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I created a survey about the different Paizo Adventure Paths. The idea was based on a discussion on Reddit that lots of posters come to message boards asking "What is the best AP for X?" and it might be nice to have some data that people could look at.
I figured I would share the survey here because:
a) The more answers, the better the data
b) People here might be interested in the results too
So here is the survey:
The survey
The results
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Hmm, yeah, out of 100 or so answerers, quite many of them have not played quite lot of APs so quite lot of APs don't really have a lot of data to say much about
I personally think though that roleplaying potential's answers are mostly about players' and gm's ability and not really the AP. I mean, sure, if adventure is only combat and no tips on how characters behave are given to GM then yeah roleplaying is hard and requires ton of work, but players can't know that without reading the AP. So while player can answer "Yeah this AP had ton of roleplaying" or "This AP had none of roleplaying", that answer can't be accurate if they haven't read the AP since they don't know how much stuff GM added or removed.
You should probably post your survey (which is a great initiative in my opinion) to other media as well.
This is a question, which shows up time and time again, but I feel that you need to add some short descriptions of the setting, if you want it to be useful to other people. I mean for example, what use is it to me that Iron Gods seems to have a great plot, if you can't get behind the whole sci-fi technology in the setting.
That's pretty interesting. I feel like out of all these things, roleplaying is the hardest to rate (though they'll all be subjective). Every AP will have the same encounters barring the GM making changes, but the amount of roleplaying that goes on will be pretty heavily dependent on the GM and the players. Some APs might allow for it more than others (e.g., more socially-oriented encounters), but I feel it's pretty dependent on your group. Data on that might not be as useful to people since it's so individualized. To give you an example, Shattered Star is rated as being not very good on the roleplaying front, but when I played it, we had more roleplaying than a lot of the other campaigns I've played in.
It's a pretty neat project, though. Are you planning on continuing it for future APs?
I think some APs are easier to RP in than others. It depends on how free the AP is.
For example, Reign of Winter, though many love it, is a straight on Railroad. If the players don't want to do certain things or ACT in certain ways, the GM can either end it by killing them all, or other limited things which can basically force them to follow exactly what the story wants them to follow.
The other option is that the GM could HEAVILY modify the AP.
I haven't played the current AP, but HV is another which due to it's nature, can heavily force the players in another direction. They cannot play certain alignments, which is also a restrictive item on Roleplaying.
Other AP's don't have those types of items going on. Most have some sort of storyline that you have the players follow, but many have alternate routes or ideas, and/or are more freeform in what they cover.
At least in my opinion.
In that light, some APs give more leeway and leverage to those players that want to RP.
Hmm, yeah, out of 100 or so answerers, quite many of them have not played quite lot of APs so quite lot of APs don't really have a lot of data to say much about
I personally think though that roleplaying potential's answers are mostly about players' and gm's ability and not really the AP. I mean, sure, if adventure is only combat and no tips on how characters behave are given to GM then yeah roleplaying is hard and requires ton of work, but players can't know that without reading the AP. So while player can answer "Yeah this AP had ton of roleplaying" or "This AP had none of roleplaying", that answer can't be accurate if they haven't read the AP since they don't know how much stuff GM added or removed.
While CorvusMask makes valid points above, I kind of disagree. Nothing prevents people from roleplaying their characters in these AP's, however roleplaying in these AP's (with some exception, ie Kingmaker) carries no intrinsic value to the campaign, and in some instances runs counter to the campaign.
The most dramatic example for me was playing a paladin in Reign of Winter. For those who don't see a problem from that statement alone, consider what it means to play a paladin in a campaign where you are magically compelled to help Baba Yaga, a powerful and evil individual.
Aside from that, AP's tend to be very linear, so any roleplaying we bring to the table is fluff, and rarely builds upon the story as published by Paizo. Personally, I feel that sandbox campaigns are the only avenue that really demonstrates value to roleplaying.
