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The AP titles and authors are:
* The Dead Roads, by Ron Lundeen
* Eulogy for Rozlar's Coffer, by Jason Keely (I may have got the spelling wrong on Rozlar, obviously)
* Last Watch, by Larry Wilhelm
* Gardens of Gallowspire, by Crystal Frasier
* Born by the Sun's Grace (Son's Grace?), by Luis Loza
* Midwives to Death, by John Compton
And some more details:
* There will be a couple PFS tie-ins. A prequel will send players to a small town in Lastwall called Rozlar's Coffer. A later tie-in, dubbed "The Grinder" (and I know there's been some more discussion in the PFS circles about this) involves trying to get back to Vigil to get help. But they get back too late, which leads too:
* The Dead Roads doesn't start off well for players -- they're dead. They've got to deal with pyschopomps in an effort to find a way home.
* Last Watch involves going to Vigil and trying to recruit paladins.
* Born by the Sun's Grace (Son's Grace?): Arcadia! Find out what Aroden was doing there, involving the "legacy left behind of a god traipsing around in an unfamiliar culture." Adam said he realized he's been keeping Arcadia all to himself, so when Luis was hired and really wanted to play there too, they had a long talk to set parameters and now we finally get the most Arcadia stuff that we've ever gotten.
* Midwives to Death, will NOT involve going mythic to try to be able to face Tar-Baphon. HOWEVER, players will get to pick up a 2nd mythic character who can kick Tar-Baphon's ass ... if we can keep her alive. A later comment in Secrets of Golarion made my think this could be Nocticula, who will now be a CN goddess of something (sorry, I didn't catch it!) and I think artists in exile. I could be very wrong on where Nocticula is expected to pop back up thought, as that's my assumption that it's here.
* From Secrets of Golarion panel: Crystal says TB's phylactery is not on the Isle of Terror.
* This will mostly NOT take place in Ustalav.
Ohhhh!!!
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Ok starting of dead is really cool
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- Love the "woke up dead" angle. Very refreshing, only seen it done at all well once before.
- Escorting someone else to do all of the buttkicking, let alone two someone elses to administer said buttkicking ... just, ugh.
As GM and player I detest escort scenes, let alone a third-to-half of a campaign apparently being built around having to do so in order to kick the bad guys' buttocks, and - it would appear - to not even be the ones administering the buttkicking? C'mon, gang, better can be done on this.
Temporary awesome angel-possessed templates, the "temporary mythic power" set-up outlined - with a dollop of pillaging from Legendary Games' take on Mythic rules - anything but 'escort the Mary Sues to the bad guy and enjoy the flavor text'.
Why not tie the beginning to the end? The PCs' bargain to leave the Boneyard by the end results in becoming super psychopomps tasked with dragging Tar-Baphon kicking and screaming back to the Boneyard for Pharasma's Judgement.
The start up though ... seven kinds of awesome.
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** spoiler omitted **
Mad Comrade's comments:
Escorting someone else to do all of the buttkicking, let alone two someone elses to administer said buttkicking ... just, ugh.
I think *second* mythic character refers to a second person beyond Tar-Baphon (the question pointed out that TB was statted up in -- IIRC -- Mythic Origins and the questioner was curious if the PCs would be getting mythic, which they will not).
I'm not sure how much escorting of that character will need to be done, and how much it will play into the overall AP. Personally, I trust the Paizo crew to know that taking the agency away from the PCs and having an NPC be the big hero isn't fun, so I would be surprised if that's what happens.
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I do wonder why Paizo wouldn't want players to get even the first rank of mythic tier in campaign where bbeg is max rank max level lich <_< I mean if the final book is indeed just finding someone else to beat him, that feels anticlimactic.
That said, I trust that we aren't getting full picture here and whatever they are planning is gonna be cool
Aw, man. I really had hoped Brandon Hodge would get to write the last PF1e module. Oh, well.
Still looking forward to this very much, though. :)
Creative Director
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I do wonder why Paizo wouldn't want players to get even the first rank of mythic tier in campaign where bbeg is max rank max level lich <_< I mean if the final book is indeed just finding someone else to beat him, that feels anticlimactic.
