RoTR is a solid option, especially the AE version. But to be honest, it's difficult to give suggestions unless you tell a bit more about you and your group and what sort of games you enjoy or are looking to run.
Kingmaker. My group has had a ball with it.
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My group has been gaming for years. We have played almost any iteration of polyhedral gaming you can think of. I don't think any particular theme would throw them off, but we do enjoy a good, well written adventure. I am really just wondering which AP has the best plot, best advancement, most stuff going on. Or to change the question, if you had to rate the ones you have played on a scale of one to five, five being awesome, how would you?
The GM needs to foreshadow book 6 a bit more heavily.
The players need to not abuse the kingdom-building rules.
Very sandboxy, good if you like that sort of thing, or if the players
have personal goals they can strive for. Very easy for a GM to modify or add side quests.
Not good if players like a huge amount of direction/hand-holding/rail-roading.
Really impressive, though your PCs have to be people who like Korvosa.
Very enjoyable, very memorable NPCs, well-done plot.
Needs conversion from 3.5.
(we only got to book 4 before the GM burned out in one campaign, and
I dropped the other before the end of book 2, but that was GMing issues, not the fault of the Adventure Path.)
Nice backstory, classic old-style adventure feel, very memorable.
Needs someone who can do haunted houses right in book 2. "You enter a room. Roll a Will save." does not cut it.
Big thematic change between books 1-2 (you're low-life skunge in a corrupt town) and books 3-6 (you're self-sacrificing heroes who save the world for no reward).
Also the elves are douchebags and by the end of book 4 my character was ready to help the drow drop an asteroid on their heads, as long as it only hurt elves. There are some really good set scenes in books 1-2.
Needs conversion from 3.5.
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My group has been gaming for years. We have played almost any iteration of polyhedral gaming you can think of. I don't think any particular theme would throw them off, but we do enjoy a good, well written adventure. I am really just wondering which AP has the best plot, best advancement, most stuff going on. Or to change the question, if you had to rate the ones you have played on a scale of one to five, five being awesome, how would you?
Well I get a "we are savvy players who have seen it all, done it all", in which case I think you may be interest to take a look at the current AP, "Reign of Winter". You will find some HIGHLY unusual things in that AP which should surprise even the most experienced players.
If you are not into that particular kind of crazy, then I would bring your attention to either Carrion Crown or Shattered Star, which are both collections of very solid adventures that have rather weak connections between them. Of course with some work you can change that if you are a fan of continuity in campaigns. Carrion Crown is a tour of every single kind of gothic horror out there, with each critter getting it's own adventure, and Shattered Star is all about dungeons - every adventure in it is a huge dungeon for the PCs to explore. Both of these APs are amazing execution of the kind of adventures they are supposed to be and if either of them sounds like your style, then they are recommanded.
Kingmaker is a very unique AP in that it is a COMPLETE sandbox, with each adventure being mostly a colletion of encounters for your PCs to stumble into as they explore. It focuses on the PCs rulling a kingdom, which, if it is your thing, I think you'll quite enjoy.
If you don't mind doing some conversion work from 3.5 to Pathfinder, then I highly recommand "Curse of the Crimson Throne" for it's deep and interesting story line, filled with excellent NPCs for the PCs to interact with, with a focus on urban adventuring.
Rise of the Runelords gives me the impression of a very fun AP, though it does have a strong focus on dungeons, and it's dungeons are very inferior to those in Shattered Star (even if you do run Rise of the Runelords, I suggest you get Shattered Star #5, "Into the nightmare Rift", and use it instead of Rise of the Runelords #5 with slight changes). If your party enjoys old style adventuring then there's no mathcing Rise of the Runelords in that regard.
Hope this helps!
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If this is any help, I am running Rise of the Runelords AE for my group and we are all enjoying it thoroughly! Highly Recommended :)
That said, I would love to jump straight on the Reign of Winter, it looks great and as previously said goes places no AP has gone before! Also the great thing about running that right now would be the anticipation of the next months arriving in the mail and running it 'live' so to speak.
"Rise of the Runelords" : Save the world (!), recently refurbished, pretty tough in parts
"Curse of the Crimson Throne" : Very good (near excellent) urban AP, will need refurbishment since it is mostly written for 3.5. If you like to expand and "homebrew" a setting - like fleshing out a town, this is.... IMHO, probably the best AP. Tons of fun NPCs, storyline, twists.... the full social works. Opinions will vary
"Kingmaker" : the ultimate rural sandbox AP. Very flexible. Nice ideas and concepts. Does have nasty amounts of feys. Although anything but straightforward and will need strong player initiative, so some groups will hate it.
"Shattered Star" : If you love dungeoneering. Personally, I don't like the concept, but lots of people wanted it.
