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Borrowing inspiration from the humour thread I was looking for people who had played the adventure paths to suggest a one sentence / elevator pitch synopsis for each adventure path that I could send to players to get more buy in about what type of path to run. Ideally this would include the theme / style of adventure (e.g dungeon crawling for Shattered Star)
Some can be easy e.g. Pirates of Golarion
Comparisons can work e.g I get the impression Ironfang is a bit like battle star galactica in the forest (without the enemies within part)
I would appreciate any insight.
Thanks !
dot
I am not sure that reign of winter one would sell it to players!
I have run three books of that one - perhaps Doctor Who meets Frozen where the ends always justify the means
- Legacy of Fire Desert rats (you) are in the gnoll killin' business only to get swept up in wishcrafting chicanery against fire-based bad guys to keep a supervolcano from erupting.
- Rise of the Runelords Small-town heroes strive to thwart the return of an ancient Wizard with a fondness for fiends, giants and gold.
- Serpent's Skull Survivors of a shipwreck on cannibal island don the mantle of pulp-style jungle explorers to kill a god before it barfs poison on everything.
- Second Darkness Ne'er-do-wells eventually learn the darkest secret of the elves while attempting to thwart rocks fall, everyone dies on a nation-destroying scale.
- Curse of the Crimson Throne Save your city from the maniacal aspirations of what will become an infernal queen with significant field trips required.
- Council of Thieves Restless actors and performers can't take the night terrors anymore so they become determined to liberate their home from the yoke of Chelish tyranny.
- Kingmaker Carve a kingdom of your own from the sparsely inhabited eastern frontier while thwarting competing kingdoms and freaky fey. Game of Thrones-grade viciousness is optional.
- Skull and Shackles Pirates, plain and simple - be sure to carefully read the players' guide or you'll either die like flies or not have a lot of fun. Or both.
- Shattered Star All dungeon-crawling, all the time with quite possibly the most powerful PC-friendly artifact ever published being the Great Macguffin. Gack its creator in the end so you can keep it.
- Mummy's Mask tomb-crawling instead of dungeon-crawling with a side helping of stopping death pyramids in low orbit.
- Carrion Crown is a grab-bag of assorted Victorian and Lovecraftian horrors with a strong emphasis on defeating the nefarious machinations of the undead.
- Jade Regent Assist or become the new Imperial Family of a distant Asian-themed country as Westerners and Vikings crossing the north pole on foot.
- Reign of Winter as Lanathar suggests. Chapter 5 is awesome, as is Chapter 6 - getting to them is the hard part.
- Hell's Rebels For-real-this-time civil uprising headed by Your Heroes to free an entire duchy from the yoke of Chelish tyranny.
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- Legacy of Fire Desert rats (you) are in the gnoll killin' business only to get swept up in wishcrafting chicanery against fire-based bad guys to keep a supervolcano from erupting.
- Rise of the Runelords Small-town heroes strive to thwart the return of an ancient Wizard with a fondness for fiends, giants and gold.
- Serpent's Skull Survivors of a shipwreck on cannibal island don the mantle of pulp-style jungle explorers to kill a god before it barfs poison on everything.
- Second Darkness Ne'er-do-wells eventually learn the darkest secret of the elves while attempting to thwart rocks fall, everyone dies on a nation-destroying scale.
- Curse of the Crimson Throne Save your city from the maniacal aspirations of what will become an infernal queen with significant field trips required.
- Council of Thieves Restless actors and performers can't take the night terrors anymore so they become determined to liberate their home from the yoke of Chelish tyranny.
- Kingmaker Carve a kingdom of your own from the sparsely inhabited eastern frontier while thwarting competing kingdoms and freaky fey. Game of Thrones-grade viciousness is optional.
- Skull and Shackles Pirates, plain and simple - be sure to carefully read the players' guide or you'll either die like flies or not have a lot of fun. Or both.
- Shattered Star All dungeon-crawling, all the time with quite possibly the most powerful PC-friendly artifact ever published being the Great Macguffin. Gack its creator in the end so you can keep it.
- Mummy's Mask tomb-crawling instead of dungeon-crawling with a side helping of stopping death pyramids in low orbit.
