Indeed that was a good call James, as long as someone else doesn't go and trademarked it.
You can't trademark a term someone is already actively publishing and then prevent them from using it.
-S
You can't trademark a term someone is already actively publishing and then prevent them from using it.
-S
You can't?
Ok i didn't know that, that leaves my post looking quite ignorant.
i knew that! But my mom is a writer/editor and my wife is a government tool:)
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We dropped the TM for the term "Adventure Path" because while we felt we DID have a shot at keeping it as a Paizo trademark, it would have required some work to defend... but more to the point, it's such a useful term for a type of gaming product we decided to not pursue it specifically because by not trademarking it, it could be used by other companies and would therefore strengthen the industry as a whole. And now we're seeing Adventure Paths put out by numerous companies... which is good on all sorts of fronts!
...if only more people in the world thought like this, rather than at all times trying to figure out how to maximize the stuff that they can claim complete and total exclusivity on....
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You can't trademark a term someone is already actively publishing and then prevent them from using it.
-S
...well, you can't legally, but you can try. And, if you're big enough, and have a big enough phalanx of lawyers, you can make life difficult and expensive for those who would challenge you.
(That's the foundation of a nontrivial number of patents nowadays.)
You can't trademark a term someone is already actively publishing and then prevent them from using it.
-S
...well, you can't legally, but you can try. And, if you're big enough, and have a big enough phalanx of lawyers, you can make life difficult and expensive for those who would challenge you.
(That's the foundation of a nontrivial number of patents nowadays.
I remember LucasArts doing this with the word "Empire" actually! The film Dark City was supposed to be called Dark Empire, but they were told the usage of "empire" in the title wouldn't be allowed because Lucas already had claim to it with from Empire Strikes Back. If you watch the commentary of the film, they actually talk about it in there.
People with money just get crazy when it comes what they think belongs to them.
You can't trademark a term someone is already actively publishing and then prevent them from using it.
-S
...well, you can't legally, but you can try. And, if you're big enough, and have a big enough phalanx of lawyers, you can make life difficult and expensive for those who would challenge you.
(That's the foundation of a nontrivial number of patents nowadays.)
Quite. Lets not forget a certain use of the words "Candy" and "Saga" that a company tried to claim as a trademark for use in social games to prevent their use by small developers that were using it long before themselves.
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Well, a 12 part AP would certainly be interesting from the standpoint that it could allow campaigns where you don't spend 75% of your time fighting. But given the history of how AP's are written on a technical level (six different authors writing the modules, often at the same time) and Paizo's unwillingness to invest the time and resources to coordinate those authors better, I fear that I am highly skeptical that such an endeavour would actually produce a more coherent story than previous AP's. And a more coherent story is what would be what is needed to fill the additional space with something else than just "more fights".
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I remember LucasArts doing this with the word "Empire" actually! The film Dark City was supposed to be called Dark Empire, but they were told the usage of "empire" in the title wouldn't be allowed because Lucas already had claim to it with from Empire Strikes Back. If you watch the commentary of the film, they actually talk about it in there.
People with money just get crazy when it comes what they think belongs to them.
Ain't that the truth (re: your second statement). Other people sometimes, too.
Re: Dark City, I have to admit I like the title better than the title Dark Empire. (Which does not justify LucasArts' behavior; sometimes people pull this kind of thing out as an example of why maximalist IP is "good", because it forced somebody else into a change that might have been better. Sure, sometimes good things happen via a bad path, but that doesn't justify the bad path. Silver linings still have clouds in them.) Then again, I really like that movie, and I may be biased because for years I've associated the title "Dark City" with that movie. "Dark Empire" sounds cheesier. And, given that the action of the movie takes place entirely within one city, the title is apt.
I share your fears magnuskn but how sure are you that Paizo is unwilling, instead of unable, to invest the time and resources to coordinate the authors better?
Ditch all the filler in the AP.
Make them 4 modules only
Or
The 12 May work as an extra publication, 32 page format each time
The filler is why subscribe. I look forward to reading the content. I rarely read the adventure unless it's an adventure I plan to run.