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Hmm, yeah, out of 100 or so answerers, quite many of them have not played quite lot of APs so quite lot of APs don't really have a lot of data to say much about
I personally think though that roleplaying potential's answers are mostly about players' and gm's ability and not really the AP. I mean, sure, if adventure is only combat and no tips on how characters behave are given to GM then yeah roleplaying is hard and requires ton of work, but players can't know that without reading the AP. So while player can answer "Yeah this AP had ton of roleplaying" or "This AP had none of roleplaying", that answer can't be accurate if they haven't read the AP since they don't know how much stuff GM added or removed.
While CorvusMask makes valid points above, I kind of disagree. Nothing prevents people from roleplaying their characters in these AP's, however roleplaying in these AP's (with some exception, ie Kingmaker) carries no intrinsic value to the campaign, and in some instances runs counter to the campaign.
The most dramatic example for me was playing a paladin in Reign of Winter. For those who don't see a problem from that statement alone, consider what it means to play a paladin in a campaign where you are magically compelled to help Baba Yaga, a powerful and evil individual.
Aside from that, AP's tend to be very linear, so any roleplaying we bring to the table is fluff, and rarely builds upon the story as published by Paizo. Personally, I feel that sandbox campaigns are the only avenue that really demonstrates value to roleplaying.
Then there's other circumstances where the right 'venue' for rp'ing just happens in the game. Runelords is my all time favorite AP, and Sandpoint is like 50% of the reason why. It's a nice little town, with detailed npc's that give you tons to play off of. I played a 'medical doctor' trying to run a practice in a town with a temple to 5 gods. I was the 'joke of the town' until I started helping to save it from monsters, then people wanted to come get help from the 'hero doctor' lol. Tons of fun.
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Our game of Council of Thieves became about saving our home. Not just 'doing what was right', but Westcrown was our home dammit, and we weren't about to let some upstart ruin it.
Skulls and Shackles was (for us, and I was our 'captain') about gaining glory, and preserving the 'perfect society' of freedom from oppression. Granted, piracy, but it was better than Cheliax.
We've also had games that the party made their own 'rp resources'. The Shattered Star game I ran featured an all-dwarven party that was somewhat linked to eachother.
The Iron Gods game features two party members who are almost mercenary like, and myself and another party member who love Torch. I'm personally wanting to begin a revolution against the Technic League!
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Hmm, yeah, out of 100 or so answerers, quite many of them have not played quite lot of APs so quite lot of APs don't really have a lot of data to say much about
I personally think though that roleplaying potential's answers are mostly about players' and gm's ability and not really the AP. I mean, sure, if adventure is only combat and no tips on how characters behave are given to GM then yeah roleplaying is hard and requires ton of work, but players can't know that without reading the AP. So while player can answer "Yeah this AP had ton of roleplaying" or "This AP had none of roleplaying", that answer can't be accurate if they haven't read the AP since they don't know how much stuff GM added or removed.
While CorvusMask makes valid points above, I kind of disagree. Nothing prevents people from roleplaying their characters in these AP's, however roleplaying in these AP's (with some exception, ie Kingmaker) carries no intrinsic value to the campaign, and in some instances runs counter to the campaign.
The most dramatic example for me was playing a paladin in Reign of Winter. For those who don't see a problem from that statement alone, consider what it means to play a paladin in a campaign where you are magically compelled to help Baba Yaga, a powerful and evil individual.
Aside from that, AP's tend to be very linear, so any roleplaying we bring to the table is fluff, and rarely builds upon the story as published by Paizo. Personally, I feel that sandbox campaigns are the only avenue that really demonstrates value to roleplaying.
To me good roleplaying is that players and gm are enjoying it, not "How much it helps with progressing the story in AP/providing value to PCs"
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Very interesting!
Just add my Ap experience in your survey, will certenly consult in the futur.
