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So I am planning on starting to run Extinction's Curse next week with my group (although that is the Session 0 so first real AP running session will be in two weeks). I have been prepping for the adventure and I am overall pretty excited about the AP and running it for my group.
However, I am finding the "running the circus" more lackluster than I anticipated and I was wondering what people who actually ran the circus feel about my concerns/changes I was thinking of making to the circus when I run it. (this will be a long one so I will have a TL/DR at the bottom)
**Advertising**
This one just doesn't make any sense to me at all as it is always a net negative for the show. The only tier of advertising that makes any sense is 1, and Tier 2 is cheap enough to be somewhat worth it since it is cheap even though you will likely lose money more often then not.
Essentially, each point of anticipation seems to be worth basically 1.X gold, since a "normal" payout would mean 1 gold per anticipation, a critical is 2A and a failure is .25A depending on your success/crit/failure rate you will be probably around 1.5g at best per anticipation for the payout. So advertisement costs simply make absolutely no sense as written. I mean the Tier 12 advertisement is to spend 3,000 gold to add a potential of 100 gp to your earnings, apparently our circus people are really really bad business people. But really only the first two tiers is it even POSSIBLE to earn money from advertisements, and most of them are just amazingly crazy money sinks that don't seem to serve any purpose that I can tell (please tell me if I am missing something).
As for a solution, I feel like first off the pricing just doesn't make any sense and can be adjusted down (dramatically) to make any sense to take. I am 100% certain my players would look at this table and immediately discard Advertisement as a useful thing to ever invest in for the campaign. However, I am thinking there could be a few better solutions to mix in with this to make this more interesting. The most obvious one to me is to get rid of the "only lasts one show" idea of the show. To me, advertising is something that would slowly build up anticipation about the show, I am tempted to treat this as prestige, but that clearly has a different purpose in the show (and has a modifier). So I could just have the anticipation decay over time but that sounds too micro-managementy to pull off.
I think I will likely try to fix this in my final payout calculation overall.
**Player Tricks**
I have a bit of a problem with the way PCs can manage their tricks and run them in the show. I love the idea of the players having a "signature trick" that they perform to the crowd, and I really want to encourage my party to participate in the show with their own tricks and update them throughout the campaign. I think this mostly works with what the have in the books, but I am thinking of a few things that could improve it in my mind.
My biggest problem with the system is that the system is clearly encouraging the player to take on both "traits" and "checks" for their skills. Traits seem to make sense they give you boosts and bonuses to the trick so they have a natural reason to be something you would want to do for your trick. However, adding additional checks doesn't really seem to add much value. All you would want to do is perform the trick with whatever trait you are best at, if there is a tie you don't really "care" which one it is. Combined with the MAP for performing the trick multiple times in turn it just ends up feeling like a silly limitation.
My thoughts on this is that I want to replace all the "trick check" upgrades with the ability to have multiple tricks in your "arsenal" that you can use during your turn. So from level 1-3 the player has one signature trick that is what they do in the show. At level 4 they can have a second trick in their bag of tricks that they can use during the show. At level 16 they can have three tricks available. Using the other trick does not have a MAP on your turn, you can still perform the same trick twice or three times on the turn, but using a different trick negates the penalty. Each trick much use a different skill of the performer.
The other item I want to change here is to remove the limitation that the trick has to be at the level of the performer when it is run. For the PCs I want to give them the ability to "pull off that special trick they have been practicing" or to "dial it back for the matinee". Essentially a player can perform a trick at any level from 1 - Players Level + 1. So a player that is level 3 can perform a trick that is level 1 to level 4. This way they can go for a higher risk/higher reward option to run a trick higher level or pull out their "old standards" they they have less chance of failing.
**Downtime Activities**
I really feel like the fact that there is no downtime activities for improving your act is just really lacking in the way they put this together. As a result in addition to the normal "promotion" option for downtime activities (or retooling their act). I wanted to add a few more options for the players to participate in.