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I share your fears magnuskn but how sure are you that Paizo is unwilling, instead of unable, to invest the time and resources to coordinate the authors better?
Because James said so, although not in those exact words. We had a discussion about story, recurring characters and the general coherence of AP's, and the topic came to conference calls or chats between the editors and authors. Apparently it just is too hard to coordinate seven (or a few more) people once every month or two, because a lot of them are freelancers and live in different time zones. I was and am not really convinced by this argument, given how about most companies manage to do just that.
Look, I understand that Paizo seems to be always rushing to a deadline, but given how AP's are their bread and butter, I'd hope that getting a better story into them would have more priority. I already have gotten disenchanted by them mostly consisting of combats and more combats, strung together by some plot, but given the roots of Pathfinder, that is not so surprising. However, I think that too short shrift is given to adding roleplaying scenarios, recurring NPC's who have an evolving story outside of the module in which they were introduced and a bit more novel-like plot.
Jade Regent was extremely good in many regards. The recurring NPC's stood out (although they were not given anything to do beyond module one), but one thing which stood out to me was a section at the beginning of book four, which consisted of pure roleplaying. It took only two and a half pages in the adventure, but it was some of the best time my group had in the entire AP. If we got more of that, instead of just another section of weak monsters between bosses, padded out with flavor text how this particular dungeon room is decorated, then I'd be much more happy with how AP's are going. But it seems that actual detailed roleplaying scenarios are more the aberration than the rule.
Anyway, I'm off to bed, work tomorrow and I need to get up early.
I played JR and i know of which part you speak of, that part was almost two sessions for my group.
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The filler is why subscribe. I look forward to reading the content. I rarely read the adventure unless it's an adventure I plan to run.
Likewise. Mind you, I find myself wanting to run them all, but I don't have time to do that. And I play in some, which means I don't want to spoil them... so I resist reading the adventure material until I'm sure I'm not going to play in that campaign. But I read the other stuff.
(I run and play in multiple games at once in parallel because I play by PbP, which means that things go horribly slowly, but I can play multiple games simultaneously. So, right now, I am about to start a real-time VTT (as fast as, but not, face-to-face) Reign of Winter, and I'm running by PbP all of Shattered Star, Skull & Shackles, and Kingmaker by PbP.)
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I would love to see the Adventure Paths morph into, instead of 2 6 issue separate paths, 2 4 issue paths and 1 shorter 3 issue path all set in the same geography of the world with a certain amount of crossover with NPCs and such and a 1 issue module that would show how to integrate any or all of the 3 paths together into a mega-path.
The 4 issue paths would be able to the PCs to around 10-12 level. The 3 issue path could be a higher challenge that could easily add directly onto either of the others to bring the party to levels 16-18. The additional 1 issue module could offer a small adventure but most of it I would like to see devoted to showing how to adjust the others to all fit together.
I played JR and i know of which part you speak of, that part was almost two sessions for my group.
Although I really can't make much progress at the moment, I'll try to use it as an inspiration for how to do social encounters in the homebrewn urban Taldor campaign I am working on.
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Skeld, what these individuals believe is that you can have your cake and eat it too. Or in other words, they want concurrent APs - a year-long AP going from levels 1 to 20 for 12 issues... at the same time as the two six-issue APs. Because hey, you just have to hire twice as many people to do it. No problem. And hey, who cares about the bottom line. Because the customer is always right even when it drives the company out of business.
Skeld, what these individuals believe is that you can have your cake and eat it too. Or in other words, they want concurrent APs - a year-long AP going from levels 1 to 20 for 12 issues... at the same time as the two six-issue APs. Because hey, you just have to hire twice as many people to do it. No problem. And hey, who cares about the bottom line. Because the customer is always right even when it drives the company out of business.
Whilst I think it's unlikely to happen, I dont see any problem with telling Paizo what you want and suggesting ways it might work.
They're not saying "I'm the customer - I demand you make this for me". They're saying "This is what I'd like".
It's slightly counterintuitive that hiring more people and expanding production to meet demand is not always the best way to make more profit or to ensure the survival of the company.
