Are APs too long?


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Hi guys,

my Iron Gods campaign is soon coming to an end and as I'm revisiting the campaign I'm getting the feeling that there was to much dead space in the middle, which crippled the fantastic pacing of the first 2 books.

How does that lead to me making a thread about APs in general? Well my only other campaign I have run so far was Kingmaker, which had in my opinion, and I know it's an opinion many do not share, an unnecessarily tagged on villain in the last chapter.

Two APs with a similar problem still isn't enough to deduce a pattern, but Hell's Rebels seems to have markers that point in the same direction, as it says somewhere on the boards or in the books (can't remember where I've read it) that the end of the fourth book would be a good cutoff point, if you run a straight Rebellion based Adventure. I want to make clear that at this point I haven't seen or read all the books and it may be unfair to make an early judgement, but I'm simply a bit worried as it is the next campaign I'll be running.

So back to the threads title and back to my initial thought... Are APs to long? Or is it just my GM fatigue kicking in at some point or simply the inherent flaws of some APs (after all there are many other APs that I haven't read yet, let alone run or played...).

What are you guys thinking?


The thing about APs is that they are supposed to be long. They are the quintessential "campaign in a can". The idea started with Shackled City and has expounded from there.

I find a lot of Paizo's earlier modules to be great at stringing together mini-APs. Also, there's nothing saying you can't cut them short or take out some of the books and adapt the others to your players' taste/preference.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Every AP, even the best of them, usually has at least one book a group would just as soon skip... but which book it is depends on the group.


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I don't see a problem, personally.

I'm also a huge fan of the end of Kingmaker so I don't see where your problem lies there, but whatevs.

Sovereign Court

Gratz wrote:

Are APs to long? Or is it just my GM fatigue kicking in at some point or simply the inherent flaws of some APs (after all there are many other APs that I haven't read yet, let alone run or played...).

What are you guys thinking?

APs are definitely too long. I have argued this many times and recently done so in another thread. I am wishing they move to a monthly magazine format which may or may not have continuing adventures.

i.e. the default being a one or two part AP, with the occasional 4, 5 or 6 part AP (maybe once a year or so, as a grand bonanza)

Essentially you would receive your monthly Adventure Path magazine and not really know up front if the adventure would have "To Be Continued" at the end.

That format would put more emphasis on the other articles of the monthly magazine (page count could maybe be higher for those, as applicable) and not only emphasize the "adventure" part of the magazine. There could be more crunch in there (races, equipment, magic items, individual city descriptions, major NPCs of Golarion, major organizations of Golarion described, etc.)

Also it seems to me that it would increase the freedom / scheduling release of the monthly AP and make it easier for Paizo. I'm sure they have got the 6-part release process down pat by now, but I'm thinking it would be nice for them to be able to release a one or two part AP waiting on the shelves if say, the 6-part AP needs an extra month or two to finalize...


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Pass.

That does not sound appealing at all, like not even slightly.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Yeah... going from a reliable "every six months you get a campaign for levels 1-somewhere in the mid to late teens, usually" to "who knows or dares to dream?!" would not be good for the subscription business which so satisfies Paizo. It's what made my youthful subscription to Dungeon Magazine in the 1990s such a crapshoot... "Oh, you need something for a level 15 party? TOO BAD SUCKER, THIS ONE'S ALL ABOUT LEVELS 1-10, oh, and then another adventure for a completely different game system TSR happens to publish. GOOD LUCK!"

Regularity keeps subscribers happy.

And they absolutely publish one-part APs. They're called solo modules,and these days they're even getting bound like a Pathfinder Companion...

Now, could they switch to, say, three four-part APs every year? Sure. But would it bring in enough revenue to justify the extra work of securing art, design, and plotting for three, rather than two stories? I rather doubt it,because that is ultimately what each AP is- a story. It's a lot easier to socket bits into a tale than come up with a new one from whole cloth. That's why so many of us pay people to write them for us and deliver them every month...


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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Iron Gods is effectively three "mini-APs" in one: Defeat Hellion, Find Cansandalee, and Defeat Unity; each arc consisting of two books.

