Oh. And in last night's game, after all was said and done, one player said that she was disappointed at the relative lack of roleplaying in the game. Part of that was my fault. I was hoping to get through as much as I could (and failed miserably due to technical issues and the fact I probably should have eaten a proper meal before going down - cheese and bread is not really sufficient to game off of if you've not eaten anything else all day).
So. Yes, we need more roleplaying elements for the APs. We need options where players can use diplomacy or brains to bypass encounters and get experience (and treasure even!) for doing so.
And I need to look at the upcoming encounters and find ways to allow roleplay to work as solutions. Fortunately, the Howling has multiple encounters where diplomacy and RP is rewarded over blind violence.
Creative Director
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I suspect you'd have a lot more fun taking a book like, say Magnimar (choosing that 'cause I'm familiar with it) and simply using that book to generate ideas for adventures and NPCs and stories for your group to go on.That sounds like a lot of work.
Pathfinder makes it pretty easy to assemble a scenario of 'bad guy is holed up in a lair full of CR-appropriate encounters and the players have to break in and kill everything'. I could come up with that myself.
I feel like to get the most out of a role-playing game, these bits need to be interspersed with challenges that aren't based around 'kill or be killed' and which give players the freedom to choose what they want to do and how. Those are the bits that are difficult to create.
So, to take a constructive approach, what parts of the APs do that well? What do we want to see more of? We've had one example: the opening chapter of Jade Regent 4 where you're the guests of a slightly mad king. What else?
As it turns out, it IS a lot of work. That's one of the reasons why Adventure Paths are so popular and successful; they do the bulk of that campaign-building work for the GM.
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Damn straight it's a lot of work. And imagine what it was like ten years ago when there weren't programs like Hero Labs that would allow GMs to automate much of combat, keep track of bonuses and the like, and so forth.
But APs can be the basis for more. While you can run it from the box (as it were), the wise GM will take notes and if his or her group is more into roleplay, incorporate those elements into the game. When the game includes tidbits on how to utilize diplomacy and the like... it helps.
Ultimately though, the GM should not rely on dice or other random generator mechanisms. If a player manages to talk the talk in working to convince the villain to step aside and the argument is that good? Then why not incorporate it? If your group uses politics to turn a faction against their villain? Great! Go for it!
Ultimately, does it matter if the players defeat the villain through force of arms or through wit, wiles, and like like? Let them win with their brains. That game will be the one they talk about, not the game where the ranger got a critical hit with a human bane arrow against the evil human archmage and killed him before he could even act.
Even better is if you pull the twist that has the group blinking in surprise and going "can he do that?" as the villain walks away from the fight without a single blow having fallen... and having escaped his deathly fate by forsaking the path of godhood.
There is so much more to these APs than what is written. What we as GMs need to do is unleash our imaginations. If only Paizo dared experiment with an AP that was less bloodshed and more politics, diplomacy, and roleplay. Who knows, such an AP could even be considered the best ever put out... surpassing even Runelords and other classics that are considered Paizo's best.
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And as for combat length, the way to solve the ratio of combat to RP seems to me to be the removal of "trash" encounters. Trash is to mean the term as used in MMO's, i.e. lesser monsters between boss monsters. I am not against a pulse pounding combat encounter which takes an entire evening. I am against all the mook monsters whose encounters eat tons time to resolve but do not have a chance of stopping the party.
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And, hell, there are other recurring AP's story foibles that need to be cleaned up after years and years of new adventure paths. Like, introduce your main villain before the last module (or even the last fight)! Have him interact in non-dangerous ways with the party during the AP, so that the last encounter is not literally a "And who the hell are you?" first meeting.
--------------------------------------------------------------Four skills for social stuff, IMO. Diplomacy, Bluff, Intimidate, Sense Motive. Although Intimidate is wonky, since using it in most settings has actually almost always negative effects on your social success.
I see what you mean about those additional subsystems, since every first stab by Paizo at them have been pretty bad (kingdom building, caravan rules, relationship rules, mythic rules). But I'd rather see them try and fail somewhat then see them just put out the same kind of combat overdosed AP's for years and years.
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Given a lack of surveys on the topic and, so far, an unwillingness by Paizo to put out those surveys (which they did for the ACG playtest, so it isn't as if they can't do so), we'll probably never know. I think the very contrary about the topic.
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I agree with everything Magnuskn said, especially the points quoted above (regarding those easy encounters, that is one of my greatest complaints) .
I think it would be a nice idea to add some RP or non-combat options to the APs. I appreciate, that this is rather hard, and page count can be very constrictive.
My players usually complain, when I don’t change the adventures, they want their ideas to matter and the desipse fight after fight after fight….. I really blame throwaway encounters.
I think resource management is a major issue here, with spell slots, ability uses per day (from items or other sources) the system seems to need a number of encounters per day.
My group has come to prefer fewer (very ) hard encounters, or evade encounters altogether,
Those options are pretty hard to describe with exhaustive detail, but sometimes adding them can help to keep things fresh.