That said, I trust that we aren't getting full picture here and whatever they are planning is gonna be cool
In a nutshell, because of the toxic reaction some folks had to Mythic made us not want to hard-code mythic PCs into anything.At least, that's how I see it.
There's no reason any GM who is used to mythic, who understands how it changes the game play experience, and who has a group of players who want to enjoy it can't have mythic characters in any Adventure Path. I'm playing in a campaign with mythic PCs now and it's quite fun, but it's with players and a GM who both enjoy that content, understand it, and with a GM who's adjusted things to make the rules fit his style of game play.
But yeah... a few obscure hints does not count as full revelation for a six part Adventure Path. There's a LOT of awesome coming up in "Tyrant's Grasp" and the fact that the PCs aren't mythic makes sense, given the way the story unfolds and what happens along the way. We're not quite ready to tell everything about the AP though. We generally don't say much about them at this stage other than what's been said already... the time for more info on Tyrant's Grasp will come eventually.
Maybe it'll be Aroden? Look i know it wont but i can dream, i just want to know the secret
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Arazni would make sense considering seems you could intepret this ap being indirectly also about dealing with Aroden's legacy and loose ends he left behind ._.
That was really complicated way of saying "Arazni would make sense yeah since Tar-Babhon turned her into undead to begin with" :P
Tarby killed her but it was Geb that turned her into a lich.
I like this as a final AP. We need the REAL Tar Baphon in this though. No tricks, please Paizo.
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Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd that there's going to be a second AP storyline based around Tar? There's been overlap with countries and locations and even some NPCs before, sure, but this feels to me like if someone took the "continuing the adventure" section from an AP and rescaled it for 1-20.
That's just my thoughts, but since there's sections of map that have at best only been tangentially touched before (Land of the Linnorm Kings, Realm of the Mammoth Lords, Nidal, Galt, most of Garund, Casmaron) I feel like there's more to work with besides bringing back something older.
The AP titles and authors are:
* The Dead Roads, by Ron Lundeen
* Eulogy for Rozlar's Coffer, by Jason Keely (I may have got the spelling wrong on Rozlar, obviously)
* Last Watch, by Larry Wilhelm
* Gardens of Gallowspire, by Crystal Frasier
* Born by the Sun's Grace (Son's Grace?), by Luis Loza
* Midwives to Death, by John ComptonAnd some more details:
** spoiler omitted **
Now, I don't want start a flame - but when I read about the last adventure of this 24° Pathfinder campaign, why did I had the unpleasant feeling that the group could be reduced in props, and the whole campaign ruined in that moment by "the GM's PC"?
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Creative Director
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Now, I don't want start a flame - but when I read about the last adventure of this 24° Pathfinder campaign, why did I had the unpleasant feeling that the group could be reduced in props, and the whole campaign ruined in that moment by "the GM's PC"?The AP titles and authors are:
* The Dead Roads, by Ron Lundeen
* Eulogy for Rozlar's Coffer, by Jason Keely (I may have got the spelling wrong on Rozlar, obviously)
* Last Watch, by Larry Wilhelm
* Gardens of Gallowspire, by Crystal Frasier
* Born by the Sun's Grace (Son's Grace?), by Luis Loza
* Midwives to Death, by John ComptonAnd some more details:
** spoiler omitted **
That's not how we do adventures. Never fear. We're not changing the way we create adventures at the last minute. The PCs retain agency through the entire thing, and remain the "stars" through it all.
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Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd that there's going to be a second AP storyline based around Tar? There's been overlap with countries and locations and even some NPCs before, sure, but this feels to me like if someone took the "continuing the adventure" section from an AP and rescaled it for 1-20.
That's just my thoughts, but since there's sections of map that have at best only been tangentially touched before (Land of the Linnorm Kings, Realm of the Mammoth Lords, Nidal, Galt, most of Garund, Casmaron) I feel like there's more to work with besides bringing back something older.
