"A person's greatest strength and biggest weakness are often the same attribute."
The strength of an adventure path is a well designed story arc building in significance and magnitude as the party gains in power and status.
The weakness of an adventure PATH is the story LINE which can decrease the party's autonomy and character growth.
Session 0: "Write up a backstory for your character including motivations for adventure and people/places/things important to you."
Session 1: "You wake up on the Plane of Narrative with no memory of who you were."
Session 13: "Your memories come flooding back to you, but there is no time to dwell on them. You only have fourteen days to defeat the Omniturbulent Hambasticor!"
The typical response is "A good game master can weave the two together". So, I would like to invite people to tell stories of how they or their GM made the adventure path feel personal. Such as:
- Familiar faces in unusual places ("Hey Mom! What are you doing in the Alushinyrra?")
- Bending the AP arc ("Launching a coup could ensure you more resources on the quest!")
- Customize encounters for characters. ("The mayor's dog reminds you of the feral mutt who killed your baby brother.")
Spoilers are probably unavoidable, but I would love to hear good examples that I can model my story telling on.
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Let's see a few soap opera style twists occurred over the course of my Jade Regent campaign.
The Oni-Blooded Tiefling Paladin player was the secret twin brother of the Jade Regent.
One of the PCs was the secret half-brother of Ameiko Kaijitsu, and thus a viable second heir to the throne (though they didn't want that responsibility).
One of the PCs was the half-sister of the Regent's consort.
Two of the PCs were the secret children of Shalelu.
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Some good examples from my Wrath of the Righteous run that I'm doing right now:
One player thought he was tied closely to Iomedae, but it is going to be revealed that his actual parent is Nocticula.
One player is going to wind up closely related to Queen Galfrey, something that he'll discover in book 3. His father is the missing last prince of Mendev, and the origin of the Neathholm Children of the First Crusade.
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I did this a good bit in my Agents of Edgewatch campaign.
When I was starting the adventure I made a basic NPC sheet, with a place for a name, portrait, relation to the PC, occupation, personality and background. All of the characters had to be from Absalom and in order to start they had to submit three of the NPC sheets. They also got a bonus hero point for each session if they submitted another NPC sheet. When something would come up like entering a store or a person being kidnapped, I had a number of fleshed out NPCs that I could drop into the world. Not every one knew the PCs (one option was that they did not have a relation to the PC), but it made the world feel much more alive, and my players appreciated seeing their creations in the world. Just to draw some examples from the first book, I had several NPCs scattered around the fair, one kidnapped by disgruntled workers, and another the victim of a murder the characters investigated.
If I had to do it over again, I'd probably be a bit more granular in this, ask the PCs to make up a Rival, an Ally, and a Nemesis for the first three, then use the general NPCs for the extra hero points. Most of my players had an NPC at the start of the session, so I quickly got too many of them to use. Also, don't be afraid to add side quests. Yes, the AP as written has a time crunch, but a lot of them have a natural end point at the end of each adventure and that is a perfect time to add in a side quest.
For mine, for instance, I had a PC who gave me the idea for Rival, Ally and Nemesis, and submitted NPCs for each. At the end of book one, they had wrapped up the investigation at the Dreaming Palace, and got a letter from their Ally, a station chief in The Coins, who had a bank robbery with little clues to go on. I ran it as a one session mini adventure. The PC arrived on site with their companions to find their rival, a grizzled investigator who fought to keep them from being accepted into Edgewatch, already investigating and generally being a jerk. The players investigated and found out it was their nemesis, a daring gentleman thief, who the PCs tracked down. They were able to recover the stolen loot, but the nemesis got away. If you were able to run 2-3 of these adventures between each book, it provides a nice change of pace from the main story, and gives some more character moments for the player characters.
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** spoiler omitted **
One player chose an automaton, and so he is sort of like a kofun-era clay warrior that was created by a servant of the family to protect them.
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My wife is great at character arcs. I hold a Session Zero for aligning character concepts with the adventure path, but she gains her information even earlier as we discuss which adventure path to run nrxt.
