Not only foreshadowing is good. Also the opposite (cant find any better word in english, so I'll use flashback)
By foreshadowing, I understand when you find a brief cameo of an important (in the future) NPC, item, zone, or event. But you can also help to give cohesion to the AP, when you make a brief cameo of a PAST event.
for example, let's say you fight in book 1, vs a goblin warchief. After some adventuring, in book 3, you might find hints that said warchief know something about the current evil dragon cult, so you can go back to unbury him, and Speak with Dead.
Or you could find a son of an old NPC, or maybe just find the magic weapon created by said NPC. Even if those events are minor, or sidequests, they help to provide a cohesive feeling. Do you remember when you saved the life or that sheriff, in book I? Well, he is no longer the sheriff, but he is married, have a son, and is very happy to help you with some piece of information you need.
The problem with that is that the PCs might not save the life of the sheriff. Alternatively, what if the PCs who saved the life of the sheriff died in a TPK and it's a whole new party that have picked up the old trail? It's dicey to assume the outcome of the earlier parts of the campaign or that the level 1 PCs are the same PCs who are still part of the campaign at 6th level.
Iirc, that's been the basic response when people ask why specific NPCs don't carry over from one book to the next: Paizo can't assume that any of them will necessarily survive their initial encounters with the PCs.
Creative Director
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The problem with that is that the PCs might not save the life of the sheriff. Alternatively, what if the PCs who saved the life of the sheriff died in a TPK and it's a whole new party that have picked up the old trail? It's dicey to assume the outcome of the earlier parts of the campaign or that the level 1 PCs are the same PCs who are still part of the campaign at 6th level.
Iirc, that's been the basic response when people ask why specific NPCs don't carry over from one book to the next: Paizo can't assume that any of them will necessarily survive their initial encounters with the PCs.
Correct.
I'm trying something new for the 8 most important ally NPCs and 8 most important enemy NPCs in Wrath of the Righteous though... stay tuned!
The problem with that is that the PCs might not save the life of the sheriff. Alternatively, what if the PCs who saved the life of the sheriff died in a TPK and it's a whole new party that have picked up the old trail? It's dicey to assume the outcome of the earlier parts of the campaign or that the level 1 PCs are the same PCs who are still part of the campaign at 6th level.
Iirc, that's been the basic response when people ask why specific NPCs don't carry over from one book to the next: Paizo can't assume that any of them will necessarily survive their initial encounters with the PCs.
Correct.
I'm trying something new for the 8 most important ally NPCs and 8 most important enemy NPCs in Wrath of the Righteous though... stay tuned!
So I shall. :) Seems that this AP will be the one my "always me as GM" group wants to choose after Jade Regent. I hope it'll be all it promises ( I also hope it will not be too "rocket tag"-y at high levels ^^ ).
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Creative Director
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If by "rocket tag" you mean whoever goes first wins initiative...
... then no. That is not my goal. Nor has that been my experience running games, though (and I've run plenty of high level games—I've got two with 14th level parties in play right now, in fact), so maybe it's just a difference in play styles between you and me, in which case I'm not sure what I can do to fix your rocket-tag fears...
As far as coherency goes for APs, there's three bits of feedback that come to mind:
1- As both a player and a GM, I really like it when there's a natural flow from one adventure into the next. Parts 1 and 2 of Kingmaker are a great transition. Your reward for the former (have your own kingdom!) inherently kicks off the plot of the next (establishing a new kingdom is kinda tricky). Jade Regent works out wonderfully since most of the adventure transitions are covered by the fact that you're on a road trip with a course plotted through some really varied locations.