Well the last Tar AP was less about Tar, and more Gothic Horror in general. So that itch IMO hasn't been scratched yet.
This looks like it will be a lot of fun!
Well the last Tar AP was less about Tar, and more Gothic Horror in general. So that itch IMO hasn't been scratched yet.
A persistent complaint about that particular AP, really...
...
*Scurries off to make a list of "APs that are perfectly fine but which don't match the expectations"*
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I am both extremely excited and extremely frustrated by this...
...by which I mean, I've been planning to run this exact story for YEARS now, foreshadowing little bits of it across 3 separate full-length campaigns, and now I won't know whether or not to run my story or the much-easier, probably-just-as-good version written by Paizo (also +1 for the return of Crystal Frasier! I was super impressed with her work in War for the Crown!).
I've been introducing McGuffin Artifacts on the side, foreshadowed Nocticula as a future BBEG (even before I ran Wrath of the Righteous and REALLY turned it up to 11 with her there), and I've got a GooglyDoc full of notes connecting backstory bits of Tar-Baphon and Aroden. My plan was to have the heroes start as basically college students / apprentice Pathfinders and really build up a Harry Potter vibe in act 1, then turn it into a spooky Scooby-Doo story in act 2 by killing off the PCs mentor and having him entrust his conspiracy theory and all his collected notes to them and having the nonMythic PCs have to run away from Mythic Bad Guys. The conspiracy would have to do with Aroden's unique path to divinity, and why he was so much more powerful and special than the rest of the Ascended pantheon that followed him via the Starstone. Tar-Baphon enters the picture as both the object of Nocticula's interest (he knows more about Aroden than anyone else), and as a potential final-tier BBEG for the PCs to oppose.
My interpretation of established canon is that Aroden's death was a premeditated suicide to both subvert one of Pharasma's prophecies and to save Iomedae from her failure in the Starstone Trial... My extension of this canon is that it wasn't Aroden himself OR the consequences of the Trial which pulled the cosmically metaphorical trigger. While accomplishing his primary and secondary objectives, he knowingly or unknowingly stepped into a trap laid by Tar-Baphon by re-entering the material world, and now an unsealed Tar-Baphon (and Nocticula / the PCs) believes that his next resurrection will come with the full powers of divinity he stole from Aroden.
The endgame scene I desperately wanted to run was to have the PCs utterly unable to influence the final battle between Baphy and Nocticula, but to then present them with a final clue which leads them to a totally unexpected tilt that neither of the bad guys realize: Tar-Baphon's plan didn't work, and Aroden is still alive... as a level 3 Expert drained of all magic, mythic, and divine energy. He's an insane old fisherman in Absolam that the whole city considers to just be insane. He goes on about how he failed and the prophecy isn't subverted yet, and how an apocalypse is imminent that only he can prevent by reaching the Starstone again. The great big choice for the PCs would then be: Help Aroden by taking on the Trial of the Starstone and hauling him along to it, or kill him with their anti-Mythic McGuffin to instantly deny both Tar-Baphon and Nocticula the prize that they are currently destroying central Avistan over.
I'll be excited to see how many of Paizo's ideas overlapped with mine!
Well the last Tar AP was less about Tar, and more Gothic Horror in general. So that itch IMO hasn't been scratched yet.Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd that there's going to be a second AP storyline based around Tar? There's been overlap with countries and locations and even some NPCs before, sure, but this feels to me like if someone took the "continuing the adventure" section from an AP and rescaled it for 1-20.
That's just my thoughts, but since there's sections of map that have at best only been tangentially touched before (Land of the Linnorm Kings, Realm of the Mammoth Lords, Nidal, Galt, most of Garund, Casmaron) I feel like there's more to work with besides bringing back something older.
But will the PCs actually fight him this time? My guess is probably not. He'd wipe the floor with non-mythic PCs. Although maybe he'd be weakened due to recently breaking free, and that might take him down to a more manageable level.
