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Yes. The one thing I DON'T want is for the war to kick off and end in the same adventure. Things must change, but a war should take 3+ years to resolve. And Paizo can get feedback from the community before deciding where to go to resolve the war. I feel strongly that Geb is the more interesting faction to ally with, because I want to fight the horrors and mages of Nex more than more undead again.
Let the good vs. evil fight against undead campaign be against Tar-Baphon. And in Geb we can be the group of adventurers that joins undead.
Useful to remember that some undeads are against Tar-Baphon's plans, especially those who feed on the living, and this is quite divisive in Geb, just not brutally... yet.
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I could see a Geb vs Nex war AP, but one where the war happens in the background and the PCs try to minimize damage to all countries involved.
It could even be a high-level AP with Blood Lords and Arclords (and other luminaries from concerned countries) working side by side to ensure there are even Impossible Lands left after Geb and Nex go all out at each other.
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Or even PC build themes. We've done 3 of these so far—the "dwarf" and "orc" and "elf" themed campaigns. Would people be interested in us exploring that in other areas, but instead of focusing on ancestry themes, doing it with religions, or organizations, or even classes?I think a Thieves Guild AP could be a lot of fun. All of the PCs start off as a member of the guild, and as they advance they deal with rival guilds, internal guild politics, burglary victims out for revenge, and (of course) the city guard. Eventually, the campaign could even shift into a more traditional "save the city from some villainous catastrophe" thing, but the twist would be that the PCs are uniquely placed to combat the threat because of the guild resources that they have, and the motivation of what it might mean for the guild (or even just them), when they become the heroes.
Traditionally, I could see tying this into a "halfling" themed campaign; I don't know if this appropriate for Golarion halflings, however.
You don't even need the PCs to be good people.
As long as the local government is inefficient, anyone who can provide vital help, especially AFTER the catastrophe has struck, will be hailed as a savior.
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For the next aquatic/sea-based campaign, what about Wanshou?
A campaign where you undermine the Kraken Lord, and build make way for a new successor state?
What I like about Wanshou as a setting is that it set up aquatic aberrations as a major enemy that, while possibly related to Lovecraft, would more likely relate to Asian mythology and pop culture on tentacled monstrosities from the deep.
The only problem ofc is that the setting lends itself to horror, and they just did a horror themed AP last time they visited Tian Xia.
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I could see a Geb vs Nex war AP, but one where the war happens in the background and the PCs try to minimize damage to all countries involved.
It could even be a high-level AP with Blood Lords and Arclords (and other luminaries from concerned countries) working side by side to ensure there are even Impossible Lands left after Geb and Nex go all out at each other.
That fits with what I posted earlier about trying to keep your own side from doing something truly horrific, but also try to keep it from collapsing.
For the next aquatic/sea-based campaign, what about Wanshou?
A campaign where you undermine the Kraken Lord, and build make way for a new successor state?
What I like about Wanshou as a setting is that it set up aquatic aberrations as a major enemy that, while possibly related to Lovecraft, would more likely relate to Asian mythology and pop culture on tentacled monstrosities from the deep.
The only problem ofc is that the setting lends itself to horror, and they just did a horror themed AP last time they visited Tian Xia.
It could be partly diplomatic as well as horror. What if you had to deal with some of the Krakens in order to defeat the big one? Then it would be:
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Perfect joke.
Paizo, please make an 12-book AP based on this joke. Thank you.
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Has Paizo updated Underwater adventures or rules to 2e?
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I think I unintentionally killed this post with a question about an update on crunch. Any new or interesting wants in terms of AP themes or ideas?
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Now that we have Howl of the Wild's Ancestries and some Mythic options, it does feel like the stage is somewhat set for the story of a new set of hero-gods arising in Iblydos - I'd really enjoy that.
We've had a martial arts tournament and a horror story in Tian Xia, but that leaves plenty of genre spaces untouched; the standout for me is still the pretty gritty military/political tensions in Songbai, but I'd also love to play around in those spaceship ruins Valash Raj enjoys.
