That is quite a broad question. Do you have a narrower slate of potential options you are looking to run ?
Or is it that you are specifically looking for the exact opposite in an AP? I am not 100% clear on the context of your question
As you noted it is quite easy to massage - make the count pay over the treasure amount in a reward
Lots of APs do this partially in places. Like an expensive evil magic item that can be kept, sold or passed to the church to destroy . The church will basically “buy” it
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A lot of APs assume PCs get their income by looting the bodies of their foes. None, to my knowledge, have you killing people just to do that, though. There's always other reasons you're fighting.
As far as I can remember, situations like the one you describe in Carrion Crown (where you loot the possessions of someone alive and innocent) do not show up in most APs. I haven't read through all of them, but no instances like that come to mind from the ones I have (which is mostly Age of Ashes, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Legacy of Fire, Reign of Winter, Serpent's Skull, and Mummy's Mask...I've skimmed most of the others, but not enough to spot this ind of detail for sure).
The new Agents of Edgewatch very specifically has some serious problems in this regard, however, particularly given that the PCs are supposed to be members of law enforcement, and setting up an alternate way for the PCs to get paid is a must in that AP, IMO.
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None of the aps really assume that pcs murder everyone or "just enter a trodgolyte cave and kill entire tribe without provocation to loot them" like lot of old D&D modules do. Pretty much all monster encounters have reason for why would pcs fight something that is "because it exists or has treasure".
There are few moments though where only source of loot is place owned by someone who hired you to clean up place(or you are supposed to rescue), but while its hard to tell what writer "assumes" players will take in order to fill average wealth by level quota, I tend to assume them to be more of "Well its written here in case players DO want to steal everything that is possible to steal".
My experience with players not actually looting their employees' stuff is that it doesn't seem to impact their ability to play the game at all really so I have no real clue how "average wealth by level" really manifests in game or if its just possible for PCs to be morally righteous and not suffer consequences to not taking that loot
Though for record, only example of this trope that I can think of from personal experience in AP is the 4th book of Strange Aeons you just mentioned: SA is in general more morally ambiguous AP that doesn't seem to strictly assume players are heroes, but moment you were speaking of is "Players need to enter library/archive of eldritch knowledge and it would seem very strange if owners allow you to loot the place after hiring you with gold to clean up the place from horrific monsters"
(and for record, I had/am played/run/running kingmaker, reign of winter, rise of the runelord, curse of the crimson throne, iron gods, ruins of azlant and strange aeons. I kinda get feeling that this is rare problem that only exists really in one book in Carrion Crown and Strange Aeons but I could of course be wrong)
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I think Ironfang Invasion literally has "go kill those Troglodytes so you can use their cave to shelter your refugees." I guess it's not totally different from the "bad guys have taken over the fort, go kill them so you can take the fort back" in the next book.
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I think Ironfang Invasion literally has "go kill those Troglodytes so you can use their cave to shelter your refugees." I guess it's not totally different from the "bad guys have taken over the fort, go kill them so you can take the fort back" in the next book.
Yeah but I think that one established that trodgolytes had been attacking the village before iirc.(forgot ironfang invasion from list since I only managed to play one book of it before campaign went on perma hiatus)
That said, if there are any ap that would be best fit for murderhobo, I would think that any "there is single enemy type you are figthing in all books" probably will come the closest :p But paizo aps are the sort where even dungeon crawls contain lot of roleplaying moments and ability to avoid encounters with roleplaying
Creative Director
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The concept of "Let's make an Adventure Path for Murderhobos" has literally NEVER been a design goal for any of our Adventure Paths as far as I know. Certainly some of them would fit well into that play style more than others, but even when we do dungeon-crawl heavy Adventure Paths (such as Shattered Star) we try to make sure there's plenty of roleplaying and story and situations that should be resolved with something other than "kill monsters take stuff repeat."
