While preparing for a character playtest and asking questions on this forum I remembered something I was a little embarrassed to actually bring up, but the desire to run Jade Regent has me wanting to suck it up and ask for some help.
I don't like saying this or using it to sound like a crutch, but sometimes it really is an issue. I have Aspergers, and it's hampering my ability to really understand how to even approach running an adventure path.
I'm the usual DM for my group but the last month I've been taking a break and someone else has been running modules for us to just test out classes we might want to try and asked if I could maybe give an AP another try which prompted me to try and explain how it is when I go to read them. My style of DMing is to make an ending, a beginning, and a general theme, then completely make it all up from there in logical progression based on the actions of the party/setting/tone of the game/and theme of the game. I can make up detailed things, tactics, and story threads with extreme speed and have no issues following the continuity of it. This has served me very well and has (from what they tell me) been a lot of fun for my group.
I really do want to run an AP because I hope it might let my brain have SOME bit of relaxation on the creative part, but every time I've gone to read it, the whole thing just congeals into a mess in my head. I understand what parts it wants me to read to the party, and what the plot is, but it's how it's all presented. It feels like I'm reading a loose kind of novella with spatterings of rulings that are all left both too open ended and too narrow to be cohesive if that makes any sense. If it was just a long series of instructions with breaks of "Feel free to change [blank]" I could handle it, but as it's written I don't understand what it wants me to have them do when, why, and how. An example is in the Jade Regent's "Adventure Background" section. This is all cool, and well written...but do I read this to my players? Are they expected to know this? Why would they know this? Why does it matter what happened before they get here if they don't have characters native to this region? The descriptions of the parts themselves aren't any more informative because it doesn't give me anything but "This is the story. You figure out why they are doing it"
I want to believe it's just because if I'm not making it ALL up, that I just need a very specific list of things to do and then can fill it in from there, but it almost seems like the "pre-created adventure" wants me to make my own notes and plot out things even further in advance than IT already has, with no allusions to things up ahead or greatly over detailed bits about NPCs that will probably never come to light unless I specifically incorporate it (in which case, why is it not in there already?). I feel like I'm staring blankly at a half finished product that my mind just can't make up how it wants it to go because if I use my usual "make it up on the spot", then the point of trying to run something pre-made is already pointless.
Am I just vastly overthinking it all? (I am prone to this), or is this just something that I'm going to have to put under the "My brain is not going to accept this information like normal people and I just have to accept that" file?
Edit: Sorry if I ramble on or seem conflicting in my thoughts, honestly I have difficulty even trying to verbalize the way it all is in there.
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Ye seem like you are over thinking it.
APs and modules are sort of toolboxy in that sense that they never tell you "This is only way you will run this adventure, do this step by step exactly as written in order". Besides, there is no way AP can account for everything, for example if PCs take out every bad guy alive and interrogate them or try to redeem them or whatever.
Adventure Background isn't usually something you read to players, its so that GM knows the background. You can usually tell some of it to players if they find it out in character, for example by finding BBEG's journal that details same info or something else.
But yeah, if you are running AP or module as written, you don't really need to "plan things ahead" unless you want to foreshadow or want to remember what NPCs know if players ask them stuff. I'd recommend reading through entire AP before running it so you know overall plot and get inspiration on how to foreshadow it assuming you want to do that.
Ye seem like you are over thinking it.
APs and modules are sort of toolboxy in that sense that they never tell you "This is only way you will run this adventure, do this step by step exactly as written in order". Besides, there is no way AP can account for everything, for example if PCs take out every bad guy alive and interrogate them or try to redeem them or whatever.
Adventure Background isn't usually something you read to players, its so that GM knows the background. You can usually tell some of it to players if they find it out in character, for example by finding BBEG's journal that details same info or something else.
But yeah, if you are running AP or module as written, you don't really need to "plan things ahead" unless you want to foreshadow or want to remember what NPCs know if players ask them stuff. I'd recommend reading through entire AP before running it so you know overall plot and get inspiration on how to foreshadow it assuming you want to do that.
I wouldn't want to run it all like a checkbox no, but sometimes it feels like there is missing info. A good example is in the first few pages where the Jade Regent Ap starts off with "To deal with the goblin threat, Sheriff Belor Hemlock has restored Sandpoint’s old “goblin bounty” after several years of inactivity—it was suspended when a group of eager but too-young adventurers were swept out to sea while in pursuit of goblin ears." That's the first sentence, and already I don't know who hemlock is, what I should make him say or act like, etc. I know the info is probably in the book, but it's ust...weirdly laid out I guess. The order information is being presented makes it seem more convoluted than it is I suppose. I do have the terrible habit of missing the simple parts of anything.
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I wouldn't want to run it all like a checkbox no, but sometimes it feels like there is missing info. A good example is in the first few pages where the Jade Regent Ap starts off with "To deal with the goblin threat, Sheriff Belor Hemlock has restored Sandpoint’s old “goblin bounty” after several years of inactivity—it was suspended when a group of eager but too-young adventurers were swept out to sea while in pursuit of goblin ears." That's the first sentence, and already I don't know who hemlock is, what I should make him say or act like, etc. I know the info is probably in the book, but it's ust...weirdly laid out I guess. The order information is being presented makes it seem more convoluted than it is I suppose. I do have the terrible habit of missing the simple parts of anything.Ye seem like you are over thinking it.