The top of my wish list remains "literally anything with Arcadian protagonists" and "an Iron Gods sequel where the Dominion of the Black invades Numeria, where disparate factions have to pull together to protect their bizarre homeland."
I mean we did just learn in paizo live that third ap in 2025 is Mythkeepers set in iblydos. Hint is that its the mythic calling ap while ap afterwards will be mythic destiny one.
(casmaron book, casmaron book!)
I didn't watch the latest Live, that's *wonderful* news! I really hope we can meet Iapholi in it.
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Iblydos!! Yaaay! Pathfinder Greece gets some love!
I like that it’s low level as another potential avenue for those who want a classical game and start from first level. My newbie group was surprised at how many 2e starter paths had horror/other grimdark and gritty themes. A sword and sandal setting is also nice in that it’s familiar enough to my family as alternative introd should they wish it.
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I want an Iblydos AP, and I want a proper film noir detective genre AP.
This has been at the top of my wishlist since I got into Pathfinder 4 years ago, so hype!!!
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Iblydos sounds good for mythic, too. (still hoping for an element/genie mythic destiny at some point; maybe the second mythic AP that starts at 11th?)
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ANDORAN VS CHELIAX WAR AP IS HAPPENING!
"This war's most important lesson for the policy of the proletariat is the unassailable fact that it cannot parrot the slogan 'Victory or Defeat,' not in Cheliax or in Andoran, not in Isger or in Ravounel. Only from the standpoint of imperialism does this slogan have any real content. For every Great Power it is identical to the question of gain or loss of political standing, of annexations, colonies, and military predominance. From the standpoint of class for the Inner Sea proletariat as a whole the victory and defeat of any of the warring camps is equally disastrous."
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ANDORAN VS CHELIAX WAR AP IS HAPPENING!
"Battlecry! will tell the story of the wide-ranging conflict known to inhabitants of the world of Golarion as The Inner Sea War. The inspiration comes from World War I — complete with a similar inciting event, specifically the assassination of a foreign dignitary."
Gonna say... we already kinda got this w/ one recent AP and some of us were not overly thrilled with the output.
ANDORAN VS CHELIAX WAR AP IS HAPPENING!"Battlecry! will tell the story of the wide-ranging conflict known to inhabitants of the world of Golarion as The Inner Sea War. The inspiration comes from World War I — complete with a similar inciting event, specifically the assassination of a foreign dignitary."
Gonna say... we already kinda got this w/ one recent AP and some of us were not overly thrilled with the output.
Which AP do you mean?
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Which AP do you mean?ANDORAN VS CHELIAX WAR AP IS HAPPENING!"Battlecry! will tell the story of the wide-ranging conflict known to inhabitants of the world of Golarion as The Inner Sea War. The inspiration comes from World War I — complete with a similar inciting event, specifically the assassination of a foreign dignitary."
Gonna say... we already kinda got this w/ one recent AP and some of us were not overly thrilled with the output.
Probably Wardens of Wildwood. It is less than a year old, is ranked 42nd out of 44 APs by the hoi polloi who bothered to vote on the question, and opens with a terroristic assassination of assembled dignitaries.
That said, anyone whose takeaway from World War I is limited to its inciting incident (and who makes that inciting incident the assassination of Franz and Sophie rather than the German blank check to Austria and the subsequent Austrian ultimatum to Serbia!) is Doing It Wrong. The exemplar for this AP shouldn't even be World War I, nobody has the military-industrial complex to do total war or the massed fires to do the trench stalemate -- and almost nobody has mass politics or an industrial proletariat liable to conscription either (as opposed to big agrarian populations liable to levy, which is different, even en masse). The exemplar here really ought to be the Thirty Years War, the Wars of the Spanish or Austrian Successions, the Seven Years' War, or at the outside limit the Napoleonic Wars.
I am curious about the timeline. Hellbreakers starts at level 1, and probably only goes to level 10 over the course of three months of publishing. This seems quite short for a war AP -- even a level 1 to 20 six-month AP is highly abbreviated, and resembles more the highly optimistic projections of World War I's planners than the protracted struggle that actually materialized over four years (still less the decade(s)-long timelines implied by actual early modern general wars). Will there be significant time-skips, within or between books, or both?
