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Deeply motivated by the urgent need for cash, I made a census of how often APs were mentioned on this forum of AP General Discussion in threads about best/worst APs or parts thereof during the last 4 years.
So that I would keep the best ones in case I could GM them someday.
I figure it can be of use to others, so here we are :
1. Curse of the Crimson Throne : 41 points = +41 positive mentions - 0 negative mentions
2. Hell's Rebels : 35 points = +35-0
2. Rise of the Runelords : 35 points = +35-0
4. Strength of Thousands : 30 points = +30-0
5. Iron Gods : 29 points = +29-0
6. Carrion Crown : 26 points = +26-0
7. Strange Aeons : 25 points = +25-0
8. War for the Crown : 24 points = +25-1
9. Reign of Winter : 22 points = +23-1
10. Skulls and Shackles : 19 points = +19-0
11. Abomination Vaults : 18 points = +18-0
12. Return of the Runelords : 14 points = +15-1
13. Mummy's Mask : 14 points = +16-2
14. Jade Regent : 13 points = +15-2
15. Wrath of the Righteous : 13 points = +16-3
16. Serpent's Skull : 12 points = +18-6
17. Age of Ashes : 11 points = +12-1
18. Ironfang Invasion : 10 points = +11-1
18. Legacy of Fire : 10 points = +11-1
20. Shattered Star : 9 points = +13-4
21. Tyrant's Grasp : 7 points = +9-2
22. Quest for the Frozen Flame : 6 points = +6-0
22. Fists of the Ruby Phoenix : 6 points = +6-0
24. Outlaws of Alkenstar : 6 points = +7-1
25. Agents of Edgewatch : 4 points = +6-2
26. Ruins of Azlant : 4 points = +6-2
27. Sky King's Tomb : 3 points = +3-0
28. Blood Lords : 3 points = +4-1
28. Extinction Curse : 3 points = +4-1
30. Second Darkness : 1 point = +8-7
31. Hell's Vengeance : 0 point = +7-7
31. Council of Thieves : 0 point = +7-7
33. Giantslayer : -3 points = +3-6
Did you not search on APs you don't own (or do own but already decided not to sell)? I don't see Kingmaker on this list.
I also don't understand your process. If I search "Jade Regent," the search returns 1,891 results. Did you trawl through all of those results, only finding 15 positive comments and 2 negative comments for this AP?
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Did you not search on APs you don't own (or do own but already decided not to sell)? I don't see Kingmaker on this list.
I also don't understand your process. If I search "Jade Regent," the search returns 1,891 results. Did you trawl through all of those results, only finding 15 positive comments and 2 negative comments for this AP?
You are right. I have the PF2 Kingmaker and decided to keep it, so I did not include it in my rankings. My bad.
It would be in the top 5 based on all the positive comments I remember seeing.
I did not go through all posts that mention a given AP. Merely through the threads in the AP General Discussion board that are about best/worst AP, best 1st part of an AP and somesuch. And I did not go further than 4 years in the past.
Do you not still have the PDFs to GM from? Back when I maintained an AP subscription, the 6 physical books went onto Ebay as soon as the set was complete, but I can still run every AP from RotRL to 7DfS (even the rubbish ones - looking at you Blood Lords).
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Do you not still have the PDFs to GM from? Back when I maintained an AP subscription, the 6 physical books went onto Ebay as soon as the set was complete, but I can still run every AP from RotRL to 7DfS (even the rubbish ones - looking at you Blood Lords).
Good point. I do from Jade Regent onwards.
But I like reading an AP before running it and it is easier for me with books.
I will consider it though. Thank you.
I’m surprised Giantslayer is that lowly ranked. I heard it got repetitive but is it that bad?
I’m surprised Giantslayer is that lowly ranked. I heard it got repetitive but is it that bad?
I have not played Giantslayer, but I heard that some people were disappointed that after they grew attached to protecting a town from orcs in the 1st module, they abandoned the town to battle giants in the 2nd module.
In a recent post in No more 6-parts APs? comment #80 Creative Director James Jacobs said,
Kinda highlight one of the issues with 6 parts APs, filling 6 volumes with contents can be difficult.Especially if that idea doesn't really lend itself well to six volumes. One that immediately comes to mind is Giantslayer—that one would have probably done better as a high-level 3 part Adventure Path, because at low levels, giants are simply things you shouldn't be fighting at all, let alone in numbers.
I think that means that since Giantslayer could not start with low-level characters fighting giants, the 1st module had the wrong foes for the theme of the adventure path. In retrospect, it should have been a shorter adventure path starting with higher-level characters who could fight giants immediately.
I’m surprised Giantslayer is that lowly ranked. I heard it got repetitive but is it that bad?I have not played Giantslayer, but I heard that some people were disappointed that after they grew attached to protecting a town from orcs in the 1st module, they abandoned the town to battle giants in the 2nd module.