APs and modules are sort of toolboxy in that sense that they never tell you "This is only way you will run this adventure, do this step by step exactly as written in order". Besides, there is no way AP can account for everything, for example if PCs take out every bad guy alive and interrogate them or try to redeem them or whatever.
Adventure Background isn't usually something you read to players, its so that GM knows the background. You can usually tell some of it to players if they find it out in character, for example by finding BBEG's journal that details same info or something else.
But yeah, if you are running AP or module as written, you don't really need to "plan things ahead" unless you want to foreshadow or want to remember what NPCs know if players ask them stuff. I'd recommend reading through entire AP before running it so you know overall plot and get inspiration on how to foreshadow it assuming you want to do that.
Ah. I think that is side effect of Jade Regent, along with Shattered Star, being one of those rare APs that assume previous one definitely happened.
In otherwords, the gazetteer for Sandpoint is in Rise of the Runelords, along with who that Sheriff is(well technically you could also buy darkwaters rising volume 1, they have bonus article on Sandpoint including statblock for the sheriff, but nobody on the forums seems to read pathfinder comics xD). Shalelu's backstory references RotR & her Second Darkness cameo, Ameiko's backstory references what happened with her dad and half brother in RotR too.
I guess technically speaking, you don't need to know who the Sheriff is to run Jade Regent, but yeaaaah, this is one of those reasons why Jade Regent is on more average side compared to other APs if you ask me :'D It kinda feels like "Oh, you remember those cool npcs from RotR? Well how about you go on a caravan trip with them" which doesn't really work out if you don't like the npcs or if you feel like the story isn't about pcs.
I wouldn't want to run it all like a checkbox no, but sometimes it feels like there is missing info. A good example is in the first few pages where the Jade Regent Ap starts off with "To deal with the goblin threat, Sheriff Belor Hemlock has restored Sandpoint’s old “goblin bounty” after several years of inactivity—it was suspended when a group of eager but too-young adventurers were swept out to sea while in pursuit of goblin ears." That's the first sentence, and already I don't know who hemlock is, what I should make him say or act like, etc. I know the info is probably in the book, but it's ust...weirdly laid out I guess. The order information is being presented makes it seem more convoluted than it is I suppose. I do have the terrible habit of missing the simple parts of anything.Ye seem like you are over thinking it.
APs and modules are sort of toolboxy in that sense that they never tell you "This is only way you will run this adventure, do this step by step exactly as written in order". Besides, there is no way AP can account for everything, for example if PCs take out every bad guy alive and interrogate them or try to redeem them or whatever.
Adventure Background isn't usually something you read to players, its so that GM knows the background. You can usually tell some of it to players if they find it out in character, for example by finding BBEG's journal that details same info or something else.
But yeah, if you are running AP or module as written, you don't really need to "plan things ahead" unless you want to foreshadow or want to remember what NPCs know if players ask them stuff. I'd recommend reading through entire AP before running it so you know overall plot and get inspiration on how to foreshadow it assuming you want to do that.
Ah. I think that is side effect of Jade Regent, along with Shattered Star, being one of those rare APs that assume previous one definitely happened.
In otherwords, the gazetteer for Sandpoint...
Oh, well at least I'm not totally insane then! That does clear up a lot of the missing information there. What about something like Carrion Crown? I also have that one on the shelf, is it any easier to pick up, read through, and just kind of go for?
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I haven't read Carrion Crown, but it shouldn't require gazetteers from other APs to know who the heck name dropped NPC is. I'd still recommend reading it through as well as the player's guide, if you still have questions you want answered, well I think book probably recommends the books were you find more information.(I think Rule of Fear aka Ustalav campaign setting book is probably safe bet if you want more information on country AP takes place in.)
I wouldn't want to run it all like a checkbox no, but sometimes it feels like there is missing info. A good example is in the first few pages where the Jade Regent Ap starts off with "To deal with the goblin threat, Sheriff Belor Hemlock has restored Sandpoint’s old “goblin bounty” after several years of inactivity—it was suspended when a group of eager but too-young adventurers were swept out to sea while in pursuit of goblin ears." That's the first sentence, and already I don't know who hemlock is, what I should make him say or act like, etc.
Hemlock is the local Sheriff. What more do you need to know? His job is to offer the PCs a reward to kill goblins, and give them that reward later on. It's probably easier to invent a personality for him than it is to work out what his personality is supposed to be, and the players won't know the difference.
(If in doubt, pick a trait from this list at random:
1 Lazy
2 Pathetic
3 Professional
4 Sarcastic
5 Kind-hearted
6 Lecherous)
It's a lot of work to run an AP. Where convenient, I'd advise you not be too faithful to the text, especially with Jade Regent's dodgy caravan sub-system.
Note that most of the NPCs in JR have virtually no dialogue provided. If you want your players to bond with any of them, you'll have to make it happen yourself.
