I have played and and GM'd a few APs. Because my groups can only play every other week for about 4 hours - they take about 2 years to complete. Which can be hard to stay focused and invested in the storyline.
Are there any APs where you could easily convert to only play some of the books and still have a decent "full" campaign?
Which APs and which books?
Example - CotCT
As far as the story goes you could not run #4 History of Ashes and #5 Scarwall - but then you need to find an interesting way to get the characters from 10th level to 13/14th before #6 Crown of Fangs. Or majorly adapt and reduce CR for CoF encounters.
Council of Thieves,
Cut the Council part and focus on the Shadowcurse. 1,2,3 work fine and then skip 4 and tone down Walcourt
Hell's Rebels comes to a fairly nice conclusion at the end of book 4 - while 5 and 6 (especially 6) are very good, you get a complete story without them.
Book 1 of Rise of the Runelords could be a self-contained adventure. Books 2, 3, and 4 could also serve as the end of a mini-campaign if you have the big boss at the end of each book serve as the final baddie with no superior to hunt down afterward.
It sounds to me like you don't want an AP. I would recommend a module trilogy, or a 100+ page supermodule. There are some great ones out there.
The first book of Serpent's Skull, Souls for Smuggler's Shiv, stands on its own pretty well (would just have to take out the hooks pointing to the rest of the campaign).
Iron Gods, if your players are into sci-fi in their fantasy, has a sort of 3-act structure, so you could probably play books 1 and 2 as a standalone arc.
And seconding the recommendation of Hell's Rebels. Books 5 and 6 are great, but you could easily end the campaign after book 4 since it has a pretty climactic feeling.
Some people made some suggestions in the following thread:
Ok this is what I have gathered from some of the other threads:
Council of Thieves could nicely
end at book 3 if you concentrate on curse not on the Council.
Serpent's Skull could end at book 3 with a possible mix of book 4 to claim the city.
Mummy's Mask could end with book 4 - just don't have XXX soul escape to reunite with his body
Could Giantslayer end nicely at Book 3?
|
Could Giantslayer end nicely at Book 3?
Giantslayer could really end nicely at all 6 books.
Book 1 - Skreed organized the whole thing in order to pull off his heist
Book 2 - Grenseldek organized the whole thing
Book 3 - Whatever his name is organized the whole thing
Book 4 - The Ice Queen organized the whole thing (probably the weakest ending point, esp. with the dragon and the thematic shift in ultimate villainy)
Book 5 - The Fire King organized the whole thing
|
|
I think most APs can be ended fairly easily around the halfway or two-thirds mark, as long as the GM is planning that from the start. Basically make the boss at the end of book 3 or 4 the campaign boss.
Could Giantslayer end nicely at Book 3?Yep. You could just say that Urathash is the leader who's been rallying giants and stirring up trouble. You'd probably want to downplay the stuff about relighting the forge, though -- ending with "And we killed the giant chief!" is a bit easier than "And we found this artifact that helps us make magic weapons and armour!"
Book 4 is probably a slightly easier endpoint to reduce reworking.
Well, you relight the forge, and have a massive cinematic ending - the hundreds of giants see that the Cathedral of Minderhal has been relit and kneel before it - and the one PC who is giant-sized has now become the leader of a Giant Religious Revival / Crusade.
He looks askingly at his colleagues... what now????
End scene.
Kingmaker could easily end at book 5. One of the common complaints about this adventure path is that the main villain effectively comes completely out of nowhere from the perspective of the PCs. This villain is the main driver for the actions of most of the "minibosses" throughout the campaign, but if you plan the AP without having the behind-the-scenes main villain, it's very manageable.
Further, Kingmaker has a lot of filler in the form of standalone encounters during exploration and sidequests (in the form of a Wanted poster board). If you fast track XP (or do away with it all together), you can go through at least the first two books in half the time.
I'll second Aaron Bitman's comment above about looking at different sorts of module collections for your group.