But will the PCs actually fight him this time? My guess is probably not. He'd wipe the floor with non-mythic PCs. Although maybe he'd be weakened due to recently breaking free, and that might take him down to a more manageable level.Well the last Tar AP was less about Tar, and more Gothic Horror in general. So that itch IMO hasn't been scratched yet.Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd that there's going to be a second AP storyline based around Tar? There's been overlap with countries and locations and even some NPCs before, sure, but this feels to me like if someone took the "continuing the adventure" section from an AP and rescaled it for 1-20.
That's just my thoughts, but since there's sections of map that have at best only been tangentially touched before (Land of the Linnorm Kings, Realm of the Mammoth Lords, Nidal, Galt, most of Garund, Casmaron) I feel like there's more to work with besides bringing back something older.
That heavily depends on the specific non-mythic characters.
PCs absolutely should beat down Tar-Baphon, by hook or by crook, mythic and all in this AP.
Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010 Top 8
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RE: The GMPC issue
That would actually make for a pretty righteous finale.
RE: The GMPC issue
** spoiler omitted **
That could work.
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But will the PCs actually fight him this time? My guess is probably not. He'd wipe the floor with non-mythic PCs. Although maybe he'd be weakened due to recently breaking free, and that might take him down to a more manageable level.Well the last Tar AP was less about Tar, and more Gothic Horror in general. So that itch IMO hasn't been scratched yet.Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd that there's going to be a second AP storyline based around Tar? There's been overlap with countries and locations and even some NPCs before, sure, but this feels to me like if someone took the "continuing the adventure" section from an AP and rescaled it for 1-20.
That's just my thoughts, but since there's sections of map that have at best only been tangentially touched before (Land of the Linnorm Kings, Realm of the Mammoth Lords, Nidal, Galt, most of Garund, Casmaron) I feel like there's more to work with besides bringing back something older.
Mechs.
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Mechs.But will the PCs actually fight him this time? My guess is probably not. He'd wipe the floor with non-mythic PCs. Although maybe he'd be weakened due to recently breaking free, and that might take him down to a more manageable level.Well the last Tar AP was less about Tar, and more Gothic Horror in general. So that itch IMO hasn't been scratched yet.Am I the only one who finds it a bit odd that there's going to be a second AP storyline based around Tar? There's been overlap with countries and locations and even some NPCs before, sure, but this feels to me like if someone took the "continuing the adventure" section from an AP and rescaled it for 1-20.
That's just my thoughts, but since there's sections of map that have at best only been tangentially touched before (Land of the Linnorm Kings, Realm of the Mammoth Lords, Nidal, Galt, most of Garund, Casmaron) I feel like there's more to work with besides bringing back something older.
Drop a star of Mad Cats on his head! Stravag undead!
With +5 disruption holy undead bane feet!
Bypassing DR/epic, it's the only way to be sure.
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Well the last Tar AP was less about Tar, and more Gothic Horror in general. So that itch IMO hasn't been scratched yet.
I suppose, but it still feels a bit weird to me, like if the final area of Return of the Runelords is just the reverse castle version of the final area from Rise of the Runelords.
But will the PCs actually fight him this time? My guess is probably not. He'd wipe the floor with non-mythic PCs. Although maybe he'd be weakened due to recently breaking free, and that might take him down to a more manageable level.
Honestly I hope he's optimized like crazy. I know sometimes the final bosses are toned down for players, but there's no reason he can't use every dirty trick and rules loophole in the book. Dazing fireballs, chained timestops to Gate in creatures to fight the party, forced teleport traps that dump the party into a pit of acid in an AMF, hiring a Sensei Monk of the Healing Hand to join the party and at a crucial moments remove a friendly NPC from existence, using disjunction, throwing spheres of annihilation, channeling a mage's magnificent enclosure through eldritch conduit, re-inventing Armor of the Dread Emperor, psychic asylum with fast study to prepare his spell list as a swift action, blood money casting wish with sacred geometry through a possessed body with magic jar, armies of simulacra, fighting through a projected image, and just being as much of a cheating jerk as possible. Leave it up to the GM to tone him down, and give everyone else a nightmare they'll remember.