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I wouldn't call wiki most reliable source though. For example, this is what Belor Hemlock looks like nowadays after RotR anniversary edition gave him new portrait.
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There are, confusingly, two Pathfinder wikis.
The pathfinder.wikia.com one is ... a mess, because when the community working on the wiki decided to pull out of Wikia (due to changes in Wikia TOS), move to a new place and set up the wiki there, Wikia pulled out a TOS clause where every content posted there becomes their property and refused to take the wiki down. There's a lesson about Wikia's business model there, by the way.
Since then, the new, "official" wiki is Patfhinderwiki.com, whose article on Sheriff Hemlock has the correct image. The Wikia Pathfinder wiki can't use the updated image because Wikia does not fall under the Community Use Policy, being a full-on commercial enterprise.
Long story short, Pathfinderwiki.com is the place you want, while the Wikia one is a lumbering zombie which is alive only because Wikia won't take it down. The Wikia wiki has some 3.5k articles, while the Pathfinderwiki has 13.5k articles and has a thriving community behind it. Just let the Wikia one wither and die (and fall down in Google search results), because every time you hit it Google ranks it up and keeps the necroid corpse aliveeeeeeeeeee...
It might help you a lot, if when on your read-through you prepare a little write-up for characters that you expect to be difficult or important. Write their motivations down explicitly, some can be inferred from the storyline, some not so much. Feel free to make them up. Look at the write-up just before you are going to run the NPC. This will help a lot to reduce brain-lock when the PCs interact with the NPCs.
Hemlock is the local Sheriff. What more do you need to know? His job is to offer the PCs a reward to kill goblins, and give them that reward later on. It's probably easier to invent a personality for him than it is to work out what his personality is supposed to be, and the players won't know the difference.
This is an idea that actually does kind of get me questioning the point of running an AP though. If I was going to do the same thing I do in all of my home games, but now be trying to do it for a continuity that I can't just 'adjust' on the fly (I don't know the world of Golarion like I know any world I could make myself, cultures/habits/customs/places, I'd have to go learn all of that elsewhere). My players and I are pretty heavy into roleplay, they would want to talk to the sheriff and ask him things. I don't need a list of things like "if player A asks this go to response C", but I wanted to run an AP so that my brain has LESS to do, not the same amount in a world I have less outright given information. Heck even a single sentence like "Hemlock is gruff, but fair and fiercely loyal to his town" would be all I'd need. I know now why there is no information on him HERE though thanks to CorvusMask.
Part of it just stems from a likely misunderstanding of what the APs are supposed to be. I assumed they were meant to be "Huge sized Modules" where you could open one up, play through it with a little bit of prep after reading ahead, and move on through an established storyline. I'm getting the impression however that they are actually the skeleton of a half created game with just major plot points and backstory detailed while everything in the middle is left for you to do yourself.
Side Note: thanks for clearing up the confusion with the Wikia/wiki deal, I really wasn't aware about that whole mess.
One thing they did in the Module for "Dragons Demand" is have a 1 page list of all the locations in that town with a lot of good info.
For each Location they list:
Name/type/residents/faction(or religion)/principal NPC/diposition
for example:
The Wise Piper/Inn/6 humans/Shelyn/Talia Ogrem (NG F expert 3)/friendly(welcoming)
this was very useful to have a 1 page layout with all the important people and places and also a couple hints on how to roleplay them. Wish they would do this with APs.
APs are a sort of skeleton, with a lot of the roleplay-fleshing out left to you most of the time. You can pick up an AP, read it, and run it through its plot, but if your players are heavily into roleplay, a lot of that is left to you to develop. I'm pretty sure that's by design, as a) they simply don't have the space in the book to detail every possible NPC and interaction, and b) most of the time, it's more fun to be able to customize for your group a bit. Often, they will have a sentence or two describing an important NPC's personality, but this isn't always the case for less important ones.
So it provides you with a complete plot/story, but a lot of the socializing within that story is left up to you and your players, if that makes sense. It still definitely does save a ton of time in that you don't have to write the whole campaign, but they do still require a little prep work, I've found.
APs, as written are skeletal compared to most good homebrew games/campaigns. They are designed for limited playtimes and playstyles, to keep everything "fair" and homogenous, to support Society norms as much as possible. Even the ones not designed for Society play have to balance content with limited word counts. Nature of the beast and all.
^-^ Now APs and modules do provide an opportunity for a non-Society GM to twist the material to the consternation of the overly well researched players, and to the amusement of everyone else.
One thing they did in the Module for "Dragons Demand" is have a 1 page list of all the locations in that town with a lot of good info.
For each Location they list:
Name/type/residents/faction(or religion)/principal NPC/dipositionfor example:
The Wise Piper/Inn/6 humans/Shelyn/Talia Ogrem (NG F expert 3)/friendly(welcoming)this was very useful to have a 1 page layout with all the important people and places and also a couple hints on how to roleplay them. Wish they would do this with APs.