Extra Practice. Using this downtime activity for the week leading up to the act will give you a +2 circumstance bonus for the trick of your choice (so at level 4 you have to pick one of your two tricks to gain the bonus). Requires you to pass a trick check for your level DC for that check (so if your trick is Athletics based you would require a check of your level to get the bonus. Critical Success would give you a +4 bonus to the check a failure would give you -2, critical failure would disable the trick for the day of the show.
Routine Practice. Using this downtime activity for the week leading up to the show with your costar can be used to give your costar a +4 bonus to their aid check in your routine. Requires a check for the skill of the trick, critiical success gives +6 bonus, failure is nothing, critical failure is -2, disables the costar for that show.
Group Practice. Work with an NPC to practice their act. This is essentially an aid check to the performer before their performance. Normal rules for the aid check applies.
** Ringmaster **
This seems like a glaring omission from the book for me, there is no Ringmaster role for the show. To me when you think of a circus the three things that come to mind are Clowns, Animals and of course the Ringmaster (and of course the "freakshow" aspect). Not having a ringmaster role in the show is just a huge miss to me, so I feel like I need to add it in. This role can be an NPC or a PC.
If it is an NPC this role is simple, the ringmaster will do a performance check for the show and would add an excitement value to the overall show based on his/her result just like a trick. I will probably have a couple potential "face" NPCs around in the campaign to make this a recruit-able NPC.
If the PC takes on this role he/she gets three actions and a reaction to use throughout the show. The Ringmaster can use an action before each act and can use their reaction once throughout the show. Just like the other performers, the Ringmaster gets a MAP penalty if he/she uses multiple actions in the show with checks. At level 4 the Ringmaster automatically gets the Agile trait and at level 16 they can ignore the penalty the first time.
Available Actions
Highlight Performance. The ringmaster calls attention to a performance ginning up anticipation in the act. This "gambles" some of the anticipation in the crowd on the specified performance in the act by calling attention to it. Max anticipation that can be "gambled" in this way is half of the Ringmaster's level rounded up. Depending on the performance results, you add the anticipation on success, deduct it on failure and remove it 2x on crit failure. On a crit success you get the added anticipation as normal but also double the excitement generated by the trick.
Set Expectations. This allows the ringmaster to help set the stage for a particular trick in the show. This works essentially like an Aid check for the performance, but the Ringmaster always uses the Diplomacy skill.
Hype Performance. This adds excitement to an individual performance. This is a diplomacy check that will add half the player's level in excitement to the upcoming performance (rounded up). On a crit success this excitement is doubled. The performance must at least succeed to generate the excitement. If the performance critical fails the excitement is deducted instead.
Bully Hecklers. Can be used to attempt to heckle hecklers into submission. If hecklers are in attendance either due to beer or a random event the ringmaster can attempt to put them in their place (like a good comedian that can turn hecklers into a crowd pleasing joke). Rolls an intimidation check at the player level. Critical success gives a +1 bonus to the target act and negates the penalty from the hecklers for that act. Success negates the hecklers, Failure Nothing.
Send in the clowns. The PC can send in the clowns.
Reaction
Distract From Performance. With this action the ringmaster can distract from a performance in the previous act, this is a deception check using the Ringmasters level to distract from the performance in the previous round. A success will negate the loss of excitement from a single failed trick in that act, a failure does nothing, a critical failure will reduce excitement just like a critical failure of the trick. A critical success will generate excitement like a successful trick.
** NPC **
I love the NPC concepts included in the books and their shows seem great and fun. They look like memorable characters for the PCs to interact with throughout the campaign and work them into the circus. However, I am worried about the mechanical aspect of the way the NPC shows are treated, since the NPC can't level up and never "learns a new trick", it feels like as the circus grows they will just get rid of all the old acts and simply replace them with newer better more powerful acts to make the show rewarding. I like the idea of the meta-game of being on the hunt for new acts to include into the show and improve the show over time, but I hate the fact that means that poor Axel will never have a better trick then his level one fumbling doves act and all of the acts are static as the show grows. So this circus that is supposed to the the "home" of the players and NPCs doesn't grow into the best show on earth they just discard all the old talent and hire better performers for the acts. The other problem is that there are only just so many slots to go around, so you simply don't need that many performers to run the show.