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Which AP do you mean?ANDORAN VS CHELIAX WAR AP IS HAPPENING!"Battlecry! will tell the story of the wide-ranging conflict known to inhabitants of the world of Golarion as The Inner Sea War. The inspiration comes from World War I — complete with a similar inciting event, specifically the assassination of a foreign dignitary."
Gonna say... we already kinda got this w/ one recent AP and some of us were not overly thrilled with the output.
Probably Wardens of Wildwood. It is less than a year old, is ranked 42nd out of 44 APs by the hoi polloi who bothered to vote on the question, and opens with a terroristic assassination of assembled dignitaries.
That said, anyone whose takeaway from World War I is limited to its inciting incident (and who makes that inciting incident the assassination of Franz and Sophie rather than the German blank check to Austria and the subsequent Austrian ultimatum to Serbia!) is Doing It Wrong. The exemplar for this AP shouldn't even be World War I, nobody has the military-industrial complex to do total war or the massed fires to do the trench stalemate -- and almost nobody has mass politics or an industrial proletariat liable to conscription either (as opposed to big agrarian populations liable to levy, which is different, even en masse). The exemplar here really ought to be the Thirty Years War, the Wars of the Spanish or Austrian Successions, the Seven Years' War, or at the outside limit the Napoleonic Wars.
I am curious about the timeline. Hellbreakers (sic.) starts at level 1, and probably only goes to level 10 over the course of three months of publishing. This seems quite short for a war AP -- even a level 1 to 20 six-month AP is highly...
Wardens is the AP I was referencing.
As for Hellbreakers, it might just be that the PCs are involved in one aspect of the war... say... the Conquest of Westcrown [just making something up]. You can tie up one story w/o wrapping up the whole conflict.
It seems to me that Paizo wants to play around w/ the metaplot in this bold new post-Gorum era, and I for one am very excited for it.
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As for Hellbreakers, it might just be that the PCs are involved in one aspect of the war... say... the Conquest of Westcrown [just making something up]. You can tie up one story w/o wrapping up the whole conflict.
If we're prognosticating, Andoran's opening gambit more likely has to do with conquering [large parts of] Sirmium than anything to do with Longmarch beyond coastal raiding. There are Eagle Knights and Firebrands operating clandestinely in Ostenso, and that city is more easily reached both overland from the Arthfell-Sirmium frontier and by sea from Augustana than Westcrown.
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As for Hellbreakers, it might just be that the PCs are involved in one aspect of the war... say... the Conquest of Westcrown [just making something up]. You can tie up one story w/o wrapping up the whole conflict.If we're prognosticating, Andoran's opening gambit more likely has to do with conquering [large parts of] Sirmium than anything to do with Longmarch beyond coastal raiding. There are Eagle Knights and Firebrands operating clandestinely in Ostenso, and that city is more easily reached both overland from the Arthfell-Sirmium frontier and by sea from Augustana than Westcrown.
That's what they want you to think.
Clearly the PCs are part of the infiltration and sudden offensive to seize Westcrown, depriving Cheliax of its largest city and access to its most important port.
[the sequel AP FREEDOMSMASHERS begins in the Shackles, as Cheliax's agents [the PCs] raise a fleet of mercenary pirates to strike back against Andoran after forcing the straits of Aroden and contesting the Inner Sea.]
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Honestly, IMO war works better as a meta-plot than as the focus of an AP (even a "full" six issue one). For instance, Ironfang Invasion was probably the most war-focused Pathfinder AP (as a whole, other APs had bits with individual battles); even it did a bunch of off-screen narrative handling of the conflict where the PCs' small unit actions could influence the struggle.
It's mainly a matter of scale and time. War deals with large numbers over wide areas and takes more time than can be portrayed in a handful of adventures.
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Honestly, IMO war works better as a meta-plot than as the focus of an AP (even a "full" six issue one). For instance, Ironfang Invasion was probably the most war-focused Pathfinder AP (as a whole, other APs had bits with individual battles); even it did a bunch of off-screen narrative handling of the conflict where the PCs' small unit actions could influence the struggle.