SO much this. My problem is partly that myself and my group are very much the "deeply detail oriented" types and the issue I'm having with the AP partly stems from knowing how what is left up for me to 'customize' will require almost as much work as a full on game creation it seems. I'll need to write up motivations and linked plots between NPCs, record major story breaks the party diverges on to be able to pull them back into the plot somehow, note down treasure differences, etc. I was really just hoping to open the book, read it, and run it for the night because I don't have a LOT of prep time available that much anymore. Something as simple as a 1 page bit of annotations about NPCs and locations would be a fantastic time saver.
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APs, as written are skeletal compared to most good homebrew games/campaigns. They are designed for limited playtimes and playstyles, to keep everything "fair" and homogenous, to support Society norms as much as possible. Even the ones not designed for Society play have to balance content with limited word counts. Nature of the beast and all.
^-^ Now APs and modules do provide an opportunity for a non-Society GM to twist the material to the consternation of the overly well researched players, and to the amusement of everyone else.
Umm, wait what, none of APs are designed for Pathfinder Society
Anyway, I think most major npcs in APs usually have details on their personality and how to play them. At least I remember thats how it was with Iron Gods, RotR & Crimson Throne(aka the ones I'm running/have run to completion/am going to start soon and have read through).
I think at least some of your issue may be the aspect that Jade Regent is, yes, kind of a sequel to Rise of the Runelords, in a sense (in that it re-uses a lot of those NPCs and presumes some familiarity with them).
Try reading through the first chapter of Rise of the Runelords (go for the anniversary edition, though) and seeing if that coheres more for you. It has an IMMENSE guide to Sandpoint, the town: a full map, and like 20 pages of bios of all the major NPCs and locations, etc, in the appendices.
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As a tangent, I believe the reason they changed Hemlock's portrait is that, since he's given up his Shoanti roots, he's no longer going for the bald Shoanti look, and grew out his hair to fit in more with the townies. /my two cents
The APs provide several things that are useful for me as a GM. One is the large scale plot of the whole campaign broken up by the individual plots of each individual book. I think that gives a good balance of having a long term story, but also having victories, successes and even completed stories along the way. Some are better than others of course.
It is also handy for a basic encounter design. While I tend to have to adjust a bit to keep it challenging for my players, it is generally far quicker that coming up with a whole string of encounters on by own. Having maps and all of that done ahead is useful.
While that all saves a lot of time, I certainly don't think running an AP is a time free proposition. I typically would read the entire AP through before ever starting it, and reread each book before starting that section, and before each session reread the parts that I think are likely to come up that session. If I want to customize, that of course takes time as well.
I do think that all of the NPCs that are important to the plot are fleshed out well, you have enough personality, motives and abilities to pretty easily determine what their reaction to anything the PCs might do. Unimportant NPCs are generally not fleshed out, and of course in many situations there would be NPCs around that aren't even named (anytime PCs enter any but the smallest of settlements for example) and how you want to deal with PCs reacting with any of those you will have to decide. Mostly I just wing it, perhaps using them to feed the PCs some of the outlined 'rumors' or perhaps having the encounter be entirely inconsequential. For the most part, NPCs that don't matter to the AP shouldn't end up effecting the story much.
Whether APs are useful to you given your own GMing style is of course something for you do decide. For me it is a lot less work than building my own world and plotlines, but your mileage may vary.
Hemlock is the local Sheriff. What more do you need to know? His job is to offer the PCs a reward to kill goblins, and give them that reward later on. It's probably easier to invent a personality for him than it is to work out what his personality is supposed to be, and the players won't know the difference.This is an idea that actually does kind of get me questioning the point of running an AP though. If I was going to do the same thing I do in all of my home games, but now be trying to do it for a continuity that I can't just 'adjust' on the fly (I don't know the world of Golarion like I know any world I could make myself, cultures/habits/customs/places, I'd have to go learn all of that elsewhere). ...
I like running my campaigns from modules because when I invent personalities for my villains, they end up too nice or too sensible: "I uncovered a source of vast occult power!! Why, I could make a fortune using this power in legitimate ways. All my hometown enemies will suffer with envy!" The module gives me situations that I wound not have invented myself. An Adventure Path has a scope beyond what I would have created, especially in the limited time I had before I retired.
Nevertheless, any module becomes a travel guide to hazardous situations rather than a plot to follow once it has an encounter with my wife, a grandmaster derailer. Fortunately, I love weaving a new plot in response to the players' actions. It is a challenge.
I wouldn't want to run it all like a checkbox no, but sometimes it feels like there is missing info. A good example is in the first few pages where the Jade Regent Ap starts off with "To deal with the goblin threat, Sheriff Belor Hemlock has restored Sandpoint’s old “goblin bounty” after several years of inactivity—it was suspended when a group of eager but too-young adventurers were swept out to sea while in pursuit of goblin ears." That's the first sentence, and already I don't know who hemlock is, what I should make him say or act like, etc. ...
In Naoki00's thread on "Why do people love being 'normal' in a Fantasy Setting?", I mentioned creating a gnome just to see what playing a Pathfinder gnome is like. The Pathfinder Core Rulebook described gnomes as more fey than Dungeons & Dragons had. Well, that gnome was a character in Rise of the Rulelords, which begins in Sandpoint. He became good friends with Sheriff Hemlock, which ended up defining the personality of both the gnome and the sheriff. It marked my gnome ranger as lawful, despite "Chaotic Good" written on his character sheet, and he multiclassed to monk: What to do with a Gnome Ranger Monk?
