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Kind of long, but I just thought I'd post this.
Originally posted on Boardgamegeek
0. An Epiphany
Lesson: Creating custom content is the pinnacle of engagement with a game.
Creating good content requires that the creator be familiar enough with the game’s systems to apply its rules in meaningful and interesting ways to produce a playable experience. I think there is something of a stigma associated with “unofficial” content, characterizing it as gross and unpolished. While custom content may rarely be comparable in quality to the official content, it makes up for this deficiency by being meaningful to the creator: “this may be an ugly scenario, but it’s [u]my[/u] ugly scenario.”
1. The Adventures Begin
I began my venture into the world of Pathfinder with the PACG core set. I found the mechanics of the game very rich and engaging, but the meager nine scenarios included felt like they didn’t live up to the potential I felt the system had. In particular, it irritated me how little time and hero points I could invest into my characters’ roles. I decided my first step towards making content for this game would be a half campaign like tDD, allowing me to build up my content design skills before setting out to create a full AP.
2. Custom Adventure Path #1: Droidworks
Having previously come from making content for the decidedly combat-centric Lord of the Rings Living Card Game, I found PACG’s system refreshingly open to more non-combat situations, like puzzles and exploration. This adventure path is based on a game forgotten to time that I have so dearly wanted to recreate for so long, but the right system had escaped me until now, I thought. PACG gave me a medium to recreate the exploration and physics-puzzle experience I envisioned.
Granted, most of my scenarios wound up being hot messes of mechanics. But hey, arranging locations in rows and using the Bridge to move up and down was cool.
Many of my scenarios fell flat because while I understood how the game worked, I didn’t understand why the game worked: I gave out too many boons, and so rewards weren’t satisfying. I put interesting mechanics over the player experience, and so convolution overtook the sense of fun the game had. Balancing rewards with challenges, complexity with ease of play, and my vision with the game’s reality were all important factors I’d become aware of through this adventure path.
Lesson: Passion for your vision is good, but greatness needs understanding of the tools you use to realize it.
3. Three's not Company
My first custom adventure path served as an option roughly on-par with tDD, intentionally restricting itself to three adventures so I could design it more easily than a complete adventure path. Droidworks had given me the confidence to venture into my first custom six-adventure campaign, which would help me test the full campaign experience the game had to offer before I invest in an official one.
4. Custom Adventure Path #2: The Curse of Thep Kauf
No, I don’t know how it’s pronounced either, I just thought it looked Egypt-y.
This AP is deeply rooted in my history as a game designer and player. My venture into tabletop gaming began with the Lord of the Rings LCG, for which I have also designed much content. Early on, I’d learned about PACG as a potential alternative, should I choose to branch out into other games. I’ll never forget how striking and imposing the Mummy’s Mask box and expansions looked when I walked into my local A1 Comics. My innate desire to create, my experiences with LotR, and the image of Mummy’s Mask all melded together into an attempt to design my own card game. I’d designed three scenarios for my custom game, though I’d never tested them, as physically creating the cards proved difficult, and I found myself disheartened by design failures I perceived in my work.
Roughly a few years after giving up on my own game engine, PACG came along, and I could implement my idea. I had the vision, and now I could make it real. I ported my three scenarios into the PACG system, building a six-adventure campaign around them. Now I could see the PACG characters grow and mature into the fully-fledged level 6 characters the system intended, and my ancient designs finally came to life.
Lesson: Custom content is not merely an experience, but also a celebration of its creator’s journey. A part of your heart goes into your work.
5. Holding out Against CotCT
Naturally, the core set couldn’t sate my appetite for long. I needed something where these characters could grow to their full potential with level 4-6 boons. CotCT drew my eye, but the urban setting and other themes I’d gathered from the Paizo articles didn’t sound interesting to me. Holding out hope for a more interesting large box to drop, I waited to purchase CotCT. Instead, I bought the Paladin Class Deck, and was eager to build a new campaign where I could test those level 4-6 boons.
6. Custom Adventure Path #3: Creatures out of Time
While I already had a custom six-adventure campaign, I felt it covered too many different ideas, the individual adventures discordant with each other. After watching a regrettably short playthrough of Wrath of the Righteous on YouTube, I was inspired to create a more thematic and story-driven campaign. This led to a lot of cool scenarios, including a chase sequence inspired by scenario 2C of tDD, multi-part boss battles against an evolving villain (think scenario 2D of CotCT), and brief story text to give context to the scenarios “the stolen artifact falls and shatters upon the catacomb floors. From its remains, a spectral figure rises.”
Having a story in mind guided me as I designed these scenarios, allowing me to better decide how each scenario should feel, correcting many of the poor design decisions I had made earlier on: player’s shouldn’t feel safe exploring boon-heavy ancient ruins, so why not have the ruin’s guardian creep closer with every boon the party acquires, building tension? Player’s shouldn’t encounter tons of monsters in a peaceful city street, so why not make allies turn into monsters on a failed Diplomacy check? Players shouldn’t feel safe enough to explore at a leisurely pace deep in the villain’s lair, so why not add dangerous wildcards to make them feel that something could swoop in and kill them at any moment? Before, I knew how to create a mechanical experience, now, I have a better sense of how to create an interactive story experience as well.
Lesson: custom content is more than just combining mechanics in interesting ways, but also weaving a story from those mechanics.
7. Biting the Cursed Bullet
Like I imagine most PACG players felt, I was extremely disappointed by the announcement of PACGs discontinuation. The primary reason I had bought the Core Set instead of Mummy’s Mask was the potential for multiple future adventure paths building on the foundation the Core set provided, saving space and money over buying multiple pre-core APs. For completion's sake (and a fair dose of FoMO) I finally bought Curse of the Crimson Throne.
Somehow, I felt disappointed. This isn’t a review for CotCT, so I’ll spare you my criticisms. Being unfamiliar with the lore behind the PRPG AP (or Pathfinder in general) this was based on, I couldn’t make much sense of some story aspects. I sought to make my own take on the CotCT theme, at least what I interpreted from the cards. Basically, tell the story the cards and existing CotCT adventure path told me.
8. Custom Adventure Path #4: Curse of the Crimson Throne (Mark II)
As of the writing of this article, I am still in the process of designing and testing this AP. This is my first attempt at a full adventure path of six adventures, each with five scenarios. I was surprised at how much better it played as a campaign experience, with characters rarely keeping underpowered boons between adventures (well, except armors… those are so hard to get). The mechanics of these scenarios feel far more interesting and thematic than many of my previous scenarios, inspired by CotCT (Evidence is such a great card for creating thematic scenarios, and “do-something-build-villain’s-lair” scenarios are cool). Yet still, it feels as though it is falling flat. I’m trying to tell a story the existing CotCT AP tells, but in my own way. By listening to the cards, they are telling me what story to tell, rather than empowering me to tell my story.
Lesson: Your content has to tell your story.
Lesson: Use the game’s materials as tools to tell your story, not constraints your story must conform to.
9. Conclusion and Further Plans
This leaves me with four custom adventure paths in varying stages of polish and interest to me. New and more intentional adventure paths will likely come, old adventure paths may be scrapped for ideas, and some will be improved with the lessons I have learned and the new tools CotCT has given me. As of now, my content feels too rough to expose publically (it’s literally scribbled in spiral-bound notebooks). However, I hope someday that I can show my content to people like you, so that you might be inspired to create your own content, as I have.
Lesson: a game never dies, so long as one makes content for it.
So, what are your thoughts? Do you enjoy making / playing custom content? Feel free to share any lessons you learned in your design process!
Thanks for bringing this to our attention!