I'm talking about the best final battle or series of battles, the most satisfied the players felt after overcoming the final obstacles, the best denouement after the fact, the best lead in into continuing adventures or the best finish for the conquering heroes...
How you determine 'most satisfying' is up to you. I've read through most of the AP's and have played through three (SnS, Rise and Wrath) and out of those three...
Rise of the Runelords was a tough battle at the end, but all of the great moments for us were interspersed throughout the AP and the final battle felt like just the last thing we needed to get through.
Wrath was a fantastic campaign (we skipped the Mythic rules) and definitely felt the biggest, but much like Runelords, many of the best moments and best battles were during the course of the AP, not at its finale.
Having not yet finished any APs (we're nearing the end of Chapter 4 of Kingmaker and have played halfway through Savage Tide in the past), I can only speculate.
I imagine that our Kingmaker game will turn out much like your Runelords - so many great moments scattered through the plot, the ending will be appropriately climactic but perhaps not the most so in the entire plot. We'll see.
Savage Tide on the other hand I believe will come much closer, with the massive buildup toward the enormous final encounter. We'll be replaying it from the beginning once Kingmaker is done.
Of the ones I've not played at all yet, I'd have to throw a bone toward Curse of the Crimson Throne. But as that's on the docket after Savage Tide, perhaps in a few years I'll be able to come back and report first-hand.
Savage tide... played TWICE? Ummm... Wow. *does not compute* =)
We didn't finish it the first time, our group fell apart due to various things around The Lightless Depths. There'll be some changes along the way though, incorporating some things from other APs and otherwise changing up some of the earlier chapters to keep the repeat players on their toes.
(Unless this is a commentary on how you don't like the AP, in which case my group and I couldn't disagree more. =) )
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Serpent's Skull.
I liked the ending of JR best thus far...all became right in the land and everyone retired to do what they wished
I found SeSk to best the least satisfying, so it all goes to show how different things can be
Wow, great question. And I agree completely with the OP's Runelords comments - great throughout, including the end. For me...
I'l go on a limb and say Wrath of the Righteous. I mean, no spoilers there, but the game ends at lvl 20, mythic, the stuff you do there at the end is world shattering.
We didn't finish it the first time, our group fell apart due to various things around The Lightless Depths. There'll be some changes along the way though, incorporating some things from other APs and otherwise changing up some of the earlier chapters to keep the repeat players on their toes.
(Unless this is a commentary on how you don't like the AP, in which case my group and I couldn't disagree more. =) )
That makes it compute, then. I was just thinking of how we spent two years going through MOST of Shackled City, even longer going through Age of Worms in its entirety... I would love to play Savage Tide as well, but the time investment is... frightening.
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Age of Worms
After my guys defeated the big bad in that, the explosion of released divine power turned one of them into a new Demi god and gave the others enough power to extend their lives by a few centuries.
The battle itself was written into the AP. The divine bit was my part added as a culmination to a number of plots and story arcs the players had created themselves during game play.
We still reference characters from that game in many of our campaigns now. They have in fact become part of the lore of our game worlds.
Nothing more satisfying than that.
That makes it compute, then. I was just thinking of how we spent two years going through MOST of Shackled City, even longer going through Age of Worms in its entirety... I would love to play Savage Tide as well, but the time investment is... frightening.We didn't finish it the first time, our group fell apart due to various things around The Lightless Depths. There'll be some changes along the way though, incorporating some things from other APs and otherwise changing up some of the earlier chapters to keep the repeat players on their toes.
(Unless this is a commentary on how you don't like the AP, in which case my group and I couldn't disagree more. =) )
Our group is slow. We started Kingmaker in May 2012. We are - hopefully - going to finish Blood for Blood this coming Thursday, meaning we still have two chapters to go, though there'll be a bit of an added interlude between Chapters 4 and 5 that may take a bit to complete.
Granted, our version of Rivers Run Red got REALLY extended and expanded with side quests and extra stuff, and the two remaining chapters are comparatively short - especially our replacement for Chapter 5 - so we're hoping to wrap it up by the game's third anniversary this coming spring, or sometime in summer if that fails.
We've come to expect that running an AP will be a task of at least two years in the working, and that the players should make their characters with that in mind, especially if we plan to have any extensive roleplaying involvement. We could probably blitz through the encounters themselves in much shorter time, but - and I'm sure many groups would sympathize - the RP within the PCs and with the various NPC cast members, as well as any edits or expansions the GM adds, tends to increase the expected time allotment.
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That makes it compute, then. I was just thinking of how we spent two years going through MOST of Shackled City, even longer going through Age of Worms in its entirety... I would love to play Savage Tide as well, but the time investment is... frightening.We didn't finish it the first time, our group fell apart due to various things around The Lightless Depths. There'll be some changes along the way though, incorporating some things from other APs and otherwise changing up some of the earlier chapters to keep the repeat players on their toes.