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Finally, Arcadia! I hope there'll be a part where you can either endure long-winded lectures by syrinx to get a chance to research their closely-guarded secrets, or just give them the bird and march on past their shocked looks of horror.
Also: Aroden went there? Huh, now I want this AP just to read more of that sweet, sweet backstory.
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* TB's phylactery is not on the Isle of Terror.
I looked at that sentence and my immediate reaction was "So, the phylactery is the Isle of Terror?"
Which would be kind of neat.
Now, I don't want start a flame - but when I read about the last adventure of this 24° Pathfinder campaign, why did I had the unpleasant feeling that the group could be reduced in props, and the whole campaign ruined in that moment by "the GM's PC"?
Well it could go different ways.
My group is slowly finishing Epic Sequel to our Enemy Within WHF/W40k campaign.We're like absolute badasses in scale of continent. Demonslayers, dragonslayers, saviors of Empire.
Even though our Epic Mission is to let free powerful NPC (goddess of law Arianka who's also Living Saint of God-Emperor) to fight with 40k scale villain, that can wipe out floor with Sigmar, Ulric and rest of pantheon with one hand, way beyond our reach.
And it's freakin' awesome.
So have some trust my friend.
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* TB's phylactery is not on the Isle of Terror.
I looked at that sentence and my immediate reaction was "So, the phylactery is the Isle of Terror?"
Which would be kind of neat.
Hanson from Zoolander voice: "The soul is in the island!"
My main interrogations are :
* Will it take place after Carrion Crown ?
* At which level will this AP stop ? Since it's the last AP from Pathfinder 1st edition, I hope it will carry over level 20, like Return of the Runelords =D
* I see that characters aren't meant to become Mythic. But will it be allowed anyway without destroying the AP ? I find Mythic really fun.
Might the campaign traits in the Player's Guide be tied to how that PC died?
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Well the last Tar AP was less about Tar, and more Gothic Horror in general. So that itch IMO hasn't been scratched yet.A persistent complaint about that particular AP, really...
...
*Scurries off to make a list of "APs that are perfectly fine but which don't match the expectations"*
well... from the complaints I've seen, they don't stem so much from the fact that it wasn't Tar Baphon who was the big bad... it was that the "big bad" is so poorly placed in the AP that he kinda pops in out of nowhere in Book 6. In fact, paizo seemed to have recognized this and put in the preface tips on how a DM could better put in the big bad earlier in the campaign.
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Well, Kingmaker's BBEG also does pop pretty much out of nowhere, but it's still an excellent AP.
it's a problem in many of the earlier APs. I think Paizo has recognized this issue and made efforts to tie the opening of book 1 (as regards to BBEG) to the conclusion of book 6 since at least Hell's Rebels (arguments can be made for Iron Gods and Giantslayer as well).
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Creative Director
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Well, Kingmaker's BBEG also does pop pretty much out of nowhere, but it's still an excellent AP.it's a problem in many of the earlier APs. I think Paizo has recognized this issue and made efforts to tie the opening of book 1 (as regards to BBEG) to the conclusion of book 6 since at least Hell's Rebels (arguments can be made for Iron Gods and Giantslayer as well).
As the person who built Kingmaker, the reason we took this approach was that at the time, customers were pretty vocal in asking for a sandbox game that didn't "spoil" the villain at the start. There are several places where she can be foreshadowed throughout the adventure path, but the point isn't to build up anticipation for her as much as it is to let the players chart their own course. If a GM knows their group, then he will know if they prefer to have more structure, and there are plenty of clues in the adventures that can be used for this purpose.
It's not that we've "recognized the issue" as much as we're continuing to adapt to customer feedback and requests, which change constantly. These forums are an EXCELLENT tool for us to do just this, and your feedback and comments and suggestions are very important. But it's also good to keep history in context and not rewrite things. ;-P
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Well, Kingmaker's BBEG also does pop pretty much out of nowhere, but it's still an excellent AP.it's a problem in many of the earlier APs. I think Paizo has recognized this issue and made efforts to tie the opening of book 1 (as regards to BBEG) to the conclusion of book 6 since at least Hell's Rebels (arguments can be made for Iron Gods and Giantslayer as well).As the person who built Kingmaker, the reason we took this approach was that at the time, customers were pretty vocal in asking for a sandbox game that didn't "spoil" the villain at the start. There are several places where she can be foreshadowed throughout the adventure path, but the point isn't to build up anticipation for her as much as it is to let the players chart their own course. If a GM knows their group, then he will know if they prefer to have more structure, and there are plenty of clues in the adventures that can be used for this purpose.