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I surely wouldn't mind more framework for RP elements in the AP. Things like more alternative ways to do things, aside from combat. I'm speaking of things like going through a trapped area, to sneak around a patrol - or what have you. I don't know how else to describe it, there are mechanics I set up in my home campaigns that rely on puzzle solving, with information to be had from various formats, including speaking with NPCs and such.
But anyway, just personally some things that would help me a bit, as a GM, in the AP would be possible a short hand description of the character of the variety of NPCs the party meets. In trying to keep the game within the framework of the background to Pathfinder's world I sometimes wonder if I am making the right decisions. A few more details on incorporated stories would help (the rumors for instance)
But I realize the onus is on the GM and obviously there's only so much room in the AP, and there are guides/helps like the campaign setting information.
Our group is fairly new to pathfinder and I'm still trying to learn the background and incorporate the 'world' that Pathfinder uses, I think a lot of my questions would be moot if I knew it better. And possibly, I'd be able to guide our group into more RP encounters and fewer combat encounters.
Perhaps it's simplistic, but since my group is made up of younger players (the oldest is 17), I tend to gloss over such things as wandering monsters - unless they've spent just an inordinately long time in one area or made their presence impossible to ignore. The combat encounters are just too long as it is, played out in our group particularly. (I don't mean that's a game fault, it's the maturity of the group.)
I wish I had some more concrete ideas for RP elements that would help in an AP setting. I guess it bears some more thought. I like the APs very much, thus far (we've played through one and a half). It's always good to improve things while recognizing their limits. I love the society/community of the Pathfinder forums because they are so obviously passionate about improving the game.
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Actually, M0u53b41t, it's not just your group. My groups consist of people in their 20s to 40s. Many of them have been roleplaying for years. Yet combats tend to drag on, to the point that I have decided to disallow Cohorts in one game (and will allow the two players with Cohorts to take a new feat to replace it - mind you, the cohorts still exist for roleplaying purposes, they just won't participate in combat), and in the second I've retired one of two GMPCs (the second was never meant to stick around, but one player entered into a relationship with her so now she'll remain a background character who uses the bow to target the same enemy the player targets with her PC) and will not be having NPCs stick around for any significant period of time.
Even with this, combats have run long. The last game I was in we only got two combats in during a three-hour period (we started late and ended a little bit early); as two players didn't make it, there were only three PCs and one GMPC, fighting three enemies (for each fight). And I use Hero Labs to keep track of stuff so I didn't even have to look stuff up.
Unlucky die rolls and the like can result in fairly simple combats taking far too long. Eliminating random encounters sounds like a valid method of reducing time wasted in combat and increasing your roleplaying opportunities. And really, isn't roleplay the reason we play Pathfinder, instead of fantasy computer games?
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I think I can safely say I'm in the "the RP elements provided are okay, it's the convoluted combat rules that make combat drag on so much that are the issue." camp.
Agreeing with the idea of eliminating random encounters - especially if you also remove XP, then you've eliminated a big need for them too.
I'd love to see more things in APs that make my players _think_. More problem-solving encounters that have a range of solutions - even if one of those is rolling dice against a skill and another is to just kill the problem, as long as there are other feasible solutions as well.
If I want a combat game, I'll just throw some dungeon tiles on the table and pick monsters from the Bestiaries :) No need for any other prewritten material - I want material that does my thinking for me, not that just automates picking what monster to go where. I think the APs, overall, are storylined nicely - I just want to see more things where a writer has sat down and concocted a really, really complex situation for me to throw at my players.
So overall - combat is a problem, the only real solution in PF is to just have less of it. RP in APs is okay, but there's certainly room for more.
Combat isn't a problem for all of us. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see more RP opportunities. But not all of us think that you need RP at the expense of combat. I routinely have both large amounts of combat encounters and role playing encounters, along with other types of encounters that are peppered in. Hell, some of the best RP happened during combat.
Combat isn't a problem for all of us. Don't get me wrong, I'd like to see more RP opportunities. But not all of us think that you need RP at the expense of combat. I routinely have both large amounts of combat encounters and role playing encounters, along with other types of encounters that are peppered in. Hell, some of the best RP happened during combat.
Oh, absolutely - I was implying that the removal of extra combat should be done by GMs, not at the product level :) There, I simply want to see more options for problem-solving added in.
This is an interesting discussion. I'm prepping the first chapter of Mummy's Mask right now, and I've actually added a warning to my players that there are surprisingly frequent opportunities for interaction in that adventure. ("Surprising," because the initial concept sounds like a lot of dungeon delving, and so they might not think they need to build characters that are equipped for social scenes.)
Then again, my group likes to stop and talk to almost everything. When I ran Fortress of the Stone Giants, they did most of the exterior and ground-level without a single fight, by intercepting and recruiting a bunch of different factions. (They did gain an entire character level during that time. Okay, they did about half a level-worth, and then the running joke took over. "Let's see if we can get to next level without rolling initiative," someone challenged. And I ran with it, building on the info in the adventure. It was awesome!)