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I think Ironfang Invasion literally has "go kill those Troglodytes so you can use their cave to shelter your refugees." I guess it's not totally different from the "bad guys have taken over the fort, go kill them so you can take the fort back" in the next book.Yeah but I think that one established that trodgolytes had been attacking the village before iirc.(forgot ironfang invasion from list since I only managed to play one book of it before campaign went on perma hiatus)
I have been running Ironfang Invasion converted to Pathfinder 2nd Edition. The troglodyte caves ("xulgath caves" in PF2) gave me a lot of concern about the moral direction of the game. The troglodytes are evil cultists who abduct people for human/elven/dwarven sacrifice, but the party wouldn't learn that until they have killed off at least five xulgaths. The party would first take a dark path of deciding to wipe out the xulgaths to use their cave to shelter the refugees and no other reason, or negotiating with the xulgaths and losing many refugees when the xulgaths betray them.
Therefore, I added an NPC. The party encountered Gahreestrohmeister, a 3rd-level svirfneblin rogue. He regularly stole from the xulgaths in revenge for them murdering family members, but this time they cut off his exit to the Darklands and he had to escape to the surface, which he found weird and disturbing. The party had two gnomes with a common language with Gahree. He told them about the crimes of the xulgath cultists, so the party had moral justification for attacking them.
EDIT: Oops, I forgot that the module had two other justification for attacking the xulgath caves. First, the party could encounter a pair of xulgath hunters who would attack on sight. Second, the xulgaths were in negotiation with the Ironfang Legion to ally with them. In my adventure, the stealthy party avoided the hunters. And I edited out the negotiations with the Ironfang Legion, because I wanted the caves to be totally secret from the legion.
As for the original murderhobo issue, almost all module writers provide a path to victory if the party does kill anyone who looks potentially unfriendly, but that is not the best-developed path. The module usually intends more friendly interaction.
For the CC one, the simplest thing to do is to just have the man of the house reward the PCs himself.
The actual funniest weird-murderhobo-assumptions I can think of... are also in Carrion Crown! Assuming the party is going to murderhobo the vampires rather than do a fun murder mystery with them, and in book 6 where it assumes you're going to fail at some DC *15* Diplomacy checks against some lawful good knights and get in a fight with them so a daemon can interfere. (in reality this just turns in to a 1v9. this is a baffling encounter)
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There's also a dragon in Ironfang who is completely distraught because the bad guys picked off some of her scales, and who rewards the PCs by letting them ... pick off some of her scales.
I don't see an issue with this one. Consent matters. It's the difference between someone finding out a creepy person stole some of their hair for that person's 'shrine' to them, and them giving a lock of hair to their significant other.
Well, it's probably slightly less intimate than that, at least in this case, but the principle applies.
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Shattered Star, in our hands, had markedly too little treasure--I don't know if that was because the PCs refused to loot allies or just because the treasure wasn't there.
I've only skimmed through Shattered Star, but in some cases the adventure assumes the PCs are literally scraping loot off the walls.
I don't like that idea, but any party that decides not to deface ancient ruins in this manner would presumably end up short on loot.
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Creative Director
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Don't mistake "we give you all the information you need to run your game" for "we expect and encourage your players to scrape loot off the walls."
Furthermore, we always aim to put about 200% of the expected loot into our published adventures, on the assumption that not every group will have every encounter, some groups will donate treasures, some groups will have more than 4 players, some groups will need to sell extra stuff to recover from deaths and the like, and indeed, some groups aren't murderhobos and won't be scraping walls.
In the end, it's the GM's job to make sure that the party has the right amount of treasure for the table, and that doesn't have to be what we suggest in the rules.
Interestingly enough, the Agents of Edgewatch AP so far seems to be quite the opposite. I noticed there would be quite a few opportunities for the less law-abiding PCs to make extra money through theft or other illicit means, and the book doesn't even acknowledge the possibility. It's for good reason, anyway, since if they got caught, they'd get fired, and the rest of the AP would probably be over.
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This issue isn't restricted to older APs.
** spoiler omitted **
This reminds me of the recent controversy regarding Agents of Edgewood.
My conclusion is to accept that what Paizo is offering is a fun game where Bards and Barbarians kill hundreds of creatures and take their stuff, then getting rewarded by levels and immense powers.
It's a silly elfgame. Don't treat it as anything more than that or you will quickly find you simply can't defend any of it.
In fact, I would say it is a fundamental cornerstone of all of D&D. Don't overthink it, just enjoy kicking in doors and taking names :-)
Cheers
I do think you have tendency to simplify and generalize a lot though, since vast majority of APs don't as far as I know have the issue of silliness of "well only treasure in entire adventure is what you get by stealing stuff from people you rescue" :p
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This issue isn't restricted to older APs.