On the other hand, we have a protracted struggle metaplot with Molthune-Nirmathas (complete with mention of a renewed Molthuni offensive in the context of Spore War), and it's mostly just boring.
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Honestly, IMO war works better as a meta-plot than as the focus of an AP (even a "full" six issue one). For instance, Ironfang Invasion was probably the most war-focused Pathfinder AP (as a whole, other APs had bits with individual battles); even it did a bunch of off-screen narrative handling of the conflict where the PCs' small unit actions could influence the struggle.On the other hand, we have a protracted struggle metaplot with Molthune-Nirmathas (complete with mention of a renewed Molthuni offensive in the context of Spore War), and it's mostly just boring.
Well, war is "months of boredom punctuated by moments of terror." (Julian Grenfell)
Given that the AP is (presumably) 1-10 and is called "Hellbreakers", I assume it is going to have something to do with the Hellbreaker's League in Isger that was mentioned on page 92 in War of Immortals.
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Given that the AP is (presumably) 1-10 and is called "Hellbreakers", I assume it is going to have something to do with the Hellbreaker's League in Isger that was mentioned on page 92 in War of Immortals.
*Somewhere behind the scenes in Paizo* "Dangit, they weren't supposed to figure that out yet!"
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Honestly, IMO war works better as a meta-plot than as the focus of an AP (even a "full" six issue one). For instance, Ironfang Invasion was probably the most war-focused Pathfinder AP (as a whole, other APs had bits with individual battles); even it did a bunch of off-screen narrative handling of the conflict where the PCs' small unit actions could influence the struggle.
It's mainly a matter of scale and time. War deals with large numbers over wide areas and takes more time than can be portrayed in a handful of adventures.
I ran Ironfang Invasion converted to PF2 rules and extended to 20th level. A 20th-level PC is as powerful as 2^(19/2) = 724 1st-level soldiers. To handle this at intermediate levels, such as 10th-level in Assault on Longshadow, I had created 5th-level large Hobgoblin Troop units that mimicked four 1st-level Hobgoblin soldiers working together, and 9th-level gargantuan Hobgoblin Formation units that mimicked four 5th-level Hobgoblin Troops working together. Fortunately, I got to skip the colossal-size units due to the next two modules stepping away from fighting hobgoblins, but for Vault of the Onyx Citadel I created 16th-level gargantuan Veteran Formation troops whose unseen individual soldiers were 6th level.
My maps in Roll20 got so wide that one player had trouble running them on her tablet, so I had to split maps of towns into 250-foot (50 squares) wide pieces.
And the party, whom the Ironfang Legion nicknamed the Chernasardo Elite, killed an army of 320 soldiers.
Real-world armies are thousands and tens of thousands rather than hundreds, but fantasy nations, both in literature and in games, tend to have tiny populations. I calculated that the entire Ironfang Legion could have at most ten thousand individuals.
Pathfinder 2nd Edition rules are very flexible.
Nevertheless, having the war in the background could lead to more fun in roleplaying than focusing on fighting the war itself.
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Real-world armies are thousands and tens of thousands rather than hundreds, but fantasy nations, both in literature and in games, tend to have tiny populations. I calculated that the entire Ironfang Legion could have at most ten thousand individuals.
Actually, real world armies in the Middle Ages tend to be a lot smaller then most people realize. 500-1,000 men would have been considered a large force.
Larger set piece battles did occur (The Siege of Antioch (1097 C.E.) had a Crusader force of 40,000 men!), but they were quite rare, and usually ruinous for both sides.
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Real-world armies are thousands and tens of thousands rather than hundreds, but fantasy nations, both in literature and in games, tend to have tiny populations. I calculated that the entire Ironfang Legion could have at most ten thousand individuals.Actually, real world armies in the Middle Ages tend to be a lot smaller then most people realize. 500-1,000 men would have been considered a large force.
Larger set piece battles did occur (The Siege of Antioch (1097 C.E.) had a Crusader force of 40,000 men!), but they were quite rare, and usually ruinous for both sides.