Spoiler:
Kingmaker suffered a bit in that Nyrissa's involvement in the region was not highlighted to the players, other than with a few easily overlooked hints, until close to the end of the 5th book. A much tighter feel could be realized by adding a journal for the PCs to find in the Stag Lord's room (detailing his dream of Nyrissa as his motivation for setting up as a bandit), making the Dancing Lady into Nyrissa's agent (PCs find documents, etc. on destabilizing the area), making Hargulka's neckalace of fireballs out of Nyrissa's hair (like the ring bestial friendship), making the rings of friend shield (in Varnhold and Vordakai's tomb) out of Nyirissa's hair (the spriggans acting for Nyrissa in the area; one spriggan was sent with an offer to Vordakai, but Vordakai killed them), making Ngara's headband of mental prowess out of Nyrissa's hair (and finding documents similar to the Dancing Lady's in her lair), and playing up Irovetti's obsession with Nyrissa (artwork displayed, costumes worn by his retinue, etc.). By the middle of the 5th book, the PCs should feel that there is some fey menace working against the Stolen Lands in general and them in particular.

Some APs (Second Darkness, Council of Thieves) particularly suffer from the disjointedness between books; this is something that, unfortunately, is probably not ever going to be completely fixed. Each book of an AP is written by a different author at the same time as the others (the authors don't get a chance to read the other books to set up stronger transitions), leaving the editors to tweak things after all the drafts are in; because of the time constraints, the tweaks will only be minor (substantial re-writes would throw off the monthly publication schedule). However, it is also something (like tailoring things to the particular group's taste and character goals) that a GM can usually do with a little bit of work; it's also the GM's responsibility, IMO. Ending the AP early is as much of an option as extending it (with the Continuing the Campaign section).


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Gratz wrote:

So back to the threads title and back to my initial thought... Are APs to long? Or is it just my GM fatigue kicking in at some point or simply the inherent flaws of some APs (after all there are many other APs that I haven't read yet, let alone run or played...).

What are you guys thinking?

I would say that they are not. The only AP's that I've played all the way through are Rise of the Runelords, Wrath of the Righteous and Skull n Shackles, but I've read through most of the others. In all three there was a ton of material that could easily have been skipped or pared down to make the campaign move along more quickly, yet in all three we ended up adding material - quite a bit of it, in fact - to what was already there.

In my experience, what makes AP's drag more than anything else is playing them with larger parties. We always have 3 or 4 PCs' and things always seem to move right along, in part because combat doesn't take forever and in part because we have fewer conflicts when it comes to getting everyone together.

Having said that, something I think would be great (but would never happen) would be to break the AP/Module year into the following annual format:

A 1 volume adventure, a 2 volume adventure, a 3 volume adventure and a 6 volume adventure, rather than two 6-volume adventures. That would give a fantastic mix of different lengths to draw on for GM's.


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Cole Deschain wrote:

Yeah... going from a reliable "every six months you get a campaign for levels 1-somewhere in the mid to late teens, usually" to "who knows or dares to dream?!" would not be good for the subscription business which so satisfies Paizo. It's what made my youthful subscription to Dungeon Magazine in the 1990s such a crapshoot... "Oh, you need something for a level 15 party? TOO BAD SUCKER, THIS ONE'S ALL ABOUT LEVELS 1-10, oh, and then another adventure for a completely different game system TSR happens to publish. GOOD LUCK!"

Regularity keeps subscribers happy.

And they absolutely publish one-part APs. They're called solo modules,and these days they're even getting bound like a Pathfinder Companion...

Now, could they switch to, say, three four-part APs every year? Sure. But would it bring in enough revenue to justify the extra work of securing art, design, and plotting for three, rather than two stories? I rather doubt it,because that is ultimately what each AP is- a story. It's a lot easier to socket bits into a tale than come up with a new one from whole cloth. That's why so many of us pay people to write them for us and deliver them every month...

Same here. I like knowing what I am getting for like the next 6 or so months. Because if it is a topic I don't like, I can unsubscribe. I also like that I know that each AP will have a couple of gazeteers, some ecology articles, new monsters, a couple of diety write ups, and a scattering of random articles. Because this means that even if I am not enthused at the story, there are other stuff I can pull from it and use/read. Going to a more random and varying format means that their is a much higher likelihood that a single issue might not have anything I care about, and be worthless to me.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

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I think adventure paths are too long if you want a campaign that is laser-focused on one plot thread with little deviation.