When I ran The Brinewall Legacy, first module in Jade Regent, Sheriff Hemlock did not make an appearance. Ameiko Kaijutsu explained the situation to the PCs. Talking to Belor Hemlock would have slowed down the introduction to the adventure. All that the sentence about the bounty meant to me was that the goblin problem in Sandpoint had died down for a few years, Sheriff Hemlock had relaxed, but now goblin raids had resumed and the townsfolk were worried.
My wife and the other players tattered the original plot of Jade Regent thouroughy, creating a better story in the process. I chronicled it at Amaya of Westcrown. Especially note the total derailment of the fifth module, Tide of Honor, which in unaltered form has a reputation of leading the players on a frustratingly predetermined railroad plot.
SO much this. My problem is partly that myself and my group are very much the "deeply detail oriented" types and the issue I'm having with the AP partly stems from knowing how what is left up for me to 'customize' will require almost as much work as a full on game creation it seems. I'll need to write up motivations and linked plots between NPCs, record major story breaks the party diverges on to be able to pull them back into the plot somehow, note down treasure differences, etc. I was really just hoping to open the book, read it, and run it for the night because I don't have a LOT of prep time available that much anymore. Something as simple as a 1 page bit of annotations about NPCs and locations would be a fantastic time saver.One thing they did in the Module for "Dragons Demand" is have a 1 page list of all the locations in that town with a lot of good info.
For each Location they list:
Name/type/residents/faction(or religion)/principal NPC/dipositionfor example:
The Wise Piper/Inn/6 humans/Shelyn/Talia Ogrem (NG F expert 3)/friendly(welcoming)this was very useful to have a 1 page layout with all the important people and places and also a couple hints on how to roleplay them. Wish they would do this with APs.
That information exists for Sandpoint in the first module of Rise of the Runelords. Too bad they did not update it and repeat it in Jade Regent, but the writers assumed that the party would spend very little time in town. Yet, some people have posted it online, so search on "Pathfinder Sandpoint".
That is one weakness of modules: the writers cover only the most likely events. For example, in the second module of Iron Gods, my current campaign, the inhabited enormous junkyard named Scrapwall is written up as a series of armed encounters with the gangs that live there. The PCs are most likely to defeat or befriend each gang and then move on to the next gang, just like a party moves through the rooms of a dungeon. But in my game, the PCs decided to move into Scrapwall under cover identities as new residents, because they knew a significant portion of Scrapwall's population was refugees. They interacted with the gangs as neighbors. I had to invent everyday village life in Scrapwall. The party and its bard held a concert, and in turn they were invited to a beer festival.
For working peacefully, I rewarded them with a chance to rebuild a wrecked spaceship in Scrapwall, guaranteeing that the rest of the adventure path would not play out as written. :-)
But if you don't want to create new material, then make a deal with your players and ask them to stick close to what typical adventurers would do.
For working peacefully, I rewarded them with a chance to rebuild a wrecked spaceship in Scrapwall, guaranteeing that the rest of the adventure path would not play out as written. :-)
But if you don't want to create new material, then make a deal with your players and ask them to stick close to what typical adventurers would do.
You didn't have to deviate, or at least not so far if you didn't want to though. You could have rewarded them with more or less the same rewards they would have gotten for facing the challenges in a more traditional manner. Your players doing the unlikely thing obviously forced you to react to that and adjudicate it, but it didn't force you to alter the story like you did.
Not that there is anything at all wrong with doing that and customizing can lead to a lot of fun, but players behaving atypically seldom will force you to abandon the storyline (as long as they have characters that basically 'fit' with the AP, which the GM should ensure before starting one.)
For working peacefully, I rewarded them with a chance to rebuild a wrecked spaceship in Scrapwall, guaranteeing that the rest of the adventure path would not play out as written. :-)
But if you don't want to create new material, then make a deal with your players and ask them to stick close to what typical adventurers would do.
You didn't have to deviate, or at least not so far if you didn't want to though. You could have rewarded them with more or less the same rewards they would have gotten for facing the challenges in a more traditional manner. Your players doing the unlikely thing obviously forced you to react to that and adjudicate it, but it didn't force you to alter the story like you did.
Not that there is anything at all wrong with doing that and customizing can lead to a lot of fun, but players behaving atypically seldom will force you to abandon the storyline (as long as they have characters that basically 'fit' with the AP, which the GM should ensure before starting one.)
Their actions did not force me with regard to the spaceship. The module said that that spaceship was buried and irreparable. Instead, their actions opened up the possibility that they could recruit enough friendly local labor to dig that spaceship out of the debris. I changed the "irreparable" part because I was amused to watch them recruit and manage that local labor. And because Iron Gods as written did not let them play enough with alien technology.
The part that was forced was figuring out the daily lives of the gang members. I could have brushed that off with, "Your neighbors won't talk to you except at gunpoint," but that would be stupid. People don't live like that, not even in a war zone, and that was not a war zone.
