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TNG is all about Tea, Earl Grey, Hot. And Prune Juice. I mean real TNG that is.
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An entirely music-themed AP would be the most niche thing ever and will never happen, but it’s #1 on my wishlist with a bullet.
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An entirely music-themed AP would be the most niche thing ever and will never happen, but it’s #1 on my wishlist with a bullet.
I'd argue "circus" was more niche, but that AP didn't exactly commit to being a circus story.
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If we did an entire Kung Fu musical AP set in the First World I could die happily.
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[ Threadjack ]
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One common word in French for a place where you can have a quick glass of alcohol (bistro) supposedly comes from a Russian word for Quick.
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Ah man, I love stuff like this; this is great.
I had heard it slightly differently so I looked it up just now. (I had heard it was from WWI when German soldiers wanted their French pastries or tea or whatever 'quickly' because they were afraid a German officer might see them supporting a French citizen or cafe -- which apparently was a 'no, no.' A German soldier would be looking over his shoulder while waiting for his baguette or whatever and be saying, 'bistro, bistro, bistro' -- "hurry, hurry, hurry" or "quickly, quickly, quickly" -- concerned an officer would catch him. And at some point the French just adopted the word, "bistro," as a cafe that would sell you your pastry or baguette or drink or whatever really quickly.)
But looking it up just now, thanks to you, I learned that this story comes not from WWI from Germans but rather from Russians in the Napoleonic era! Holy cow! And further, that many think it may be apocryphal (There is no certainty one way or another.). Still, this is really cool!
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[ / Threadjack ]
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There were Paizo staff who raised objections to AoE, and they’ve since admitted that they should’ve been listened to.
But sure, “artificial.”
A bad word choice as I considered the events in the real world around the timing of the release exceedingly serious and felt it needed serious consequences for the individuals involved.
I just felt that Paizo freaked out a little like the rest of the world and saddled Agents of Edgewatch with a bad reputation from the start when the subject matter therein was quite good and interesting for those who enjoy that type of fiction.
After reading the module, the more serious issues weren't even covered in the statement Paizo released. That being the loot system which was very problematic. I changed that part to ensure it did not encourage any rotten behavior.
I also took measures to cue my players when to and not to use lethal force forcing them to use nonlethal means to secure certain situations. I felt that was a much better learning experience than the blanket nonlethal force rule in the statement given you were fighting monsters that nonlethal would not even work against.
To me part of the fun of running something unusual like Agents of Edgewatch is forcing the players to think outside the box in conflict resolution. They were City Watch Officers, not murder hobo adventurers, it was very important to cue them and get them used to resolving conflicts with social skills, taking different spells they might not take to ensure are not all combat focused or liable to cause area damage that might harm citizens or property, make deals to limit violence even with people engaged in criminal activities, always be cognizant of citizens around, and think about who they are in the community when they wear the uniform and who they represent so they can't just go doing lots of random violence you usually do as adventurers.
It's been an interesting experience to run and one of Paizo's better APs for outside the box thinking while incorporating many fun genre conventions. Whoever wrote the Agents modules really incorporated a lot of material from a lot of different fiction sources that made for a pretty fun mix. Even has a little that old Wild Wild West or James Bond style theatrical villainy with lots of weird devices incorporated.
Truly, I do not want to downplay at all what occurred in the real world as I was very much sympathetic to that terrible situation. But at the same time I do want let people know not to overlook Agents of Edgewatch for those that enjoy that type of fiction as it was a very well done series.
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What I'm mostly hearing here is that our current methods of doing multiple Adventure Paths a year and varying the contents and themes and stories continues to be the right call.
So that I am clear on this, I was VERY pleased to see that Outlaws of Alkenstar was another lvl 1-10 3 vol AP. A heavy bias favoring level 1-10 in the 3 volume APs is preferred by me -- and it's not even close.
Leave the 6 volume APs for those who want higher level play. That is my STRONG preference as a customer.
