So due to decisions my party took, they're going to skip two whole books of the AP.
They didn't rescue any of the townsfolk and left the bridge intact.
After asking about nearby settlements they could run to, they learned about Longshadow and decided to book it there, ignoring the fangwood entirely.
Has this happened in your own rendition of the AP? What did you decide to do in regards to everything that was skipped?
wow - just wow.
In our session 0 we agreed to follow the Adventure Path. Without that then it can seriously derail things if the players decided to go in a totally different direction. If there was unanimous decision to go elsewhere then the Adventure Path is essentially abandoned and the campaign is going in a different direction.
If it's not too late then get some in-principle agreement with the players to get back on track and have them encounter patrols that run them down and they need to escape into the Fangwood or be killed / enslaved. They shouldn't be able to get to Longshadow at their level without getting crunched, especially as they left the bridge intact.
It is possible to recover, but you miss a lot of the flavour of rescuing Nirmathas. Have them find some more survivors in the forest, along with Aubrin and a few of the named townsfolk. Have Oreld Vane be one of the survivors and have him with some explosive alchemical items that can be used to drop the bridge in a guerilla-style encounter.
By going straight to Longshadow you will have skipped more than 2 1/2 books, PCs won't have the opportunity to level up to be able to deal with the Assault on Longshadow, missed most of the opportunities to hobble the Ironfang Legion, have no reinforcements available from Fangwood, and indeed left intact extra reinforcements for the Legion (including Ibzairiak the black dragon). At that point you might as well have the Legion just roll over Longshadow and retire the game, or at least give up on the AP.
What happened was this:
I gave the party the choice of where to start the AP, telling them about the various major townsfolk and where each one was at.
However, once the attack started, they decided that securing an escape route was the best course of action.
For some reason this prompted them to go west to the plains. I described several hobgoblins shooting down anyone fleeing from town and having an easy time of it due to the lack of cover.
They mulled over taking on all the crossbowmen on their own before deciding to go back to the other side of town and securing the bridge instead.
Since they had nothing but their starting equipment on them, they had a pretty rough time with the bridge fight but eventually pulled through.
Rather than going back for survivors at this point, they decide to just book it into the fangwood.
A few days went by, they came across Veld, thoroughly insulted her for not helping them at the drop of a hat, then decided there was no point staying anywhere near Phaendar.
They asked about places to go, I told them the only real major hub within reasonable distance would be Longshadow, and stressed to them that this would not only be a long trip but an arduous one for such an unprepared group.
They ended up deciding that a longshot was their best and only shot, and thus they began marching to Longshadow which is where I cut session 1.
We did have a session 0 as well, and I had them put forth several reasons as to why each of their characters was attached to Phaender and why they'd want to liberate either it or its inhabitants, but it seems none of it was enough.
If any of them are (supposed to be) of good alignment then I'd suggest they have shifted to neutral (at least).
If you are keen to play the AP and can get the players to agree to changing how they operate then I'd call mulligan and either have them wake up in the Taproot Inn as Aubrin is telling stories - they have dreamt the attack, and suddenly it occurs again (prophetic dream - cheesy and a trope but honestly might be the simplest way of course correcting), or have the existing party meet an overwhelming encounter on the road to Longshadow and all be killed (their longshot did not pay off) - reroll new characters who also happened to be in Phaendar at the time of the festival, and they can rescue villagers and when escaping find the bridge unguarded (as the previous party had taken out the guards before getting away) and then head in to Fangwood.
If they don't think they did anything wrong and want to play on with these characters then abandon the AP - they have already demonstrated behaviour that is completely opposite from that expected to do well on the AP and if you keep trying to shoe-horn them in you'll just frustrate the players and make too much work for yourself.
Thanks for the input, I'll think it over and plan for next game!
It is hard to run an adventure when the players decide they're not going to play the adventure. If your players aren't on board with playing the actual adventure presented, you should consider finding a few new players or a new group altogether.
Conversely, if following adventures just isn't their thing, then you might want to find something a little more open and sandboxy with a very limited plot like Kingmaker or a site-based encounter setting like Rappan Athuk.
NPCs matter. They should have a voice, and when the PCs come up with boneheaded, wildly off-book plans, the NPCs are the GM's surrogates to keep things on the rails.