2- As a player especially, it's great to get emotionally invested in a base of some kind, and come home to it now and then. Legacy of Fire actually did a fantastic job of leaving everyone with a strong attachment to Kelmarane with the one-two punch of the first adventure and the following huge span of downtime, but doesn't do so well on the front of coming back home now and then. Going way back, Shackled City got everyone in my group pretty darn invested in Cauldron towards the end where the PCs start really moving up socially but that comes a bit late in the AP to really pay off. Kingmaker is pretty nice about the feel of coming home after a major harrowing adventure, and the emotional investment is fairly obvious, but the fact that the party is personally responsible for all of the out of town adventuring and the general management of the city makes it rather hard for them to ever just kinda kick there feet up and relax for a while.
3- As a GM, I like to have a real solid handle on where things are going in the long term, established as early as possible. Again, Jade Regent is really nice for this. The background information in the first adventure paints a great picture of how everything was originally set into motion, the end of it establishes the PCs' long term goal, and why they're going to have to deal with a lot of trouble along the way. Then the second adventure reinforces the hell out of all that. Legacy of Fire on the other hand really felt like either there was a lack of communication between authors about the backstory, or there were some serious on-the-fly revisions going on:
Oh, and campaign traits can be pretty inconsistent about paying off, but that's not so much a structural issue I don't think. I am somewhat curious at what point in the lifecycle of an AP those tend to be introduced though. Does someone come along at the end, read through everything, and try to come up with a list of traits that might hook into adventures as they're turned in, or is it part of the initial brainstorming which authors will just hopefully try to work in where they can?
If by "rocket tag" you mean whoever goes first wins initiative...
... then no. That is not my goal. Nor has that been my experience running games, though (and I've run plenty of high level games—I've got two with 14th level parties in play right now, in fact), so maybe it's just a difference in play styles between you and me, in which case I'm not sure what I can do to fix your rocket-tag fears...
"Rocket tag", as far as I've heard the term used, is when there is so much damage output from a monster ( or player character ) in a round that a similar CR just vaporizes into fine rest mist before he gets to act once. It can happen pretty easily when players at high level get access to things like Pounce ( or at levels a Quickrunner's Shirt ^^ ).
I think my main concern for the high level mythic play is that things like the Agile monster template ( one additional full action per round at -20 initiative ) will mean that fights will become even more quick and brutal and that players better have resurrections aplenty at hand.
I hope you guys get to playtest some combats of the high level modules before publishing them. I know that I have many times been surprised at how rules, which seemed quite innocuous when just read in the ruleback, turned out to make living wrecking balls out of player characters or monsters.
The problem with that is that the PCs might not save the life of the sheriff. Alternatively, what if the PCs who saved the life of the sheriff died in a TPK and it's a whole new party that have picked up the old trail? It's dicey to assume the outcome of the earlier parts of the campaign or that the level 1 PCs are the same PCs who are still part of the campaign at 6th level.
If the Sheriff died, then you have a normal AP. Nothing to loose there.
EDIT: Example, in WotW campaign. The PC have to take down some watchtower, and kill the guards of that tower, plus the liutenants.
If the wizard of the tower survive, he'll come later to attack the PC lair, in Book II (like 5 levels later). If the wizard doesn't survive, then the PC are attacked by the brother of a different PC (the watchtower scout).
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I'm curious if Paizo would ever consider producing an adventure path that didn't follow the one-volume-per-month subscription model. I'm not saying drop the model for all future APs, but produce one (or more) APs that are realeased all at once, preferably in one volume as the new Runelords AP was. Perhaps this would make it easier to have one (or a few authors) do the whole thing.
The reason this occurs to me is that I personally will never begin running an AP until I have the ENTIRE thing. Whether or not the AP has adequate foreshadowing of its own, I would want to do my own foreshadowing. I would also never try to tell a story without knowing how it ends (and all the details) first.
Obviously, the subscription model works for a lot of people, but in my opinion an AP that was released as one product would be really appealing to some of us at least. And it would give Paizo a chance to experiment with a different way of doing it, and possibly craft a story that's even more cohesive and powerful than what they've done before.