I'm not saying that what you did was wrong. Sounds like a cool story and you and your players had fun, which is the goal and all that really matters.
What I am saying is that your assertion that players have to 'stick close to what normal adventurers would do' to play an adventure path without heavily customization is wrong. For the most part, while you might have to adjudicate some things that they do, it usually isn't anything that is going to majorly change the overall plot unless you want it to. An unusual solution to a problem is still a solution after all, and APs generally do expect the players to solve the problems encountered.
Honestly, I think it all might just be a 'me' thing based on how everyone is talking about it. When I make my own campaigns I guess it's just easier to sort the information as a 'first come first serve' basis. I can make up detailed things far faster than I can recall information I wrote down previously. When I read the Adventure Path my brain is just having difficulty parsing the information because I want it to be as detailed as I can come up with, but also simple enough to just read and note down a page or two.
Some of this difficulty is probably just coming from the fact that I have never prepared much of anything but maybe grabbing an enemy I think would be cool to hammer into a plot line, opting instead just to invent. Like when I read the simple line about the goblins and Hemlock, my brain wants to go into writing out a much more detailed entry giving a more elaborate scene about Hemlock arguing with someone about the goblin situation as the PCs enter town, drawing them into the conflict as he impromptu "deputizes" the party to figure things out. But this is a lot more work than it actually is saying I need to do, and so then I just try to reel it back and imagine having to do that for every bit of text in the book which becomes overwhelming.
This is just working a skill set I've never built up over years like other people. These sort of things have always given me a lot of trouble for no particularly easy to understand reason, but I am very grateful to everyone for giving suggestions. Maybe knowing more about the setting will help, and I'll try to grab the Runelords information for that much.
On a side note, is Carrion Crown easier to handle or will I have similar issues with understanding what it's asking me to do?
Carrion Crown is significantly easier. You can of course use the wiki or related setting books like Rule of Fear to expand your knowledge, but CC is very much a "creature of the week" style game, with a fairly simple "one the next episode" hook from each to the next.
+1 to the idea that Jade Regent relies heavily upon "accumulated" knowledge from Rise of the Runelords. I do consider this a bit of a failing on the APs part, but nobody's perfect and the APs tend to improve with each new chapter. Shattered Star suffers a bit of the same, but significantly less so.
My best hint for running an AP? Remind your players (nicely) that it's a role playing game. They are playing a role in the game, and while many think that just refers to race and class, it is more: it is the role of a character in a story. APs (and modules) have a predetermined story; as such, players should predetermine their characters to work in such a story.
It should never be "my character wouldn't go on this quest because it doesn't fit her personality". It should be "how do I get my character to go on this quest even though it doesn't fit her personality". Just my 2 cents.
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Carrion Crown is relatively straight forward. Players arrive at a town they likely have never been before to attend the funeral of an old friend/colleague/teacher. The locations in that AP were not explored before and all the NPCs are for the most part introduced in each book for GMs to use. Even the guy who died is a relatively blank slate and it comes up to the players to decide how they knew him (I HIGHLY recommend using the free Carrion Crown players guide and having the PCs pick a trait to tie them to the Professor). The players desire to follow his last will and testament are important.
Ustalav is the main setting of CC but most of its history and what not is background detail and anything of note is for the most part fleshed out in the AP. However if you want to know more about it, Rule of Fear is the Ustalav source-book.
The main plot to CC though revolves around an evil cult trying to bring back/recreate the "worst" villain that the setting ever had, so learning what you can on the Whispering Tyrant and the Whispering Way will help make everything more clear, but their involvement is background in the first book, and there is even a handy chart on what the players will learn about them through research, so its all pretty fleshed out.
The town that the first book also has a full write up in the back detailing many of the people in the town, its history, and important locations, and anyone you could likely want are located there if you wish to flesh out this town (Which you should, as the PCs are asked via the will to spend a month there) But overall the players will likely have their hands filled as something unnatural is happening in the town, and the first book goes a great deal into describing what happens, why it is happening, and how to approach the PCs with these challenges.
Will the Horror Adventures book happen to be of any use as well? I've been wanting to dust that bad boy off for a while now.
When I read the Adventure Path my brain is just having difficulty parsing the information because I want it to be as detailed as I can come up with, but also simple enough to just read and note down a page or two.
I think this is the crux of the issue - in pre-written adventures, in general you can have detailed, or easy to run. Very rarely can you have both, and Adventure Paths are not one of those rare examples.
Essentially you have to pick whichever is more important to you and your players - a high-prep time very detailed home-brew environment, or a low-prep time pre-written Adventure Path that might have some gaps that you can either fill in or leave by the wayside.
For what it's worth, my group uses option two. We like the ability to open an AP volume, read it a couple of times, then run it. Yes there are gaps sometimes, but we're experienced enough that we either ignore them or paper over them with another encounter or a bit of roleplay or some character development that makes them feel less jarring.