Most adventure paths seem to have some padding or filler that branches away from the plot, but I think this is important to give some variety and show that there's other stuff going on in the setting.


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Purple Dragon Knight wrote:
Gratz wrote:

Are APs to long? Or is it just my GM fatigue kicking in at some point or simply the inherent flaws of some APs (after all there are many other APs that I haven't read yet, let alone run or played...).

What are you guys thinking?

APs are definitely too long. I have argued this many times and recently done so in another thread. I am wishing they move to a monthly magazine format which may or may not have continuing adventures.

i.e. the default being a one or two part AP, with the occasional 4, 5 or 6 part AP (maybe once a year or so, as a grand bonanza)

Essentially you would receive your monthly Adventure Path magazine and not really know up front if the adventure would have "To Be Continued" at the end.

That format would put more emphasis on the other articles of the monthly magazine (page count could maybe be higher for those, as applicable) and not only emphasize the "adventure" part of the magazine. There could be more crunch in there (races, equipment, magic items, individual city descriptions, major NPCs of Golarion, major organizations of Golarion described, etc.)

Also it seems to me that it would increase the freedom / scheduling release of the monthly AP and make it easier for Paizo. I'm sure they have got the 6-part release process down pat by now, but I'm thinking it would be nice for them to be able to release a one or two part AP waiting on the shelves if say, the 6-part AP needs an extra month or two to finalize...

PAIZO PLEASE DO NOT EVER CONSIDER THIS SUGGESTION!!!!!

The AP'S are great. I love them. I don't need a magazine format with suggestions. AP's are the suggestion, special rules for special things, etc that I want.

Sovereign Court

Dragonchess Player wrote:
Iron Gods is effectively three "mini-APs" in one: Defeat Hellion, Find Cansandalee, and Defeat Unity; each arc consisting of two books.

Not advertised that way... if it was I would be interested. The geek in me wants to collect everything, sure, but reality sets in and there's no way I'm gonna buy all the APs just because. There's no way we can currently play them all and juggle our lives. Maybe the hope of Paizo is to rope in more young people without family, careers, etc.

Sovereign Court

Wiggz wrote:
A 1 volume adventure, a 2 volume adventure, a 3 volume adventure and a 6 volume adventure, rather than two 6-volume adventures. That would give a fantastic mix of different lengths to draw on for GM's.

Seconded.


Should we turn this thread into the FaWtL of the AP boards, just keep coming up with plot hooks to continue APs indefinitely. :-)


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I love adventure paths the way they are. I don't think they're too long at all. They're meant to be ongoing campaigns that plays can devote months or even years to playing.

If anything I wish they were longer so characters could get to level 20 by the end, but I know that's not the popular opinion. :)

Grand Lodge

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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

There's a certain amount if overhead involved in creating an AP of any length. Things like devising the story arc, recruiting writers, crafty specialized rules, and anything else unique to that AP.

With two APS per year, you have to go through that overhead process twice. With three APs, you'd do it three times, a 50% increase in overhead. Even if APS were shortened to three or four issues, there's no way it would be less work for Paizo to produce. At least with two APs, they know year-to-year what their overhead looks like. Going to variable AP lengths would make the overhead harder to manage.

They already seem to be at their limit. If they did this, the price would probably go up too.

-Skeld


I agree with the others that having a possibly/maybe continuation of an adventure sounds like a terrible idea. If I'm going to invest money and time into something, I want it to have a definitive continuation. Otherwise, I'll just whip up a campaign on my own time and without money expenditures.

If I'm paying for a "campaign in a can", then I want the entire thing to be a complete adventure with a well-thought out path and ending. I would be very upset if I started down an adventure path with my players only to find out that the publisher suddenly decided that idea wasn't worth continuing and dropped it. That's bad business.

