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The goal of this thread is to establish a consensus rating of the Paizo PFRPG Adventure Paths that may be ultimately compiled into a chart for reference by GM’s trying to figure out what adventure path to play.
Did you GM or play Serpent's Skull in its entirety? If so, please post your ratings here so they may be tallied for in a final posting that will show the results for all the adventure paths.
Please rank Serpent's Skull on a scale of 1-10 for each of the following categories (half points allowed):
1) GM Ease of Play: This category relates to how ready to play “out of the box” an adventure path is. Are there enough maps? Are the encounters properly detailed? Is a great deal of work required to play the modules? Readily scale-able? (1-10)
2) Synthesis of the Story: Does the story-line flow through all the modules in a way that leads the players along the path while not being so obvious as to knock them over the head rail-road style? (1-10)
3) Role-play Friendly: Are there enough opportunities for role-players to delve into the soft side of the game? Are there opportunities for well executed role-play to have a positive impact on the story line? (1-10)
4) Combat Design: Is the adventure appropriately powered for four well designed 15 point buy characters? Are there TPK-prone encounters that will probably disrupt the campaign? Will the players cruise through to the point of boredom? (1-10)
5) Fun factor: Did you have fun GMing the campaign? Did your party have fun playing the campaign? (1-10)
Links to other rankings:
I'm exactly half-way through running Serpent's Skull, so I'd like to contribute (also, spoilers).
1) GM Ease of Play: As with Kingmaker, this is (partly) a sandbox-y campaign which requires a lot of work from the DM. And we all know how Book 3 drops the ball on detailing Saventh-Yhi. The maps are excellent, though. 4/10
2) Synthesis of the Story: Serpent's Skull does a pretty good job with the story overall. The biggest problem might be the introduction of Eando Kline's expedition, which is kinda goofy. Other than that, good stuff. 7/10.
3) Role-play Friendly: If the five factions are put to use by the DM, the role-playing opportunities in Serpent's Skull are endless. 9/10.
4) Combat Design: Apart from the infamous Shadow Demon encounter, most fights have been pretty easy. 6/10.
5) Fun factor: I'd give it 10/10, but my campaign is heavily modified (as most Skull campaigns probably are). As written, the campaign is flawed. 7/10.
RPG Superstar 2011 Top 32
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I have run Serpent's Skull 1.5 times - once all the way through, and once through book 3. Spoilers!
1) GM Ease of Play: There are a few nitpicky things the GM needs to do. You need to make a chart of NPC relations for the first adventure, track travel time in the second adventure, and faction stuff in the third and fourth. The third adventure is more like a 1e era list of encounters, it really needs fleshing out. 4/10
2) Synthesis of the Story: The second adventure is about as railroady as it gets - there is literally a line on the map depicting the PCs' route. That having been said, the players never felt like they were being pushed around. 7/10
3) Role-play Friendly: Oh gosh yes. The other castaways in the first adventure, the factions, the Society NPCs, the Gorilla King, several of the Saventh-Yhi encounters - there are tons of roleplay opportunities. 9/10
4) Combat Design: My group that finished it did so by the skin of their teeth. They are not really optimizers, but they are very experienced roleplayers. The shadow demon is super tough. An optimized party will chew through most encounters, but that seems to be normal for an AP. 6/10
5) Fun factor: We had a lot of fun with it. Even the aborted game was due to time/job considerations, not due to dissatisfaction. 8/10
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Played this all the way through as GM...
1) GM Ease of Play: 6 Needed a lot of work, especially book 3. Also, books 5 and 6 can get a bit 'samey' with extra work to liven them at times.
2) Synthesis of the Story: 8 Good clear story running right through, plenty of clues and hints to drive PC's on. Except book 2, total railroad!
3) Role-play Friendly: 10 Book 1 has built in roleplay and works well, as does book 3 with a lot of work.
4) Combat Design: 8 Encounters are well written. Shadow demon in book 2 is dangerous, and again book 3 needs work to tie areas together. Books 5 and 6 suffer from being a bit 'samey', but I used this to my advantage, running enemies as coordinated, militaristic and adaptive.
5) Fun factor: 7 Book 1 was fantastic. Books 5 and 6 dragged a little. On the whole, I think my players enjoyed the campaign.
Played as Player to End
1) GM Ease of Play: 5/10 looked like a lot of hard work, and not 'fun' hard work
2) Synthesis of the Story: 3/10 Rail Roady despite being a sandbox. Didn't matter what the PCS did, the NPCs get there first, and stuff still happens no matter. Didn't play out as expected
3) Role-play Friendly: 5/10 Some opportunities for inter-party play, decision making. Loads NPCs to really hate by the end of the modules. Mixed bag in this area
4) Combat Design: 7/10 Yes. Until they get repeated too much, and you end up having similar encounters in similar dungeons. Final fight anti-climax.
5) Fun Factor ?? I didnt enjoy much of it, even missed most of mod 4. Mod 5 was good and 6 was ok. 2 was trash and 1 went on too long. 3 was ok. We finished it, I guess that scores a point?
This was the first AP I ran to completion.
1) GM Ease of Play: (3/10) If Kingmaker needed a GM willing to put the work in to make that AP his or her own, Serpent's Skull required just as much effort just to make the AP viable for play. Book One served its purpose exquisitely well, but Book Two through Four required an enormous amount of work on my part to run well, especially the infamous Book Three. Books Five and Six ran themselves relatively well with a couple alterations here and there, but without the extensive work in those middle books, it's quite possible a group will never get to the final third.