My thought to improve this is to allow tandem acts for the NPCs and Players. I want to allow the players to incorporate the NPCs acts into their own or potentially into new acts combining the two talents. Maybe the Amazing Aquanetics can combine with Mordaine to do a new act that improves the level of both and gives allows the acts to perform better at a higher combined value.
I am not fully sure how I want to fix this and thankfully I have a bit of time in my campaign before I get to this point, but it is a flaw I see in the current Circus Management that I would like to resolve to make this really feel like the family they want the Circus to be for the players.
** Prestige and Payout **
Prestige seems pretty wonky in the current system. Essentially you gain 1 prestige for finishing a show even if it is an abject failure and every act completely tanks and you set fire to the tent and drown one of the audience members in your act. Also, prestige kind of feels like it is a 20ish point system with each book having a different "cap" on the maximum prestige allowed (4 for book 1 and 9 for book 2) I haven't read all of the last three books but I have a feeling you end up with something similar in each book.
It feels really wrong that running 4 abject failure shows in Aberrton will have the exact same impact as running 1 critically successful show in Aberrton. My other problem with prestige is that it is essentially just a "built in free anticipation" for the show. To me in the book they are essentially going with the Prestige to be the "renown" of the circus and the anticipation is roughly analogous to the audience size for the show. I think I want to make a few changes to the way Prestige and the Payout is calculated overall
Change the Prestige rewards to be -1 on Failure, +1 Success, +2 on Crit Success
Minimum Prestige is 0
Starting Prestige is 0
Change the payout calculation to treat Prestige as a multiplier for the payout rather than additive. I am leaning towards the calculation being (1 + (P/4)) * A = Payout.
Ex. First show will be Prestige 0 and Anticipation 15. so (1+(0/4)) * 15 = 15. Normal payout = 16.
Ex. If Prestige is 2 and Anticipation is 20. (1+(2/4)) * 20 = 1.5 * 20 = 30 Normal Payout would be 22.
Ex Prestige 10 and Anticipation is 50. (1+(10/4)*50 = 3.5 * 50 = 175. Normal Payout would be 60.
Ex Prestige 20 and Anticipation 200 (1+20/4) * 200 = 5 * 200 = 1000. Normal payout would be 220.
The goal here is to make it overall more rewarding as you get your renown up so your rewards match the profits you would expect from such a famous show. This also gets back to what I want to do with the advertising as I want it to provide a temporary buff to prestige in addition to the anticipation boost. So I will probably reduce it to the following tiers:
Tier 1. 0 Prestige, 1 anticipation
Tier 2. 1 Prestige, 5 Anticipation
Tier 3. 1 Prestige, 10 Anticipation
Tier 4. 1 Prestige, 20 Anticipation
Tier 5. 2 Prestige, 20 Anticipation
Tier 6. 2 Prestige, 50 Anticipation
Prices for these should be approximately 75% of the potential rewards on success. This both increases the difficulty of putting on a good show and the rewards, so a standard success should be profitable, and a crit success should be very valuable to me. A failure should add to the losses for the show. Overall I feel like this will scale better and give them something to make it worth while to participate in from a strict rewards perspective.
**TL/DR**
Well that turned out even longer than I anticipated. I will try to boil down the comments as much as possible below:
Player Tricks. Allow them to keep 1-3 tricks available instead of adding new "trick checks" these will let them avoid MAP penalty and use different tricks during the course of their act.
Perform Tricks at level. Let the player decide the level of their tricks rather than assuming Player Level
Add a ringmaster with their own special actions for a player to participate or assign an NPC to the role for the benefits.
NPC Tandems. Allow the players to create tandem acts between two acts with the same traits to make use of more NPCs in the act.
Prestige/Payout. Change the Prestige to be multiplicative of the payout rather than additive to essentially mean you are "charging more" for a ticket of a prestige show.
Have Advertising increase the prestige and anticipation temporarily and make it something that is worth investing in from a cost perspective.
Overall, what do people who have run or are running the AP thing of the Circus Mechanics? What issues have you run into and what solutions have you come up with or maybe wish you came up with?