I think many of the adventure paths really do make this possible, if you can get yourself to set aside the monster stat blocks and allow other options when the opportunity arises. And yes, if you can ignore the "fights to the death" statement that is so common in Morale entries. Admittedly, if you spend a lot of time updating stat blocks and working on the combat-prep, this can be really hard to do.
Oddly, I think that "fights to the death" is made necessary by the long stat blocks and strict limits to word count. If something doesn't fight to the death, then you need at least a couple of paragraphs explaining what it wants and how it should interact. And you might need info on what happens later if that creature survives the adventure. If something "fights to the death," that's all the author needs to say. And that doesn't mean I am required to have the creature fight to the death - it just tells me the adventure assumes the creature is unlikely to survive, so if they happen to survive anyway, it's up to me to figure out what to do with them, but I don't have to worry that the next chapter will have further info about them and contradict whatever I came up with.
They could shorten stat blocks by not having 'monster rules', really don't need to know what 0 level spells higher level things have....more mini games they add ( like pools, evolutions,grit etc.) bigger the blocks become....
They could bullet point basic stuff npcs stuff needed for RP. Pages of backstory just rarely get used.
My groups too talk to a lot of stuff...in shattered star they tried to make nice with everything, good as it avoided lot fights
The problem with "fight to the death" is that, very often, PC's don't kill the opponent, either wittingly or unwittingly, just by the nature of the game. But if you got "fight to the death" in the morale statblock, it seems that the author assumes 99% that the enemy will be dead at the end of the combat and so will play no role anymore in the AP. So there is almost never any thought given to how the opponent will react to having lost, being alive and so on.
I think I remember reading that 'fights to the death' is used so much largely because it's short and simple.
I think 'attacks immediately' bothers me more. Most hostile enemies will end up dead, but all enemies have an opportunity to make themselves interesting before they're defeated. I wish they'd include bits of dialogue for anything that could plausibly be communicated with.
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The problem with "fight to the death" is that, very often, PC's don't kill the opponent, either wittingly or unwittingly, just by the nature of the game. But if you got "fight to the death" in the morale statblock, it seems that the author assumes 99% that the enemy will be dead at the end of the combat and so will play no role anymore in the AP. So there is almost never any thought given to how the opponent will react to having lost, being alive and so on.
One can still extrapolate their reaction from the tidbits of history presented. If you know someone's past, you can make an educated guess as to their reactions to future events. Your guess might be different than the author's idea of what they would do, but they only gave you a look at the character, not the many, many possible outcomes of things (good or bad) happening to them.
So, what about Nameless Cultist #23? :p
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I think I met her at the coffee machine once.... We were going to go on a date but she never showed....
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I think that one of magnuskn's best observations is the commonness of "X will fight to the death."
My best campaigns have contained the theory that ANY encounter should be resolvable without combat in the right situation, and I see to it that my players are rewarded with treasure and experience commensurate with having defeated the encounter if they do so without combat.
I think that a few minutes extra thought in the Morale part of the stat block would go a long way.
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I think I met her at the coffee machine once.... We were going to go on a date but she never showed....
Thats because she was at my house:D
sorry, i probably should've told you sooner.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
I think I met her at the coffee machine once.... We were going to go on a date but she never showed....Thats because she was at my house:D
sorry, i probably should've told you sooner.
Bastard!
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Bastard!I think I met her at the coffee machine once.... We were going to go on a date but she never showed....Thats because she was at my house:D
sorry, i probably should've told you sooner.
Thats what she said!
I think that one of magnuskn's best observations is the commonness of "X will fight to the death."
My best campaigns have contained the theory that ANY encounter should be resolvable without combat in the right situation, and I see to it that my players are rewarded with treasure and experience commensurate with having defeated the encounter if they do so without combat.
I think that a few minutes extra thought in the Morale part of the stat block would go a long way.
Also the addition of just a couple of sentences to illustrate ideas for how to deal with the encounter without resorting to killing. Sometimes newer GMs will just assume you *have* to kill them because there's no other option listed - by adding in a couple of suggestions it can get them thinking "hey, apparently I can actually allow the party to find other ways to deal with this, if they're clever enough."
I'll just respond quickly to this: I am writing a campaign set in Oppara at this time. While I am stuck at the very beginning , due to a full-time job and other commitments...
What a coincidence! You and I see eye-to-eye on a lot of things about the APs, and I am also slowly developing a campaign set in Oppara. Naturally, I am also stuck at the beginning, due to a full-time job and other commitments.
That's great!
-Matt
GMs are for the most part smart people, i'm sure they can figure out what NPCs they want to live and can figure out a resonable way to make that happen, no matter what the text of the adventure says.
who hasn't changed an Adventure Path to suit their needs
i myself receently had an NPC come up that according to the text should've died, however i did not paly him that way and came up with a reasonable way to make that happen.
as far as nameless cultist whatever her name was (i guess i should've asked her) they do have random NPC motivation/personality tables in the game mastery guide (i think) if you really want to get detailed with it
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Well count me “lucky” that my players usually don’t bother trying to keep enemies alive, and while I am quite happy, that I won’t have to deal with torture… it does limit my options.