2) Synthesis of the Story: (6/10) I actually think the story does fit together fairly well, and it even has its moments of excitement for the players. However, it can get quite railroady in Book Two and in Book Five, especially. The PCs are literally expected to go a certain way, or to work with certain races that there's no guarantee or likelihood that they will or would. I had to eliminate a significant portion of Book Five because for my players it just wasn't feasible that they'd deal with a certain group. There were workarounds, but they were all still involving dealing with that certain group in some capacity, and that just wasn't possible. A few more or different story options would have increased this score by a point at least.
3) Role-play Friendly: (9/10) This AP still worked quite well in this category. There were plenty of NPCs for the characters to interact with, which was truly necessary since there was virtually not travel outside the location discovered at the beginning of Book Three. Civilization, in general, was out the door by Part II of Book Two, in fact! This is one aspect this AP still got right, which is one of the reasons why I love Paizo so much! They never fail to give me plenty of viable roleplaying encounters or opportunities for my players!
4) Combat Design: (5/10) The vast majority of the combat design worked well for the appropriate levels and 15-point character builds, but there was a ton of repetition found here, especially in Books Three and Five. Naturally, this does favor the PCs, because once they realize the best tactic to defeat a specific type of enemy, and then they face that enemy a dozen or a score more times in rapid repetitiveness, well, you understand . . . The final conflict, as written, was a huge letdown, too. I did a lot of beefing up the second to last encounter to make it a CR 20, which I accomplished by throwing in villains from earlier that had interacted with the PCs (in some cases numerous times) but always got away. By doing this, it caused the final confrontation--a CR 19--to be more hair-raising because they'd had to use up more resources in the fight immediately prior.
5) Fun factor: (7.5/10) We certainly did! My players had a lot of fun, though had I run everything "by the book," this probably wouldn't have been the case. Still, that's pretty much a given for any AP, I think. There were moments and aspects to the AP that wore on them a bit more, though. More traps, more high-end treasure, and more variable enemies would have increased the fun factor a bit more, I think. All of my players commented upon the completion of the AP that for a legendary lost city, there was nothing there for them except for discovering its history (a mechanic I had to build in, since the AP had nothing for that) and saving the world. It just didn't live up to their expectations of what it should have been.
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Viewpoint of someone who has played SS to the end with Ibayboy as the GM.
GM ease of play 6. Our GM had done a lot of work before we started each book, and it showed. Without GM preparation it could easily become a dull grind with no life to the NPC's and events.
Synthesis of the story 7. As a player, the hook in book one caught me and logically lead to the rest of the story unfolding as we progressed through the AP. Even the railroad of book two made sense as part of the overall story.
Role-play friendly 9. My character was an opportunist, interacting with the NPC's of book one, and the various factions of the later books was fun and profitable. Especially a certain racial enemy in book five!
Combat design 8. Shadow demon. Giant parrots with vorpal beaks! Insanity powder. Vagabond spiders (Those got me in the obituary thread!) Tough, organised enemies in the last books. Combat was tough and enjoyable with sense of danger all the way through.
Fun factor 7. Some parts were a grind, but our GM had prepared things so it kept us feeling that we were working to a result and the payoff would be worth it.
On the whole I enjoyed it, having a character that worked for the AP, and a GM who had done the preparation beforehand helped a great deal.
DBH
DBH wrote nice things...
Thanks!
Thanks!DBH wrote nice things...
From the various SS threads it's clear that it's an AP that can easily fall flat.
I've read a lot of complaints where it's easy to see the GM didn't do the prep work, so you earned it.
DBH
Thanks!DBH wrote nice things...
From the various SS threads it's clear that it's an AP that can easily fall flat.
I've read a lot of complaints where it's easy to see the GM didn't do the prep work, so you earned it.
DBH
I know a certain sylph bard that won't be dying on Saturday!
edit: although, that dice roll was low!
he's just sucking up so you won't have his character sold for spice;)
i'm kidding of course, i'm sure you did an awesome job, which isn't the easiest with Serpent's Skull (i spent 4 months doing maps of every encounter location in Saventh-Yhi so i know the work involved:)
alas we only made it to book 4 before real life strife crossed over and broke up the group:\
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GM ease of play. N/A Player
Synthesis of the story. 5/10 Book One was great but everything else seemed very rail-roady
Role-play friendly. 3/10 Okay but no matter what you did as a player everyone seemed to know what was going on. Seemed pointless as a player to try and do anything to derail the other factions as no matter what they'd still be there. As a player I was really annoyed that despite the death of the PF Gnome, hiding all notes etc leading to the city, etc we had six groups following.
Combat design.5/10 A few interesting combats but nothing outstanding.
Fun factor. 3/10 Bored with hack and slay Book 3, its the only AP I dropped out of. The other factions always being on your tail despite any precautions put in place made me feel that this was a GM V Player scenario (despite I am sure that wasn't the intent). If it stopped at Book 1 it would have got 10/10.
On the whole I was frustrated by the fact no matter what we did as a group everyone knew where to go. I felt railroaded and that our actions didn't matter. So we killed off a few NPCs in Book One, didn't let anyone near the secret cave, hid all notes that we made and EVERYONE still knows about where we are going and why? And then we end up in a city filled with random hack and slash... Not for me.
CC
Agreed...may have been the GM being inflexible but I was utterly gutted when we go to the lost city and a holiday camp had already been set up....and then we met Juliver and Eando....eech