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As someone with a complete AP collection, I'm almost exclusively interested in the hardcover compilations for the changes they make. That's part of why a Kingmaker compilation doesn't interest me much, personally - the original books are fine. ^_^
If they did any of the PF line (which they currently have no intention of doing), Council of Thieves, Serpent's Skull, and Carrion Crown are all in need of various significant fixes.
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Jade Regent. The first four paths are far too set on the journey and the caravan system. It was marketed as an exploration of the Dragon Empires, and ended up being tropey as hell (Viking ninjas, opium addicted Chinese spider women, and so on). A better bet would be to lessen the neverending trip across the snow belt and the North Pole, and more material added to Minkai.
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In the unlikely event that they do a Jade Regent Anniversary Edition within my lifetime, I'd like for them to also flesh out the suggestion briefly mentioned in the Jade Regent Player's Guide (current version) of converting the 4 main NPCs into PCs.
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In the unlikely event that they do a Jade Regent Anniversary Edition within my lifetime, I'd like for them to also flesh out the suggestion briefly mentioned in the Jade Regent Player's Guide (current version) of converting the 4 main NPCs into PCs.
Backmatter in The Brinewall Legacy gives their full stats. They're all around 4th-6th level, but it should be a simple matter to scale back their level and equipment to 1st if you want to.
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It is worth remembering that there may not even BE another such compilation; Paizo has often said so.
The 3.5 APs are the prime candidates. Legacy of Fire is fighting hard for "least liked AP" (as far as I can tell), with Second Darkness winning and Serpent's Skull coming in third.
That Legacy of Fire is somewhat more sold-out than Second Darkness, but not completely, so that puts LoF ahead of SD as a candidate, since being 3.5 puts them both ahead of Kingmaker.
Kingmaker may be sold out, but the changes to the Kingdom rules are external to the AP.. they're available on the PRD for anyone who wants to use them in preference to the versions in the AP itself, so re-writing the AP to use them is not necessary. Otherwise, the AP is already Pathfinder, which makes it less of a priority to collect and update.
Legacy of Fire may not be as disliked as Second Darkness, but it does seem to be a close second. That implies that it may need as much revision, or almost as much, as Second Darkness. That it is closer to being sold out gives it a bit of an edge over Second Darkness.
Since neither SD nor LoF is actually sold out, though, that could just mean that there are no candidates that meet the criteria for an Anniversary Edition at all.
Okay, I did a little bit of digging to see why I had that perception. Basically, just grabbed post counts from the first 65 most-posted-in threads in the PBP forum. And you're right - the two Second Darkness campaigns I looked at had a total post count lower than every older AP except Savage Tide. Serpent's Skull is right above SD, with two threads and about four thousand more posts.
Interestingly, Legacy of Fire has four threads (in those top 65), and by total posts is ranked only 4th after (in descending order) Council of Thieves, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Rise of the Runelords.
So, I was thinking of amount played, not amount purchased, and even then it's amount played in PBP, not in other formats. The numbers purchased make the most difference in whether they'll ever want to do another hardcover release in the future, as Marco Massoudi keeps saying.
Shackled City , 2 , 21967 , 1743
Age of Worms , 2 , 27369 , 1065
Savage Tide , 2 , 16097 , 1789
Rise of the Runelords , 4 , 36310 , 1633
Curse of the Crimson Throne , 4 , 36347 , 1500
Second Darkness , 2 , 16500 , 1349
Legacy of Fire , 4 , 30572 , 1413
Council of Thieves , 4 , 53572 , 736
Kingmaker , 1 , 10645 , 463
Serpent's Skull , 2 , 20124 , 1285
Carrion Crown , 3 , 30160 , 1295
Jade Regent , 2 , 15870 , 75
Way of the Wicked , 1 , 12164 , 486
Skull & Shackles , 2 , 21259 , 257
Shattered Star , 1 , 12384 , 254
Reign of Winter , 2 , 14500 , 1121
Wrath of the Righteous , 3 , 23011 , 699
Mummy's Mask , 1 , 6712 , 895
Iron Gods , 1 , 6715 , 743
Giantslayer , 0 , 0 , 0
Hell's Rebels , 0 , 0 , 0
Hell's Vengeance , 0 , 0 , 0
Strange Aeons , 0 , 0 , 0
, 0 , 0 , 0
Homebrew , 22 , 282972 , 1469
Hmm, Council of Thieves was that popular? Weird.
