A suggestion for improving the presentation of subsystem sections in APs: cheat sheets


Pathfinder Adventure Path General Discussion

Vigilant Seal

I've been running Mantle of Gold (book 1 of the Sky King's Tomb AP) with my group, which features half a dozen or so quests that are resolved using some variant of the Victory Point subsystem. I've found that the presentation of these quests makes them quite hard to run because the details of the quest and the progression of the subsystem are spread over 5-6 pages. While the wealth of detail given on those pages certainly helps flesh the quests out, it makes it very difficult to quickly discern the quest's structure or refer to the text when running it. In addition, points that tie into other quests or future events can easily be overlooked, especially if they are not highlighted. I therefore think it'd be good to include a one-page cheat sheet that outlines the flow and structure of the event (i.e., the number of tasks available to the PCs, the number of VPs to earn in each one, and the number of rounds of checks that the PCs can perform), any unique features of the quest, points that tie into other quests or events in the AP, and the rewards available to the PCs if any. To show how this could work, I've created such a cheat sheet for the *Burntown Temps* quest from the first chapter of Mantle of Gold, which takes up 5.5 pages in the existing text. The cheat sheet can be seen here (minor unavoidable spoilers for Sky King's Tomb): https://i.gyazo.com/d8728648b128929f3f7189f9053d9d4e.png

I really think that including cheat sheets like this would make it a lot easier to run subsystem events in general and greatly reduce the amount of prep GMs need to do to run them well.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Well I doubt Paizo would have the room to put sheets like this in the page counts of the APs, this does seem like a very helpful cheat sheet. I could see this being a good project someone could put together and sell on Pathfinder Infinite as a support product.

Silver Crusade

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