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Paizo developers are running at the absolute ragged edge of disaster of what they can get done in a month now. It's a constant battle with deadlines. (The modules line got months behind this last year and has now gone from bimonthly to quarterly, and the Visions of WAR book that's an "extra" non-subscription-line product has already slipped from May to July.)
Asking for more product from Paizo is unlikely to be met with approval unless and until they get the product lines they're producing now under control.
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Great thread!
There's something that's been nibbling away at the back of my mind about APs, and some of the things in this thread really brought them into my consciousness.
First off, I own the printed copy of every single installment of the APs, inclusive of both the hardcover of Runelords and Shackled City. I've 100% fully supported Paizo and pretty much recognize the Paizo team as the best adventure-producing team there is.
Then some things like Way of the Wicked come along, and there's "something" about the product that really strikes you in how well-woven everything is.
Then I consider to myself, "what if someone like Pett wrote a whole AP", and lo-and-behold, he lets slip he is doing just this.
I haven't devoured Shattered Star or Reign of Winter yet. They're on the shelves behind me, but there's just so much stuff to run. I have to imagine some other folks are in this same situation, and they think to themselves, "I wonder if I should hit pause the Paizo APs for a bit". This thought creeps into my head after kickstarting Razor Coast and now Throne of Night. For some reason, I haven't gotten all tingly about the WotR AP yet, but that's a whole topic of its own.
I think one of the things that really made Paizo stand out from other companies is that it did things that were different and highly experimental at their time. Now, it's a bit stuck in a fairly rigid system of AP production from which it really can't hit the pause button and "blow things up" and re-evaluate their construction (at least until there's some sort of revenue disruption from other factors).
As a consumer of AP content, I can really feel when an AP or an installment has a "soul" to it. It's a lot of the little things that are mentioned in here, but there's something that's really hard to define, but I think it comes down to the author (who is a form of artist) really pouring himself into the work.
A good example is Age of Worms. You can just feel the passion of the author (in this case Mona) as he provides excruciating detail to the Wind Dukes. And, he evokes a labor of love in his detailing of the various NPCs throughout Diamond Lake.
Burnt Offerings is another great example. You can clearly tell that James loves Sandpoint and it's an important location to him - personally, as if it's a reflection of him - personally.
How can you feel these labors of passion? It's the little details about a location, an NPC, and the historical insight provided to the reader. It provides a clue that this location, NPC or ideal has "existed" for a long time - it's not something that a writer simply invented in a month of effort. They've kicked around the idea for months, if not years, improving it's internal consistency in their minds (or maybe paper?)
I believe this is what folks talk about with a single-author AP. In the case of Way of the Wicked or Tsar or any of these up-and-coming single-author APs from other publishers, you can clearly see they are labors of passion and love and things that their authors have had "trying to get out of their heads for years" (or decades?).
I've rambled a bit, but what I'm trying to get to is that some of the more recent APs have lost some of the "soul". They're a little less internally detailed - they feel like they've had a lot less time to mature from conception-to-printing. They are less "special" and more routine in production. It's really hard to explain how they are more of a "homework assignment" of a module rather than a "I have to share Diamond Lake with the world because it's such an amazing place, and I need three times as many words as you are giving me to do this job..."
I'm sure this could be an all-night discussion, so I'll stop here. :)
Kickstarter may be changing things in crazy new ways...
Not sure self advertising is good but I have just had the first part of my AP released thanks to the fine people at AAW. This is the first thing I have ever written with the intention of it being published and I ended up creating a 4 part AP, written solo as the original post queried!
http://paizo.com/products/btpy8zaa/discuss?Search-for-Lost-Legacy-By-Silver s-Light#tabs
Over the four separate modules it comes in total at about 120,000 words of 'adventure'.
It has been a most interesting project to attempt and was very hard work. I will write up a full post about the trials and tribulations of such an endeavor in due course. It has made me wonder why anyone would write a second thing!! Plus it made me realize how hard it can be to get what you think is a good idea that is floating about in one's head and into good grammar....or even half decent grammar
my hat is tipped towards all the AP writers.