Actually, IIRC (didn’t use the adventure yet) but Reign of Winter had some nice encounters, where the players could use alternative tactics (convincing NPCs to change sides) instead of fighting and killing everything.
It is not required for every enemy, but it is nice now and then.
It really depends on the scenario, it seems harder to implement something like this in a scenario like Wotr 2, but in a scenario with various factions this could be valid option.
Best of all is when you take a villain that should die, find a way to not only not have him die but to pull one over on the party, and leave them blinking in shock with a plaintive little "can he do that?" the only sound heard. ^_^
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I've run homebrew. They're tough to do from a time perspective but give you exactly what Magnuskin is asking for. The best homebrew I ever ran was when I had my huge collection of Dungeon magazines and use those to create encounters and jobs for the pcs on the fly. 90% of the work was done for me and all I needed to do as DM was come up with clever ways to tie them into the game. It was great, and gave the players the freedom to create and run what they wanted. Lots of bookkeeping in the end though. Especially after the first year and half, tracking everything became hard.
Then I discovered APs. It has everything. A n overarching plot to help keep the game focused. It has all combat stats ready to go assuming the players follow the AP. Most importantly though, it has enough background on major players that I can absolutely allow players the freedom to build into the world around them as necessary. I've run PbP on these forums and the roleplay was so intense the games became real. I've had one table group that took NPCs as wives in the end.
The trick is to find what your players want and what you've got time for. APs took most of the work out of my hands. I still book keep if necessary, but I don't need to find reasons for missions to tie together, nor do I need to spend time creating NPCs etc. if my players save a nameless NPC I just go to suggested names for race from the setting and use one of them. If I need some idea of what saved NPC will do then I use background info from the APs themselves to make those decisions. Which they provide for you. It's called extrapolating and is a skill you need to use if you want to run sandbox feel game but only have time to get APs.
Paizo presents exactly the right blend for me and my party. It's the combat stats that take the most time to design and put together. Story elements can be made up on he the spot with enough background knowledge to understand how the NPCs are thinking. The DM's job is to be familiar enough with that background that they can make informed decisions when the pcs do most of what Magnuskin complains about.
Take the advice as needed James, but also understand there are plenty of us out here who understand how your working this thing and really enjoy it. For me in particular it's allowed my gaming life to continue when work and kids and other stuff would have compressed my time to where I otherwise couldn't game.
Cheers
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I'll just respond quickly to this: I am writing a campaign set in Oppara at this time. While I am stuck at the very beginning , due to a full-time job and other commitments...What a coincidence! You and I see eye-to-eye on a lot of things about the APs, and I am also slowly developing a campaign set in Oppara. Naturally, I am also stuck at the beginning, due to a full-time job and other commitments.
That's great!
-Matt
<fistbump>
I've run homebrew. They're tough to do from a time perspective but give you exactly what Magnuskin is asking for. The best homebrew I ever ran was when I had my huge collection of Dungeon magazines and use those to create encounters and jobs for the pcs on the fly. 90% of the work was done for me and all I needed to do as DM was come up with clever ways to tie them into the game. It was great, and gave the players the freedom to create and run what they wanted. Lots of bookkeeping in the end though. Especially after the first year and half, tracking everything became hard.
Then I discovered APs. It has everything. A n overarching plot to help keep the game focused. It has all combat stats ready to go assuming the players follow the AP. Most importantly though, it has enough background on major players that I can absolutely allow players the freedom to build into the world around them as necessary. I've run PbP on these forums and the roleplay was so intense the games became real. I've had one table group that took NPCs as wives in the end.
The trick is to find what your players want and what you've got time for. APs took most of the work out of my hands. I still book keep if necessary, but I don't need to find reasons for missions to tie together, nor do I need to spend time creating NPCs etc. if my players save a nameless NPC I just go to suggested names for race from the setting and use one of them. If I need some idea of what saved NPC will do then I use background info from the APs themselves to make those decisions. Which they provide for you. It's called extrapolating and is a skill you need to use if you want to run sandbox feel game but only have time to get APs.
Paizo presents exactly the right blend for me and my party. It's the combat stats that take the most time to design and put together. Story elements can be made up on he the spot with enough background knowledge to understand how the NPCs are thinking. The DM's job is to be familiar enough with that background that they can make...
Well, I am someone who basically was (and is) in the position you are in. However, I think that the AP's still can use improvement in some sections, which is why I criticise aspects which I think need those improvements. The argument that "GM's an always make adjustments" is, IMO, not a valid one to not make improvements, since with this argument Paizo could as well forego any roleplaying aspects and just publish 50 pages of statblocks and flavor text for rooms every month.
The trick is to find what your players want and what you've got time for. APs took most of the work out of my hands. I still book keep if necessary, but I don't need to find reasons for missions to tie together, nor do I need to spend time creating NPCs etc. if my players save a nameless NPC I just go to suggested names for race from the setting and use one of them. If I need some idea of what saved NPC will do then I use background info from the APs themselves to make those decisions. Which they provide for you. It's called extrapolating and is a skill you need to use if you want to run sandbox feel game but only have time to get APs.Paizo presents exactly the right blend for me and my party. It's the combat stats that take the most time to design and put together. Story elements can be made up on he the spot with enough background knowledge to understand how the NPCs are thinking. The DM's job is to be familiar enough with that background that they can make...