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What I'm mostly hearing here is that our current methods of doing multiple Adventure Paths a year and varying the contents and themes and stories continues to be the right call.So that I am clear on this, I was VERY pleased to see that Outlaws of Alkenstar was another lvl 1-10 3 vol AP. A heavy bias favoring level 1-10 in the 3 volume APs is preferred by me -- and it's not even close.
Leave the 6 volume APs for those who want higher level play. That is my STRONG preference as a customer.
How do you feel about another 11-20 like Fists if the Ruby Phoenix? I agree that more 1-10s is good, but I certainly wouldn’t mind a few more high tier stories. There’s a few themes - planar stuff especially - that’s tough to fit into a full 1-20, and I’d like the option to still see some love.
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11-20 stories should be about something that's pretty gonzo that it just doesn't feel right building 1st level characters towards.
Something like "we're going to do intrigue in Alkenstar" is a 1-10 AP. Something like "we're going to do intrigue in the City of Brass" is a 11-20 AP. You get to start with characters who are sufficiently robust that they can survive on the elemental plane of fire (for example) without having to build up to that point with something that ties into the eventual endpoint.
The reason I feel like the 1-10 APs and the 11-20 APs should be relatively balanced is so you can mix and match things where your Quest for the Frozen Flame characters end up fighting in the Ruby Phoenix tournament, while your Outlaws of Alkenstar end up going to Nex to figure out where Count Ranalc has gone and return him to the Free World, whereas the Abomination Vaults group can go be pirates on the Sightless Sea or something.
The whole idea of "modules" going back to AD&D is that you can take your characters that finished one story and slot them into another, potentially unrelated one where their levels slot in nicely.
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I feel 3-part APs and Adventures are pretty redundant for the higher levels.
I don't know, I would have enjoyed the Galt story in Night of the Gray Death as a 11-20 story spun out over three volumes. If they didn't want to do that, that's fine, but I feel like I wanted more of that.
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I really would love to see more intrigue-based APs. I wanted to play in something like War for the Crown, but in 2nd edition. I think it would be great to set that in the 5 kings mountains (which never seems to get much love) or Belkzen. Tell me it wouldn't be fun to try to unite the Orc tribes against the threat of the Whispering Tyrant. You can't. That would be awesome. Just my 2 cents.
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I really would love to see more intrigue-based APs. I wanted to play in something like War for the Crown, but in 2nd edition. I think it would be great to set that in the 5 kings mountains (which never seems to get much love) or Belkzen. Tell me it wouldn't be fun to try to unite the Orc tribes against the threat of the Whispering Tyrant. You can't. That would be awesome. Just my 2 cents.
Blood Lords seems like it’ll have this in spades.
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Blood Lords seems like it’ll have this in spades.
. Yeah, but the idea of being undead doesn't thrill me as much as I'd like. That's been my experience with a bunch of the 2nd edition APs. I want to be an adventurer. Not an adventurer with a gimmick. Because if the gimmick doesn't do it for me and my players, we aren't going to do much with it. And that seems to be the difference between the APs in the different systems. In first, you were going to do/become something. (Pirates! Explorers/Rulers! Revolutionaries!) but in the second, you start out as something and then go on an adventure. It is telling that the 2nd edition AP that seems to be regarded as the best one so far (Abomination Vaults) has no gimmick.
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Blood Lords seems like it’ll have this in spades.Yeah, but the idea of being undead doesn't thrill me as much as I'd like. That's been my experience with a bunch of the 2nd edition APs. I want to be an adventurer. Not an adventurer with a gimmick. Because if the gimmick doesn't do it for me and my players, we aren't going to do much with it. And that seems to be the difference between the APs in the different systems.
It's a good thing you don't have to play as undead in Blood Lords, then :p
The only requirement for PCs is non-Good.
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Blood Lords seems like it’ll have this in spades.Yeah, but the idea of being undead doesn't thrill me as much as I'd like. That's been my experience with a bunch of the 2nd edition APs. I want to be an adventurer. Not an adventurer with a gimmick. Because if the gimmick doesn't do it for me and my players, we aren't going to do much with it. And that seems to be the difference between the APs in the different systems.It's a good thing you don't have to play as undead in Blood Lords, then :p
The only requirement for PCs is non-Good.
