I'm new to PF, and wanting to make a good impression on the players initially.
They mostly like playing good guys, though they quite like the odd moment of moral ambiguity.
However, reading through some of the modules I bought, a lot of them seem 'heroic' only in that you're slaughtering a bunch of bad guys. Are there any that allow the PCs to actually do good deeds beyond killing bad guys? I noted there was a thread lamenting the lack of 'redemption' for the characters, and I agree - quite a lot of the villains are fairly tragic individuals.
In fact, generally reading through my new, shiny PF stuff, I'm getting the feeling that Golarion is quite a 'mature', 'adult' setting. I assume that 'dark and edgy' was a design aim, compared to most of the other campaign worlds. There's an awful lot of horror, and it doesn't shy away from contentious real-world issues like slavery. (On the plus side, there are some LBGT characters and themes, which will be well-recieved by the players. I'm delighted I don't have to houserule that opposite genders can romance the JR NPCs).
The 'feel' of PF adventures seems to be more neutral than heroic - more in line with Grey Mouser, Conan or even Thomas Covenant or Elric than Frodo or Aragorn. We even now have the 'Evil AP' people wanted. While I'd stop short of saying Golarion is a 'cr*psack world (as per TV Tropes) it's certainly grimmer than most campaign settings, with the odd exception of something like Midnight or Warhammer. I guess 'dark is deep' is the design brief these days.
I was struck by the huge shift in tone between the Beginner Box and the 'first' Adventure Path, Runelords. It settles down into standard fantasy eventually, but the first half feels brutal. A bit like going from a Disney film to 'Hostel'. My first thoughts were: 'I'm going to have to tone some of this down if I want to keep the players interested!'
I suppose I'm worried about 'horror fatigue'. It's easy to get desensitised if you have all these monstrous atrocities one after the other. By the time you've had the third encounter with monsters eating babies or whatever, the effect feels somewhat diluted.
Anyway, I've rambled off the point a bit; anyone recommend an AP or module with more of a bent towards being 'Big Damn Heroes' than anti-heroes?
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Almost every AP is perfectly suited for being Big Damn Heroes. The PCs are supposed to be heroes, and what's more heroic than defeating evil that's a real danger unlike the "ooga booga" generic torch your village steal your cows opposition you find in so many fantasy cliches?
If your PCs want to be beacons of hope, it's fine. If your PCs want to be antihero mercs who are in it for the money, fine as well. That's the strength of APs - they're open to multiple PC themes.
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I think you're really looking for two different things here.
See, by all accounts, Rise of the Runelords is a perfect scenarion to be Big Damn Heroes in. You can be shining paragons of all that is good and right easily. The same is true of all the other APs though some (Jade Regent and Legacy of Fire leap to mind) are more conducive to it than others. That's no problem. Indeed, it's the norm, even in something like Skulls and shackles, where you're easily able to be CG heroic pirates.
But you seem to also not want the villains to be terrible monsters who perpetrate all manner of atrocities. That's a bit rarer and harder to find in the APs...to the point that I'm having a hard time thinking of one where that's not gonna be at least something of an issue.
See, I disagree with your assessment of Golarion as particularly grim or dark. There are bad things, but there are also shining beacons of light and good. Lastwall and Andoran, for example, really are great places people would want to be a part of. And Paizo doesn't go out of it's way to make things overly hopeless and depressing ala Warhammer. No, what they do is very simple: They make the villains truly villainous.
If you're the main villain of a Paizo AP...odds are you're a real monster of some sort. Same for most of the lesser villains. In my opinion this is a good thing, and allows for more and better opportunities for someone like a Paladin to demonstrate their righteousness as well as lay low the wicked. But it also results in some fairly dark plots (which is very different from a dark world) as the PCs see evidence of the horrors committed by the villain.
So the question you asked? Yes, all the APs allow it easily. The other one you implied? Gonna be hard to come by.