Not to mention most action was not the big pitched battles but skirmishes and raids.
Moreover narratively even in battles with thousands of forces on both sides, you don't need to focus on what all the actors are doing, you focus on your PCs. Are they part of the cavalry who are going to charge the enemy or pull the enemy cavalry away to avoid that happening to their side? are they in the front line holding the line so that the enemy can't get to the mages and healers? Are they commanders doing the inspiring speech and giving orders? Are they the bannermen holding their sides banners so that morale remains even in the toughest moments? That is far more important to how battles in games like pathfinder goes.
Real-world armies are thousands and tens of thousands rather than hundreds, but fantasy nations, both in literature and in games, tend to have tiny populations. I calculated that the entire Ironfang Legion could have at most ten thousand individuals.Actually, real world armies in the Middle Ages tend to be a lot smaller then most people realize. 500-1,000 men would have been considered a large force.
Larger set piece battles did occur (The Siege of Antioch (1097 C.E.) had a Crusader force of 40,000 men!), but they were quite rare, and usually ruinous for both sides.
Not to mention most action was not the big pitched battles but skirmishes and raids.
Moreover narratively even in battles with thousands of forces on both sides, you don't need to focus on what all the actors are doing, you focus on your PCs. Are they part of the cavalry who are going to charge the enemy or pull the enemy cavalry away to avoid that happening to their side? are they in the front line holding the line so that the enemy can't get to the mages and healers? Are they commanders doing the inspiring speech and giving orders? Are they the bannermen holding their sides banners so that morale remains even in the toughest moments? That is far more important to how battles in games like pathfinder goes.
Might still need a way to tell how each forces are doing, as it can help or hinder the PCs in a similar way that the PCs' actions can help or hinder their forces.
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ANDORAN VS CHELIAX WAR AP IS HAPPENING!
. . . Can't they come up with a more catchy name than "planar silk creatures"?
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. . . Can't they come up with a more catchy name than "planar silk creatures"?
I have the sneaking suspicion we'll get a proper Jotun species name once the book actually drops. Calling a new fantasy creature by a made-up name in a press release months before the book drops sounds like a great way to confuse people.
Anyway, I'm loving how weird and biologically grounded the Jotunblood look - I know it makes them very different from giants, but these days proper giants are like half-elemental, rather than being flesh-and-blood creatures. The improvised armour is also very cool, and I'd love to hear more details about their native plane - are the Jotunblood from an Outer or Inner Plane, or are they from a parallel universe entirely?
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but with less dungeon-crawling.
That.
That's what I want.
I'm running Abomination Vaults right now and I've come to despise it. I've been super close to cancelling my campaign multiple times and the ONLY thing keeping me going is that when I was a player in it I had 3 GMs give up and cancel it on us. A 4th I left for schedule reasons and in following their discord - they abandoned it also.
Because dungeon crawls just get in the way of roleplay.
Monster in room 1, then 2, then 3 ... repeat to N.
No matter how much logic you put into that, players can and will just roll through and slaughter things. It hyper trains them to think they're entitled to bust down the door of people's homes and kill everyone inside.
- That's been a theme everytime, and in running it I've come to realize that half the early battles we were in, we were technically the bad guys.
The door was there, the treasure was there, the thing inside looked like a monster or couldn't explain itself fast enough, or somebody heard a rumor from 30 years ago, or I got tongue tied, or it was unclear in defending it's right to exist, so the PCs killed it (which just reads back extremely badly in light of things that happen all too often in the modern world).
As a GM I can see plot and story here and there - and if the PCs go from 1 to 2 to 3 they get the plot. But if they go from 3 to 1 to 4 to 2 they don't.
I'm just so over dungeon crawls because every excuse to make them make sense is way too thin and can be skipped through no fault of anyone leading to just a 'murder-hobo slog'.
I want stories with plots, and locations that unfold as the story does. I want tools to bake in why a villain is the villain, or NPCs players will encounter that they don't have 'baked in logic' to presume 'this guy is in room F23a, so we kill him.'