And even that is more of a suggestion / piece of advice IIRC :-)
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It's a good thing you don't have to play as undead in Blood Lords, then :p
The only requirement for PCs is non-Good.
Nice. That makes it significantly more interesting. I won't lie that I haven't read/heard much on it only because I don't check out many of the announcements until items get closer to purchase.
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Nice. That makes it significantly more interesting. I won't lie that I haven't read/heard much on it only because I don't check out many of the announcements until items get closer to purchase.It's a good thing you don't have to play as undead in Blood Lords, then :p
The only requirement for PCs is non-Good.
it's still something like 5 months out. Paizo really haven't announced much for Blood Lords - and usually don't, so nothing new - this far away from publication of a AP.
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it's still something like 5 months out. Paizo really haven't announced much for Blood Lords - and usually don't, so nothing new - this far away from publication of a AP.Nice. That makes it significantly more interesting. I won't lie that I haven't read/heard much on it only because I don't check out many of the announcements until items get closer to purchase.It's a good thing you don't have to play as undead in Blood Lords, then :p
The only requirement for PCs is non-Good.
I mean, there’s already store pages up for the first three books; we know their broad plots and what’s in the backmatter articles.
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1) then the ap wasn’t for y’all. “My [level 1 friends] would you go investigate this accursed place I’ve had bad dreams about” is a rather strong setup, and it’s near-immediately apparent upon exploring that something is up.
3) they’d still be limited to what they can put on a page, all dungeons have this constraint.
6) moving goalposts, lots of fights are fight to the death. You said there was no RP opportunities.
I’d say that a lot of people liking it makes it a good megadungeon.
“That's why it's essential for every adventure to have a time clock,”
This isn’t true in the slightest.
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Likely my group would've preferred starting with something like the Beginner Box, but it sadly wasn't available when we started. Our inability to figure out sound tactics led to many TPKs and poisoned the well of PF2 for that group of players. Likely, they'll never return to the system.
This is a diversion from the topic of this thread, but in my opinion the non-intuitive tactics of PF2 are the 2nd biggest flaw of PF2. The players could use an adventure path that teaches tactics. Alas, though I have been analyzing PF2 tactics in mathematical detail, I still have not figured out a way to teach them in-character rather than out-of-character.
I would argue that because PF2 focuses on encounter-based resource management more than daily resource tracking, it's actually a poor system to run traditional dungeon crawls, which in practice will turn into strings of encounters that might be individually interesting but can't really carry a lasting cost.
The only resource that gets permanently spent in PF2 is time. That's why it's essential for every adventure to have a time clock, some reason that you can't just take infinite time. It's the only pressure in the game that stretches beyond the encounter tier.
I have not played an adventure path written for PF2. I own Extinction Curse but have not run it. However, I have been converting the PF1 adventure path Ironfang Invasion to PF2.
Ironfang Invasion has constant time pressure. As my players said, every day they delay is a day that the Ironfang Legion conquers another village. (In contrast, our PF1 Iron Gods campaign had zero time pressure. The party liked crafting and they would often take two months off to make items.) The Ironfang Invasion party exploited the PF2 rules to push themselves. They zipped through missions at 4 times the expected speed. The stormborn druid in the party does have to practice daily resource management to last through the whole day, handling minor battles with cantrips, focus spells, and maybe one slotted spell. The ranger, monk, champion, rogue, sorcerer, and rogue/sorcerer always seem to have plenty of resources at the beginning of an encounter. The sorcerer's secret is that she is built as a support character and can play support with her low-level spells while the druid is built as a blaster and her low-level spells don't blast well. The sorcerer also invested heavily in Medicine feats to use Treat Wounds for healing rather than spells. The rogue/sorcerer invested in focus spells with his Sorcerer Multiclass Archetype rather than slotted spells.