Sovereign Court

Full disclosure: we're still running an AP in my group but we're also running two other homecampaigns set in Golarion... we find the rich sandbox that is Golarion is a bit under served by the APs, and the stories are a bit myopic or too focused at times. The quality of the APs is great in my opinion, but we feel that APs leave less room for character development and free will of said characters. Basically, it's ok for a character to say, "I'm not going to be a part of this," or to go a completely different way than expected. We just deal with it and adapt our next game. There's a lot of mods and individual dungeons (be they in APs or other resources) to cover the gamut and adapt on the fly, one week to the next.

Our groups has played APs for years but players have matured (a bit, but not too much... :P ) and have the need to stretch their legs once in a while. Especially past levels 10-12, where limitations due to geography fall off to the wayside...


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Throughout my younger years, when I had the time to create the vast majority of my own campaigns, their lengths would be between 2-4 years. That's about the period of time I felt comfortable telling a genuine, epic story, while still giving my players enough time to truly delve into their characters. It meant I didn't need to level them too quickly that they felt the whole thing a race to the finish, yet they weren't waiting forever to attain that next level of progression. I've probably run nearly a dozen campaigns in my time, but there are only two that I haven't brought to completion (one because I simply grew bored with the setting; another that after 2 years of gameplay, I realized we had only scratched the surface of my story, and that it would be another 8-10 years before we could finish . . . far too long, even for my own tastes!).

So, are the Paizo APs too long? I would say definitely not! If we just run through them, my group can usually complete an AP in about 18 months. The Kingmaker AP (which we've loved from book one through book six) is one we've been at over 3 years now and should be finishing soon (we're done with the books, and are completing the finale of my own Dark Tapestry storyline interwoven through the campaign).

If anything, I'd say the APs--as they currently are--would be too short! That's not to say that I expect or want them to lengthen them, as that's something I can do on my own if I so desire. Up to this point, my players and I have never yet found an AP (we've completed only one, but are near completion of three others--Runelords, Jade Regent, and Kingmaker) we haven't thoroughly enjoyed! Don't mess with a good thing, I say.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I'd rather say they are too short, mostly by three to four levels, i.e. book seven.

I still hope that someday the developers take up the idea of publishing an "after the campaign" module, which bridges the last levels until level 20 and picks up some of the ideas from the "after the campaign" section of the sixth AP book.


The question isn't "are APs too long or short" but "what level cap is my group interested in" and "how often do we meet"

For instance, my defunct RoW game met maybe eight times a year at its height due to the scheduling conflicts of two of the three tabletop players (the Skype players were more flexible). And this wasn't eight sessions that lasted through the day and into the night - no, these were 4-5 hour sessions. It would thus be no surprise to anyone that we didn't even finish Book 2 (and even with my cutting half of the encounters when going from Waldsby to Winterthrone).

If a group meets weekly and plays for six to eight hours each session then they will likely blow through an AP within six months. If the group is able to remain on target and doesn't waste a lot of time, the GM may even need to pad things.

If your group meets every other month because of RL concerns and half of the game is puns and snacks and you only were together for five hours... then you're going to find yourself languishing in Book 1 or Book 2 two years into the AP.

And if it's because you, as the GM, got bored with the material and don't want to continue past a certain point? Buy a module. That's what they are there for. There are plenty of products out there that are for lower-level play - as ultimately that is what cutting APs short would result in - games that never get above 13th level... or (with a three-book AP) never above 9th level.

Sovereign Court

PDK: GM (75% of the time)

I think everyone here should preface their response by saying if they are GMs or players. It's fine to like "Long APs" but if you're always the player it's not really fair, as per the OP's comments on GM fatigue.

PS: I will no longer GM a 6-part AP - I have told my group so, and I have switched to GMing a homecampaign. One of my players took the GM hat for the AP we're in currently.


(At the moment, I'm the GM for our group about half of the time.)

I like how the APs give opportunities for a group of PCs to experience one long story together. However, I prefer a somewhat lower proportion of combat than the APs usually contain. So when I'm GMing, I'll tend to cut a few combats or set up alternative ways the PCs can get past some of the encounters if they want. (Our group doesn't track experience points.) This speeds up our progress, but I sometimes wonder if this also means that the PCs are levelling a bit too rapidly. This leads to an idea...