For my Jade Regent campaign she created the human ninja Ebony Blossom. Ebony Blossom was a member of the Tiger's Tears ninja and winemakers clan, who had served the Amatatsu imperial family before the Amatatsu disappeared. She had traveled (along with a master ninja who died on the trip) across the world following old rumors that some Amatatsu had escaped to Varisia. Her character arc was about success in that mission and changing her loyalty from her clan to her future empress. Ebony Blossom's greatest strength and greatest weakness was her ninja tradition.
For my Iron Gods campaign she created the dwarf gunsmith gadgeteer Boffin. Boffin simply wanted to make interesting things and was interested in tinkering with the alien high technology in Numeria. The party acted like citizens rather than adventurers, avoiding trouble when possible, so I let them salvage and refit a small spaceship mostly to have more technology. Iron Gods has several potential themes to incorporate into the story, such as magic versus technology, the role of gods, or good versus evil, but the players chose making and sharing technology versus the Technic League's policy of confiscating and hoarding technology. It was more a character theme than a character arc; nevertheless, it transformed the original plot of the adventure path. Boffin's greatest strength was her technological crafting, and while it was not a weakness, it did often make her less of an adventurer.
For my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign she created the halfling rogue/sorcerer Sam, who was an escaped slave from Nidal lying low in a village in Nirmathas. She told me that Sam's character arc would be him progressing from distrusting people to leading people. However, the story took a twist in the 2nd module, Fangs of War, when Sam pretended to be a fey in order to enter a Korred festival. That changed the tone of Sam's development, because he took to calling himself fey to highlight his more relaxed openness with people. That became an interesting twist in the fey-based 5th module, Prisoners of the Blight. Sam's greatest strength was his Deception ability until he became the living incarnation of the lies he told (he ended the game as a fey).
Our younger daughter has her mother's talent with character stories. She joined the Ironfang Invasion storyline with a leshy sorcerer Twining Gold-Flame Honeysuckle. Honey's backstory is that a Fangwood druid had awakened her as a familiar while he traveled as a healer. After bandits killed the druid, Honey became an independent leshy, continuing her former partner's healing circuit until she had to rescue villagers from the Ironfang Invasion and joined the party at 6th level. Her character development continued even further and she ended the campaign as a goddess. Honey's greatest strength was support, and as a weakness she defined herself by who she supported. She ended up supporting worshipers across the world.
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@Mathmuse, that is awesome!!!
It feels routine to me. I became a long-time GM back in 2011 when my wife quit running a Rise of the Runelords adventure path due to health problems. I volunteered to continue the campaign as replacement GM. My primary motivation was that I wanted to see what happened next in the adventure.
The D&D 3.5 Rise of the Runelords, before Paizo converted an anniversary edition to Pathfinder 1st Edition, had a reputation as a meat grinder with heavy combat against ogres and giants and lamia. My wife had been using fan-created material to play it under PF1 rules, so she and later I were altering it anyway. The player characters were not combat specialists, except for the battle oracle. Party also had a scholarly wizard, a clever rogue, a sneaky rogue, a journalist bard, and a scouting bard. I altered the adventure style to one about gathering information beforehand to gain tactical advantages in combat, because then the abilities of the PCs would support the story.
Customizing the adventure path to fit the characters became my style of gamemastering. Improvising is the other side of my style, because I let the characters seize the narrative and alter the plot but then I have to make up new details for the rest of the game session. Good, quick improvisation, unfortunately, requires skill gained from experience. And between game sessions I adjusted the encounters to fit the new plot. I became skilled at encounter design, too. For example in Encounter Balance: The Math and the Monsters, comment #68 I explained why I had to alter some encounters:
When I began my Iron Gods campaign, Iron Gods among Scientists, I learned that my players were not in it to build powerful characters. Two of them created residents of the local town. The third made an exotic strix skald. Their main goal was to explore the interesting Numerian setting and play with the alien high technology in a fantasy setting. When we recruited a newbie as a fourth player, he was the kind of player who wanted to win, but as an engineer he was happy to win by mastering high technology. In the second module, Lords of Rust, the writer anticipated that the PCs might have different styles for entering the shantytown named Scrapwall.
