Worth Salvaging?

[Lord Fyre]

Given the problems with Colonialism baked into Sargava (and the old pulps in general) is this AP worth adapting into Pathfinder 2nd Edition?

[Sunderstone]

Some Spoilers (players beware)

This AP has moved to my top 5 from being near the bottom for years, but needs some heavy lifting on the part of the GM, IMHO.
Part of this might depends on your age. I'm a fan of the old pulp books and Tarzan movies. I also like all kinds of Jungle adventure movies, probably due to the exotic locales. The colonialism while a part of this era can be written out if you want it to be. You can turn this into an earlier "Wakanda" (as an example) with any of it's peoples trying to unify all of the Mwangi Expanse, some people like the Bekyar by force in service to their demon queen or whatnot. Replace the colonials with the most powerful faction of Mwangi people.
Or...
Discuss some things with your players before hand and tell them what the campaign focus is supposed to be despite some of the potential pitfalls. You can allow and plan for them to help free slaves, seed revoulution from time to time etc. as potential side treks, but explain that it's not the focus of the campaign and there's a deeper story here.

I wasn't a fan of this AP when it was released for more "mechanical" (for lack of a better term) reasons, despite the 1st book being so good. I originally planned for Shiv to be run as a "zero level" prelude to Skull and Shackles instead using an updated version of Goodman Games zero level rules in 3.5.

My issues with the AP were...
1) Too many factions, as well as castaways. I was looking to keep 2 or 3 castaways only as well as maybe 2 factions.
2) The City of Seven Spears discovery is kind of an ending in itself and then it's a "fooled you" kind of thing leading to another hidden city below ground. After finding one hidden city, finding another one below ground is a little bit anticlimactic,IMHO.
3) Book 4, Vaults of Madness feels like an add-on pack for Book 3 which is ok, but I'd use maybe 3 Vaults only and definitely use maybe one insanity check every few hours and only for prolonged exposure.
4) Books 5 and 6 are technically one long book cut in half by page count limits, which is perfectly fine. However, I really hate the Urdefhan. Maybe it's the semi-Hellraiser look and feel, I don't know. I just don't care for them.
In a nutshell (and slight tangent), I have a long text file replacing every Urdefhan with Drow from a fallen and exiled house (IMC, House Rasivrein) using the super useful Monster Codex. Rasivrein needs the city for a new home/base of operations and wants to try and control the serpent god and direct it to Zirkaynan later as a vengeance plot.

Overall, jungle exploration, hidden cities, cannibal savages, dangerous environments, etc. ticks a lot of boxes for high adventure. The colonialism virtually vanishes after the second book anyway. It all becomes about the exploration of hidden cities and preventing a major catastrophic event.

[Lord Fyre]

Sunderstone wrote:

Some Spoilers (players beware)

This AP has moved to my top 5 from being near the bottom for years, but needs some heavy lifting on the part of the GM, IMHO.
Part of this might depends on your age. I'm a fan of the old pulp books and Tarzan movies. I also like all kinds of Jungle adventure movies, probably due to the exotic locales. The colonialism while a part of this era can be written out if you want it to be. You can turn this into an earlier "Wakanda" (as an example) with any of it's peoples trying to unify all of the Mwangi Expanse, some people like the Bekyar by force in service to their demon queen or whatnot. Replace the colonials with the most powerful faction of Mwangi people.
Or...
Discuss some things with your players before hand and tell them what the campaign focus is supposed to be despite some of the potential pitfalls. You can allow and plan for them to help free slaves, seed revolution from time to time etc. as potential side treks, but explain that it's not the focus of the campaign and there's a deeper story here.

I wasn't a fan of this AP when it was released for more "mechanical" (for lack of a better term) reasons, despite the 1st book being so good. I originally planned for Shiv to be run as a "zero level" prelude to Skull and Shackles instead using an updated version of Goodman Games zero level rules in 3.5.

My issues with the AP were...
1) Too many factions, as well as castaways. I was looking to keep 2 or 3 castaways only as well as maybe 2 factions.
2) The City of Seven Spears discovery is kind of an ending in itself and then it's a "fooled you" kind of thing leading to another hidden city below ground. After finding one hidden city, finding another one below ground is a little bit anticlimactic,IMHO.
3) Book 4, Vaults of Madness feels like an add-on pack for Book 3 which is ok, but I'd use maybe 3 Vaults only and definitely use maybe one insanity check every few hours and only for prolonged exposure.
4) Books 5 and 6 are technically one long book cut in half by...

I am 59 year old white dude, so while I am with you about the allure of the old pulps, I can see some of the problems resulting from the colonialism baked in to the setting (so has Paizo).

But that actually opens some opportunities.
* - The Shackles are now hostile. So this cuts down the factions, buy cutting both the Pirates and the Mantis. Change the factions to the Vidrian government (acting as the "neutral" faction), the Apis (acting as a "badguy" faction), and the Magaambya (as the "good guy" faction).
* - Actually, the Shackles Pirates make dandy replacements for the Freeman’s Brotherhood (Racing to Ruin, p11) and the saboteurs in Kalabuto (p34 of the same book).

This would require some other changes.
* - New Campaign Traits
* - New Faction NPCs for Book 1
* - Swapping NPCs for Vidrians in the rest of the AP, mostly Book 2.

[Bjørn Røyrvik]

Worth it?
Depends on who you ask. The colonialsm aspect isn't an important part of the adventure and can easily be rewritten to something more palatable. If you like the rest of the AP well enough as written, it should be easy to fix that one little bit.

The bigger problem IMO was basically everything else. The core idea was cool (I too love old pulp stories) but it needed work, a lot of work, to make it into something more coherent and interesting than what is in the books.

Since the colonial aspect fit well with the part of Mystara I wanted to use, I kept that bit with just a mild bit of reflavoring. However I spent a LOT of time and effort rewriting and adjusting just about everything else. Many many hours.

Was it worth it?
It got the job done, but I think my players were less enthused than they would have been had I spent even more time fixing it up. I added a bunch of stuff to SY and even so they felt it was mostly empty and featureless . Had the players wanted to stick with the factions and the competition between them rather than soloing it, they might have felt more connection with the busywork of the adventure.

[Lord Fyre]

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

Worth it?

Depends on who you ask. The colonialsm aspect isn't an important part of the adventure and can easily be rewritten to something more palatable. If you like the rest of the AP well enough as written, it should be easy to fix that one little bit.

Yes, the Colonial aspect does bother me. But not as much as it probably should have until it was illuminated for me.

Bjørn Røyrvik wrote:

The bigger problem IMO was basically everything else. The core idea was cool (I too love old pulp stories) but it needed work, a lot of work, to make it into something more coherent and interesting than what is in the books.

That's the problem. The idea is very cool. It is an homage to I9 Dwellers Of The Forbidden City, itself an homage to Burroughs's Opar.

Sadly, this story would have been a great candidate for a three part AP. (Abomination Vaults for the win!) Of course, such an AP would have needed to be much more plot driven.

Alas, What could have been ... :(

[Lord Fyre]

There is not specific question here, I am just spitballing some thoughts.

Okay. I admit that I am obsessed with what this AP could have been.

One idea, though I hate the idea of giving WoTC money, but Tomb of Annihilation seems to have many useful ideas I could steal.

So, after an amazingly good first adventure, I should start re-writing from that point on.