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It may not have been popular - given the small number of threads in each AP, it would be extremely sensitive to outliers. In other words - one extremely productive game would skew the 'Total Posts' heavily.
It certainly looks to have been significantly more efficient than any of the others (measuring "efficiency" as posts/days). Which would suggest one or two games where the participants posted several times per day.
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I don´t think you can measure success of AP´s like that.
PBP seems big here, but overall i don´t think it´s big.
As a VC for PFS, i know that the players i know doing PBP are a very small minority. VT have a higher number as far as i can judge, but old fashioned table games where you get to meet other people live are still the most favored thing nearly everywhere.
What you also have to consider is that "finished" campaigns don´t appear on the page anymore, once they have been deactivated and many people make a new thread for new books.
Next thing for PBP to consider is the different play approaches.
-1/day or 2/day small posts.
-x/day small posts, what can lead to very high posting rates.
-big extensive posts. Low posting rates, but still deep rp and long campaign probably.
That's actually one of the barometers management uses to gauge AP popularity, message board activity I mean. :-)
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Council of Thieves also was the only adventure path written for the Pathfinder RPG at the time, so that may also have contributed to its popularity.
It is worth remembering that there may not even BE another such compilation; Paizo has often said so.
-- snip --
Since neither SD nor LoF is actually sold out, though, that could just mean that there are no candidates that meet the criteria for an Anniversary Edition at all.Okay, I did a little bit of digging to see why I had that perception. Basically, just grabbed post counts from the first 65 most-posted-in threads in the PBP forum. And you're right - the two Second Darkness campaigns I looked at had a total post count lower than every older AP except Savage Tide. Serpent's Skull is right above SD, with two threads and about four thousand more posts.
Interestingly, Legacy of Fire has four threads (in those top 65), and by total posts is ranked only 4th after (in descending order) Council of Thieves, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Rise of the Runelords.
So, I was thinking of amount played, not amount purchased, and even then it's amount played in PBP, not in other formats. The numbers purchased make the...
When I made my statement, I had done a similar analysis, though I used the Adventure Path Forums as the source of the counts, not the Play-by-Post. Total posts divided by number of months since announcement gives a basic (though very very raw) measure of post-per-month activity, and accounts for the 'blips" of activity when people get excited about an AP that won't start for 6 months.
Based on that, the top 3 were Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, and Kingmaker.. the bottom 3 were Second Darkness, Legacy of Fire, and Council of Thieves.
Paizo is in a better position to make more detailed analysis.. like "days between new threads" and "frequency of new posts to old threads"... which I think would be fairly indicative of interest in the AP.
Of course, message board activity is only ONE factor, so even deep analysis is hardly definitive.
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Not gonna lie, I ordered a copy of all parts of second darkness last week just because I want to see it redone better in a hardcover. I'm interested in legacy of fire too, though.
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Whoa, that's the first time I've heard the Race Card played on Second Darkness. Does that pop up at some time after Book 3? Because I've played through those first three books and really haven't found anything racist in them, and I think you're going to have to defend that charge when Paizo - a leader in diversity in gaming - is the one being charged.
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Whoa, that's the first time I've heard the Race Card played on Second Darkness. Does that pop up at some time after Book 3? Because I've played through those first three books and really haven't found anything racist in them, and I think you're going to have to defend that charge when Paizo - a leader in diversity in gaming - is the one being charged.
I'm pretty sure what's being talked about is in-character racism. Drow are horrible, horrible people. Surface elves are also horrible, horrible people. Technically the drow are more sympathetic because at least their Bestiary entry says they're supposed to be evil. Surface elves evidently just choose to be jerks.