Of note: When I completed it, it wouldn't let me fill in anything under "Additional Comments." Not sure if anyone else has had this issue.
Thanks to everyone who responded to the survey. To reply to a few questions/comments:
I personally think though that roleplaying potential's answers are mostly about players' and gm's ability and not really the AP. I mean, sure, if adventure is only combat and no tips on how characters behave are given to GM then yeah roleplaying is hard and requires ton of work, but players can't know that without reading the AP. So while player can answer "Yeah this AP had ton of roleplaying" or "This AP had none of roleplaying", that answer can't be accurate if they haven't read the AP since they don't know how much stuff GM added or removed.
This is a fair concern and I would agree that RP is at the mercy of the GM's skill to a degree. That being said, I do believe that some adventure paths offer better opportunities for RP than others. Most of the questions in this survey are subjective in nature. The hope is that with enough answers the data normalizes around the most common experience.
You should probably post your survey (which is a great initiative in my opinion) to other media as well.
This is a question, which shows up time and time again, but I feel that you need to add some short descriptions of the setting, if you want it to be useful to other people. I mean for example, what use is it to me that Iron Gods seems to have a great plot, if you can't get behind the whole sci-fi technology in the setting.
So far I have posted here and Reddit. I know that it was shared on Facebook as well. Any other medias which you would recommend? As for the descriptions, I am somewhat limited by the fact I actually haven't played most of these APs (thus my personal interest in this data). However, I can add the Paizo AP descriptions if that would be helpful.
Are you planning on continuing it for future APs?
For now I wanted to focus on APs that have all six books released. However, if interest remains I will add the new paths as they are completed. However, I may consider a new survey for the new paths, since it would be a little tedious (and not good data) to force people to fill the survey out again just to answer questions about the new path.
Was I the only one hoping for the old Dungeon magazine paths to be included? I loved Shackled City and Age of Worms was pretty mega; only Savage Tides was meh for us.
Oops sorry. At the risk of having to turn in my gamer card, I must admit that I know very little about those paths beyond hearing their names mentioned from time to time.
Any chance you could set up a more helpful graph comparing the different APs in different respects? It'd be really interesting to see how they stack up against each other. (And as is, it's kind of hard to navigate through all of that information...)
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Actually got curious about this, so here's some collated data, based on the "likelihood to recommend" question. (In what follows I take "likely to recommend" and "liked" to be synonymous.)
- 1. Rise of the Runelords (88.2%)
- 2. Curse of the Crimson Throne (85.9%)
- 3. Hell's Rebels (81.3%)
- 4. Kingmaker (76.2%)
- 5. Iron Gods (76.1%)
- 6. Giantslayer (74.5%)
- 7. Carrion Crown (72.4%)
- 8. Legacy of Fire (71.8%)
- 9. Reign of Winter (69%)
- 10. Mummy's Mask (68.6%)
- 11. Skull and Shackles (67.8%)
- 12. Shattered Star (66.1%)
- 13. Jade Regent (65.3%)
- 14. Council of Thieves (64.5%)
- 15. Serpent's Skull (63.4%)
- 16. Wrath of the Righteous (57.5%)
- 17. Second Darkness (37.9%)
- 1. Curse of the Crimson Throne (62%)
- 2. Rise of the Runelords (53.4%)
- 3. Hell's Rebels (51.4%)
- 4. Iron Gods (43.7%)
- 5. Kingmaker (42.9%)
- 6. Reign of Winter (34.5%)
- 7. Giantslayer (32.6%)
- 8. Jade Regent (27.8%)
- 9. Skull and Shackles (26.3%)
- 10. Wrath of the Righteous (23.3%)
- 1. Wrath of the Righteous (27.4%)
- 2. Second Darkness (13.9%)
- 3. Serpent's Skull (12.7%)
- 4/5. Council of Thieves (11.3%)
- 4/5. Shattered Star (11.3%)
- 6. Jade Regent (11.1%)
- 7. Giantslayer (9.3%)
- 8. Skull and Shackles (8.4%)
- 9. Carrion Crown (8.3%)
- 10. Mummy's Mask (7.5%)
This seems to divide the APs into some clear groups. The first two tables suggest the following top 5:
- 1/2. Rise of the Runelords
- 1/2. Curse of the Crimson Throne
- 3. Hell's Rebels
- 4/5. Kingmaker
- 4/5. Iron Gods
And these three tables, taken together, suggest the following bottom 5:
- 1/2. Second Darkness
- 1/2. Wrath of the Righteous
- 3. Serpent's Skull
- 4. Council of Thieves
- 5. Shattered Star (giving Shattered Star the nudge over Jade Regent, because the latter does significantly better in the very liked category)
Interestingly, the Wrath of the Righteous seems to be the most divisive AP, by far. Almost twice as many people disliked Wrath of the Righteous as the second most unpopular AP (Second Darkness). But Wrath of the Righteous sits 10th (out of 17) on the list of very liked APs, which is much higher than Second Darkness (which sits 16th out of 17).