Note to future self: Perhaps if I run another AP, I could adapt it so that the PCs move through a narrower range of levels (maybe 4 - 11). I'd need to make the challenges harder at the beginning and a bit less difficult at the end (and so I'll have to decide whether the benefits will be worth the extra work).


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I think most of us who subscribe to the APs are probably doing so in a GM capacity...

I'm lucky, I get to play about as much as I GM, but the value I place on the current system of APs is TOTALLY from the perspective of a GM.

Sovereign Court

Fair enough guys. I'm hearing the majority still like the AP format, so I must conclude that my taste has changed on the format, and not really representative of a subset of folks here. I mean, I use to LOVE the format, but it's become too much of a bear. I gave up long ago even the remote possibility of keeping up with APs, but now, I can't even look at one of them - it's like looking at this big looming mountain you know will take 2-3 years to climb.

Home campaigns allow me to shut it down whenever I want, or deviate from the plan, or have a god show up and slap a template on the PCs so they can deal with overwhelming odds. They allow me to strike lightning on PCs at random for mouthing off about gods, or to allow them to disobey a lord and have them flee to other kingdoms when they feel their family's welfare is more important than a mission or an ideal.

Last but not the least, they allow me to freestyle using all the new juicy stuff from Occult Bestiary, Bestiary 5, Monster Codex and other recent things that probably will never see the light of day in an AP. I'm aware that you can add things to APs (i.e. shore in the weak spots with that new stuff, side quests and all) but in the end you slow down the AP - the oh so sacred AP! - or end up skipping things to add the extra stuff in, and basically it's not the AP anymore anyways (which may not fit in with the expectations of some players signing up to be at your table...)

So I'll keep listening and see what AP is about what, and chime in to ask a question or two, to see if some parts of those series may fit my campaign, but I think I'll be detaching myself from that for the time being, lest the format is rethought at some point. No hard feelings at all for Paizo, as they've given me years and years of fun so far, with more of those ahead using non AP resources. Cheers!


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One thing to recall is this: The AP is not written in stone. You are a customer, and you are purchasing a product to use as you desire, so long as you are not reselling it.

So if you want to create a longer AP, you can. If you want to merge Shattered Star and Runelords for an AP that runs levels 1-20, go for it! If you want your game to branch out into Wrath of the Righteous partway through? Sure! And if you feel the game is running too long and want to cut half of the encounters? You can.

You can even decide to have more diplomatic solutions - allow the group to talk their way through encounters, convince enemies to put down their blades and walk away, and award them the XPs for that encounter. Do what you want! It is your game.

Paizo will continue putting out the six-book AP line no matter what you do with your games. They may do some experimental APs, like maybe a "Hard Mode" AP which runs through level 20 by having more difficult encounters or the like... but the one thing they will probably not everdo is change the number of books in an AP.


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For the record, I'm GM for my group about 90% of the time (though one of my friends has picked up on the idea, done really well as GM of a campaign, and will probably continue, giving me the opportunity to play a little more . . . Yeah!).

I think Tangent is dead on. In the end, every game is your game, so feel free to make it yours. Just because I'm sitting here with a six-book series in front of me doesn't mean I can't let my players go their own way. My job as GM is to facilitate their fun by letting them do what they do and figure out ways to get them back on track later.

There was a great moment in our Kingmaker campaign that took place in the second book. A bunch of loggers from Mivon (realm to the south) that were cutting down trees around a pond and got involved into an altercation with a nixie. The players took the side of the nixie and convinced the loggers this was their territory now through some good diplomacy rolls. However, one of the characters was a bit more vindictive, and she sneaked down to the loggers camp and firebombed the whole place, destroying all their equipment and goods.

That heinous act led to a great deal of trouble with Mivon that required some serious diplomatic RP to avoid war, as the Mivonians also didn't like how the PCs kingdom apparently elevated fey above their own kind! With the PCs kingdom being so young yet, they didn't have money for building significant armies, so a war would have been very bad for them. As it turned out, they were able to make amends for their mistake by helping with the elves in northern Mivon, eventually convincing those elves to leave Mivon's territory to the loggers and settle in the Narlmarches, where the PCs gave them their own land for a small elven kingdom.

