Interactive Adventure Path website + unlockable tech tree of Pathfinder products

[CULTxicycalm]

I've made an interactive overworld of the Inner Sea region with all Adventure Paths placed on it (including the three upcoming ones): https://interactive-img.com/view?id=18493 (takes a while to load if you're on a slow connection or cellphone etc.)

Click on each AP to get details on it, including main soundtrack theme.

I am also working on a zoomed-out Golarion one for the two APs that aren't set in the Inner Sea region. I'll be linking that here in a future post. (I am also making a Starfinder one, but that's a few weeks off.)

Sketched out in these details you will find the beginnings of an unlockable "tech tree" in the manner of Sid Meier's Civilization, if you're familiar with that game. That is to say, a group needs to complete Rise of the Runelords in order to unlock Jade Regent or Shattered Star. They need to complete Council of Thieves to unlock Hell's Rebels/Vengeance. Moreover, when they unlock Kingmaker, they also unlock the "Ultimate Campaign" rulebook; when they unlock Carrion Crown, they unlock the "Horror Adventures" rulebook; and it is only then that they unlock the new rules, classes, feats etc. in those books.

The same applies for other products and standalone adventures. E.g. when they meet Zellara in Curse of the Crimson Throne, they unlock the "Harrow Deck" accessory plus The Harrowing standalone adventure; when they try to visit the Acadamae in Korvosa they unlock the Academy of Secrets adventure.

And finally, the groups have to complete ALL 23 PF1 campaigns in order to unlock Tyrant's Grasp, and then completing that unlocks Pathfinder Season 2, and so on.

I currently have four groups unleashed on this overworld, and I am looking for more groups and players. Message me if you're interested (but note that it isn't free). It is the GROUPS here which choose where to go on the overworld and what to play, not the GM. Think of it like a videogame. The biggest videogame overworld ever, powered not by subpar programmer rules and programmer settings and programmer adventures, but by the genius of Paizo. It essentially IS a videogame because it's all run through Fantasy Grounds, Foundry and TaleSpire.

I have a whole set of rules that elaborate how this works, and I call them "Ultimate Edition". They include aspects like procreation and bloodlines, city-building and 4X powered by TaleSpire, group co-op (where two or more groups join forces to tackle a disaster that one of the groups failed to contain), and group PVP for campaigns like Hell's Rebels/Vengeance, or generally for campaigns where the group is evil and another group wants to take them on. I can provide reading materials to interested players and parties. The book will be released on DriveThruRPG later this year, and there is an interactive website coming that tracks all the campaigns and events.

But that's not what this thread is about. This thread is about the tech tree. I am asking for the community's help in order to fully develop it, as a single person can't know anywhere near enough to set that up. Note that I am also placing things like novels, comics, web fiction, Society one-shots, etc. on the overworld. All these things will be unlockable at the right time, and the goal of this thread is to decide on the trigger-event. E.g. defeating the goblin raid on Sandpoint at the start of Rise of the Runelords unlocks 1) We B4 Goblins! standalone adventure, and 2) Shalelu Be Food? web fiction.

So whoever wants to contribute, start contributing, and I'll be adding your major contributions to the overworld and setting up a Google Document for the minor ones. Which particular event in a Pathfinder product do you think should be the trigger event for unlocking another Pathfinder product out of the thousands that exist? And note that a product can have more than one trigger-event. E.g. the Dragon's Demand adventure can be unlocked by talking to Tanasha Starborne in War for the Crown, but maybe no group will talk to her, so I need more Verduran-related characters and trigger events to sprinkle throughout the overworld for players and groups to stumble on.

I can complete the whole project on my own, but it will take years, and it won't be as nuanced as if I got the backing of some knowledgeable community members. So whoever likes this project and wants to help flesh it out, jump in.

[KaiBlob1]

I'm not sure about some of your decisions. Specifically, needing to complete outlaws of alkenstar to gain access to Guns and Gears, and needing to complete bloodlords to access book of the dead, seem like mistakes to me. Its strongly implied that PCs in bloodlords will benefit from being undead, something they can only be using BotD, and I think not allowing PCs in alkenstar to be gunslingers is a mistake. Maybe have these books unlock at the same time as their connected adventures?

[CULTxicycalm]

Oh yes, that’s what I said:

CULTxicycalm wrote:

when they unlock Kingmaker, they also unlock the "Ultimate Campaign" rulebook

An added twist is that the unlock happens only for the group in question. The other groups can only gain access to the new book by spending Epic Points (EP) which they gain by successfully completing adventures at the rate of 1 EP/page of adventure completed. So an AP book completed would give 96 EP, and the books cost their pagecount in EP to unlock. So the typical Pathfinder hardcover rulebook would cost about 250 EP.