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It would be nice if...
* The first book of Jade Regent actually had a Chapter Two that wasn't just "Um, make up some encounters before the PCs reach their destination."
So... 'pretend for a moment that you are a GM' was too much?
* Second Darkness wasn't horribly racist.
'cuz the 'bad guys' have purple skin?
* Serpent's Skull allowed your heroic PCs to actually be heroes and decide they want to side with the anti-colonial faction, instead of just killing people who had a legitimate beef about being colonized and enslaved at the start of book 2.
It does allow that. Again, it's called GMing.
* Kingmaker gave at least a bit of a notion about how... say... if your prime mover is a dwarf or an elf or someone who's not human, maybe their culture will influence their kingdom building.
Ah. This one doesn't fall under GMing. This is roleplaying in general.
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Whoa, that's the first time I've heard the Race Card played on Second Darkness. Does that pop up at some time after Book 3? Because I've played through those first three books and really haven't found anything racist in them, and I think you're going to have to defend that charge when Paizo - a leader in diversity in gaming - is the one being charged.
I think it could be argued that "if an elf becomes evil enough, suddenly their skin turns dark" is at least somewhat problematic on the race front.
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Whoa, that's the first time I've heard the Race Card played on Second Darkness. Does that pop up at some time after Book 3? Because I've played through those first three books and really haven't found anything racist in them, and I think you're going to have to defend that charge when Paizo - a leader in diversity in gaming - is the one being charged.I think it could be argued that "if an elf becomes evil enough, suddenly their skin turns purple" is at least somewhat problematic on the race front.
Fixed that for you. Golarion drow are not black skinned for that very reason. They turn an unnatural skin color to sidestep the unfortunate implications attached to the drow, even if they were originally designed from the swartalfar. There's even an elf from Garundi with additional melanin in his skin to help drive home the lesson - Dark Skin Does Not Mean Evil.
And while I've heard the complaint that the surface elves are terrible people, I haven't run into it yet. Like I said, though, we're only just now starting Book 4, and I've been told that the Unforgivable Sins occur in Book 5. And I agree - that needs to be reworked. But since the Core Rules states that "most elves are Chaotic Good," that doesn't track with the assertion that "surface elves are horrible, horrible people." There are certainly bad apples in the bunch, and the Council may have a few of them, but there shouldn't be a point where the party decides "eh, screw it, these elves can all just be put to the sword."
I'd still like to hear from Jesse, so we aren't trying to infer his meaning from his offhand comment.
Whoa, that's the first time I've heard the Race Card played on Second Darkness. Does that pop up at some time after Book 3? Because I've played through those first three books and really haven't found anything racist in them, and I think you're going to have to defend that charge when Paizo - a leader in diversity in gaming - is the one being charged.I think it could be argued that "if an elf becomes evil enough, suddenly their skin turns purple" is at least somewhat problematic on the race front.Fixed that for you. Golarion drow are not black skinned for that very reason. They turn an unnatural skin color to sidestep the unfortunate implications attached to the drow, even if they were originally designed from the swartalfar. There's even an elf from Garundi with additional melanin in his skin to help drive home the lesson - Dark Skin Does Not Mean Evil.
And while I've heard the complaint that the surface elves are terrible people, I haven't run into it yet. Like I said, though, we're only just now starting Book 4, and I've been told that the Unforgivable Sins occur in Book 5. And I agree - that needs to be reworked. But since the Core Rules states that "most elves are Chaotic Good," that doesn't track with the assertion that "surface elves are horrible, horrible people." There are certainly bad apples in the bunch, and the Council may have a few of them, but there shouldn't be a point where the party decides "eh, screw it, these elves can all just be put to the sword."
I'd still like to hear from Jesse, so we aren't trying to infer his meaning from his offhand comment.