It was one small encounter within the book that led to a ton of political encounters not scripted at all. We're just finishing that AP after about a 3-1/4-year run, and it's been filled with unscripted situations where the PCs actions and desires determined things that happened.

Running APs doesn't have to be by the book ad nauseam! They can very much be your own . . . add to them, take away from them; make the story what you and your players are looking for! It provides a beautiful outline of a wonderful story with little work required (most of the time) though, which makes them perfect for me. And, like I said, there hasn't been an AP we've started that we haven't gone all the way through. I love them, but don't let yourself get lost in the text!


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The newer deluxe module format is basically 2+ AP volumes in one as well. That could help alleviate your fatigue from the full 6 volume runs as an option that may help?

Sovereign Court

Rathendar wrote:
The newer deluxe module format is basically 2+ AP volumes in one as well. That could help alleviate your fatigue from the full 6 volume runs as an option that may help?

I will definitely look into this


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AP's are instead too short. They end before the capstone. As a GM, you should spice up parts that aren't to your group's taste.


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The game itself can be modified. You can choosen when the Capstone ability takes effect - so if you want to have level 17 Capstone? Go for it! This is something that the Paizo crew itself has stated.

Don't forget - the rules are guidelines. You can modify them as you wish. So if you want Capstones at level 17? Have them available then.


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Count me in with the group who thinks the APs are good as-is.

I'm definitely going to consider the idea of moving capstones down to level 15 or so. Maybe even 13, so that the PCs can have a few levels to use them before I stop them leveling. Having now run a campaign or two into the high-teens, the high-level fatigue is real, and I'd like to avoid that in the future.

I think the main reason Paizo won't change their format, regardless, is that APs - and, more specifically, AP subscriptions - are their big moneymaker. It's the AP subscriptions that keep Paizo afloat as a company, more than their rulebook sales or other things. Maybe less so now than in previous years, when they were a much smaller company in a much more turbulent economic niche, but I'd still say it's a good majority of their profit margin. (Though if a Paizo staffer knows different, please feel free to correct me!)


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APaWtL?


Tangent101 wrote:

One thing to recall is this: The AP is not written in stone. You are a customer, and you are purchasing a product to use as you desire, so long as you are not reselling it.

So if you want to create a longer AP, you can. If you want to merge Shattered Star and Runelords for an AP that runs levels 1-20, go for it! If you want your game to branch out into Wrath of the Righteous partway through? Sure! And if you feel the game is running too long and want to cut half of the encounters? You can.

You can even decide to have more diplomatic solutions - allow the group to talk their way through encounters, convince enemies to put down their blades and walk away, and award them the XPs for that encounter. Do what you want! It is your game.

Paizo will continue putting out the six-book AP line no matter what you do with your games. They may do some experimental APs, like maybe a "Hard Mode" AP which runs through level 20 by having more difficult encounters or the like... but the one thing they will probably not everdo is change the number of books in an AP.

this is a good point. For instance, Burnt Offerings works perfectly fine as a stand alone adventure, or paired with just The Skinsaw Murders and then leading into a Magnamarian campaign. You could run the first four books of Rise and have the campaign be all about stopping a giant invasion. You could skip the first two books of Second Darkness (many do) and make it an under dark campaign for its entirety. You could run the first book of Skull n Shackles to kick off a pirate campaign or run books 1-5 and let the invasion of the Chellish fleet be the climax.

With the understanding that it's very easy to simply skip whatever parts you might wish, I'd definitely rather have more than less.


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Souls For Smuggler's Shiv can be tweaked into a first portion of Skulls and Shackles if you want to avoid the press-gang story...


Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Cole Deschain wrote:
Souls For Smuggler's Shiv can be tweaked into a first portion of Skulls and Shackles if you want to avoid the press-gang story...

You can also go the other way: Run The Wormwood Mutiny and part of Raiders of the Fever Sea, before having the PCs participate in Racing to Ruin as the leaders of the Free Captains faction; you may have to tweak the Racing to Ruin encounters, as the PCs will be a bit higher level than assumed, but the conversions shouldn't be that extreme.


Havent run many APs (still through our second one, S&S which we've fluffed up and added stuff to and enjoying thoroughly, yet never finished our first RotRL...which was very boring).