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All the reasons for requesting a 12-part AP are described in my original post. In a few words what I request is more space for the authors to expand their ideas. I don't want to reach higher levels, I want to stop seeing glaring plot holes / omissions just because the adventure reached the page count limit.
More books per AP would not solve that problem at all.
Generally speaking, each book in an AP is written to stand on its own as a distinct adventure, and the various books in a given path are written by different authors, with overlapping timetables.
So let's say author A absolutely can't fit his adventure into the allotted pages or so, and it's all just so very awesome we can't bare to cut any of it, and we simply must let it spill over into an extra book.
First off, I think you're really overestimating the amount and frequency of awesome material ending up on the floor.
Next, we have the issue that this same author is now writing these two books back to back, which is a lot of extra stress.
Then, we have to deal with a weird cliffhanger. We obviously couldn't cram a decent conclusion in with just those 50 pages, and most APs start off with a bit of setup, then dive into a dungeon or two, with a lot of stat blocks near the end. So... how do you split that up? We can't move part of the setup into the next book, we can't say "the stats for these guys will be in next month's volume." Maybe we can move half a big dungeon over, but then it feels like we're just petering out at an arbitrary point, and hey, how many parties do you know who consistently explore all of one floor before poking around staircases?
Then there's the problem that nobody's ever going to be cutting HALF their planned content. When people go over a page count, it's still what they're aiming for. So even if we're talking about being 12 pages over the limit, this part 2 adventure has another 38 pages to fill in now. So... we pad that out, maybe with some nice big maps or towns, but it's still going to be a lot of stuff that's superfluous to the original concept, and we're probably going to want to stick to the same general percentage of combat per book, so, lots of random special NPCs to eat that up serving as major henchmen, hey, you can use one as the mid-boss at the end of the first book. Now things are really going to feel like they're dragging on for players though.
Plus, this is going to screw things up for the rest of the AP. If you're suddenly covering a wider level range, the next author, who again, was probably already writing their book when you went over the line, needs to rewrite all the encounters, heck, probably replace monsters who are no longer CR appropriate, account for a more powerful party, maybe make adjustments for any major details crammed in there...
And if you're suggesting this be a standard policy for all APs, that's going to really cause headaches for the authors who are comfortable with 50 pages for their 1/6th of a campaign... which again, I suspect is most of them, with how long they've been working with that restriction.
The filler is why subscribe. I look forward to reading the content. I rarely read the adventure unless it's an adventure I plan to run.Ditch all the filler in the AP.
Make them 4 modules only
Or
The 12 May work as an extra publication, 32 page format each time
As I often feel the adventure writers would rather write novels, than say adventures where the pcs choices really affect things....I understand why
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In fact, many of us (myself included) DID post alternative scenarios for the start of WotR. I talked about how much of this could be non-lethal combat, with players working to save civilians and the like, and saving throws showing if they were able to avoid such things as falling buildings - but failure meaning they were driven back to the square where everyone is at the beginning when the crack underneath drops them into darkness.
The vagueness of that start was in fact a vital part of what catalyzed the virtual community to start expanding on several scenes. It caught our interest and made us strive to improve an excellent foundation. AND THIS IS WHAT APs AND MODULES ARE SUPPOSED TO DO. It is not supposed to be run from the box as-is without ever varying from the text. If you want that, you can pull out the Atari computer game "Temple of Elemental Evil" and have a fun 3.5 D&D game that has set responses and while is still a lot of fun, ultimately is limited.
APs are living and breathing things. Your players should catalyze change within them. And you as the GM should modify things, often on the run, without depending on an all-inclusive list of "and if your players do X, respond with Y, but if they do Q, go with R."
Now here's the thing. You say "we need 12-part APs." I said "do it yourself and sell that product" - and then it turned out that others have done just that. So perhaps you should try one of these 12-part APs that are out there from a third party publisher. I know one of those, at least, includes a 13th part for free - the 1st level adventure to hook players and GMs. It's an excellent business model to draw people in. You have a 1st level adventure, you can see how it's written, and decide if it's for you.
And seriously, why do you think Paizo doing a 12-part AP would be any better than a third-party publisher? At one point, WotC was the company we bought from, and Paizo was the third-party publisher.
