What points in the campaign did you feel are in need of more content?


Skull & Shackles


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To those who have run the campaign already. Where at in the campaign (level wise) did you feel you needed more content for the players to do?

I feel like making some stand alone adventures and am wondering if there are any holes in the campaign that I build something to fill.

Shadow Lodge

Our group is almost through book 3.

I can't say that there have been many spots where I felt that the content was very thin.

Bonewrack Isle is encounter-heavy, but seemed to me to leave a lot of room for exposition. The side-quests at the back of book 1 are great fun.

Book 2 seemed to me to be pretty balanced, as far as story/combat/content goes. There's a lot of opportunity for the group to meander though. If they're not really interested in a sandbox style segment, you might want to work on it a bit. My group liked the freedom at first, but then got a little frustrated after a while when it seemed they didn't have much direction.

Book 3 has loads of content. Too much in some parts, in my opinion. The 'spy hunt' is crammed full of encounters, NPCs, leads, and mini-quests. I trimmed it down somewhat.

Like you, I initially wanted to add in some stand-alone adventures, but there is so much that needs to be done to advance the main story line that I couldn't find a logical place to insert them. Adding additional content seemed like it would have made the adventure take a very long time.

I suggest you read ahead and see what parts don't look that interesting to you or your players. The AP is pretty clearly divided up by level per chapter, so substituting stand alone adventures doesn't seem to be too hard to do. I don't recommend just shoe-horning them in somewhere though. It seems like it would be too much content and would take too long for PCs to advance to the next level.


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Speaking personally, I'm fortifying the sandbox section of the second book with some more structured content - partially due to not wanting it to feel to samey, or like a string of small, mostly-disconnected encounters, and partially because there's a certain number of the encounters listed that I don't want to run for one reason or another - my party aren't going to want to attack any villages, and ship attacks, while iconic, will get old fast. Throwing in a smaller module or a couple scenario-level events will help carry the load through that section.

Shadow Lodge

Jondera wrote:
Speaking personally, I'm fortifying the sandbox section of the second book with some more structured content - partially due to not wanting it to feel to samey, or like a string of small, mostly-disconnected encounters, and partially because there's a certain number of the encounters listed that I don't want to run for one reason or another - my party aren't going to want to attack any villages, and ship attacks, while iconic, will get old fast. Throwing in a smaller module or a couple scenario-level events will help carry the load through that section.

Having completed that section, I support this plan.

The things that you anticipate happening with your group all came true with my group. I wish I had trimmed it down and added in a module at that point in the AP.


I added a fair amount of custom material into book 2 (mostly some of the items from the back covers), just so I could give more options for the PCs than "village, ship, or port?" It doesn't seem like it'd be hard to add in a module there, though I've never patched in something that major before.

I've only run the first two, and read through 3 & 4, but that's the only place so far that it seems like there's a real need for extra content.


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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I partially used Plunder & Peril in place of part two as I think it is a better option. I also added a jungle city ruin encounter instead of Rickety Squibbs. I think that book 2 is the weakest plot-wise, so it is best time to introduce other adventure ideas that you want to try out.


I've been adding ad hoc content to book 3, mainly because a chunk of the published adventure seems to be 'go here, find a corpse with a clue on it that leads you to another corpse with a clue on it, now make a massively high linguistics check to find the third corpse...', and It wasn't inspiring. They prefer tussling with cultists of the Eye in Drenchport bordellos.

Scarab Sages

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Wherever you decide to add content, here's an excellent thread full of suggestions. I inserted some of these in addition to the published content, and used others to completely replace things (like most of the mystery in Tempest Rising).

Adding content does create the risk that the party will level up faster than the AP assumes they will. I avoided this problem by eliminating experience points, and having the party level up exactly when the AP assumes they will.

Spoiler:
The aboleth in the adventure as written struck me as being shoehorned in, with no reason to be there. Instead, I had the party encounter an aboleth by inserting The Styes from Dungeon Magazine #121, in which it's crucial to the plot.


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From my experience, I'm going to suggest not going overboard with this kind of thing.

S&S was the first AP I ran and I looked at lists like KarlBob posted and I was just enamored with making the game as grand as possible. I added extra content during "Raiders of the Fever Sea" and in both my players' and ultimately my own estimation, I drug it out too much. We're talking a trip to Smuggler's Shiv (running a bit from "Souls for Smuggler's Shiv"), a trip to Bloodcove (running a PFS scenario), a trip up the Vanji River (from another part of a PFS scenario) a trip to Mgange Cove, a trip to Sargava and another city on the coast of the Mwangi Expanse and extra explorations at Rickety Squibb's. That's in addition to running everything in the actual AP and making sure that the PCs encountered all of the ships in the book's Bestiary. I'm pretty sure I made "Raiders" last about a year by itself.

As GMs, we sometimes don't think that we can add too much, but I did and although some of it was a hit, a lot of it should've been left out in hindsight. I spent so much time on "Raiders" that it ultimately made it so my players got tired of the pirate's life before it was all said and done and we didn't make it all the way through "Isle of Empty Eyes" before they asked to change gears to Hell's Rebels. If I would've paced that book better, we may have made it to the end.

I learned my lesson. Keep side-questing to a minimum and only if it advances the PCs' interests is my advice.

So, to answer the OP's question: If you take the time to flesh out what's already there (for example I roleplayed out the party for the PCs held at Tessa Fairwind's at the opening to "Isle of Empty Eyes" and don't gloss over it, Skull & Shackles needs little to no additional content just piled on. Enrich what's there, don't slap extras onto the back end.

Good luck. It's a tight line to walk, but more isn't always better.

Liberty's Edge

I feel that book two is also a little thin. There should be at least suggestions for taking the other fortresses that were once ruled from the Rock as a start.


I plundered elements from Savage Tide and other pirate adventures wherever I could. But I connected those elements to character backstory and sandbox choices. So when they put in at Little Opparra they had to contend with elements from Savage Tide book 1 (which I pumped up for their level). It was also in Little Opparra that they learned why ships got snubbed.

There is an Island of the Shackles book that helped flesh out the places that when things got sandbox there were strong jumping off points.

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