What is for me a killer when I read through the APs is that the setting placement and story developing are generally a lot of fun (books 1&2, though I have read that some do drop the ball here) and then the rest of the books are extended dungeon crawls. For our group, that is very boring. We much prefer the exposition, interesting npcs and then some relevant and to the point combat.

In general, Paizo likes these humongous dumgeon crawls, with 37 rooms with a APL minus CR7 encounters. We as a group grab these rooms and make 5 out of it with some better, more relevant combats. This helps shorten certain things about the AP. "You go in the room. It has 3 doors, which do you take? Ok the North. You go in, it has 4 doors, which..." At the 20 minute mark we've lost interest.
When half of the AP devolves into this, I understand why no one can finish it.

Things that make some APs fantastic for us, and eager to get through them, are things like the S&S captains Regatta, the Council meetings, and staged events, with fast, simple rules to get through them and add a tonne of environment, without it being a succeed or die scenario.

In short, if the AP is about having a big dungeon crawl in books 3-6, yes, the AP is too long because there obviously wasnt enough relevant content to make an interesting story for so many books.


I've actively started to speed up some of the dungeon-crawl parts of the game. XD Stuff like blatantly hand-waving away any combats that are unlikely to be a challenge, having people move quickly through the hallways instead of checking rooms one-by-one, and so on. Seems to be working fairly well.


Gratz wrote:

Hi guys,

my Iron Gods campaign is soon coming to an end and as I'm revisiting the campaign I'm getting the feeling that there was to much dead space in the middle, which crippled the fantastic pacing of the first 2 books.

How does that lead to me making a thread about APs in general? Well my only other campaign I have run so far was Kingmaker, which had in my opinion, and I know it's an opinion many do not share, an unnecessarily tagged on villain in the last chapter.

Two APs with a similar problem still isn't enough to deduce a pattern, but Hell's Rebels seems to have markers that point in the same direction, as it says somewhere on the boards or in the books (can't remember where I've read it) that the end of the fourth book would be a good cutoff point, if you run a straight Rebellion based Adventure. I want to make clear that at this point I haven't seen or read all the books and it may be unfair to make an early judgement, but I'm simply a bit worried as it is the next campaign I'll be running.

So back to the threads title and back to my initial thought... Are APs to long? Or is it just my GM fatigue kicking in at some point or simply the inherent flaws of some APs (after all there are many other APs that I haven't read yet, let alone run or played...).

What are you guys thinking?

*too


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Three! ah ah ah!! *thunder rumbles, lightning flashes*

Damn It Count! Way to relapse!


I actually don't think they're too long, I've been incredibly impressed with how they've evolved and that you can see fan input being implemented.

So no, I wouldn't change anything, they're doing a great job.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Dungeoncrawling is a thing. I actually know of people who take the dungeons and handwave the rest.

Personaly, i would enjoy the dungeons to contain more meaningful stuff often.
Playing out monsters and NPC´s in dungeons makes a big difference though. If your party just kills anything they find, nothing makes sense there. Gets more difficult if you have a Paladin with detect evil and the urge to kill anything registering as evil, without any interactions.
There are a lot of good encounters in many dungeons though. Mummys Mask has some pretty cool stuff and there was a really good one in Jade Regent too.

Liberty's Edge

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I love the APs. To date I've fully GM'd to completion three, and am playing 2. So with that as a perspective, I think the relative length depends on how well the APs are constructed. Some simply seem to have filler books which can be a drag to GM and a drag to play though. For example book 4 of Jade Regent with its massive dungeon that added nothing to the exotic flavor of the AP. Frequently in Carrion Crown I found myself asking, "why are we here again?"

I think the trick is for the GM to figure out what their group will react to and emphasize that while editing down parts they'll be less interested in.


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I think they're a bit too long indeed. I'm finding myself cutting all kinds of encounters from Giantslayer as a means to bring things to a faster close. Often encounters feel like they are just there as experience point balloons to be popped. So I'm doing away with much of that to move the story along.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 4, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32

Lass wrote:
I think they're a bit too long indeed. I'm finding myself cutting all kinds of encounters from Giantslayer as a means to bring things to a faster close. Often encounters feel like they are just there as experience point balloons to be popped. So I'm doing away with much of that to move the story along.

