|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Hey all -
I am getting a new group together, consisting of my brothers and sister in law. We are all adults. Older brother and I have RPed when we were kids (MANY years ago), and a little bit in recent years. Younger brother and sister in law have never RPed but willing to learn. I haven't GMed since I was a kid, when I was most certainly Doing It Wrong. But we're all excited to give this a whirl.
We will be playing online (either roll20 or MapTool). I am going to run Black Fang's Cave with pregens first, and then (assuming everyone has fun) move on to creating characters and some adventure path or other.
Any suggestions for the best AP for this situation? I'd love to run Skull and Shackles (who doesn't like pirates?), but any info about which AP is/isn't a good fit or why would be welcome.
Thanks a lot!
Congrats on getting a group together and may you have much fun in your future pathfinder adventures.
If this is your first AP, and there are a few peopleknew to the system and rules, it may be best to pick a campaign that does not require significant use of a subsystem. Examples off the top of my head include:
Kingmaker: While an innovative sandbox campaign, it requires much prep work for the GM and, for the full experience in my opinion, the use of the kingdom building and exploration subsystem.
Skull & Shackles: makes use of naval combat, as well as a reputation subsystem. These are more minor than kingmakers subsystem, but still may take a bit of work to excise. Also, this AP may be more dungeon delving than you'd hope from a pirate AP.
Jade Regent: makes use of a Caravan system. Somewhat minor to the AP, can mostly be ignored for the books it is present, however the third book will require some rework to rebalance without it. That being said, not a difficult subsystem, but one that requires a bit of house ruling and rework to balance too, but there are numerous threads on this.
Wrath of the Righteous: requires Mythic Rules. Might not be best for first AP.
Also, if you are playing in the pathfinder system, you may want to avoid the following APs that were written with 3.5 rules unless you want to take some extra prep time, though some are quite good paths (Crimson Throne).
-Curse of the Crimson Throne
-Second Darkness
-Legacy of Fire
So, then, as to what I would suggest...
Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition: The first AP and a darn good one. Classic monsters and dungeons. This has been updated to pathfinder rules with its re-release, and works on the fast experience track. One of the best adventures to give a full experience of low to high level play. While there is some disconnect between the chapters, the anniversary edition has smoothed over these bumps a little too. Check it out.
Carrion Crown: a Gothic adventure path dealing with classic horror monsters such as ghosts, flesh golems, werewolves, Lovecraftian horrors, vampires and liches. The individual chapters are a bit disconnected, but there are suggestions in the forums to tighten these up. Some very atmospheric and unique modules.
Shattered Star: A sequel of sorts to Rise of the Runlords, Curse of the Crimson Throne and Second Darkness, it takes place after the events of the three and presumes certain facts that come to light because of them (lesser so Second Darkness). So if you read Rise of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne and think you might desire to run either, you may want to do so first before running this. That being said, a great module, especially if you like interesting dungeons. This is the Dungeon AP, but rooms are interesting, multiple opportunities to interact with denizens of the dungeons, and an epic story that might start a bit slow but works up to a great finale. Been running it and having a lot of fun.
Reign of Winter: Classic fairy tale meets dimension travel. This AP provides a lot of variety and a darker look at some fairy themes and the party races to free Baba Yaga to stop her daughter from covering Golarion in eternal winter. The PCs get Baba Yaga's dimension hopping hut and travel to distant planets, earth during WWII, and other such places. Fairly solid and fun.
There are also Council of Thieves and Serpent's Skull, however there are some issues of the design and overall story of some of the individual books, and may require a bit of GMing work to make them fun and more palatable. But check out all the AP summaries, and tell us what seems interesting. There are also some highly rated Third Party APs too.
Run Runelords anyway. It's a superb game. There is a large amount of material available on the forums for Sandpoint and for maps and the like. And audiobooks and the like never truly match what is going on for the actual game (which you can always modify to your own whims anyway).
I've only run Runelords and Reign of Winter so I honestly can't give you any advice on the others. Jade Regent is said to be fun (and I own four of the six books; it seems like an interesting storyline) but I have also heard the Caravan rules are... not exactly viable. Again, the forums may have alternatives.
Regarding shattered Star and Runelords, I don't think much is spoiled by playing shattered star first. The main thing is Runelords introduces lore, Runelords and the Thassilon empire, upon which the backstory of Shattered Star is also entrenched, however it is easy enough to introduce and spread that knowledge throughout Shattered Star as well. Furthermore, the way Runelords is set up, even if players know about the end boss being a Runelord Archmage, it really won't effect decisions or the story at all because they still need to wait until the last book to have a showdown with him. So yes, it should be fine to run Shattered Star first and still run Rise of the Runelords afterwards at any point, and have have high amounts of enjoyment from both.
My major spoiler concern is regarding Curse of the Crimson Throne. The second book of Shattered Star is very sequelish in regards to that campaign, and the knowledge characters receive spoils, in my opinion, many important concepts and story developments that can reduce the enjoyment of playing Curse of the Crimson Throne. I would not recommend playing Shattered Star first if you ever plan on running Curse of the Crimson Throne with those players.