I don't think people giving you things for saving their life (which is what your example amounts to) is quite in the same category as the behavior being complained about.
In fact, I think unless it's very specifically your job to save someone's life (in which case, them rewarding you on top of that is probably an ethical issue of some sort), accepting such a reward is entirely reasonable and ethical.
Automatic Bonus Progression saves a lot of trouble when it comes to keeping your players from stripping the walls and stealing the sofa, I've found.
Managing loot is 100% my least favorite part of GMing.
Strange Aeons suffered from the Curse of Murderhoboing - in that if you played intelligently and ethically (ie, not robbing homes or businesses you're investigating) then you'll end up under the recommended wealth per level. It's probably also the best suited for Automatic Bonus Progression, though I also think that Reign of Winter works well with ABP seeing you end up going through areas without much in the way of cities or towns to sell and buy magic items.
Heck, the third book of RoW can easily result in the PCs getting little in the way of loot should the group NOT kill the first guy who had a lot of valuable equipment (seeing he's acting as a guard for Baba Yaga), and you risk angering one of Baba Yaga's guardians if you loot the Maiden, Mother, and Crone dungeons (outside of stuff brought in by an invading group or the rebellious hags). For that matter, the mobile merchant you can acquire in RoW only accepts magic (and probably coinage?) so good luck selling all those advanced firearms looted in Book 5....
SA wants to sort of tempt you into doing the bad thing before you recover your memories, to activate the "Wait, I was a bad person? Am I still a bad person?" dynamic.
Yes, but punishing the players for being good is not fun for the players. Further, this encourages murderhobo tendencies. If you are forced to murderhobo to save the world in Strange Aeons, then why wouldn't you murderhobo for Return of the Runelords or other later APs? And yes, the GM should use the AP as a template from which to build an adventure, but many GMs are pressed for time and tend to run the APs as-written. So should a group go through an AP and it ends up not being fun because their desire to be heroic costs them time and time again? Then ultimately this is a failed AP for that GM and for those players.
Paizo has a number of APs that ultimately fail to pan out as expected. Fortunately they tend to learn from their failures and their successes. Because ultimately? Paizo intends for people to buy all of their APs and this is the ultimate reason why they will want an AP to accommodate multiple play styles.
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Creative Director
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We try different things with our Adventure Paths all the time, mixing that up with "traditional" ones now and then. The next one after Agents of Edgewatch is an example of a traditional Adventure Path.
If we didn't mix things up, we'd get stale and boring and repetitive.
If we didn't experiment, we'd never innovate and we'd never have things like Kingmaker, Iron Gods, Reign of Winter, or Strange Aeons for example, all of which are examples of various experiments and deviations from the traditional plot in one way or another that have resulted in very popular and very successful Adventure Paths.
Furthermore, not everyone is the same, and by varying our stories and telling them in different ways, we increase the chances of building more Adventure Paths that appeal to more types of groups.
We don't expect anyone out there to like or want to run everyone of our Adventure Paths. That's not possible. But if we didn't change them around, we'd be ignoring a HUGE amount of possibilities and would only appeal to a fraction of the potential audience and would increasingly bore them.
And don't underestimate the power of a GM to enhance or ruin an Adventure Path! Hopefully, more GMs fall on the enhance side, where they take a published campaign and adjust it to make it better for their specific group. And hopeful in cases where a GM isn't up to that task, the players realize it and seek out a better GM... but that's a tougher call, I fear, since most groups don't have a wide pool of GMs to pull from...
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We try different things with our Adventure Paths all the time, mixing that up with "traditional" ones now and then. The next one after Agents of Edgewatch is an example of a traditional Adventure Path.
Personally, for what it's worth, I think the objections to AoE are actually that it's too traditional, given the premise. It involves defeating most foes in physical combat and a loot system that is basically identical to that of normal adventurers.
Both of those (especially the latter) just leave a sour taste in many people's mouths when they involve the police doing them.
A less traditional set of adventures with even more opportunities to talk people down and deescalate, and particularly the PCs receiving a salary rather than looting everything that isn't nailed down, would've both been even more non-traditional moves and solved a lot of people's issues with that AP entirely.