(Unless this is a commentary on how you don't like the AP, in which case my group and I couldn't disagree more. =) )
Our group is slow. We started Kingmaker in May 2012. We are - hopefully - going to finish Blood for Blood this coming Thursday, meaning we still have two chapters to go, though there'll be a bit of an added interlude between Chapters 4 and 5 that may take a bit to complete.
Granted, our version of Rivers Run Red got REALLY extended and expanded with side quests and extra stuff, and the two remaining chapters are comparatively short - especially our replacement for Chapter 5 - so we're hoping to wrap it up by the game's third anniversary this coming spring, or sometime in summer if that fails.
We've come to expect that running an AP will be a task of at least two years in the working, and that the players should make their characters with that in mind, especially if we plan to have any extensive roleplaying involvement. We could probably blitz through the encounters themselves in much shorter time, but - and I'm sure many groups would sympathize - the RP within the PCs and with the various NPC cast members, as well as any edits or expansions the GM adds, tends to increase the expected time allotment.
You aren't slow, Orthos! Our Kingmaker group started in 2010 or so, and we are nearly finished the stuff we tackled from Parts 4 and 5 in parallel. Since Linda drew an entire hex map for an additional region that she determined based on the political map of the River Kingdoms was the only contiguous portion that was unclaimed by any nation, with a large density of interesting encounter locations, plus lots of additional politics, we spent a lot of time in the Part 2/3 region as well.
That makes it compute, then. I was just thinking of how we spent two years going through MOST of Shackled City, even longer going through Age of Worms in its entirety... I would love to play Savage Tide as well, but the time investment is... frightening.We didn't finish it the first time, our group fell apart due to various things around The Lightless Depths. There'll be some changes along the way though, incorporating some things from other APs and otherwise changing up some of the earlier chapters to keep the repeat players on their toes.
(Unless this is a commentary on how you don't like the AP, in which case my group and I couldn't disagree more. =) )
Savage Tide can easily be ended after the siege on Isle of Dread by the brother of the character who wires the PCs(Don't have names.) It makes a perfect end point with the colony protected and the threat of the pearls ended(for now.)
Jade Regent had one of those endings you'd expect from a "Journey to the West" style story; the quest has been completed, all is right in the land, and the people who traveled across the world left their old selves somewhere along the way, often for the better. It wasn't the most "epic" ending, but the most "comfy", if you catch my meaning (much like getting to the end of The Hobbit while bundled up by a fire.)
Kingmaker however had the most "epic" ending, but that's less due to the official final boss (she was horribly anti-climactic) but rather the "after-campaign" additions presented in Book 6.
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In my Jade Regent, the ending was the PCs taking the throne, then starting to murder one another. It isn't always what's in the book that makes for a memorable ending.
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Age of Worms and Rise of the Runelords have the most epic finales. Pretty fine antagonists, with generally useable statblocks, the overall atmosphere of racing against the clock to stop the end of the world, great locations, great sense of progression from humble origins to fighting evil overlords and gods, any snarls are easily ignored.
Savage Tide had a lot of problems in the lead-up to its finale, in the departments of NPCs, world interactivity and statblocks, which were individually tolerable, but pretty much ruined it when taken together. The same goes for Second Darkness. Wrath of the Righteous' last third is a boring slog through encounters that cease to exist the second you look at them somewhat harshly, and the final boss battle is fought past the culmination, which is only a good design when the conflict with the final boss is made highly personal, and it wasn't in WotR. I haven't ran or even carefully read the ending to Reign of Winter.
Everything else is like "And now you've defeatead a villain that has about enough mojo to treaten one whole country of, like, 40 on Golarion's globe, sometimes not even that much. Wow. So epic. Much high stakes. Why this has to be a level 15 adventure, again?"
Rise of Runelords and Shattered Star.
Even better: a mashup campaign mixing RoRL and ShSt :)
Rise of Runelords and Shattered Star.
Even better: a mashup campaign mixing RoRL and ShSt :)
Ours has been absolutely stellar... its amazing how seamlessly some of those volumes can be made to fit together.
I do need to get around to updating our website though :-/
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I'l go on a limb and say Wrath of the Righteous. I mean, no spoilers there, but the game ends at lvl 20, mythic, the stuff you do there at the end is world shattering.
As a player sure, but as a GM? Wrath has exhausted me mentally where I'm not sure I want to keep playing Pathfinder anymore. As for most climactic? As a PC I loved the end of Shattered Star, and as a GM I had a blast when my group finally faced off with the big bad of Carrion Crown.
Curse of the Crimson Throne.
Putting that <expletive deleted> down like a mad dog. Glorious.
Honorable Mention:
Rise of the Runelords. Karzoug is everything he's cracked up to be, and hooboy, is it a tough one...