Pathfinder 1st Edition Adventure Paths & Subgames

[Tallow]

Does anyone have a handy list of Adventure Paths that DO NOT have any of the sub games? (e.g. Kingmaker Kingdom Building and Mass Combat, Ironfang Invasion Militia, etc.) I am in a group where one of the members will be taking over as GM and we'd like to play and Adventure Path, but we don't want to bog him down with any of the subgames. We just want an adventure.

I know that most of these have sidebars for what to do if the players don't want to play the subgames, but any adventures where that extra work isn't necessary would be best.

Thanks for anyone who responds.

[Billy Buckman]

Pretty sure all of the APs have sub-systems in some capacity. For the most part though, you can hand-wave them out without losing much from the story. Your mileage may vary though.

For example: Curse of the Crimson Throne has a very auxiliary subsystem in the Harrow reading for each book that could be ignored completely, but you'd lose some of that fun occult flavor, and some clutch bonuses depending on your luck.

Currently GMing Ironfang Invasion. This one came with the Militia rules system (just an adapted form of the rebellion/kingdom building/downtime system from earlier publications) that is completely unnecessary to the story, but I have found it a good way to supplement the worldbuilding and fill out background NPCs, which might otherwise be these passive mouths to feed that get an offhand mention between missions. Now, instead of a passive Survival/Geography check by the party to discover new locations, the Militia can use it's Gather Information action to provide a grounded narrative reason to learn of new adventuring locations. In this adventure, the party and their followers are isolated in the wilderness for a long time, and the militia gives you an excuse as GM to insert some world building so the party can have some idea what's going on in the wider world that they're isolated from while keeping the agency with the players (they are rolling dice and making decisions as the militia leaders).

In an AP like Skull and Shackles though, it seems a lot harder to divorce the written adventure from the fleet/crew management and ship-to-ship combat sub-systems.

Basically, my feeling is it's always a good idea to give these subsystems a try, but no need to rigidly follow the rules as they are laid out if it's dragging down the game. You get as much out of them as you want to. You can take the spirit of a sub-system without getting bogged down in the rules. And really, a lot of these sub-systems are for groups and GMs that have decent system mastery and want more toys to play with. Most of the time, you can usually keep the intention or spirit of the sub-systems without rigidly following them as written (and admittedly, sometimes the rules are pretty obtuse).

[Davor Firetusk]

Strange Aeons, Rise of the Runelords, Shattered Star, and Return of the Runelords do not have any sub games at all. I do think there are others I'm just not 100% sure. In my partial exposure's I don't recall any for Iron Gods, Hell's Vengeance, or Giantslayer either

[Phntm888]

Second for Rise of the Runelords and Shattered Star. Rise hits a lot of classic RPG flavors, and Shattered Star is basically a series of dungeon crawls.

Return of the Runelords strikes a balance between the two, but one of the books does have a couple small subgames (The Festival in Korvosa in Book 3). Still, that's just for one part of one book, as opposed to Kingmaker's Kingdom Building or Skull and Shackles's ship management/crew.

[Hythlodeus]

Rise, tbf, had the whole "tracking Sin Points" going on which was not a subgame itself, but like the caravan ruules in JR just a little bit of extra rules for the GM to look at.

And, to be honest, I naver tracked them. When the time came for the payoff, I knew the player's characters well enough to have the dungeons work appropriatley

[Phntm888]

True. I started tracking Sin Points, then got off-track with it and just based it on what I knew of my characters at the time (like the player who was always going on about "Wealth By Level" got Greed, the one who was seduced by Shayliss Vinder got Lust, etc).

[masda_gib]

Reign of Winter also has no subgames or extra rules (apart from rules for advanced firearms later on, but they are optional if your PCs don't use those weapons).

[Tallow]

thanks all for the thoughtful suggestions. I don't think I'm worried as much about the tiny mechanics like the harrow readings or tracking sin points. More the large games like Skulls and Shackles, Kingmaker and Ironfang Invasion.

I think Return of the Runelords might be what we go with. Does anyone know if Rise should be familiar to the players first, or will Return play well all on its own?

[Davor Firetusk]

Return is written to mostly stand alone, but the later part has more meaning if they had a character that played through either Rise of Shattered Star as the AP directly refers to those characters as a central plot point. It works to run those characters as normal NPCs, but it is definitely a chance to revisit some favorite old characters.