All this comes from videogames, but instead of unlocking stupid, useless stuff, you unlock cool, genius stuff, so there is an element of competition as the groups try to complete their adventures and unlock more advanced stuff. Some APs that unlock new features and worlds, like e.g. the Iron Gods AP that unlocks Starfinder, cost a lot of EP to unlock: specifically it costs as much as 4 APs’ worth of EPs. So the groups are also competing for which one will play the coolest stuff.

Of course “coolest stuff” is subjective, and here it is the “show runner” aka me who determines what is coolest.

[Rysky]

… what competition?

Multiple groups competing together to speed run in locked campaigns sounds nicher than niche.

[CULTxicycalm]

I have four groups. And they aren’t speedrunning. They love role-playing. But they also love competing between themselves via Ultimate Edition rules in the videogame PVP manner, which D&D has never embraced, in my opinion to its detriment since fighting against people is a million times more engaging than against NPCs. Now you might say there are tournaments for that, but tournaments kill role-playing, which is the whole point of the game, as it says on the box. The ultimate in my view is PVP inside epic professional campaigns, and no one does these better than Paizo. I am just providing the rules framework to allow that to happen.

It always amazed me when GMs would say they run multiple groups but not put them in the same world. Some of them even run the same campaign at the same time with multiple groups! It always sounded crazy to me.

Put all those groups in an overworld and let them interact as if they’re playing an MMO, is what I say! And my Ultimate Edition will give them all the required mechanics.

[Rysky]

Some = not a lot

PvP, as in-fighting amongst the party, is almost always a horrible idea and there’s a lot of fractures that lead to that.

PvP as in one group against another is novel and I can see the appeal, but also why it was never focused on, it’s hard enough finding enough players for one group, let alone too, and then have the energy to also run multiple campaigns.

I don’t really consider “who can complete their AP first” to be PvP though.

You having four groups to run for is an anomaly, not the norm. Not a diss, that’s great you have that many and you all have fun, it’s just not what most people have access to.

[CULTxicycalm]

But each GM has at least one group. And two GMs can collaborate to put their groups on the same overworld and give them the option to interact, both in co-op and PVP. You can meet GMs in this very forum. It’s one of the reasons I made an account here as I want more players and groups.

Yes there is more overhead, but it can be fun, and VTTs can facilitate this interaction across cities and even countries and continents.

I think this is the future.

There are of course pitfalls and you need a robust rules framework, but that is the task I have set for myself, and the videogame-inspired overworld + tech tree which is the subject of this thread are the basis of my framework.

[Dancing Wind]

Flagging for Homebrew

[Rysky]

“I think this is the future.”

No, just a specific game mode you like.

If a GM running an AP told me we were gonna compete/fight against a group running in a completely different group I’ve give a flat nope to that.

[CULTxicycalm]

There are people who still only play Pac-Man and have no interest in open-world or VR games. That doesn’t mean that open-world and VR games aren’t the future. The future doesn’t need every single homo sapiens on the planet to agree. It doesn’t even need most of them.

If three of my four groups deserted me, I would quit role-playing. I just couldn’t go back to PVE Pathfinder, it’s tepid in comparison to what we have going. With VTTs making distance irrelevant, more and more people will begin realizing this.

Of course it won’t become the number 1 style of role-playing just like classical music is not the number 1 style of music. Simplistic pop music is. But the cutting-edge has shifted, and the people who know things will start realizing this very soon.

Note that my groups rarely fight. More often they collaborate to defeat foes whom one group has failed to check. This solves the TPK problem RPGs have. A runelord wiped a group out and is threatening an entire region? A normal GM would have to make up some random stuff to plug in the hole in his campaign whereas in mine I don’t have to do anything, as the players naturally decide to join forces in an 8v1 or even a 12v1 against the runelord and his forces. We’re talking the most epic fights you’ve never dreamed and all powered by Baldur’s Gate 3-level graphics courtesy of TaleSpire, and overworld powered by World Anvil.

If this isn’t the future of epic fantasy role-playing, I don’t know what would be. Gygax and Arneson would have been all over this thread if they were alive. They started out as hardcore wargamers and they would have known what I am talking about.

[Zaister]

This really makes no sense to me. And I run multiple groups, but none of my players would want anything like this.

[Errant Mercenary]

Roleplaying games are intrinsicly collaborative. No one wins the Pathfinder 2 or the DND game. That you consider it to "be the future" well, it's what many would consider a hot take. Which is cool, and as a mode of play, more the merrier.
However as a blanket statement? Good luck with the wolves :P

I'll throw a question out for a thought process. How is this remotely competitive when comparing different GMs? If the competitiveness stops the moment table variation occurs, it isnt a very solid framework.

As for the map and tech it is always cool to see more interactiveness. What is developed for one game mode surely can be used for another, for example for kingdom managing and such. Good luck.