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Honestly, I think it all might just be a 'me' thing based on how everyone is talking about it. When I make my own campaigns I guess it's just easier to sort the information as a 'first come first serve' basis. I can make up detailed things far faster than I can recall information I wrote down previously. When I read the Adventure Path my brain is just having difficulty parsing the information because I want it to be as detailed as I can come up with, but also simple enough to just read and note down a page or two.
Some of this difficulty is probably just coming from the fact that I have never prepared much of anything but maybe grabbing an enemy I think would be cool to hammer into a plot line, opting instead just to invent. Like when I read the simple line about the goblins and Hemlock, my brain wants to go into writing out a much more detailed entry giving a more elaborate scene about Hemlock arguing with someone about the goblin situation as the PCs enter town, drawing them into the conflict as he impromptu "deputizes" the party to figure things out. But this is a lot more work than it actually is saying I need to do, and so then I just try to reel it back and imagine having to do that for every bit of text in the book which becomes overwhelming.
This is just working a skill set I've never built up over years like other people. These sort of things have always given me a lot of trouble for no particularly easy to understand reason, but I am very grateful to everyone for giving suggestions. Maybe knowing more about the setting will help, and I'll try to grab the Runelords information for that much.
On a side note, is Carrion Crown easier to handle or will I have similar issues with understanding what it's asking me to do?
Let me tell you a secret: Modules and adventure paths are best used in the hands of homebrewers like yourself.
You're worried that you're going to "run it wrong", and let me tell you, that's not really how it works.
Here's what my preparation of an Adventure Path looks like:
Step 1) Read the Player's Guide
The Player's Guide is the player's point of view of the game, it's critical to know what kind of game the players are expecting, and the Player's Guide has that info. So for Jade Regent it's: Epic Journey, NPC Relationship, Medieval Fantasy Japan Themed Adventures.
Step 2) Read the first adventure
Read the first adventure. Don't worry about running it. Read it for fun first, I like to go to a nice coffee shop, drink a hot chocolate and just enjoy the writing. I like to look at the map, and jump back and forth between map key and location.
I just read for enjoyment. Takes maybe a half-hour to an hour.
Step 3) Make Notes For your first session
Don't worry too much about background, you already nailed what you need to know:
- Goblins are making problems.
- The Players need to deal with the goblins.
As great as Jade Regent is, the opening is good for some GMs who just want to start right away (You can just say: You were hired by Sherrif Hemlock to go to the Brinestump Marsh, person that [your campaign trait relates to] recommended you to him.)
Or if you are a madman like I am, you can begin the adventure with an opening prologue. Fortunately this is the Paizo boards, here's one Clark Peterson publisher of Necromancer games prepared earlier.
Take notes of any unusual rules (fire-works, difficult terrain, ride skill).
Take note of any NPC character beats you want to happen.
Ex:
- Sandru loses control of his wagon during combat,
- Koya offers the PCs a harrow reading,
- Ameiko becomes reserved on seeing Tian-Min artifacts,
- Shalelu sets out into the swamp on her own [possibly needing rescue in future session, or coming to the rescue if PC's have trouble later.
Jot down notes/expansions about 5-10 encounters (Whatever you have time for/feel comfortable with).
Step 4) Run the game
And you'll forget stuff, miss notes, get details wrong and have to incorporate your mistake into future games. Your players won't notice a damn thing, and you'll have a great time.
The players haven't read the adventure, their definitive version of it, is the version you run.
If they HAVE somehow read the adventure, then they are hoping to be surprised, they want to know what it is YOU bring to the adventure, because the Adventure Path does not run the game at your table. Paizo Pathfinder canon does not exist at your table. Only your canon exists. These adventures are yours, own them. Add what you like, throw away what you don't.
Yeah unfortunately APs are far more like Gazetteers on steroids with a major plot going on rather than straightforward adventures.
I'm running Iron Gods at the moment and the way I used the AP volumes was to read through the major NPC sections at the back to understand the major characters and their motivations, then skim over all the locations, noting any supporting NPCs that I might need to flesh out. Then I plan out hooks for the players to bite on as they move through the setting of the books. If the players bite on the hooks (and they have so far) then great. Otherwise I have a decent sense of what's in the other locations that I can adjust.
My problem is partly that myself and my group are very much the "deeply detail oriented" types and the issue I'm having with the AP partly stems from knowing how what is left up for me to 'customize' will require almost as much work as a full on game creation it seems. I'll need to write up motivations and linked plots between NPCs, record major story breaks the party diverges on to be able to pull them back into the plot somehow, note down treasure differences, etc. I was really just hoping to open the book, read it, and run it for the night because I don't have a LOT of prep time available that much anymore. Something as simple as a 1 page bit of annotations about NPCs and locations would be a fantastic time saver.
I'm in the same boat with you. And like an idiot, I plunged into Jade Regent without looking to see if the boat would float. I've ended up using the AP as a skeleton, but I'm creating all of the encounters pretty much custom, anyway -- even though I bought the AP so I wouldn't have all of that work. Right now, I admit, it's because I've insisted on actually playing out scenes over the hundreds of miles that the AP takes you from Sandpoint to Brinewall. The AP pretty much just says, "and they get there," which didn't seem right to me. I found out later about the Legendary Games module you can buy to fix that, but it was too late.
