AP Choice

[IejirIsk]

Without major spoilers, and excluding RotRL. whats a good AP to look into buying? and why (again, no spoils, please)

[atheral]

Well, this will very greatly depending on opinion and desired theme, and I can only speak for the ones I've played/GMed for. But since you asked for recommendations with a grain of salt these are currently my top three since you said to discount RotRL.

1. My current personal Favorite is Jade Regent
Pros: Epic journey style adventure, the nature of the story allows for great variation in characters due to exotic locales, lots of "role" playing opportunities especially in the later adventures.
Cons: Can feel sluggish in the middle books, Asian themes aren't everyone's cup of tea.

2. Carrion Crown
Pros: Lots of mystery and drama, plenty of opportunity to trot out odd and unusual things that may not see a lot of play in other stories. Many out of the ordinary situations need creative thinking to solve.
Cons:Some subject matter may be disturbing to some groups, also horror stories aren't okay for everyone

3. Kingmaker
Pros: Different and wide open story premise, and very grand in scale.
Cons: The kingdom building rule subset as presented has some flaws that, if your group contains a min/maxer or stat guy or someone just fairly good at rule math, will be broken fairly quickly. This has the potential among other things to make the campaign "too easy". You may want to wait till Ultimate Campaign presents a revision.

[Umbranus]

First let me say that there have been a lot of threads on this topic so it could be beneficial to look them up.

As two of the APs mentioned by atheral are the two I play in I will add something

atheral wrote:

2. Carrion Crown
Pros: Lots of mystery and drama, plenty of opportunity to trot out odd and unusual things that may not see a lot of play in other stories. Many out of the ordinary situations need creative thinking to solve.
Cons:Some subject matter may be disturbing to some groups, also horror stories aren't okay for everyone

I nearly can't believe you are talking about the AP I'm playing. I didn't find mystery, drama, out of the ordenary stuff or horror. (Perhaps I'm too much of a Cthulhu fan to soo anything D&D like as horror) I see CC as a string of undead hunting miniadventures with unlogical plot twists.

atheral wrote:

3. Kingmaker
Pros: Different and wide open story premise, and very grand in scale.
Cons: The kingdom building rule subset as presented has some flaws that, if your group contains a min/maxer or stat guy or someone just fairly good at rule math, will be broken fairly quickly. This has the potential among other things to make the campaign "too easy". You may want to wait till Ultimate Campaign presents a revision.

The open story can be really cool but it can be problematic with some groups I think. So as much as I like this AP it might not be something for everyone.

The math can be avoided by not telling the players what exactly the buildings do. So they have to choose mainly by fluff and hints from their NPC friends.

[vikingson]

there is a myriad of other threads on this, and your choice depends very much on what your group wants and what you care to master

IMHO
1) Curse of the Crimson Throne.
pro : excellent story, starting in AP#1 and with a continuous development. Very strong social activity, city based, recurring NPCs, very expandable - sidetrek, extra adventures, different plotlines
Con : has to be converted to Pathfinder (but much of this can be found in the forums)

2) Kingmaker
pro : very flexible, excpansive, gives the players the feeling of having achieved something
con : very player driven - player initiative is needed, finale needs more foreshadowing, actually buying some installments has become very difficult.

3) Legacy of Fire :
Pro : rare setting, strong internal theme, not the most difficult of APs
Con : needs conversion, needs interest in the area and subject, players may have different expectations.

4) Skulls and Shackles :
Pro : pirates, ships, can be made very sandboxy. Pirates ? Gold dubloons, ghost ships, dinosaur islands, basically a WOW-idea

Con : needs STRONG rehashing (IMHO) of the plotline, especially the three final "dungeon crawls" - may I ask what were they thinking ? And gets to topform only if massively redone and expanded. Many NPCs are truly...archetype and not really original at all. Some encounters are excessively deadly, even early on in the AP. Do read the board.

[Wesnav]

I am running Jade Regent, almost done with 3rd book, it drags a little when you travel a lot but I just glancing at book 4 and 5 I am pretty excited to keep going. Had to customize the items a bit so my player actually used the weapons they got to loot and we do not use the caravan combat but run some randoms encounters that the book supplies. All and all it's a fun so far, Vikings and Ninjas how can u go wrong?

I have played in 2 other APs that the DMs burned out on, Rise of the Runelords AE and the first two books of Serpent Skull. RotR was pretty fun and would love to finish it one day(probably ended up running it though). Serpent Skull book one was amazing, cool encounters and environmental situations, tons of fun but the dm didn't like the rest of the books in the series, bad reviews and kinda strange encounters, but I was super happy that I got to play the first book.

We are starting our second session of king maker this week so far so good, it can be very open boxed it seems. Our group has had a problem with op power gamers, we optimize so much that the other half of group doesn't really get to play in combat. We arent allowed pets this AP and not too optimized, the dm is trying to balance the group out.