It's not that we've "recognized the issue" as much as we're continuing to adapt to customer feedback and requests, which change constantly. These forums are an EXCELLENT tool for us to do just this, and your feedback and comments and suggestions are very important. But it's also good to keep history in context and not rewrite things. ;-P
well... the "villain" in Kingmaker is the process of building a viable Kingdom. That's actually pretty clear from the start. There's something in there with a lot of hit points at the end (haven't read it, so I'll assume that's the case), but that's not the story arc of the AP (as I understand it).
On another end, there's Hell's Rebels, which opens with a mob scene where a preening psychopath is standing on an opera balcony banning the consumption of garlic (or something like that) which gets everyone angry at him. And there's basically a direct line from there to the thrilling conclusion.
On the other hand, you have... let's say, Mummy's Mask, which is a fine AP on the whole. You start out as glorified tomb raiders, and spend the first two books kinda digging around a necropolis before getting caught up in something pretty major which then dominates the next four books... and has little to do with any of the circumstances that started the fist book, but which transforms the PCs from being grave robbers to becoming actual heroes.
There's lots of ways to do tell a story. But, imho, and you are the professional, these APs work better when the villain is brought into the story early, rather than leaping fully armored from the head of zeus as a stat block at the tippy top of the evil tower in book 6.
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Creative Director
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There's lots of ways to do tell a story. But, imho, and you are the professional, these APs work better when the villain is brought into the story early, rather than leaping fully armored from the head of zeus as a stat block at the tippy top of the evil tower in book 6.
There are indeed lots of ways to tell a story, and over the course of doing dozens of Adventure Paths, telling those stories in different ways is not only valuable... it's a requirement. Otherwise they'd all be the same.
But regardless, all published adventures benefit (in theory, assuming the GM is good at his or her job as GM) from a GM adapting them to match and appeal to their table's preferences. That's an adaptation we can not do for you, and so we do the next best thing—we do things different all the time so that, over the course of a few dozen products, hopefully one of them hits right and helps you with advice and examples on how to adjust the others to your preference.
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It's tough, being a writer.
But yeah, I liked how in, for example, Serpent's Skull, the Main Villain was pointed out really early on, and most of the adventure involves finding out where that villain is, getting there, and hampering the Evil Plan;
For Council of Thieves, part of the adventure relates to finding out just who the Main Villain is, while multiple antagonists vie for the title.
Really, each AP is a sort of refreshing change of pace after the last, more or less. As for this one, I'm hopeful for how it turns out, then to see what new ancient bad guys are unearthed.
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Creative Director
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It's tough, being a writer.
But yeah, I liked how in, for example, Serpent's Skull, the Main Villain was pointed out really early on, and most of the adventure involves finding out where that villain is, getting there, and hampering the Evil Plan;
For Council of Thieves, part of the adventure relates to finding out just who the Main Villain is, while multiple antagonists vie for the title.
Really, each AP is a sort of refreshing change of pace after the last, more or less. As for this one, I'm hopeful for how it turns out, then to see what new ancient bad guys are unearthed.
It's true, but it's even tougher in many ways being an adventure designer. Since from the player's viewpoint, the good parts are things your GM added or improved and the bad parts are mistakes the author put into the adventure. Or at least, that's kinda the vibe I get from most adventure reviews.
So... more so then ever, thank you for the kind words!
So far, this seems to have a Reign of Winter vibe to me. Lots of really weird stuff all mixed together to somehow work.
Also, there are adventures available for purchase that involve the PCs waking up dead. One of which is an Asian-inspired idea involving reincarnation.