Which is not to disagree with you in general, just to note the direction that those complaints seem to be coming from.
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Creative Director
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We try different things with our Adventure Paths all the time, mixing that up with "traditional" ones now and then. The next one after Agents of Edgewatch is an example of a traditional Adventure Path.Personally, for what it's worth, I think the objections to AoE are actually that it's too traditional, given the premise. It involves defeating most foes in physical combat and a loot system that is basically identical to that of normal adventurers.
Both of those (especially the latter) just leave a sour taste in many people's mouths when they involve the police doing them.
A less traditional set of adventures with even more opportunities to talk people down and deescalate, and particularly the PCs receiving a salary rather than looting everything that isn't nailed down, would've both been even more non-traditional moves and solved a lot of people's issues with that AP entirely.
Which is not to disagree with you in general, just to note the direction that those complaints seem to be coming from.
Any Adventure Path where we limit player options by saying that the PCs should all be part of a group or faith or organization or whatever is always going to be experimental next to the standard of "Build whatever character you want." Skull & Shackles is an example of a similar experiment we did with a previous Adventure Path.
I've considered doing adventure paths along the same line where everyone has to worship Sarenrae, or everyone has to be an elf, etc.
Has nothing to do with the plot being experimental, but enables us to do plots and stories that normally would be a lot tougher to do if we didn't make the assumptions that all the PCs were at an identical baseline.
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Oh, absolutely. I'm not arguing that Agents of Edgewatch wasn't experimental, I'm just saying that I think the reason many people had issues with that one is that it took a premise and then didn't lean into it hard enough.That's two different topics entirely.
Sorry, it just sounded to me like in your first post referencing it there was an element of regarding AoE as a 'failed experiment' of sorts, and I wanted to note that the experimental part was only sort of the issue people were having there.
Looking back, I may have been reading my own issues with that AP into your post, and for that you have my apologies.
I am now left wondering what the value of traditional APs is. Especially if experience shows that they are less popular than the experimental ones.
I get the impression it's hit or miss. They're less popular than some of the experimental ones...and more popular than others. But then again, maybe I'm reading too much into things there, too.
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Creative Director
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I am now left wondering what the value of traditional APs is. Especially if experience shows that they are less popular than the experimental ones.
The operating theory is that traditional Adventure Paths give players who are used to decades of expectations from playing D&D or similar games familiar ground to start their first Pathfinder game in.
Our most popular Adventure Path of all time, Rise of the Runelords, is in this category, so they're demonstrably NOT less popular than experimental ones.
Some are, some aren't.
That said, we're doing more experimental ones these days than not...
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Creative Director
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Sorry, it just sounded to me like in your first post referencing it there was an element of regarding AoE as a 'failed experiment' of sorts, and I wanted to note that the experimental part was only sort of the issue people were having there.
Looking back, I may have been reading my own issues with that AP into your post, and for that you have my apologies.
Ah! Nope... I don't regard Agents of Edgewatch as a failed experiment at all. I'm very proud of what the authors and Patrick did to develop it, especially considering the timing of everything.
We generally don't know if an Adventure Path experiment is a failure or success until well after the last volume has been out for a half year or so and we can trust that folks have had a chance to play through the whole thing... and we have actual sales data for the whole arc to study.
We're about half a year too soon for me to form opinions on that matter yet.
And no worries! Apology accepted! :)
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Yeah, hard to tell what will be opinion on agents of edgewatch overall yet.
Like with Extinction Curse there was overall enjoyment of circus stuff then after halfway I think lot of people who liked circus stuff started feeling sad there wasn't "climax" to circus arc leaving it feel bit underdeveloped overall compared to troglodyte plot?
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I get the impression it's hit or miss. They're less popular than some of the experimental ones...and more popular than others. But then again, maybe I'm reading too much into things there, too.
Personally, I find myself enjoying the experimental ones more than the traditional ones. Perhaps it's because I feel they have more interesting stories.
I read a bit of Age of Ashes and it just felt too..typical, I guess. I got bored.
That said, we're doing more experimental ones these days than not...
I have much excitement for the future adventures! ^-^
Thank you for making them.