AV has plot and story, but it's all 'on the side' and players nature can steamroll right past it. And it's just so insanely long that it gets tiring trying over and over again to get the story back in there rather than 'there's a door, bust it down'.
So...
NO MORE DUNGEON CRAWLS.
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That said, anyone whose takeaway from World War I is limited to its inciting incident (and who makes that inciting incident the assassination of Franz and Sophie rather than the German blank check to Austria and the subsequent Austrian ultimatum to Serbia!) is Doing It Wrong.
This is the problem with history. The 'inciting incident' of WWI could easily be said to the last King of France convening the 3 estates to discuss tax reform.
You can trace things back continuously without even making many logic gaps or time leaps. Most directly though - there's a period right before German unification where a post Napoleonic France tries to recapture the glory days by slaughtering millions in the German countryside. Itself a revenge for things done to them that were a revenge for things they did to others that were... etc.
The first break in the chain seems to be the failed royal treasury of France. But that probably also has causes beyond the simple.
The problem tRPGs often have is a short-line form of history where events happen in isolation. Or a super long history where people take action based on something thousands of years ago.
I love Golarian but... it has both problems.
Imagine the real world if we were still fighting grudge matches today over ancient Babylonian succession disputes, yet also couldn't draw a line even as direct as between 9/11 and Afghanistan.
Creative Director
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NO MORE DUNGEON CRAWLS.
I get it. Some folks don't like dungeon crawls. But they're one of the most popular modes of play, like it or not, so we WILL be continuing to create dungeon crawl adventures now and then. Not Every Time, and in fact, of the 19 2nd edition Adventure Paths we've published, I'd say only 3 of those are dungeon crawls (one of which isn't even out yet—Shades of Blood).
In the last 12 months, we've published, in the Adventure Path line, four different story-rich options for you to explore. I expect, at the most, we'll be doing no more than 1 dungeon crawl Adventure Path a year, and sometimes less. But also, we'll be adjusting them a bit here and there. "Seven Dooms for Sandpoint" for example is a less "always on" dungeon crawl with a stronger story than Abomination Vaults... but probably still too dungeony for your tastes, so I'd suggest looking at something like Curtain Call or Triumph of the Tusk instead?
In any event, a part of why we do 4 Adventure Paths a year (plus additional standalones) is so we CAN get variety in there. Not every adventure will appeal to every person, but we do want to try to appeal to as many as possible in a year, and at this point, dungeon crawls are a very efficient way to do so.
Still, we on the Narrative team also enjoy variety, so absent any feedback at all from anyone else we'd be varying things up anyway.
That said, we do try to be up front and obvious about our content, and the players guides for Adventure Paths will remain free PDFs that will help you get a preview for the content. So... just investigate before you purchase, and you can avoid buying dungeon crawls.
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Dungeon crawlers are cool!
I would love to see an AP that sees a single town or building develop over time. Maybe bringing back those development rules from Ultimate Campaign in a revised, refined form. I'm a fan of having a base of operations, and building it being an integral part of the story is very attractive to me. I am, however, totally not a fan of "kingdom building" as seen in Kingmaker.
Apart from that, I'm always up to face against post-colonial and neocolonial powers.
That said, anyone whose takeaway from World War I is limited to its inciting incident (and who makes that inciting incident the assassination of Franz and Sophie rather than the German blank check to Austria and the subsequent Austrian ultimatum to Serbia!) is Doing It Wrong.This is the problem with history. The 'inciting incident' of WWI could easily be said to the last King of France convening the 3 estates to discuss tax reform.
*snip*
Can be useful to make distinctions between events that add fuel/powder-kegs and events that spark conflicts, and of those, which kind/scale of conflicts, like Civil War vs ("normal") War vs World War, escalation can also happen, and some sparks lit slow burning fuses.
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Dungeon crawlers are cool!
I would love to see an AP that sees a single town or building develop over time. Maybe bringing back those development rules from Ultimate Campaign in a revised, refined form. I'm a fan of having a base of operations, and building it being an integral part of the story is very attractive to me. I am, however, totally not a fan of "kingdom building" as seen in Kingmaker.