I found the drop off in later instalments very interesting. I knew that APs 1 and 2 were always more popular, but didn't realise it was so steep.
If the results are representative of the population, it means that most people who play an AP don't finish the fourth book. (This is especially true for those released since PF came out - although it could be that those who do complete the later chapters take longer and thus the time-since-release is skewing that statistic).
Nonetheless, it seems that even finishing the third instalment seems unlikely a lot of the time.
That's actually something I expected to see. Paizo has said before that their high lever content doesn't sell as well. Also, in my personal experience, it's difficult to keep a group together for the roughly two years an AP takes us to complete. Add to that the factor that the constant stream of new releases ensures that something new and shiny is going to come out in the meantime and mid to high level play gets very complex, it's almost natural that an average group would drop the campaign to start anew with something else.
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Not finishing an AP would personally drive me nuts, mostly because I want to know how it turns out. (It's only happened once so far, but now we're playing that one with a different group.) But I'm the kind of person who has to finish every book I start reading.
I'd be inclined to chalk WoTR's divisiveness up to the mythic rules, since it's the only AP so far that uses them. From what I've seen, people who like mythic really like mythic, and people who hate mythic REALLY hate mythic.
Any chance you could set up a more helpful graph comparing the different APs in different respects? It'd be really interesting to see how they stack up against each other. (And as is, it's kind of hard to navigate through all of that information...)
Unfortunately there is not an easy way to manipulate the data into side by side info for each AP. However, once responses stagnate and I have some time I do want to go through manually and calculate some of the comparisons.
Speaking of which, thanks for the data above. Interesting stuff.
I am actually not super surprised at how divisive Wrath of the Righteous is. I feel like Mythic rules and high power games are one of those love it or hate it type things.
Did you consider the option of people in the process of playing an AP, but not being finished yet?
Mythic rules are indeed no surprise. I think WotR plays very well without them, but Pathfinder is overall cut into those two camps, "awesome" game style lover and those who don´t like that, consisting of a more gritty - low fantasy camp and the "normal" camp.
Did you consider the option of people in the process of playing an AP, but not being finished yet?
Yes, I missed that option too. Still, it is a very interesting initiative. Every AP rated on some of the same topics, but only by people who played them. So everyone speaks from personal expericience, which makes me believe in the results more.
That option would have been useful to me, too. I'm in the middle of several right now, so I just selected "other" for the "reasons why you didn't finish" section and wrote "still ongoing." Not sure how that'll be counted, though.
Actually i added that under AP not finished in the custom field.
Did you consider the option of people in the process of playing an AP, but not being finished yet?
Yeah, that was a bit of a goof. I really intended that question to only be answered by people who stopped playing. However, I realized in retrospect the wording wasn't really clear and left it open to people who are still running through the game.
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As promised, here are some further comparisons of the data.