Lords of Rust minor spoiler: <skip>My players did not use any of the cover stories--Crusader, Adventurer, Scoundrel, Technic League, or Scrapwall Gang--suggested. They claimed to be refugees. They were archeologists who had run afoul of the anti-archeology Technic League and needed a place to hide until the heat was off. Scrapwall was perfect for that. They were not there to fight.
This was a PF1 game, but described in the PF2 Threat system, that mean that they would tackle only Trivial Threats, the random encounters that all residents of Scrapwall faced. I had to invent everyday life in Scrapwall to fill the time and they did high-tech household chores for Scrapwall resident Dinvaya Lanalei in exchange for room and board. Their toughest battle was a fistfight for fun at a local beer festival. But when word went out that a wild Rust Monster was spotted, they volunteered to pick up wooden weapons, defeat the Trivial Threat for their weaker neighbors, and pretend they were being brave in the act.
Gradually, the denizens of Scrapwall learned that their new neighbors were both helpful and stronger than the rest of them. They were asked to perform more dangerous favors for the needy, slowly earning xp to level up, and eventually had to defeat a Moderate-Threat band of ogres raiding Scrapwall and reveal enough strength to draw the attention of the Lords of Rust. But the players were not disappointed with the easy combat. It was all part of their plan.
My job was to follow their plan unless it conflicted with the underlying plot and setting.
I did not mention in that thread about encounter design that the key moment when the the ordinary Scrapwall residents decided to trust their strange new neighbors was not a planned encounter. Instead, after the beer festival the strix skald decided to hold a public concert. The character was very much a musician. The player invented the concert, and I exploited it to establish the party's local reputation in order to return to the plot written in the module. Character themes and character arcs are very useful for filling in breaks in the adventure path's plot.
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Oh, I agree, 100%! My favorite twist was when I was running Rise of the Runelords, myself! I wanted to tie the PCs a little more to the ancient empire. We had 3 elves, a human monk and a Shoanti barbarian.
I ended up taking a turn and tapped into the historical origins of the Shoanti, making the barbarian the descendant Xin-Shalast's greatest general in the warrior caste (who's soul was bound to this pauldron that had been passed down from generation to generation in his family).
The monk, actually woke up without memories, and had noticed that everything she did had to do with being flashy, making sure she never looked bad. So, the obvious choice was to make her the daughter of the Runelord of Pride, awoken from her stasis. As the story unfolded, she discovered that she was bound to the Nation of Greed because she had betrayed her father because of some other issues... but mostly hubris, befitting of Pride.
The three elves, I made Faceless Stalkers that had gone into deep cover after the fall of Thassilon. They found that they needed to shed their personae every once in a while, to maintain cover, and finally settled on becoming the longest-lived race available, hence elves...
It really made them feel pretty involved in the story, they took it and ran with it!
Awesome stories, everyone!
I will definitely steal @NerdOver9000 idea for player generated NPCs. It will definitely make the players feel influential and grease the way for the characters to feel integrated.
I admire @Mathmuse willingness and ability to bend the plotline to the players. I doubt my ability to wing it that cleanly, but it gives me courage to try.
Tying characters to NPCs has worked intermittently for me. Some players were excited to be a secret prince and others accused me of re-writing their characters story.
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Awesome stories, everyone!
I will definitely steal @NerdOver9000 idea for player generated NPCs. It will definitely make the players feel influential and grease the way for the characters to feel integrated.
I admire @Mathmuse willingness and ability to bend the plotline to the players. I doubt my ability to wing it that cleanly, but it gives me courage to try.
Tying characters to NPCs has worked intermittently for me. Some players were excited to be a secret prince and others accused me of re-writing their characters story.
Session 0 and ongoing discussion can help with this.
For my players the expectation is:"Your backstory is what your character believes to be true. If something turns out to be different from this backstory, I will ensure your character is able to ascertain why they believed something else to be true."