It isn't the sneering of the sinister minister(The PCs might even make jokes about his moustache twirling) it is the night time ambush. Depending on how the GM runs it, if a PC gets killed that can be a deal breaker. ROLL-players might be willing to get a free resurrection and keep going, but those who ROLE-play may very well decide to pick up their dead comrade and take off.
Someone posted different statistics for NPCs in the SD section of the board, I very much recommend against using the tougher stats for the attack.
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I don´t think you can measure success of AP´s like that.
A little unfair. I disclaimed in my post that I was only looking at PBPs, and I never said they were in the majority or even that they were big here (I think most posters on the AP boards, including myself, play most of our games in person and on platforms like Roll20). I was only hoping to explain and also reassess my impressions through data.
I am aware of people making new threads for new books, but I wouldn't say it's "many." In the 100 most recent PBP threads I found zero AP threads that were continuations of prior books - your average PBP thread isn't a continuation of anything, except if you count organized play. For the 65 most popular threads, since I included threads down to about 6000 posts, I did actually catch threads that were continuations of prior books (two of Kyradaemon's Jade Regent threads).
Deactivated campaigns do show up in the list of most posted threads, actually. See here - baldwin the merciful's Council of Thieves thread is right near top, but deactivated.
Also, I don't think it's safe to assume that threads with many posts per day have less roleplay. Checking the top 5 threads and bottom 5 threads of the 65 most posted, the most recent pages have: 75 words per post (75339 posts, 2001 days, 38 posts/day), 131 words per post (26346 posts, 779 days, 34 posts/day), 40 words per post (19803 posts, 2103 days, 6 posts/day), 47 words per post (19527 posts, a whopping 3429 days, 28 posts/day), 146 words per post (18253 posts, 840 days, posts/day); 54 words per post (6344 posts, 1018 days, 6 posts/day), 162 words per post (6386 posts, 908 days, 7 posts/day), 22 words per post (6403 posts, 1084 days, 6 posts/day), 27 words per post (6603 posts, 844 days, 7 posts/day), and 38 words per post (6676 posts, 440 days, 15 posts/day). Granted, several threads have inflated numbers from combats currently happening, but that happens in slow-posting threads as well as fast-posting ones.
One way to change that would be including extra legitimately black elves, e.g. an Ekujae (or hell, just a black elf from Kyonin - Avistani elves don't ALL have to be white as f%#!), in a Second Darkness rerelease.
So excited about CotCT hardcover next month!
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I can virtually guarantee that the Ekujae elf from Second Darkness would receive new art - he's the poster child for Paizo's trouble with artists and elven whiteness. I suspect the other examples given would be changed as well, if they were updated (and both are from very old sources). ^_^
That said, check Book 5 of Shattered Star. I seem to recall a "black drow" in there, and that's a bit more recent. I don't own the recent Darklands book, but that bears investigation as well.
One way to change that would be including extra legitimately black elves, e.g. an Ekujae (or hell, just a black elf from Kyonin - Avistani elves don't ALL have to be white as f&+*), in a Second Darkness rerelease.
but we already have that in SD. Isn't that why Kwava is in the AP?
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One way to change that would be including extra legitimately black elves, e.g. an Ekujae (or hell, just a black elf from Kyonin - Avistani elves don't ALL have to be white as f&+*), in a Second Darkness rerelease.but we already have that in SD. Isn't that why Kwava is in the AP?
I think part of the problem is with his art, which (being "slightly coppery" rather than "recognizably black") doesn't necessarily hit the correct association nearly as hard as it should. ^_^
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I think part of the problem is with his art, which (being "slightly coppery" rather than "recognizably black") doesn't necessarily hit the correct association nearly as hard as it should. ^_^One way to change that would be including extra legitimately black elves, e.g. an Ekujae (or hell, just a black elf from Kyonin - Avistani elves don't ALL have to be white as f&+*), in a Second Darkness rerelease.but we already have that in SD. Isn't that why Kwava is in the AP?
another reason why SD desperatly needs a hardcover edition: Kwava's art
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Gark is a huge nerd with his statistics s~+#, but he's right about the drow thing.