Apart from that, I'm always up to face against post-colonial and neocolonial powers.
I'm with you on the single town kind of adventures. One of my favorite adventures back in the dark ages was Gamemastery W1, Conquest of Bloodsworn Vale. Part of it, I'm sure, is nostalgia. That adventure was the start of a wonderful campaign I was in, but the thing I most enjoyed was the play after the module ended.
Our GM played it that we were given a kind of split control of the vale, with the local lord that was there at the beginning (I forget his name, it's been 10 years since I played in that group) managing civilian affairs while we managed military defense. We got a monthly stipend from merchants traveling through, set up patrols of hirelings with a series of watchtowers we built, and commanded the armies of the vale when a marauding horde of hobgoblins invaded from the mountains to the north. We built a keep to defend against them using the rules from Stronghold Builder's Guidebook of the 3.5 era, and spent a lot of downtime there training, crafting and roleplaying.
We were also local celebrities. We participated in archery tournaments with notables of the area, hosted parties to influence the local landowners, and dealt with the fallout of the miller's son falling in love with the pond nymph who lived in the millpond, though I think he might have stolen that last bit from another adventure. Kingmaker scratched a lot of the same itch for me, but it was too...grand a scale for what I remembered. We spent too much time worrying about the Kingdom as a whole to worry about a tiny corner of it like we did with the Bloodsworn Vale. In a smaller setting like that we were able to name the guardsmen we had working with us, or sit and smoke a pipe with our librarian some cold winter night.
I'd love to see an adventure path like that, maybe spread over several years of in-game time. Something where you can just exist in the world and make it yours. Not sure how feasible it would be to write it all out, I'm sure a lot of it was strictly ad-libbed, but it would be fun to see it.
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I strongly disagree with the concept that you can't get RP in dungeon crawls, especially in AV.
AV has so many opportunities for RP. Not just in Otari, which is loaded with them, but in the dungeon itself!
On nearly every, and maybe every, level you have chances to open dialog with the residents. You have lots of opportunities to shape the way that the group approaches the story of AV.
Can the GM fail to present the story well? Sure. I've had that happen to me in the past, where I have failed to present the story of an adventure well.
Can the players fail to engage the story, or become overall aggressive and try to clear it like a commando team? Sure, and maybe they want that. Maybe they do not want a deep story and just want to kill monsters. There's nothing wrong with that.
But to make the claim that 'There are no chances to RP in AV' is just incorrect. There are so many hooks, and so many chances to make more, that every group could find its own RP niches and focus points without that much work.
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. . . Especially if the dungeon crawl is big enough and varied enough that you need to deal with story elements there as well. A specific example would be the (almost) first part of the first chapter of Wrath of the Righteous, where
Of course, that was just one little piece of an AP, so on a far smaller than what you would want with a whole dungeon crawl AP or even a whole dungeon crawl chapter.
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After having misread a description of Gatewalkers as an escort quest AP, I now demand an escort AP. With the long-awaited attending LO book : Dancing Halls of Golarion.
(The below is written with tongue firmly in cheek.)
Could you fit a full AP out of that? Maybe you need to do a book of pub crawls first. Cayden Cailean would approve! Then you can do the Escort Book, then a Golem (the card game) book. I could certainly see my players having a good time.
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After having misread a description of Gatewalkers as an escort quest AP, I now demand an escort AP. With the long-awaited attending LO book : Dancing Halls of Golarion.(The below is written with tongue firmly in cheek.)
Could you fit a full AP out of that? Maybe you need to do a book of pub crawls first. Cayden Cailean would approve! Then you can do the Escort Book, then a Golem (the card game) book. I could certainly see my players having a good time.
(continuing in the same vein)
Instead of the third adventure being just about one card game, revisit an idea from the Second Darkness AP and have the PCs help out with/take over an entire gambling establishment. The pub crawls and "escort" parts would introduce NPCs that the PCs can hire in the gambling establishment part; modern casinos serve drinks and have shows/entertainment (not all of which have to be family friendly).
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Lost Omens: Rival Academies makes me wish we were doing a Sarkoris Reclaimers storyline.