I completely agree with you, Wrath. It is the GM's responsibility to use the tools that Paizo provides via the Adventure Path to craft an exciting and memorable adventure. It's like buying a table from IKEA, all the pieces are in the box, it's up to you to put them together. You can follow the instructions in the box (as written), or you can go maverick and put it together the way that you think it should go (with mixed results).
No two GM's will run an NPC the same way. Stamping personality traits onto cool and interesting NPC's if one of the things I most enjoy about being a GM. One of the first things I do after getting a new AP is go through it looking for cool villains that I can make more memorable than might otherwise be the case. The most recent example is Millorn (the crazy dwarf from The Worldwound Incursion), as written he's just a deranged and murderous hermit and most groups will encounter and kill him without a second thought. If I run Wrath of the Righteous, I will introduce him early on as a doomsayer in Kenabres, prophesizing the imminent destruction of the wardstones and he will continue to pop up throughout the campaign as this deranged figure who may/may not know what is going on. Or until the PC's kill him, which is their perogative as players, I guess. :s
Anyway! My point is that it's the GM's responsibility to create roleplaying opportunities from what is presented in the AP as written. Just because Paizo say something is a monster and will fight to the death doesn't mean you have to run it that way.
EDIT: I'm not saying the AP's are perfect though. The last two books in Mummy's Mask have really disappointed me as they are just wall-to-wall dungeon crawls, turning what I hoped would be a memorable and exciting finale into a dull and turgid slog. I will probably end Mummy's Mask after the PC's clear the Sightless Sphinx and have the party fight Hakotep there.
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@magnuskn. Mate, I agree that advice for what people think are improvements are something Paizo appreciates, especially when presented well. It's just in this case I truly believe that if Paizo took on board what you want, the APs would be less of what I want. It's why I suggested methods that could give what you want, without changing what I want. Ultimately it comes to what creative team wants and hopefully it works for us both.
@mikeawmids. I love adding to the APs as well. They never get run exactly as written, because my players always do things that cannot possibly be accounted for. The background gives me enough to run with it though, so the module stays intact despite contact with the various play groups out there. To me that is true artistry on the part of the creative team.
I actually think there is a place for book on DMing skills and tricks as well. Not a rules book though. An advice book on how to create memorable NPCs, how to run roleplay encounters that aren't just about dice roles, how to prepare a session to break the pace so it's interesting and variable. I believe a section on advice on how to deal with the various power shifts as characters level and possible ways the world responds to those shifts ( like fry n scry etc), is essential. Point out things that experience has taught us, and give examples of how to write for this so the pcs aren't overpowered but also allows them to be powerful enough. Tricks on the "illusion" of freedom that allows a DM to spend time preparing, but still lets characters think they're making the choices. Also, a section that gives advice on how to use background info from APs and modules to create encounters you tailor to your individual group.
I think a book like that would be invaluable to new and old players alike.
Cheers
@magnuskn. Mate, I agree that advice for what people think are improvements are something Paizo appreciates, especially when presented well. It's just in this case I truly believe that if Paizo took on board what you want, the APs would be less of what I want.
Well, I don't really believe that. You really like spending hours and hours on pointless filler encounters, which do nothing but cost time?
Essentially what you are saying at the moment is that your taste is more worthy of Paizo's attention than mine and that I should just suck it up and take what they give me. The argument that "you can always change it up as GM" is so fallacious that it isn't even funny, because I could just reverse it ("If Paizo would just put 20% combat encounters into their AP's, you could as a GM always add your own!") and it would be just as much a fallacy as your argument.
The only thing I am doing here is giving feedback in the most cogent way I can and hope that some of it resonates with James and any other writer who happens to be reading this.
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@magnuskn. Mate, I agree that advice for what people think are improvements are something Paizo appreciates, especially when presented well. It's just in this case I truly believe that if Paizo took on board what you want, the APs would be less of what I want.
Well, I don't really believe that. You really like spending hours and hours on pointless filler encounters, which do nothing but cost time?
Essentially what you are saying at the moment is that your taste is more worthy of Paizo's attention than mine and that I should just suck it up and take what they give me. The argument that "you can always change it up as GM" is so fallacious that it isn't even funny, because I could just reverse it ("If Paizo would just put 20% combat encounters into their AP's, you could as a GM always add your own!") and it would be just as much a fallacy as your argument.
The only thing I am doing here is giving feedback in the most cogent way I can and hope that some of it resonates with James and any other writer who happens to be reading this.
Yeah, I was worried it would come across as that. It wasn't meant to. You're absolutely entitled to offer your advice and opinions. The people at Paizo definitely listen to the folks on these boards.
I was merely exercising my right to express my opinion too.
As I said above, ultimately it comes down that the creative team decides works best for the AP range and the company. With luck, it's something we both like.