[CULTxicycalm]

The reason D&D is multiplayer is because it's more fun than solo. And that’s also why multigroup is more fun than singlegroup. It’s not rocket science.

Multigroup has been done before of course. My innovation is that I base everything off of Pathfinder Adventure Paths placed on a vg-style overworld, with the groups sometimes collaborating and sometimes competing to complete them, the choice always being made by them rather than by the GM.

This new element shoots freedom and therefore immersion through the roof. While your group is in Sandpoint dealing with the runelords, another group of real people is in Korvosa dealing with Queen Ileosa and you hear news about it in the taproom of the Rusty Dragon. If either group falters, then the other group will have to deal with the consequences of that failure as they engulf the region.

Games don’t get any more interactive than this. Every single one of my 17 players is hooked and I run this universe for close to 20 hours every weekend.

“But my buddy plays solo, GMing himself, and he loves it—he would never dream of playing with other human beings, since he dislikes people—ergo your theory of increased immersion is invalid!”

Okay buddy.

[Zaister]

Just out of curiosity: how long does it take one of your groups to complete an AP on average?

I'm curious when you plan to actually play Tyrant's Grasp and your so-called "Season 2", if your players need to have player all 23 other 1E APs before…

[Rysky]

… what’s with the random quoted insult that no one has even come into the vicinity of saying?

Talking down to people and fabricating antagonists isn’t making you look good.

[CULTxicycalm]

Zaister wrote:

Just out of curiosity: how long does it take one of your groups to complete an AP on average?

I'm curious when you plan to actually play Tyrant's Grasp and your so-called "Season 2", if your players need to have player all 23 other 1E APs before…

We don’t know. We’ve only put about 150 hours into this so far, it’s a new project. These people are my videogame clan, and we only recently decided to embark on this project although I have been working on the rules framework for about two years (or if you count how long I’ve been thinking about it, since 1991).

To get to Season 2 I would imagine we’d need 5-10 years. It also depends on if I get more groups in the future.

The point though is I am not in a hurry to get anywhere. Moreover, the entire D&D universe is included in this overworld, so for example a group might decide to unlock Spelljammer and go to the Forgotten Realms, or I have rules that randomly determine when a group gets whisked to Ravenloft for a side-adventure, so if the groups spread among the stars maybe they’ll never get to Pathfinder Season 2. But they can get to Dark Sun Season 1, or Planescape Season 1, etc. It’s up to them to decide what they want to play and head for it on the overworld.

I have made it clear to them however that I believe that the Pathfinder setting is the best fictional setting of all time, the Pathfinder adventures the best adventures, and the Pathfinder rules the best rules. That’s why it’s the starting point of every group. I see all other settings as spice, and Pathfinder the main meal.

[Errant Mercenary]

Hey Rysky perhaps you dont know the future has no space for niceties, it is all a stark competition and the Roleplaying point score is everything :P

I'd think, OP, you'd garner a lot more curiosity from people from a more moderate stance that didnt include assuring us what the founders of the game would jam to, decades after their deaths. I think you have something that is definitely interesting for some niche applications, such as university clubs, or game shop run events, but you'd need to change a bit how you interact with people if you want some attention, more so for collaboration.

Here is an idea to play test these kind of things though: Have each party controlled by a single person. If you have a group of very dedicated players, that'd make for an easier test run, 3-4, perhaps with some simplifications.

[CULTxicycalm]

No way we’d run your suggestion. I would rather play Pac-Man than have a party controlled by one person.

[CULTxicycalm]

I believe that my project of running the entire Pathfinder Season 1 with Ultimate Edition rules, meaning all campaigns interacting with each other and not happening like clockwork every 6 months—which makes no sense—is the ultimate accomplishment in art, like Wagner staging a Ring cycle in Bayreuth but on steroids, and I plan to devote the next decade of my life making this happen, producing a full interactive overworld and stream of every session and summary of every session that will number thousands of pages.

It is absolutely not a project meant to be played by many groups on the planet. I would be surprised if it ever gets duplicated, though in the infinity of time, perhaps it might be. But I don’t expect it.

Sue me.

[TOZ]

Okay buddy.

[CULTxicycalm]

That said, I believe EVERY group can benefit by adopting Ultimate Edition rules, which boils down to creating an overworld in World Anvil, placing all published material there—or at least as much as the GM has approved (I approve all of it for Pathfinder because it’s perfect)—and letting the players head towards what they want and play what they want instead of dragging them around by the nose while pretending they have a choice, as D&D has been doing since day 1.

The other groups won’t revel in the full glory of Pathfinder Season 1 happening organically all around them, but they can at least increase the interactivity and immersion of their game by an order of magnitude if they adopt my overworld rules.