Incident at absolom station was too short. I stretched ..and stretched it but alas we completed it last night. Now its a month and half till the next one...either add more content or shorten the wait...I guess will go back to PF while we wait..and wait..
I'd rather wait for quality than have them skimp now. Paizo has been doing the AP game for a while now; I have faith that they know what they're doing on the matter better than we do at this point.
There's always the old fashioned way of generating your own content, maybe tie it back in later. Maybe explore some of the PCs' personal lives.
Incident at absolom station was too short. I stretched ..and stretched it but alas we completed it last night. Now its a month and half till the next one...either add more content or shorten the wait...I guess will go back to PF while we wait..and wait..
Thank you for confirming my fears. I'm going to wait until more installments are released before starting a campaign. At least until the Alien Archive comes out and I can brew my own adventures.
Count yourself lucky. There was a two-year gap between parts 6 and 7 of the first adventure path.
I believe the fellow may be referring to Shackled City.(Though i don't recall a gap that large for that one myself.)
Incident at absolom station was too short. I stretched ..and stretched it but alas we completed it last night. Now its a month and half till the next one...either add more content or shorten the wait...I guess will go back to PF while we wait..and wait..
I hope they increase the rate of release (and expect they will). I am much happier with the shorter adventure instalments though.
(honest question) So do you guys just run AP's? or do you just heavily prefer it over making up your own stories?
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(honest question) So do you guys just run AP's? or do you just heavily prefer it over making up your own stories?
I prefer it. My experience in nearly everything is that professionals usually do a better job than amateurs. My stories are never as good as those who do it for a living.
I really should try running AP's more I always prefer making my own stories more flexible that way. I will probably try the SF ap's since I am not as good at coming up with ideas for sci-fi.
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(honest question) So do you guys just run AP's? or do you just heavily prefer it over making up your own stories?
When I was in high school and during uni, I would write and run my own campaigns.
Now days I have no time for that (nor energy in all honesty).
So I run APs. It's gotten to the point now that I don't even modify them all that heavily either. Just no time. We use it for a fun time with mates and I just don't have much time between sessions for it.
Though I do seem to be on these forums a bit lately <.<
I really should try running AP's more I always prefer making my own stories more flexible that way. I will probably try the SF ap's since I am not as good at coming up with ideas for sci-fi.
FWIW, my version of APs is often radically different from the book. I don't consider it has to be any less creative or flexible - it's just about whether you start with a blank page or with someone else's story outline.
One of the times I ran Curse of the Crimson Throne for example, the party ended being made up of Kuthite radicals out to retrieve the crown of fangs and return it to Nidal. They had zero interest in saving the city or helping the rebellion and really didn't care about the crimes of Ileosa (beyond what they considered her heresy). My Rise of the Runelords campaign had a similar shift of focus away from saving the world. The players just wanted to get rich and to fortify/develop/expand Sandpoint. Towards the end they were really only interested in finding Karzoug's fabled wealth.
For me the APs are about the setting, the story and the characters - I'm quite relaxed about breaking substantially from the presumed plot once the players get involved.
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Count yourself lucky. There was a two-year gap between parts 6 and 7 of the first adventure path..... I don't think there was. Rise of the Runelords released in 2007, and Curse of the Crimson Throne came out in 2008. I don't think they've gone 3 months between adventure path books for pathfinder as of yet. Though I do remember particular books getting pushed back far enough they shipped 2 adventure paths book together.
I believe the fellow may be referring to Shackled City.(Though i don't recall a gap that large for that one myself.)
Kids these days. Get off my lawn.
And 64 pages of full color? Back in my day ...
Bravo, good sir. That should keep them off your lawn.
Rate and length seems good to me. Pathfinder content is flowing at a rate impossible to keep up once your group start to have full-time jobs and/or family responsibilities. One AP a year seems far more realistic, although people around me rarely gets to complete more than 1 each 2-3 years.
If your group needs more, try to have other person (or you) run a Society campaign, or brew up extra chapters. Although I agree it is difficult to reach the quality and criteria of professionals, they have to write for and unknown and diverse audience, while you can write for your players and PC tastes and story. Profit that advantage.
About level, the 12 level target seems reasonable to me. Once you reach there things start to get crazy and you need your players help to keep on track. Plus, if you do not play the same characters each week solving rules interaction during encounters tends to be slow and tiring, cutting from the story flow and immersion. I am happy to see more APs end at level 12.
See if I was going to run an AP and finish it I would probably try and continue going till the pc's hit 20 I try to make that happen when I can. Seems more satisfying to them and myself.
Eh. I prefer that a story run across whatever scope makes sense for that story. I'm more likely to run a campaign that runs from levels 7-11, 3-5, or 14-18 than 1-20.
A 1-20 campaign just ends up silly in my eyes, when you go from being mauled by a housecat to piledriving pit fiends.
well its not like it happens in one night. At least I would hope in one game play session it doesn't go form house cat to pit fiend. Its is usually a weekly 4 hour session game over the course of 1-2 years. so It defiently doesn't feel like giant rats one minute to balors the next.
Its not to hard to escalate the villain. That bad guy you were trying to defeat from level 1-5 yeah well his boss is now trying to destroy the whole kingdom yeah but his boss (10-w/e )wants the whole planet gone it block his view.
10 or iv had it up to 60 years can pass for the characters over the course of those games.
And I generally don't want a campaign that goes on for years and years. I prefer a more constrained game, then go onto the next, probably in a different system.