"Skulls and Shackles" : Piracy, always a popular theme but might need adaption for your group. Cruel and brutal in parts. Has good sandbox elements, but gets more railroadish later on
just my... shortlist.
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You could also hunt down a copy of Shackled City which runs all the way to level 20.
I should warn you though that Shackled City has a VERY different feel from any of the Pathfinder APs. It's the kind of AP for someone who is cool with having half-trolls and were-baboons be a common sight in his gaming table. The adventures are VERY loosley connected, kind of wierd with a lot of really bizzare monster choices. The layout of the book is also MUCH inferior to that of any Pathfinder AP volume.
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Shackled City was a ton of fun when I ran it a little while back. However, it needs copious amounts of work to make it playable. If it's run as is it's disjointed and outright nonsensical in parts (Strike of Shatterhorn anyone?). There are a lot of resources for fixing it here on the forums, however.
Ultimately, Paizo has learned a lot about writing APs so my recommendation would be to go with Rise of the Runelords AE. It is universally praised and has years of AP design behind it.
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I'll go with what I have played and run. Scores out of 5.
Shackled City 2.5
Rise of the Runelords: 2 (to book 4)
Curse of the Crimson Throne: 4
Second Darkness: 3.5
Legacy of Fire: 5
Kingmaker 2.5
Carrion Crown 4.5
Jade Regent: 3 (to book 6)
All others are only partially completed or not started.
Those are my personal experiences. My advice is to choose one you'd think you'd like and run that.
How long does a single book in an AP last? Thanks for all these reviews, they are really helpful!
That depends. I have known groups, role-play intensiv in their outlook on bi-weekly turns to make them last 6 months or slightly more. per book.
Personally, with a once weekly (ok, make that 3/4 weeks) , 6+ hours playing, well-attuned group, I'd say around 6-7 sessions total per book. More role-playing, more time consumed.
I am running Jade Regent [...] I am actually kinda burning out on running it though (just want to switch it up for a little then come back) and was thinking of trying Way of the Wicked by Fire Mountain Games (its a 3rd party AP) [...]
^^ Just want to reiterate this, as it's been my experience, too. We're currently working through Jade Regent and I've gotten a bit burnt out myself. The caravan system is a large part of the campaign's gestalt but is basically broken (great idea but bad execution; long thread about this in the AP's forum).
Because of this, I'm cutting out a lot of stuff and moving the campaign from a steam locomotive to high-speed rail, with the goal of switching over to Way of the Wicked (an evil-themed AP, so it is quite different but not everyone's cup of tea). There are a fair number of reviews for WotW up, as well as some awesome campaign journals you can find on the site and online campaign PbP sections.
I'm also a player in a Skull and Shackles campaign. Again, not to everyone's taste, but I find it to be a fun change of pace from the typical campaign. It can start out a little rough for some players but, once you get over that hump, it gets to be a lot of fun (I gather we're about half-way through book two).
If your players (or your own taste) is a bit more traditional, Crimson Throne would by all accounts be an excellent choice (though I haven't played it). I've read solid reviews of RotRL -- not uniformly glowing, but certainly solid.
Skulls and Shackles
The initial adventure has all the pleasantness of "mutiny on the bounty" in its first part which makes escape into piracy and your own ship all the sweeter.
Sailing, ships, piracy and the sea have been... streamlined for landlubber use, and the final three installments feature a lot more dungeons than one would expect from a piracy AP.
I rewrote extensively, but the players were absolutely enthusiastic about stretching their sealegs
Rise of the Runelords
This one does have some infamously brutal fights, which IMHO, are, if played with any degree of nastiness by the GM, will result in TPKs. Frequently. It is also pretty railroadish and does feature a number of scenes which it is essential to accomplish to even progress any further in the AP. On the other hand. It is a classic, and has some absoultely beautifully crafted parts, such as the the third installment
Curse of the Crimson Throne
the initial parts are fantastic and allow a stupenduous degree of adapting Korvosa to your group's liking. Individual shops, the revolution, setup of NPCs. The missions are pretty "low key" and not quite as deadly as they can be. there are some wonderful subgame with a "semi-rugby" and the chase card system for rooftop pursuits.
Once you leave the city, things tune up on the "dangerous" side, and especially Scarwall castle is a very scary place.
I cannot emphasize how much I am in love with this AP, which gave my group some of its best roleplaying moments ever.
This is a rare treat if your group likes social interaction or social intrigue at low-levels of magic.
Of course, adaption to Pathfinder rules is a necessity
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I personally think skulls and shackles sounds like a good deviation from the norm, but king maker sounds good for two of the players who like intensive RP and and sandbox type games. How much leeway is there for battle oriented (with not much social skills at all) characters to do to not feel out of place? I have one player who loves making unusual races with battle themed classes ( grippli ninja, for one) and optimizing them for combat. Will I have to add/change things for him to not feel out of place, or is it fairly balanced for a mixed group like mine?