While I think the adventure paths are pretty well-paced, I do think that there's usually room to cut encounters if you want a tighter plot. Switching to the fast XP track and removing some non-plot-relevant encounters would be pretty easy for most of them.

Sovereign Court

If APs buff up some of the sidebars to add some "if you run this as a standalone adventure" wording, I think it would go a long way to include back some of the gamers who have less time to devote to the hobby than others. I know lots of people buy the APs just for reading, but believe it or not some people will only buy that stuff if they intend to run or play it, and would rather read novels or engineering manuals on their off time... ;)


Purple Dragon Knight wrote:
If APs buff up some of the sidebars to add some "if you run this as a standalone adventure" wording, I think it would go a long way to include back some of the gamers who have less time to devote to the hobby than others. I know lots of people buy the APs just for reading, but believe it or not some people will only buy that stuff if they intend to run or play it, and would rather read novels or engineering manuals on their off time... ;)

I do similarly, though I do buy some AP books here and there (City of Seven spears, Kashikon...). "Buffed" sidelines are something that are very useful for this, and even when running the AP itself, giving a little "out of the box" or "out of the path" thinking.

+ to this


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Purple Dragon Knight wrote:

Fair enough guys. I'm hearing the majority still like the AP format, so I must conclude that my taste has changed on the format, and not really representative of a subset of folks here. I mean, I use to LOVE the format, but it's become too much of a bear. I gave up long ago even the remote possibility of keeping up with APs, but now, I can't even look at one of them - it's like looking at this big looming mountain you know will take 2-3 years to climb.

Home campaigns allow me to shut it down whenever I want, or deviate from the plan, or have a god show up and slap a template on the PCs so they can deal with overwhelming odds. They allow me to strike lightning on PCs at random for mouthing off about gods, or to allow them to disobey a lord and have them flee to other kingdoms when they feel their family's welfare is more important than a mission or an ideal.

Last but not the least, they allow me to freestyle using all the new juicy stuff from Occult Bestiary, Bestiary 5, Monster Codex and other recent things that probably will never see the light of day in an AP. I'm aware that you can add things to APs (i.e. shore in the weak spots with that new stuff, side quests and all) but in the end you slow down the AP - the oh so sacred AP! - or end up skipping things to add the extra stuff in, and basically it's not the AP anymore anyways (which may not fit in with the expectations of some players signing up to be at your table...)

So I'll keep listening and see what AP is about what, and chime in to ask a question or two, to see if some parts of those series may fit my campaign, but I think I'll be detaching myself from that for the time being, lest the format is rethought at some point. No hard feelings at all for Paizo, as they've given me years and years of fun so far, with more of those ahead using non AP resources. Cheers!

Home Style games would always be the way to go. I would argue that if you have the time, creativity and drive to write your own campaign... then AP's really aren't for you.

Our DM used to write years long campaigns digging deep into the mythology and world building... but that was when we were younger. Jobs, families, time... they really eat a lot out life. We still want to play on game night, but don't have as much time OUT of game night to devote to it.

We've been enjoying the APs because they are more contained, already written and ready to go. DM's still add and subtract and twist to their hearts content, but they aren't working from a blank sheet or the ground up anymore.

But yeah, if you have the ability to tailor make a whole campaign with all the twist and turns and personal details for the individual players... that's always a better campaign then a generic prefab written equally for all 100+ race/class combinations that nobody at your table will use.


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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Even if you do have the time to build a campaign from the ground up, APs (and other resources, like Campaign Setting books, modules, etc.) are still useful as a source of ideas, characters, encounters, locations, etc. to use as building blocks. You may have to tweak the elements you are transferring a bit here and there to fit them into your specific campaign or setting, but many GMs do this all the time, either when running a "prefab" adventure or even with their own material (say, for running different groups that have different tastes; or when an unused/peripheral element needs to be updated and/or repurposed for a different adventure).

Check your ego at the door, but no GM is going to personally master every single possible genre and theme for the game. We all have areas that can be bolstered with published material.

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