My personal guess is that it's a combination of both. For it do do as well as it has, it must be pretty good. However, I agree with CorvusMask that it newness might be inflating it slightly.
Also worth mentioning, it got totally screwed with regards to % that reached the 6th book. That I am positive was caused by its age.
As promised, here are some further comparisons of the data.
Very interesting! Thanks!
My personal guess is that it's a combination of both. For it do do as well as it has, it must be pretty good. However, I agree with CorvusMask that it newness might be inflating it slightly.
Another potential explanation is it might be benefiting from a combination of a self-selection and a larger number of available APs.
(E.g., the kinds of people who will start playing Hell's Rebels are the kinds of people who are looking to play a role-playing heavy urban sandbox adventure, and so the kinds of people who are disposed to like these kinds of themes and adventures. And such people are more inclined to rate such an AP more highly than a randomly selected group.
Of course, this is true to some extent for every AP. But the fewer APs there are to choose from, the smaller the effect. While the greater the number of APs, the greater the greater the range of choices people have, and the more people can afford to be picky w.r.t. how close a fit they get to the kind of game they want to play.)
Just participated, thanks for creating this survey. Running APs like a machine for seven years finally pays off.
Some random thoughts:
- Runelords is by FAR the most played AP, yet only does above-average in finished APs and/or recommendations. Similar results for Kingmaker.
- Legacy of Fire is, for some reason, a keeper, completion-wise.
- Skull & Shackles is the #3 played AP? This seems weird - it is one of the less-talked about APs and doesn't have a stellar reputation.
- I'm personally happy with the results for Hell's Rebels - my group is about to finish book one, and this AP looks awesome. On the other hand, Jade Regent continues to be underrated.
The "Best Combat" survey is at least as open to interpretation as "Best RP". What is good combat? For one player, it might be the stats and tactics of the opposition, which is a perfectly valid measuring stick. Others (like me) might be more interested in awesome combat locations, running battles, cinematic scenes and so on. Really difficult to sort out.
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I'd assume that more people play the AP, more there will be "Eh, it wasn't that good" while less people play, more there will be "OMG this was great" so it means that APs with less players will have higher scores.
Like for example, Legacy of Fire has been played by VERY few players, but those players DID finish it so it has high perchentage for that reason. If it had more players, it would most likely have similar statistics to other one.
Thats problem with surveys and statistics, if there aren't enough people who answered "Yes", you can't do accurate analysis.
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One more update. Someone on Reddit (VestOfHolding), created a program to put the survey results side by side for each AP. I don't think it updates automatically. However, it should stay at least somewhat up to date.
One more update. Someone on Reddit (VestOfHolding), created a program to put the survey results side by side for each AP. I don't think it updates automatically. However, it should stay at least somewhat up to date.
Thanks for sharing this! Yeah I wrote a program to crawl through the Google results page and grab all the numbers that way instead of needing to manually copy+paste them and do some of the number crunching yourself.
I plan on checking in on the page once or twice a week and updating the sheet whenever I see that the number of responses has gone up.
As people can see from the Google Sheets page, I unfortunately designed my Excel sheet without realizing that Google Sheets doesn't support vertical text or rotated text, so the column headers look a bit weird. Google Sheets also apparently doesn't support tables within each sheet with sortable columns, which is rather disappointing. So I've added a link to the Sheet that takes you to the Excel version that I'm keeping on Dropbox where you can play with the data much more easily.
One thing everybody at Paizo should take some pride in- the total, all-APs combined "would recommend" score is pretty killer.
One thing everybody at Paizo should take some pride in- the total, all-APs combined "would recommend" score is pretty killer.
Agreed! It's definitely cool that so far, people have said that they are either unlikely or very unlikely to recommend an AP less than 10% of the time on average.
EDIT: Oh, and to the people above who are asking about an option for whether or not they finished a particular AP, isn't that covered by the question asking which books you got through?