Also, yeah, that span of power does make it hard to scale villains. The breadth of the powerscale in d20 games gets enormous, whereas it's much more constrained in other games, such that a "weak" or "strong" enemy is much more likely to be in the same ballpark as the players.
What you could do is make your games episodic like a 90's television show the same characters on different adventures. They level up but after each mini venture they can move on to something completely new. One of my old dm's did it that way.
Eh. I prefer that a story run across whatever scope makes sense for that story. I'm more likely to run a campaign that runs from levels 7-11, 3-5, or 14-18 than 1-20.
Actually in one of the seminars they did at gencon(i was just listening to it at work, since know direction uploaded it a few days ago), they talked about possibly doing APs that start at higher levels, like 3-15, and maybe(MAYBE) even something like a 12-20 AP that says player can carry over their characters from AP X if they so choose. These are just some ideas they had so no confirmation(they even talked about 3 part APs if people still think they are too long) on anything. Unfortunately it also sounds like the length and time between APs wont change until they get more people/resources, if at all.
What you could do is make your games episodic like a 90's television show the same characters on different adventures. They level up but after each mini venture they can move on to something completely new. One of my old dm's did it that way.
One of the things I'm not terribly fond of is the same characters and system for an extended period of time. I'm all for starting from scratch and completely wiping the roster.
There's also third-party content. I know there's even a 'regular' AP or the start of one out made by Legendary Games.
(honest question) So do you guys just run AP's? or do you just heavily prefer it over making up your own stories?I prefer it. My experience in nearly everything is that professionals usually do a better job than amateurs. My stories are never as good as those who do it for a living.
Without even knowing you, I feel like perhaps you're selling yourself a bit short? :) Have you seen all the discussion about minor plot holes and ways to improve the first volume of the AP? No disrespect meant to the high-quality designers and developers of Paizo, but everyone makes mistakes, and I'm willing to bet that most players have a hard time telling where the actual AP ends and their DM's ad-libs begin (unless the DM is spectacularly bad).
That said, I do have the same worries about the length of the Dead Suns individual parts, and am curious how much additional material I'll need. Fortunately October's not far around the bend, and
1) our group will play this campaign biweekly, and
2) as noted Alien Archive is coming at the same time that Dead Suns #2 is.
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While I too feel like the pace is too slow, that's because of the biweekly pace of my actual game, not because of the AP's release schedule. I can't see my group finishing Incident until the last week of October at soonest, which would mean we wouldn't be ready to start the next chapter until the second week of November. The release schedule's pretty much perfect for me.
(Now, capping at level 12 is another story, but I'm hopeful that the overall demand for Starfinder sees the AP volumes going back to 96 pages really soon...)
Capping at level 12 yet still spanning 6 volumes makes me think they will all be as short as Incident. That's disappointing.
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(honest question) So do you guys just run AP's? or do you just heavily prefer it over making up your own stories?
The problem for me right now is two-fold. One, there isn't much material to go with in regards to monsters or enemies right now so writing my own would be even further complicated with having to dream up critters.
And two, I've been writing and playing fantasy for so long I'm having trouble coming up with decent plots for adventures. I need to see some more examples before I feel comfortable even trying.
What you could do is make your games episodic like a 90's television show the same characters on different adventures. They level up but after each mini venture they can move on to something completely new. One of my old dm's did it that way.One of the things I'm not terribly fond of is the same characters and system for an extended period of time. I'm all for starting from scratch and completely wiping the roster.
Different strokes and all of that. One of the things I find very appealing are systems where you can play the same character for multiple campaigns. It's one thing when the game system is fairly simple and straightforward (1e/2e AD&D, TOON, TFOS and CoC for example) whereas when you hit the complexity of 3e, GURPS and HERO I want lots of continuity.
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I'm hoping the low level cap for this AP is a symptom of them getting their legs under them...Council of Thieves had a similar low cap.
It'd be pretty disappointing if the standard for Starfinder APs is that characters never even get to 5th level spells. As I read the CRB it's disheartening to see all the cool abilities that the official AP basically doesn't support because they come online in the teen levels.
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I usually wait until an AP has a decent amount of material published before starting it. Not only do you not have to wait for the next adventure, you can check the messageboards to get warnings about parts that may turn out sticky.
@Vidmaster7, I work full time and game about fifteen hours a week. I barely have time to prep AP's, let alone write my own stuff. On top of that, when I do write my own stuff, I get halfway through and get writer's block. You can only do so many "monster of the week" games.
Right now, I'm doing Zeitgeist, which is a full 1-20 campaign. (actually 1-30, because I'm doing the 4e version of it). I played it with one group and now I'm running it for another. It starts off Epic and just keeps getting better.
From what I've been hearing the Starfinder release schedule for SFS is going to be half what PFS was. It seems that will be true for the APs and books.
To be honest, I'm glad it's slower. Pathfinder put out too much content too quickly. It got expensive to keep up for PFS.
Not to be too harsh, but if you can't spend 3-4 sessions of homemade adventures running around a planet or abandoned space station you really shouldn't be running.
Here's a plotline for you, no Alien Archive needed. Someone hires the party to deliver a ship and cargo to a far away place. Have the ship Hijacked, PCs have to find the pirates, recover the ship and deliver before the employer and his goons come looking for them. If you need more time just add in a "We need ship consumable X and we can get it from that conveniently random planet there."
I know I'm waiting till at least March before starting the AP, so if people go off-book I'll have the Pact Worlds book to keep them busy. Plus by then I think book 3 will definitely be out, maybe even book 4. Will let me tie stuff together pretty well.