Cheers
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It is however an unfortunate but necessary truth that for every person who wants pretty much anything changed one way, there's at least one person who wants to change it in the same amount but the complete opposite direction, at least one person who wants to maintain the status quo ("It's okay how it is, don't change it!"), and at least one person who wants to scrap the entire thing and do something completely different.
It is, unfortunately, impossible to please everyone, and thus only natural that Paizo strives - and perhaps struggles - to find the middle ground that appeals to most, and leaves it up to individuals and groups to adjust from there to the format that suits their play style more. In the end, it may be up to those who don't fit into that middle ground and enjoy or desire more extreme imbalances between pure combat and pure roleplay to accept that they're too far outside the mean.
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Given that Paizo does one traditional AP and then one experimental AP, why not truly experiment, Paizo? Why not for an experimental AP go heavy on the roleplay?
You may find that this is what many players truly enjoy and have a huge hit on your hands. And this IS what experimental APs are for - trying something new that might not necessarily be everyone's cup of tea or that might be difficult to pull off.
And you know there are some here at least who advocate for this, suggesting that a larger silent crowd who's not on the forums may also be into a product that emphasizes the roleplay over the rollplay.
I imagine there are also financial implications to consider. Paizo seem to sell a lot of miniatures, battle maps and cardboard monsters. You're not going to need those in a heavily roleplaying orientated AP, which would cut into their profits, to some extent.
If you venture too far into role playing while eliminating combat, then you might as well be LARPing, or playing with action figures and Barbie Dolls (which with an inmaginative ten year old i've been doing for years any way:)
myself personally, i'm fine with the status quo as it is, a little more interaction is cool, just not too far, a balance must be maintained
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If you venture too far into role playing while eliminating combat, then you might as well be LARPing, or playing with action figures and Barbie Dolls (which with an inmaginative ten year old i've been doing for years any way:)
myself personally, i'm fine with the status quo as it is, a little more interaction is cool, just not too far, a balance must be maintained
Woah there... LARP and action figures? Did you mean that to be dismissive of degrading? It could be said that the ten year old who can advance the story with his action figures and no dice rolled is actually role-playing at a higher level than someone who simply rolls dice, adds, subtracts and moves along to the next thing statistical equation that must be surmounted.
Remember it is a role-playing game, not a roll-playing game. Since Gygax's Chainmail first came out, combat has been a part of RPG's with dice to guide the story. However, the story has always been the dominant part and combat a mechanism to advance the story. Go back and read the old rules... combat existed but there were no grids, no optimizing, no "better builds," no "elite players." Sure you were more powerful with an 18/00 strength than with a 17, but that was simply the luck of the dice.
As we evolved into D20 there were some great advances with the skill system to allow role-play to be mechanized. Additionally, combat was greatly enhanced with the 1" grid, AoO's, movement rules, etc. However, the heart of the game was then and still should be the story, which is naturally accented with the results of the dice. Now we can have thousands of pages of forums dedicated to manipulating the combat/character creation rules to create elite combinations of powers.
That doesn't change the fact that role-playing games are designed to be a story that is told, a story that is moved along by the mechanic of combat. Role-playing is still the center of the game. Having your character react to what the dice and combat rules dictate is merely a mechanism to advance the plot. You could just as easily cut a deck of cards to see who won a fight to advance the plot, however that wouldn't be as much fun.
If you enjoy the combat side more, great! Build your builds and compare them with others... max out your damage output... raise your saves and AC to astronomical proportions. But in the end, you're building a character in a story - and all those numbers are just mechanisms for advancing the plot.
i think you found insult where i meant none, i have no problem with LARP or action figures or even Gary Gygax, all cool with me:) i wasnt even trying to pick a fight just stating an opinion,
i like rolling dice sometimes (tho not in a gambling sort of way:) i think that Paizo has a pretty healthy mix of both in their APs and its easier for the GM to add additional Role playing into then it is to add more combat encounters.
i myself am terrible at monster and NPC creation and do like having the stats for nameless cultist #52, if i want to add more role playing bits i will:)
and to reiterate i wasnt trying to insult anyones hobby or preference:)
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Okay. Here's one problem I have with the d20 system - it de-emphasizes roleplay and increases the importance of die-rolling.
Let us take, for instance, Wrath of the Righteous. At the very start when your players start interacting with the first roleplaying encounter, you're given diplomacy rolls and what you need to roll to achieve that.
That's it.
Now, an experienced GM may very well say "screw the dice" and allow a passionate argument or dialogue to prevail in convincing the encounter to do what the players are interested in. But that's not what the encounter says. It says "make diplomacy checks."
And you could make an impassioned argument that is logical, well thought-out, and takes 15 minutes... and then the GM has you roll, you roll a 1, and it's wasted effort. A smart GM who has a few games under his belt may ignore that. But far too many GMs for my taste are of the mindset "the dice roll what they roll, and I can't fudge results."
I want roleplaying. Roleplaying! I want my players to go through an encounter and have that plaintive little voice ask "can he do that?" I want my players to prevail without ever having drawn a sword. I want them to pull an Asimov in "Foundation and Empire" and defeat the Mule in a verbal argument within the first page of 11 pages of debate and dialogue.