This is the entire purpose of Aubrin the Green and the other survivor NPCs in book 1: to push the PCs to survive in the Fangwood where they can start their guerrilla resistance against the Legion. The NPCs are your players' connection to the worldbuilding. Nirmathi people don't abandon the weak and vulnerable to monsters and invaders. Nirmathi retreat to the woods to lick their wounds and strike back when the time is right.
Honestly, what you are describing is no longer the AP. From this point, it would now just be homebrew set in Golarion, based on how much the written adventure would need to be changed.
Being most of the way through Book 2 and having a blast with it, I have to say this post irrationally pissed me off. If it were me, I'd own the mistake of not giving the players a better sense of what the adventure is about, not having a better session 0 or player buy-in, and scrap the adventure as it currently exists.
Start again with new PCs who DO want to rescue townsfolk and play the adventure. Otherwise you're just asking how to homebrew an adventure from scratch set in Nirmathas, which wouldn't be appropriate for this sub-forum.
Yeah color me on the "hit the reset button" camp. Personally, I like the idea of keeping the same canon but just changing the spot light. "And now we see the ACTUAL heroes of this story." Just start them at the Taproot Inn and try to keep them on the rails. And later those heroes can find the dead bodies of the original party.
But really, you and your table need to have a talk about the finding the path in a pathfinder adventure path. Then figure out how they want to proceed. Make it clear that continuing with their original characters will lead to TPK, and maybe they want to continue anyway until that happens. Maybe they want to use the dream reset and play the same characters. Or maybe this AP just isn't for them. (I hope not, because it is a fun AP.)
Wow.
That's a rough situation. I never know quite what the situation is for other posters and gaming groups. I've been playing with the same guys for 29 years. I know what they'll do, what I expect them to do, and they know what I 'want' them to do.
So, if they are all your friends, and are just being knuckleheads, okay, mistakes were made. Perhaps they felt TOO scared of dying as level 1 characters, and didn't realize the game was balanced for them to succeed as level 1s. Like, they had the right idea; run away! They just didn't bring anyone with them...or have an altruistic bone in their fantasy bodies to check on people they knew or the people in town after the attack.
Perhaps you can get a 180 to happen. Meeting more and more patrols, maybe defeating them (and this can replace book 1 encounters), until they approach that proverbial hill that looks over the HUGE encampment of an army getting ready to push towards Longsaddle. There is no getting around it.
So, they can get hunted, because scouts did see them. Or, with any patrols they kill past the first, it's noted that some adventurers have attacked other patrols, or the PCs get named in reports, and are being hunted. Make some reports of the town NPCs that have survived, and are the thorn in Scarvinious' side within the Fangwood. But, if the PCs find the roving Phaendarran peoples, struggling to keep going, make it that the PCs really have to prove themselves as heroes this time-empty those trog caves! We need help!
Now that can work if the group is willing to roleplay, and see in and out of game that they made a mistake. I myself hate the idea of resetting the AP; especially with a fantasy wipe back to the original Save Point of game creation, or with a party wipe, making them make a new party within the NPCs, and then being told 'here's how you should be playing it!!' That just seems like chastisement with bad or hurt feelings coming about.
Depends on how you like to DM? Do you like the challenge of flowing with the created PCs narrative and still adhering to the AP storyline, or is it too much work to bother trying to shoehorn it together?
I'm curious to hear of the results.
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Yeah, I’ll agree with much of what has been said up thread. One of the things I try to identify with a new group is are they there to experience the adventure or if they are there to make my life as GM much harder than it needs to be. I generally have a conversation before we even start that I’m happy to acknowledge out-of-the-box thinking, but we’re dealing with a prewritten campaign, not a free flowing one. In the latter case, I’m making things up quite a bit on the fly with a loosely connected storyline in which case, they are welcome to go off the reservation. However, if we all agree to play the adventure that the author has written for us, they need to at least make an attempt to follow the story as it unfolds and not go out of their way to sabotage it.
One of the main ideas of this AP is the PCs have strong ties to Phaendar and its community. They aren’t just adventures passing through. It should be clear to them that simply running away is going to result in the death of nearly the entire population.
OTOH, if you really want to do the work, you could significantly rework the encounters for the remainder of the campaign so they are challenge appropriate to the PCs and just let them continue. It means the campaign will be completed much quicker than expected and there won’t be any high level epic battles towards the end, but it would be a way to salvage the game without having to hit reset.