- Carrion Crown is a grab-bag of assorted Victorian and Lovecraftian horrors with a strong emphasis on defeating the nefarious machinations of the undead.
- Jade Regent Assist or become the new Imperial Family of a distant Asian-themed country as Westerners and Vikings crossing the
Thanks. This has actually made me play some of these that I hadn't considered.
Couple of comments / questions
- Curse of the Crimson Throne : Isn't that synopsis a little spoilery?
- Carrion Crown : I did not know it was both victorian and lovercraftian horror. I thought it was just the former with Strange Aeons as the latter
- Reign of Winter : Completely agree. Book 3 killed it for my group. The dungeon was too much of a grind and rather confusing if the players were not switched on (they weren't)
- Skull and Shackles : Which parts of the players guide causes players to die / not have fun if they are not read properly? This is not something I had noticed...
Not too much after 10 years re: CotCT.
CC is a grab-bag. The Lovecraftian chapter is my favorite leg of the entire campaign. Chapter 6 was my least favorite part.
Strange Aeons is focused on the Mythos and looks like a lot of fun so long as the players take the hook in stride. If they won't, they'll be miserable.
RoW's 3rd chapter is brutal. I get the concept, but it's one of those things best pulled apart and condensed to get to the good parts. To a degree chapter 4 is similarly a bit of a drag. The final 2 chapters rocked it out of the park for me.
S&S needs players all-in on being pirates and leader types to get the most out of it. It is a rude surprise otherwise when the typical murderhobos with one "face" consign themselves to a single ship...
Not too much after 10 years re: CotCT.
CC is a grab-bag. The Lovecraftian chapter is my favorite leg of the entire campaign. Chapter 6 was my least favorite part.
Strange Aeons is focused on the Mythos and looks like a lot of fun so long as the players take the hook in stride. If they won't, they'll be miserable.
RoW's 3rd chapter is brutal. I get the concept, but it's one of those things best pulled apart and condensed to get to the good parts. To a degree chapter 4 is similarly a bit of a drag. The final 2 chapters rocked it out of the park for me.
S&S needs players all-in on being pirates and leader types to get the most out of it. It is a rude surprise otherwise when the typical murderhobos with one "face" consign themselves to a single ship...
Hook For Strange Aeons being in the asylum without any memories? When I floated this one of my players was pleased at the idea of being able to develop a backstory as things moved along rather than before (and potentially even having elements revealed to them by the GM)
It is really interesting you bring up 5 and 6 of RoW.
I was thinking only this morning about potentially statting my players old RoW characters from 18 months ago up to the level for Book 5 and handing them back to them to see how they reacted (or of course just ask them to stat themselves up).
Slightly unsure as really not used to high level play
As for S&S I like the idea of campaigns where Charisma shouldn't be a dump stats. I was just reading that the same is true of Hell's Rebels.
For that one is it best to somehow condense the early part where the players spend most of their time fatigued, with no gear, poisoned by rum and whipped with the pirates?
Some APs you can run as they are released. Strange Aeons is not one of those. Thankfully the whole campaign is out. Peruse thoroughly as the GM so you can fix the few bugs and have a smooth campaign.
A montage/vignette glossing over chapters 3 and 4 to get to the best parts of RoW I think will work wonderfully well.
Hell'@ Rebels it is probably more important to be charismatic types with the solid advice given in the player's guide than it is even in S&S. HR has much less draggy bits as well.
For S&S an option I think would work well would be to use a modified chapter 1 of Serpents Skull to have them rescued and shangheid to enter the rest of S&S. Otherwise, yes, Readers Digest chapter 1 and get to the good parts.
Some APs you can run as they are released. Strange Aeons is not one of those. Thankfully the whole campaign is out. Peruse thoroughly as the GM so you can fix the few bugs and have a smooth campaign.
A montage/vignette glossing over chapters 3 and 4 to get to the best parts of RoW I think will work wonderfully well.
Hell'@ Rebels it is probably more important to be charismatic types with the solid advice given in the player's guide than it is even in S&S. HR has much less draggy bits as well.
For S&S an option I think would work well would be to use a modified chapter 1 of Serpents Skull to have them rescued and shangheid to enter the rest of S&S. Otherwise, yes, Readers Digest chapter 1 and get to the good parts.