And I want Paizo to take that chance and create that product. I think they would be better for it. And I think we as GMs and players would be better for this.
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i think you found insult where i meant none, i have no problem with LARP or action figures or even Gary Gygax, all cool with me:) i wasnt even trying to pick a fight just stating an opinion,
i like rolling dice sometimes (tho not in a gambling sort of way:) i think that Paizo has a pretty healthy mix of both in their APs and its easier for the GM to add additional Role playing into then it is to add more combat encounters.i myself am terrible at monster and NPC creation and do like having the stats for nameless cultist #52, if i want to add more role playing bits i will:)
and to reiterate i wasnt trying to insult anyones hobby or preference:)
No worries and no insult taken. I do think that there is room within Pathfinder and other game systems for everyone's preferences. In my home campaign we have a broad spectrum and everyone brings different things to the table.
I imagine there are also financial implications to consider. Paizo seem to sell a lot of miniatures, battle maps and cardboard monsters. You're not going to need those in a heavily roleplaying orientated AP, which would cut into their profits, to some extent.
That does not sound like a logical explanation. RP characters make as good miniatures as ones from dungeon heavy AP's.
If you venture too far into role playing while eliminating combat, then you might as well be LARPing, or playing with action figures and Barbie Dolls (which with an inmaginative ten year old i've been doing for years any way:)
myself personally, i'm fine with the status quo as it is, a little more interaction is cool, just not too far, a balance must be maintained
And once again you manage to (probably unintentionally) insult people who disagree with you. Congrats.
I imagine there are also financial implications to consider. Paizo seem to sell a lot of miniatures, battle maps and cardboard monsters. You're not going to need those in a heavily roleplaying orientated AP, which would cut into their profits, to some extent.That does not sound like a logical explanation. RP characters make as good miniatures as ones from dungeon heavy AP's.But you don't need to lay out a bunch of miniatures for a RP encounter.
Of course you can buy miniatures anyway, even of characters who'll never show up on a battlemap and you can just use tokens instead of buying miniatures anyway, but the motivation is there.
If I'd be affluent enough to afford any miniatures at all, I'd buy them for the value alone of having a diverse selection. :p
Okay. Here's one problem I have with the d20 system - it de-emphasizes roleplay and increases the importance of die-rolling.
...
I want roleplaying. Roleplaying! I want my players to go through an encounter and have that plaintive little voice ask "can he do that?" I want my players to prevail without ever having drawn a sword. I want them to pull an Asimov in "Foundation and Empire" and defeat the Mule in a verbal argument within the first page of 11 pages of debate and dialogue.
And I want Paizo to take that chance and create that product. I think they would be better for it. And I think we as GMs and players would be better for this.
I dont quite understand why you want them to do that within the system you think isnt really designed for it. Given you think the system de-emphasizes roleplay and you want roleplay - why not just play another system?
Pathfinder seems to me to involve lots of numbers and other objective elements and is well suited to combats or other events resolved with dicerolls. I dont see much value in trying to write APs to suit an approach which isnt so heavily aligned with the system's strengths.
For my part, I dont get a lot of use out of all the statblocks since I generally run Paizo APs in other systems (so I'm ultimately going to do well out of the change you're advocating for). It's just that when I buy an adventure written for a combat heavy, statistic laden game like pathfinder, I expect lots of combats and dicerolling.
Changing the APs without changing the system seems like putting the cart before the horse to me.
Carrion Crown had more RP and skill checks than normal, at least in the first two books, and it was fun so I think more RP could be pushed, but I don't know if people only accepted it because it was a break from the norm or because that is really what everyone wants.
I dont think pushing it to 90% RP would go over well though. I like RP, but after a while I want to fight something, and by "I", I mean a lot of players I know.
I would like to see more RP-oriented content in the APs as well. As Wraithstrike mentioned CC I thought by way of example I would point to Trial of the Beast and Broken Moon (the hunting lodge part) as good examples of RP oriented content that Paizo has done. Hangman's Noose and Gallery of Evil are other examples that come to mind.
As written there is plenty opportunity to RP in most of the APs, modules I've come across (for instance I was quite surprised that Shattered Star had quite a bit) but I would like to see if Paizo tried to up this area a bit more rather than rely on some grinding dungeon to pad out the content (Forest of Spirits in JR being a good example of that).
I would add that while content like this I think would be good to see more of it still really is up to the GM/group to infuse the RP.
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Okay. Here's one problem I have with the d20 system - it de-emphasizes roleplay and increases the importance of die-rolling.
Let us take, for instance, Wrath of the Righteous. At the very start when your players start interacting with the first roleplaying encounter, you're given diplomacy rolls and what you need to roll to achieve that.
That's it.
Now, an experienced GM may very well say "screw the dice" and allow a passionate argument or dialogue to prevail in convincing the encounter to do what the players are interested in. But that's not what the encounter says. It says "make diplomacy checks."