PF2 rules abandoned daily resource management as a significant obstacle. Treat Wounds was introduced in the first revision of tentative PF2 rules during the playtest and it transformed the dynamics of the daily adventure. Two goals of PF2 were to eliminate spamming Wands of Cure Light Wounds and the 15-Minute Adventuring Day. The 10-minute Treat Wounds and Refocus accomplished those goals.
Did some PF2 adventure paths replace daily resource management with encounter-based resource management? What is encounter-based resource management like?
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Point 3 simply isn't true. The levels are mostly much larger than any flip-mat.
Point 3 simply isn't true. The levels are mostly much larger than any flip-mat.
Yep, I wondered if they were thinking of Emerald Spire, which specifically had 16 flip mat sized dungeons.
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Regarding the lack of roleplaying options in Abomination Vaults…
The leaders of the mitflit factions and the morlock factions, while potentially being a fight in the first case and probably a fight in the latter, provided excellent roleplay opportunities for my party. I found them to be interesting characters who my party spent a lot of time chatting and negotiating with even though they eventually fought the morlocks.
Tangletop on the surface level was a fun roleplay encounter for my party, and provides info about what the Gauntlight can do.
There’s a morlock ghoul that’s likely to become the party’s ally on floor 3, who can provide history on the Cult of the Canker so you know why all these ghouls are there.
Jaul Mezmin is likely to surrender and provides the party with a difficult moral dilemma.
Otari himself provides the party with the chance to talk with a freaking legend who knows a ton about Belcorra.
That’s not to mention all the clues and hints that can be found in the environment, such as the room on floor 3 with research about all the attempted sieges against Absalom.
And all of that is ignoring the numerous NPCs in town that can be opportunities for roleplay with minimal effort. My party’s rogue had a fling with Yinyasmera, the cleric was always going to Vandy for crises of faith, the ranger was bros with Carman and set Jala up on a date, and the sorcerer became a magical mentor to the mayor’s daughter. Obviously you can do that type of thing in any campaign, but it’s not like the book is 100% dungeon and gives you nothing to work with regarding the people of Otari.
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I will say; if you’re upset about a preponderance of fights and a lack of RP opportunities, a megadungeon was pretty much always going to be a mismatch. Strength of Thousands is an AP that puts a heavy focus on diplomacy and non-combat solutions for encounters, along with a lot of study and exploration - it may be a better fit.
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An AP can be strong and still not be a good fit for your group. Megadungeons are a tried and true, old-school approach to tabletop gaming - the dungeon is there, you go into it because that’s what you’re here to do, and you fight the monsters inside. That’s never appealed to me, so I passed on Abomination Vaults; it sounds like what it had going on was never going to be what your group is looking for.
I’m sorry you had negative experiences with the game! I hope your group is happier since then.
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At the end of the day, Pathfinder is a tactical combat system - your Class is basically a big bundle of mechanics that describe how you fight. Pathfinder games can stray away from that, but it’s still ultimately that’s the skeleton everything else hangs on. If your group likes lighter games and more RP-heavy play, there’s a good chance even the most acclaimed Adventure Path would be a miss for them.
EDIT: For what it’s worth, I’m here because I’m a fan of the setting; I personally struggle with games as mechanically-complex as PF2. I’m the usual GM for my home group, but Pathfinder is one I’d only really be able to handle as a player, and even then it’s outside of my comfort zone. I think this sounds less like an issue with the APs chosen, and more a pretty fundamental disagreement with what the system is interested in - if my group didn’t want a pretty hefty game with a strong focus on tactics and mechanical character customization (rather than something more narrative that doesn’t center combat), it’s not one I’d ever pitch.
Maybe I just need to see a good game in action? All the videos I find are in-depth rules/tactics discussions and apologists who explain why it's a good system. I'd like to see it be a good system, if that makes sense. I'd like to have a great time rolling dice, exploring the worlds, with exciting and dynamic characters. I just haven't had that experience yet.
Glass Cannon Podcast/Giantslayer!!!
Troy spends 20 minutes at the start of each session ranting about how much he hates the system, but they still manage to have a great time. Awesome cast, memorable NPCs, very funny, lots of RP.
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Is that second edition?
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Then it's not what Harles would be looking for.