What are the bugs in Strange Aeons that prevented it from being run well as released? (In your opinion)
For S&S do you mentioned the first part of Serpents because it is a very popular adventure? And do you mean pretty much completely replacing Wormwood Mutiny? Or half and half?
For SA it is informative to have the entire metaplot available as the GM. As the characters deserve nasty nightmares and other bits of answers to divinations and interrogations (see some of the SA campaign journals) that aren't otherwise a available without those latter chapters in-hand.
Half-n-half. Ch 1 of SS is quite possibly to this day one of or the best Ch 1s so far, although I must caveat this. I don't have IfI, IG or HV, so it is possible that more recent Ch 1's have toppled it from atop that mountain.
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Rise of the Runelords: Winning-formula-old-fashioned standby. Start off saving a small town from goblins, end by saving the world from ancient self-absorbed wizards. Bioshock jokes toward the end optional. Now as a sequel, due to become an entire trilogy!
Kingmaker: You and your friends get to build a city-state from the ground up, then expand it. If the PCs and GM like political theory, they'll enjoy watching their budding nation grow, to the point where it'll become more important whatever gets thrown at it.
Wrath of the Righteous: You get to be crusaders who go into the Abyss and kill ancient demons in a single round each. You get to wield power the likes of which nobody has ever seen before, and likely will never see again. You get to, in canon, meet a deity, and as long as you don't do anything stupid like try to kill her (you aren't supposed to), everything turns out just fine. Players who want to be as awesome as possible and don't mind extra math will like watching the demon king of plague wet himself before getting squashed.
Rebels/Vengeance: This shows the violence on both sides of a revolution: the empress and her cronies who want to conquer the world and worship/enslave devils, and the crusaders who want to overthrow the empress, free the slaves, and send the devils back to Hell. As it turns out, one side of this conflict is evil and the other is good. If the same group is running both APs, you can have both teams PvP each other at the end!
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Rise of the Runelords: Hey, let's try to go as tried-and-true classic as we can here. Wanna go from murdering goblins who are harassing some podunk town in the middle of nowhere to stopping the rise to power of an evil wizard who controls a bunch of giants and dragons?
Curse of the Crimson Throne: Did you ever want to fight an evil fairy tale queen?
Second Darkness: Hey, how about an adventure where you do the legwork for a bunch of a&%@@~% elves who do everything in their power to kneecap your efforts to save their miserable lives from the consequences of their own abject failures?
Legacy of Fire: Arabian Niiights!~ Like Arabian Daaaays!~
Council of Thieves: Hey, wanna have another adventure about freeing a city from tyranny, except instead of an evil queen it's a bunch of thieves being puppeteered by Hell?
Kingmaker: Are you sick of propping up these useless so-called leaders? Are you fed up with the mess they make of every country you end up having to adventure in? Do you ever want to just... tell them all to screw themselves and go make your own?
Serpent's Skull: Hey, how about we do some Indiana Jones s***?
Carrion Crown: You know what we haven't done yet? A Transylvania campaign. It'll be great, we'll have some cultists, some werewolves, Frankenstein's monster, a bunch of vampires and ghouls, maybe throw in a little Lovecraft, you'll love it.
Jade Regent: Fantasy Japan needs your help, you need to fight Vikings and ninjas at the same time, then trek across the Silk Road and the Arctic Circle combined to kill a bunch of shapeshifting demon samurai and ninjas.
Skull & Shackes: Dude. Pirates. And if you want, there's in-universe reasons for there to be ninjas.
Shattered Star: Wanna go back to basics? ...Again?
Reign of Winter: You know who you haven't killed yet? Rasputin.
Wrath of the Righteous: Have you ever felt like modern fiction has too much of a fixation on dumping moral ambiguity into everything and making protagonists a bunch of gritty antiheroes? Me too. Let's detox a bit with some righteous a**kicking.
Mummy's Mask: Hey, how about we do some Indiana Jones s***? But with mummies this time?
Iron Gods: Okay, follow me on this one. Conan the Barbarian... but with robots and lasers.
Giantslayer: Man, that was a blowout. Got to build your own demigoddess and everything. Let's do something a bit more simple to unwind, yeah? You wanna... I dunno, slay some giants or something?