And you could make an impassioned argument that is logical, well thought-out, and takes 15 minutes... and then the GM has you roll, you roll a 1, and it's wasted effort. A smart GM who has a few games under his belt may ignore that. But far too many GMs for my taste are of the mindset "the dice roll what they roll, and I can't fudge results."
I want roleplaying. Roleplaying! I want my players to go through an encounter and have that plaintive little voice ask "can he do that?" I want my players to prevail without ever having drawn a sword. I want them to pull an Asimov in "Foundation and Empire" and defeat the Mule in a verbal argument within the first page of 11 pages of debate and dialogue.
And I want Paizo to take that chance and create that product. I think they would be better for it. And I think we as GMs and players would be better for this.
On the other hand, there are those of us that aren't really all that charismatic, or can't speak well when on the spot. I'm no thespian. I'm best described as a gruff, cantankerous old man. That's why I like the Diplomacy roll. It allows me to play someone charismatic, or simple interact with people without penalizing me for my inability to be charismatic.
But that's why I (and most GMs I've enocuntered) give bonuses to people who have roleplayed their way really well. That way, you reward those that try to use Diplomacy well with penalize those that have the inability to.
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Okay. Here's one problem I have with the d20 system - it de-emphasizes roleplay and increases the importance of die-rolling....
I want roleplaying. Roleplaying! I want my players to go through an encounter and have that plaintive little voice ask "can he do that?" I want my players to prevail without ever having drawn a sword. I want them to pull an Asimov in "Foundation and Empire" and defeat the Mule in a verbal argument within the first page of 11 pages of debate and dialogue.
And I want Paizo to take that chance and create that product. I think they would be better for it. And I think we as GMs and players would be better for this.
I dont quite understand why you want them to do that within the system you think isnt really designed for it. Given you think the system de-emphasizes roleplay and you want roleplay - why not just play another system?
Pathfinder seems to me to involve lots of numbers and other objective elements and is well suited to combats or other events resolved with dicerolls. I dont see much value in trying to write APs to suit an approach which isnt so heavily aligned with the system's strengths.
For my part, I dont get a lot of use out of all the statblocks since I generally run Paizo APs in other systems (so I'm ultimately going to do well out of the change you're advocating for). It's just that when I buy an adventure written for a combat heavy, statistic laden game like pathfinder, I expect lots of combats and dicerolling.
Changing the APs without changing the system seems like putting the cart before the horse to me.
Maybe because if they take a system that has its faults and draws out the roleplaying elements in it, it'll stick. We'll see newer GMs coming into their own with Paizo's hints and suggestions on how to better integrate roleplay into the APs themselves. And it'll also challenge the writers to craft scenarios that are not two-dimensional hack-and-slash games, but instead encourage players to find other ways around problems, to think and be cunning.
For all its flaws, Pathfinder (and AD&D) is a roleplaying game. By increasing the amount of roleplay at this juncture, when the game eventually (in five, ten years) goes into a new edition, these roleplay aspects would have become integral to the game itself. And thus they could be more strongly emphasized in the rules. Skills themselves could have advice on how to integrate effective roleplay into the game mechanics... so that you don't need dice to determine a result if you don't want to.
Sure, sometimes you'll have someone who's not a good roleplayer. They can fall back on their dice. But they could also be encouraged to take a chance. And they may realize that they're actually not that bad after all... or slowly improve their roleplaying skills.
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I guess I see all RPGs as on something of a spectrum from rule heavy to rules light. Pathfinder is at the rules heavy end and I dont see the point in writing adventures which dont cater to that approach (and it's inevitable strengths and weaknesses). I may be misunderstanding, but this sounds like you're speaking more of shifting the approach to how Pathfinder is generally played. Whilst that would suit me down to the ground as I much prefer games with minimal mechanics and more narrative/descriptive/roleplayed resolutions, I dont see the dice-rolling/statistic based resolution approach as a flaw - just the way Pathfinder does it.
Okay. Here's one problem I have with the d20 system - it de-emphasizes roleplay and increases the importance of die-rolling....
I want roleplaying. Roleplaying! I want my players to go through an encounter and have that plaintive little voice ask "can he do that?" I want my players to prevail without ever having drawn a sword. I want them to pull an Asimov in "Foundation and Empire" and defeat the Mule in a verbal argument within the first page of 11 pages of debate and dialogue.
And I want Paizo to take that chance and create that product. I think they would be better for it. And I think we as GMs and players would be better for this.
I dont quite understand why you want them to do that within the system you think isnt really designed for it. Given you think the system de-emphasizes roleplay and you want roleplay - why not just play another system?
Pathfinder seems to me to involve lots of numbers and other objective elements and is well suited to combats or other events resolved with dicerolls. I dont see much value in trying to write APs to suit an approach which isnt so heavily aligned with the system's strengths.
I disagree with your assertions.
Also, this assertion basically says "if you want to roleplay, Pathfinder isn't for you so go find a different gaming system." In short you're telling Paizo customers that they are choosing the wrong product and they should leave and go to their competitors. In the long run this will drive Paizo out of business.