Again, it's called GMing.
This is the "just houserule it" of rules debates.
"You need to change the AP" is not a valid defense of the AP; it's an acknowledgement that the AP has s#~$ty or lazy elements that a good GM can changee.
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I'm not eveeen going to fix that "changee" b**%&@%$ because my "e" key is broken and I am very angry at it. Look at this, "e" key. Look at what you have wrought. Do you evene care?
...
F*+@ you, inanimate object. I ascribe motives and personality to you, and your personality is that of a huge a&!$$+&.
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Eventually, Kyonin should get a Campaign Setting book of its own. The black eyes that Second Darkness has give the Elves of Golarion can be somewhat addressed with that. It is unfortunate that the only sourcebook to-date on Kyonin is a support article "trapped" in the unpopular AP.
The "Elves of Golarion" Player Companion was light on mechanics, and heavier on flavor, as Paizo was transitioning from 3.5 at the time and did not want to create rules errors. In doing so, there are some 3.5 things that were perpetuated (Elves don't sleep, they just meditate) which should be corrected in a flavor-based supplement.
Things that could be addressed:
- Better, more diverse art for Elves in Kyonin.. especially depicting Ekujae and Snowcaster visitors.
- Clearer depiction of the political in-fighting within the Elves as a people. Now that we have so many new rules for Intrigue, Kyonin seems like the perfect place to put them to work. That the Winter Council gets a mention in Inner Sea Intrigue (but little more than that) makes that seem like a good fit.
- Better depiction of the common folk of Kyonin as NOT being the arrogant jerks portrayed in the AP Second Darkness:because the AP really only had time to show the nefarious plots of the shadow government, and the more benevolent Queen as she tried to manipulate the PCs into solving her problem for her
Of course, this would make more sense supporting another AP.. like, say, one targeting the plots of Treerazer in Tanglebriar. It won't "redeem" Second Darkness, but it might help to fix some of the issues, and could be used by GMs (new and old) to have a better handle on running Part 5 of Second Darkness.
Of course, it would also be nice if the "Drow of Golarion" article from the AP was also expanded into a Campaign Setting supplement.. though it might wind up merged with the expanded Kyonin supplement, I suppose.
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Again, it's called GMing.It would be nice if...
* Serpent's Skull allowed your heroic PCs to actually be heroes and decide they want to side with the anti-colonial faction, instead of just killing people who had a legitimate beef about being colonized and enslaved at the start of book 2.This is the "just houserule it" of rules debates.
"You need to change the AP" is not a valid defense of the AP; it's an acknowledgement that the AP has s%+!ty or lazy elements that a good GM can changee.
I disagree.
An AP which even attempted to provide encounters and guidance for every possible route the party might take and every decision they could make in regards to the beings they encounter would be hundreds of pages long, 99% of that material would never be used... and it still wouldn't be enough to cover every eventuality.
The Serpent's Skull party wants to try to reason with the guy who kidnaps one of their NPC allies, slits her throat, and throws her off a roof? Sure, they can do that (indeed, the AP even mentions that option). They want to not kill him and his supporters? The AP specifically allows for that too. They want to abandon their mission to stop an evil serpent god from arising and side with the violent revolutionaries in their stated goal to kill ALL foreigners (including the PCs themselves)? I have trouble seeing how that is 'heroic', but... ok the AP doesn't specifically mention such a possibility, but the players CAN do that. Nothing preventing them. It just falls into territory where the GM has to handle things.
That isn't "lazy" or "s%+!ty"... that's inevitable. If a GM can't handle a party doing unexpected things that isn't a flaw in the AP.