Hell's Rebels: Look, I don't want to spoil anything, but this is pound for pound the best and most consistent AP so far. What do you have to lose?
Hell's Vengeance: Evil campaign, question mark? No, not Way of the Wicked, the official one. Don't get so excited.
Strange Aeons: You know what time it is? Time to go Full Lovecraft(TM).
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Here's my two-line elevator pitch to potential players...
Rise of the Runelords: PCs start out as defenders of a small town who discover a conpiracy that threatens all the land. The campaign is an homage to classic D&D adventuring tropes, with a good mix of dungeon, investigation, urban, and wilderness adventuring... with some strong horror elements scattered throughout.
Curse of the Crimson Throne: PCs are citizens of the city of Korvosa during a time of political upheaval, and must save their city from an increasingly despotic ruler. It is an urban campaign, with lots of investigation and a fair amount of dungeon-delving.
Second Darkness: While the PCs begin as employees of the owner of a casino, they discover a horrific plot that threatens the entire world. An urban campaign that moves to the wilderness, with political intrigue, and a descent into the depths of the earth.
Legacy of Fire: Adventuring in fantasy Persia, like the Tales of a Thousand and One Nights. The PCs must stop an evil genie from carrying out his nefarious plans.
Council of Thieves: I don't know this AP well enough to pitch it.
Kingmaker: The PCs are given a charter to tame an expansive wilderness area and make it their own. A sandbox-style wilderness adventure of exploration and kingdom-building in a fey-haunted land.
Serpent's Skull: The PCs explore a jungle wilderness in search of fame and fortune. A rolicking 1930s-style jungle-pulp adventure!
Carrion Crown: A Gothic horror campaign, where the PCs must work to prevent a mysterious organization from freeing an ancient lich-king from his prison. The campaign is heavily influenced by the old Universal Pictures horror movies, like Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf-Man.
Jade Regent: The PCs escort dignitaries in a caravan on a long overland journey to the Orient. Wilderness adventuring across many different terrains, exploration of strange and exotic lands, and palace intrigue.
Skull and Shackles: The PCs are buccaneers on the high seas, seeking fortune and infamy, perhaps to become King of the Pirates.
Shattered Star: A "collect the artifacts" adventure, where the PCs seek to find the missing pieces of the rod of seven parts Sihedron, hidden in lost dungeouns througout the land. The AP is essentially a megadungeon adventure, interspersed with travel to the various dungeons.
Reign of Winter: The PCs steal Baba Yaga's Hut to prevent the White Witch from bringing eternal winter over the entire world. They then travel to many strange and distant places to find the only one who can stop the White Witch: Baba Yaga herself!
Wrath of the Righteous: The PCs are crusaders on a holy quest to stop a demonic invasion of the world, and are given immense divine power to do so. This is a military campaign, where the PCs wield mythic power.
Mummy's Mask: The PCs are explorers of pyramids and ancient crypts beneath the desert, working to prevent the rise of an ancient pharaoh. A 1930s-style pulp adventure with an Ancient Egypt theme.
Iron Gods: The PCs explore the land where a giant spaceship crashed thousands of years ago, and many of the alien technological wonders still work... mostly. It's Expedition to the Barrier Peaks meets Thundarr the Barbarian meets Zardoz.
Giantslayer: Fee Fi Foe Fum! The giants are uniting to stamp out humanity! Let's get 'em first! A wilderness adventure of giant proportions.
Hell's Rebels: The PCs' beloved city comes under the rule of a tyrant. They must form a rebellion to overthrow him... and the evil empire who back him. An urban adventure with lots of investigation and intrigue, where the PCs become leaders of a rebellion.
Hell's Vengeance: The PCs are the villains, doing the bidding of an evil tyrant to stop the good guys from overthrowing her lock on power. An evil campaign to keep the satus quo.
Strange Aeons: The PCs are amnesiacs who wake up in a horrific asylum, and must piece together their memories to work against cosmic horror that wants to destroy the world. A Lovecraftan horror campaign that spans the world.
Ironfang Invasion: An unstoppable hobgoblin military force suddenly appears and invades the PCs' town. The PCs lead a group of survivors to hide out in the woods, and grow that group into a militia. A wilderness and military adventure campaign.