But in doing the initial encounters in Sandpoint and Brinestump Marsh, I discovered that AP encounters are written for a standard party of 4 PCs of the level specified, meaning a 4-person action economy, none especially optimized, using a 15-pt build and WBL. We have a larger party, plus one PC has a tiger companion; one of the PCs is extremely well optimized; I allowed essentially a 20-pt build; I'm giving high fantasy double-WBL. Needless to say, in the first- and second-level encounters in Brinestump Marsh, the party was running rings around the printed material. I'm planning on rewriting everything even when we finally get to Brinewall and I can go back to AP material!
I highly recommend, more than words can say, the GM's Guide to Creating Challenging Encounters for a guideline to what monsters you need to supply your party with. You'll find that the author does not like the AP norm of single-foe encounters, and I believe he's got good reason. I've been following his guidelines as I've written the encounters my party has faced on their trip, and it's worked very well -- to kudos from the experienced GM among the players. Sad to say, Jade Regent is apparently like other APs in NOT following his guidelines. Even if you ensure a party of 4 with a 15-pt build and WBL, you'll likely find that the preponderance of solitary encounters are troubling.
I'm also concerned that the plot of Jade Regent is rather bound to following a railroad track. OK, a caravan route, but that's just as limited in terms of deviations. And I suspect all of the APs are, as well. If the players do something odd, after all, they'll never get to the end of six books. And my players are used to sandbox GMs, where they are perfectly free to do something creative and odd! I can foresee a lot of scrambling on my part to find a route from where they went back to the main line so we can get on to the next book.
All in all, my conclusion is that I'm a sandbox GM like you, and an AP doesn't really fit my style. I doubt it would fit yours, either. Why fight it? Stick to sandbox.
In that respect, Sandpoint is a well documented locale, and getting Rise of the Runelords 1 for the town and using Jade Regent 1 for its environs, including the Brinestump Marsh, is a good idea. I believe the nearby major city, Magnimar, is also detailed somewhere. Your party can make short trips out of town for published modules you want to slip in.
I just wish I hadn't boarded this train to the far east...
My problem is partly that myself and my group are very much the "deeply detail oriented" types and the issue I'm having with the AP partly stems from knowing how what is left up for me to 'customize' will require almost as much work as a full on game creation it seems. I'll need to write up motivations and linked plots between NPCs, record major story breaks the party diverges on to be able to pull them back into the plot somehow, note down treasure differences, etc. I was really just hoping to open the book, read it, and run it for the night because I don't have a LOT of prep time available that much anymore. Something as simple as a 1 page bit of annotations about NPCs and locations would be a fantastic time saver.I'm in the same boat with you. And like an idiot, I plunged into Jade Regent without looking to see if the boat would float. I've ended up using the AP as a skeleton, but I'm creating all of the encounters pretty much custom, anyway -- even though I bought the AP so I wouldn't have all of that work. Right now, I admit, it's because I've insisted on actually playing out scenes over the hundreds of miles that the AP takes you from Sandpoint to Brinewall. The AP pretty much just says, "and they get there," which didn't seem right to me. I found out later about the Legendary Games module you can buy to fix that, but it was too late.
But in doing the initial encounters in Sandpoint and Brinestump Marsh, I discovered that AP encounters are written for a standard party of 4 PCs of the level specified, meaning a 4-person action economy, none especially optimized, using a 15-pt build and WBL. We have a larger party, plus one PC has a tiger companion; one of the PCs is extremely well optimized; I allowed essentially a 20-pt build; I'm giving high fantasy double-WBL. Needless to say, in the first- and second-level encounters in Brinestump Marsh, the party was running rings around the printed material. I'm planning on...
Yeaaaah this is making me rethink some of this endeavor I can't lie lol. I am more of a sandbox type for sure and this is the exact scenario I'm terrified of because I would probably just have to call the game at some point.
Also are all APs designed with that sort of balance point?
Also are all APs designed with that sort of balance point?
Yes, 4 PCs at 15-point-buy with wealth-by-level as defined in the Core Rulebook is the standard to which all APs are built. If you have a larger party or allow a higher point-buy or more equipment, your players will have an easier time than the standard party.
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You'd be surprised how many people are complaining about APs as written being too easy then it turning out they allow point buy 20 or 25 for six players :D
I personally use stat rolling, but yeah, AP difficulty is fine even with 5 players or higher stats if players aren't super into optimization. I managed to run Iron Gods for six players without changing anything and they still got their asses kicked
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Step 1: Read through the module from beginning to end.
Step 2: Mark important NPCs and magic items along the way.
Step 3: Highlight skills checks so they aren't missed during play.
Step 4: Buy whatever sourcebooks, maps or figures that are needed for the adventure.
Step 5: Prepare for the next session by reviewing the abilities, classes and bestiary entries for the next three to four encounters. I've found that a good session usually involves a maximum of four encounters, so there is no need to overprepare for each session.
Step 6: Pull whatever maps and figures you need for the upcoming session.
Step 7: Repeat steps 5-6 for each session.