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Perhaps a good compromise would be giving the GM some guidance in matters where a derail seems plausible. Racing To Ruin does assume that the PCs are wholeheartedly against the rebels. Maybe including some basic info about what to do if the PCs are sympathetic to their cause (not out of the question) would be appropriate in that sort of case. ^_^
I suspect part of the thing with Second Darkness also lies with the strange attraction that players seem to have on "redeemed" evil creatures. I have no doubt at all that if they created Smurfs as a playable race, someone would want to play one of the Purple Smurfs (insane smurfs whose insanity is spread by biting the tail of another smurf - basically, Dawn of the Dead using Smurfs and done up as a Saturday Morning cartoon because the 80s were a period of insane awesomeness and weird hair) and insist that theirs was a "good" Purple Smurf.
GMs allow this because often you can't pick and choose players. So if you want to have three or four players in your group? You let that "special snowflake" player run his non-evil evil race character.
I'm old enough and have had enough campaigns die prematurely to care anymore. So I just say "no."
And if my Avatar changes to a smurf again because of this post, I'm going to have to attribute it to the people at Paizo having an insane sense of humor. It's showing Post As myself... and I've the one avatar to this specific account.
Okay. Paizo is nuts for little blue chaps.
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Yet, oddly enough, it doesn't work when you work into your name. :-)
I suspect part of the thing with Second Darkness also lies with the strange attraction that players seem to have on "redeemed" evil creatures.-- snip --
GMs allow this because often you can't pick and choose players. So if you want to have three or four players in your group? You let that "special snowflake" player run his non-evil evil race character.
I'm old enough and have had enough campaigns die prematurely to care anymore. So I just say "no."
Actually, the introduction in Shadow in the Sky recommends against allwowing a PC Drow in the campaign, making the points that 1) at this time, that the Drow exist is (mostly) unknown on the surface and 2) the Drow are intended to be the villains in this as they were in the classic adventures that introduced them.. so it is counter-productive and spoils the effect if you have a Drow PC.
And yet you will have players insisting that they should be allowed to.
And yet you will have players insisting that they should be allowed to.
Certainly. No matter where you go, or what kind of thing you're talking about, there are people who don't want to hear why their "perfect idea" isn't a good fit for circumstances (or even a good idea). Sometimes, people only want to hear "ok" and refuse to hear anything else.
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Eventually, Kyonin should get a Campaign Setting book of its own. --snip --
In the same vein, Riddleport is the only one of the four major cities in Varisia not to have its own supplement. It, too, languishes "trapped" in the Second Darkness AP.
Such a supplement would be g a good place to
- detail the black market of Lubbertown (which is mentioned in Black Markets, but gets no detail)
- add detail to the smuggling to Thassilonian artifacts (as part of the above)
- re-work the Rotgut Ripper as a Vigilante
- add performance combat (Ultimate Combat) in Zincher's Arena
- put the Influence rules from Ultimate Intrigue to work with the competing factions
- see the Order of Cyphers done up as a "school" (in the sense of the Faction-lite versions in Inner Sea Magic, Inner Sea Combat, Inner Sea Intrigue, and Occult Mysteries)
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I'm actually sad I have to cede this point. I thought that Paizo had moved away from the black-skinned drow, but it looks like the PRD specifically mentions that drow can have black skin, though they mention that "dusky purple" is also an option.
Admittedly, I can't think of a Golarion drow that's been depicted with black skin, though. Can someone steer me to a picture like that?
Gark was just showing me one the other day, though I don't know the source. It was gray, technically speaking.
That said, Kryzbyn's avatar is a good start.
I feel like there might be a conversation to be had about duergar, actually, considering their backstory sort of mirrors a lot of racist creation myths—"And these dwarves were bad, so their god cursed them with [skin color]."
Obviously, that's simplifying it somewhat, but I do think the parallel probably isn't total coincidence.
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Not sure what you are complaining about Kyonin and Riddleport being trapped. Jade Regent has a whole continent "trapped" so far ;)
Personally, I would like to see all of the 3.5 Paizo adventures made into collected and revised hardcover books. I don't much care which.
As for changing the early Pathfinder AP's, that's fine, but I would like 2nd Darkness and Legacy of Fire done first. I personally don't have much of an issue with Carrion Crown as it is, but to each their own I suppose.