John
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Since this thread seems to have been thoroughly necro'ed I might as well throw in my 2cents:
I get that a one author AP would cause too many logistical issue but how about having the same author do two parts? Specifically the beginning and end. The ideal way I would see this working is an AP idea is decided on and an outline is created. Author 1 gets this outline and begins the opening adventure. Once author 1 is done with the opening adventure authors 2-5 get the adventure and the outline and then started on their portions. With the beginning already set they get a lot stronger feeling of the style and tone of the whole AP. At this same time author 1 begins work on the last installment. As authors 2-5 finish their parts the first author ties the various loose threads to the final adventure.
Since the first author know he is working on the beginning and the end he is able to use a fair amount of subtle foreshadowing knowing that it will at least be touched upon in the final installment. He also is better able to weave in the inevitable loose ends that multiple authors will cause since he's got a better idea of how things started and how he wants them to end. I think it would give you the overall feeling of having one author while still allowing you to split up the work so things are able to get done in a timely manner.
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Since this thread seems to have been thoroughly necro'ed I might as well throw in my 2cents:
I get that a one author AP would cause too many logistical issue but how about having the same author do two parts? Specifically the beginning and end. The ideal way I would see this working is an AP idea is decided on and an outline is created. Author 1 gets this outline and begins the opening adventure. Once author 1 is done with the opening adventure authors 2-5 get the adventure and the outline and then started on their portions. With the beginning already set they get a lot stronger feeling of the style and tone of the whole AP. At this same time author 1 begins work on the last installment. As authors 2-5 finish their parts the first author ties the various loose threads to the final adventure.
Since the first author know he is working on the beginning and the end he is able to use a fair amount of subtle foreshadowing knowing that it will at least be touched upon in the final installment. He also is better able to weave in the inevitable loose ends that multiple authors will cause since he's got a better idea of how things started and how he wants them to end. I think it would give you the overall feeling of having one author while still allowing you to split up the work so things are able to get done in a timely manner.
The first and the last adventures in an AP are often the most challenging to create, and in some aspects are the most important. Not saying this makes your idea impossible, just pointing out a difficulty.
Generally speaking, I think something around 4 authors + a supervisor should be able to handle the core of an AP... but maybe there are anywhere between 1 and 1000 considerations I'm not awere of or things i'm missing.
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The first and the last adventures in an AP are often the most challenging to create, and in some aspects are the most important.
This is exactly why I think they should be written by the same person. If the schedule were adjusted so that the first installment was finished before the others were even started it wouldn't change the amount of time that the author has to write each part. And since the author has already put in a good deal of the work when he completed the first part, the last part should actually be easier for him than it would be for a different author.
Having the same voice bookend an adventure would provide a great boost for a consistent feel. I imagine it would be something the writers would look forward to. Being the headlining author would give them a showcase where they could really shine. I also expect that it's somewhat frustrating to spend all this time fleshing out a world and a story for a beginning AP and then not be able to finish telling it in your own words.
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My simple test would be this: if you skip that module, does it wreck the AP?
In my opinion, it should.
I don't have a lot of experience with the lines, but this even applies to Runelords AE. Take Burnt Offerings. You can drop the whole thing and still run the other five. Why?
Because Sandpoint is easy to care about.
Because Nualia has no relation to Karzaoug whatsoever.
Because Karzaoug rising to threaten the entire world makes the threat of Goblin attacks a bit petty, in comparison.
There's also the matter of Lamashtu factoring in heavily in the beginning yet not mattering at all in the end.
Same with Greed vs Wrath.
In a situation where absolutely every detail is in your power, thses strike me as odd. Doubly so in something as polished as RotRL AE.
how about reuniting the holy trinity of jacobs, mona, and bulmahn? they did great work here. maybe they could each write two adventures of a single ap.