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Poor Serpent's Skull; not even worthy of mention, it seems.
Of course, there is a reason for that. It's one of the more deeply flawed AP's, as even a casual glance at the SS messageboard will show you.
That said,it's probably my favorite AP, at least on paper. If pulpy adventure-archeology type stories entertain you, and you're willing to do a sort of 50% AP, 50% homebrew game, it might be worth giving Serpent's Skull a look.
*stuff*
I'm shooting a little from the hip here, based on what I've read on the forums, but I gather both Kingmaker and Skulls are rather sandboxy. Skulls might be a little more structured, but there's a lot of room to play around with it. (We spent half a game session in an extended bar crawl, just RPing with NPCs the GM kept making up on the fly, then we returned to Rickety Squibbs with a second ship that needed refitting and our GM just plugged in a little homebrew side adventure with an undead cyclops and a Ghol Gan ruin.) So, as the GM, with a little work you have an opportunity to accommodate your players' styles in both APs.
Personally, in our Skulls campaign, I'm playing a Charisma- and social-heavy Summoner who is the party's face and captain. But other players (and their PCs) are all about the hack and slash. Our GM has, I think, done a great job of accommodating all of us. And, as a bunch of pirates, pretty much any race/nationality/class can work... just be careful about your fighter in heavy armor doing an imitation of an anchor if he gets tossed overboard.
I personally think skulls and shackles sounds like a good deviation from the norm, but king maker sounds good for two of the players who like intensive RP and and sandbox type games. How much leeway is there for battle oriented (with not much social skills at all) characters to do to not feel out of place? I have one player who loves making unusual races with battle themed classes ( grippli ninja, for one) and optimizing them for combat. Will I have to add/change things for him to not feel out of place, or is it fairly balanced for a mixed group like mine?
Skull and Shackles can be made sandboxy if you feel like grabbing some of the details provided by DM_Dudemeister and Sabredoriaclark and YT on the boards. The first three parts of it provide wide roaming and sailing, but the final three parts are more railroadish and oriented towards dungeon-themed adventures. The location of the shackles provides for more exotic races than the Lost Kingdoms
Almost anything goes in Kingmaeker if you feel up to writing it.
We are about to finish a homebrew campaign in another two or three sessions. That means new characters, and a new adventure! In your opinions, which ones are the best?
I have the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary edition, any others I will have to purchase.
The New RotRL is indeed fantastic - and has a strong theme of modern horror if that's something your party is into. The best AP I've ever played by far was Skull n Shackles, but again that has to be to your party's tastes (see my postr in that forum for adapting it to 'good' parties).
The only other AP's I have experience with are Legacy of Fire, Second Darkness and Shattered Star - for some reason I couldn't get excited about SS, but I really enjoyed the other two. The only thing holding them back was their flavor made them very 'theme' oriented... players would be better off building characters to suit the AP rather than the other way around.
I'd get a brief summary of what's out there and put it before your players, let them decide what they think they would enjoy most.
Why start afresh with new characters and a new story? Why not simply create a new story for the current characters?
Curse of the Crimson Throne is by far the best AP, IMO. It's 3.5, but conversion material is easy to find on the CotCT board.
Kingmaker is a sandbox and has some deep flaws in its early modules. "One combat per day" syndrome prevails through a lot of the early stuff and the kingdom building aspect is executed in a way which makes it difficult to engage more than one or two of the players in it. The last module needs way more foreshadowing than it got in the printed work.
Jade Regent is a lot of fun, but the third module drags on too long. In a way that gives the journey over the north pole of Golarion some autenthicity, but one gets tired of the constant random encounters. The later modules have a lot of roleplaying opportunities, but at least one way too long dungeon in module four. I'm in the middle of module three and already planning to cut the dungeon crawling to a minimum, to get to more of the roleplaying aspect of the AP.
Jade Regent is a lot of fun, but the third module drags on too long. In a way that gives the journey over the north pole of Golarion some autenthicity, but one gets tired of the constant random encounters. The later modules have a lot of roleplaying opportunities, but at least one way too long dungeon in module four. I'm in the middle of module three and already planning to cut the dungeon crawling to a minimum, to get to more of the roleplaying aspect of the AP.
At the risk of going off-topic, I just had to say... *exact* same experience/perspective here to a "t". Nice to know it's not just me.
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Why start afresh with new characters and a new story? Why not simply create a new story for the current characters?
If the group decides they want to keep their current party, then that's ok too. I'll just dust off an old 3.5 pregen and run that. I just don't have the time right now to create an entirely new adventure, as much as I would like to.
However, this thread is still more than helpful, because I do plan on buying several adventure paths for the group, and knowing which ones will give me the most bang for my buck is very valuable.