Could you gain a level per 16 page adventure.....or would you need too many bonus xp from non combat?
Could you gain a level per 16 page adventure.....or would you need too many bonus xp from non combat?
You're an adventure writer, you don't know?
for the record i have no idea if you could get a level every 16 pages:)
can you?
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Here's a question for the 12-part AP crew:
Why do we need a 12-part Adventure Path? I mean, if you really want to continue to level 20, the APs offer suggestions for GMs to expand upon. You can also buy a high-level module to play for levels 17+ and "finish" the game with that.
So really, what is the point? Why should Paizo risk alienating customers who might not like the 12-part AP's storyline and opt out of buying it? After a year, why should customers return?
If you want a 12-part AP, look to a secondary publisher for that, or make one yourself and sell it according to Paizo's terms as PDF files.
That's the problem with long discussion threads.
All the reasons for requesting a 12-part AP are described in my original post. In a few words what I request is more space for the authors to expand their ideas. I don't want to reach higher levels, I want to stop seeing glaring plot holes / omissions just because the adventure reached the page count limit.
For example, Wrath of the Righteous had the potential to have the most stunning opening scene ever created for an AP, the fall of Kenabres. Yet, the scene is missing. I created one myself (whom I consider as a mediocre storyteller) and still, after several months, my players refer to that scene as "excellent". Imagine what their reaction would have been if the scene was created by a professional writer, one who had actually envisioned the scene in order to base the adventure on it.
So... why was this scene missing? My best guess revolves around one and only one possible reason: Page Count. Period.
So, you're asking why am I requesting larger APs? There you have it! :)
Actually I think you will find the supposed missing scene is not missing at all and had nothing to do with pagecount and more How do we have this event with the storm king and god knows how many cr 10 + creatures leveling the city without getting the level 1 characters killed.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4; Contributor; Publisher, Legendary Games
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Personally I like the idea of a 6 part AP, with something from the module line that can fit easily in between several of the AP's in a 3 chapter format. So you can play the 6 part AP with 3 optional plug in's that can be added allowing both the module and the AP to be run independently if desired.
Legendary games has been putting out stuff that works like this and it's awesome. But, they also have copyright issues & have to wait to see what is published so there is a long delay before the plugins come out. I don't see why Paizo itself can't do this and more closely tie the release date of the plugin modules with the AP.
It would be really nice to have one of the chapters in the 3 part module be a plug in for a campaign extension after AP book 6.
Thanks for the shout-out! Legendary Games was founded based on the idea that while Paizo AP's are awesome, there is always more room for awesome stuff to make them better... with the extra special sauce that we figured the people who know the APs best are in the best position to make the best support products for them, so we have a crew of folks who have written over half of all the Paizo AP adventures produced (on top of support products for other Paizo product lines) creating neat stuff to make a terrific product (Paizo's APs) just that much better.
Playing Carrion Crown and you think there are not enough opportunities to gain Trust in Ravengro in Haunting of Harrowstone? Pick up The Murmuring Fountain by Clark Peterson and I or The Fiddler's Lament by Greg Vaughan.
Playing Kingmaker and you want more fey and forest monsters, check out the Boreal Bestiary or Coldwood Codex by Tim Hitchcock and I.
Need more pirate islands and adventure for Skull and Shackles? Check out the Islands of Plunder series by Matt Goodall.
You get the idea.
Point is, this is a great place to find terrific 3PP product to fill out and expand your AP experience.
Then again, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Legendary Games is also making preparations to create an AP of our own, one that will probably start above 1st level (though with an optional prequel intro adventure, which we intend to release for next year's Free RPG Day) and run up to 20th. We'll be talking more about it at our What's New With Legendary Games panel at PaizoCon (Sunday at 9 AM), but you can see the announcement here for LEGENDARY PLANET
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Could you gain a level per 16 page adventure.....or would you need too many bonus xp from non combat?You're an adventure writer, you don't know?
for the record i have no idea if you could get a level every 16 pages:)
can you?
You absolutely could. Depends what's on those pages, obviously, but... a big overland journey with a truckload of random encounters, that'll do it. A big ol' dungeon crawl which relies heavily on standardized mooks (either a stock NPC described once up front, or stock bestiary monsters).
What really eats up a lot of pages is any place you have a unique NPC, or any place with really detailed round by round tactics to lay out. You'll notice both extremes are often found in the same book to balance each other out. You'll get a book with an interesting variety of encounters one month, then the next you deal with a WHOLE bunch of exploring and/or same-y mooks, followed by a really memorable set piece with some really interesting NPCs.
Then of course there's the real extreme contrast example that is Forest of Spirits, which has all this great wordy interesting stuff early on, with banquets and nature spirits, and cultural flavor, then to make up for the lack of experience from an of that is this seemingly unending slog through a massive dungeon crawl that just keeps throwing the same monster at you room after room.
You are spot on with forest
I guess 12 'scenes' should gain you a level, so they could have 1 page each.....with couple pages of summary etc
Could cut out much of the flowery text that plagues a lot of treasure description....if you need 18k for a new weapon, and you know you are in a Viking type adventure you don't endless description of bits of bone, helms, fish scales, ornate axes etc. It's fine for a while but after the 10th treasure haul it all becomes cash value
Bullet point npcs interaction to allow gm more input and flexibility
Limit stat blocks that are too unique
I would like to see a hardcover adventure yearly. Kind of a mega module (levels 1-10 or 10-17 or something). 288 pages. Especially since modules were cut to four/year.
Yeah the modules were cut to four a year but the page count has risen for each one and the total page count for the year has also risen, and that doesn't include the fact that the last (couple?) years of the old 6 modules a year paradigm we ended up with something along 5 modules a year.
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Okay. What I would like is rather than begging Paizo to put out a 12-issue AP (as that's not going to happen) is instead Paizo providing a mechanism where someone can create their own AP that utilizes the Golarion setting and the creator and Paizo share the profits on the sales of the AP (which would be PDF).
Either that or AP makers can go the path of "Night Below" and create an AP that is deliberately vague on setting which can be inserted into Golarion easily (or a more generic campaign setting for those people who still create their own campaign worlds).
Because I get the general impression it's not so much "I want Paizo to do a 12-issue AP" as in "I want to play a 12-issue AP set in Golarion."
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Okay. What I would like is rather than begging Paizo to put out a 12-issue AP (as that's not going to happen) is instead Paizo providing a mechanism where someone can create their own AP that utilizes the Golarion setting and the creator and Paizo share the profits on the sales of the AP (which would be PDF).
Either that or AP makers can go the path of "Night Below" and create an AP that is deliberately vague on setting which can be inserted into Golarion easily (or a more generic campaign setting for those people who still create their own campaign worlds).
Because I get the general impression it's not so much "I want Paizo to do a 12-issue AP" as in "I want to play a 12-issue AP set in Golarion."
I think having an AP set in Golarion would require Paizo to have editorial oversight of the product, and it'd get stuck in the exact same bottleneck that's preventing them from doing it themselves.
Therefore I don't think it's a matter of writing the AP, it's a matter of the small number of people that can stamp the seal of approval on it. By necessity, that can't be a very big group of people if you want consistency in the setting.
Having a more generic AP that GM's can port into Golarion themselves certainly seems to be the more likely option, and that puts the ball firmly in the court of 3PPs to produce such a product.
yeah when you let outsiders tweak the campaign you get Khelben "The Blackstaff" Arunson dead among other more terrible happenings:)
Not on the scale of an AP though, and it was a while ago.
yeah when you let outsiders tweak the campaign you get Khelben "The Blackstaff" Arunson dead among other more terrible happenings:)
Sadly not Elminster. Or Drizzt Du'Orden.
So yeah. We'll need someone to develop a Generic Setting mega-run AP. Of course, that does run into some problems as it might not be easy to port it into Golarion if there is extensive political intrigue and the like. And that was actually one of the nice things about Night Below - the upper-world aspect took place in a fairly small region that was fairly rural. So you COULD just insert it into, say, a corner of Varasia or Taldor and not blink twice.