In a recent post in No more 6-parts APs? comment #80 Creative Director James Jacobs said,
I think that means that since Giantslayer could not start with low-level characters fighting giants, the 1st module had the wrong foes for the theme of the adventure path. In retrospect, it should have been a shorter adventure path starting with higher-level characters who could fight giants immediately.Kinda highlight one of the issues with 6 parts APs, filling 6 volumes with contents can be difficult.Especially if that idea doesn't really lend itself well to six volumes. One that immediately comes to mind is Giantslayer—that one would have probably done better as a high-level 3 part Adventure Path, because at low levels, giants are simply things you shouldn't be fighting at all, let alone in numbers.
That makes a lot of sense actually. Honestly if Paizo wants to rectify this mistake, a 2E remake or spiritual successor of Giantslayer could be pretty nifty, since I’m reading that now APs are not only 3 parters but can start at medium or high level instead of always starting at level 1.
Wow. The fact that Extinction Curse is barely above Second Darkness makes me sad. We had a ton of fun with Extinction Curse, while Second Darkness remains the only AP my gaming group decided to abandon without finishing.
Wow. The fact that Extinction Curse is barely above Second Darkness makes me sad. We had a ton of fun with Extinction Curse, while Second Darkness remains the only AP my gaming group decided to abandon without finishing.
There's an awful lot of popular sentiment against it for how the circus half and the epic fantasy adventure half don't really meld - though I do think the volume set in the Darklands looked like great fun.
I also remember some controversy around not just trying to right Aroden's old wrong on these forums.
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I think that there are a number of Adventure Paths that are getting brought down in polls and reviews, because they require some element of execution on the part of a GM that really sells them well.
In PF2 for example, Age of Ashes probably would be very well received if it got a "remastered revision" that really went in to:
1. Fix the swingy-ness of some of the outlier encounter difficulties,
2. Turn the Dragons of the adventure into cool unique Golarion creations instead of leaving them to feel like hold-over D&D creatures. Some of the Dragons in this path are already there, but not the main ones.
3. Remove alignment from it. It was an AP that never really needed the old alignment system anyway and would feel much fresher without it.
4. Back-track GM Core subsystems more elegantly over the parts of the AP where the writers really just had to wing it as part of an early release, including doing stuff like giving Breachill the Otari/Sandpoint/Wilowshore treatment of making downtime activities more easy to parse and meaningful to the adventure and apply the research subsystem to working the Aiudara, etc.
I had fun playing extinction curse (unfortunately I had to bow out of that game in book 4 when I desperately wanted to play book 5 of it), but the Gm went to extraordinary lengths to make the circus part of it a major focus of the campaign. We had multiple sessions where we pretty much just planned and hosted a circus. He did really well with that, but even so, there where multiple times where it was really difficult to justify caring about the circus as the world fell apart, perhaps in part as this game took place during a global pandemic. Like, maybe there are better things for mid-to-high-level heroes to do than spend a week in a town under siege trying to hawk circus tickets? I personally would have rather seen the circus entirely ditched after the first half of book 1, written out entirely, or just not overlapping with such serious events to need to deal with.
A big part of why I have decided to spend my adventure prep time as a GM converting the Shattered Star AP from first edition to a remastered second edition is that I think there are a lot of things now figured out about the game system that can go back and be applied to some of the really great ideas in past adventure paths, that didn't have those systems when they were written.
I also feel like some of the newer 3 part APs have narrative problems that feed into mechanical problems that will take more work to fix than I want to do.
Like the third book of Outlaws of Alkenstar went so far off the rails thematically (even though some of it was really cool as stand alone dungeons) that it made the whole premise of the campaign fall apart. You just can't say "play low magic gun-heavy characters in this AP" and then make the ultimate and penultimate encounter sites of the AP happen in close-quarter environs against enemies that magic is almost required to beat, with auras that almost make shooting guns impossible.
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A big part of why I have decided to spend my adventure prep time as a GM converting the Shattered Star AP from first edition to a remastered second edition is that I think there are a lot of things now figured out about the game system that can go back and be applied to some of the really great ideas in past adventure paths, that didn't have those systems when they were written.
I wish you good luck with that project. I found while converting Ironfang Invasion to PF2 rules that such a conversion also makes customizing the campaign to the players' interests simpler. Catering to the players makes a game more fun.
Wow. The fact that Extinction Curse is barely above Second Darkness makes me sad. We had a ton of fun with Extinction Curse, while Second Darkness remains the only AP my gaming group decided to abandon without finishing.There's an awful lot of popular sentiment against it for how the circus half and the epic fantasy adventure half don't really meld - though I do think the volume set in the Darklands looked like great fun.
I also remember some controversy around not just trying to right Aroden's old wrong on these forums.
Book 5 is the Darklands one, yeah. It is a lot of fun (the adventure down there is good), but it also feels pretty "we needed another book here" in that the entire reason to go down there is based on a very flimsy excuse for the NPCs that want you to do it not helping you with a much simpler solution because "reasons".
That was the one point in the AP where what my players wanted to do it and what the AP expected them to want to do differed. I did tell them I'd make up something new if they wanted to follow their other idea, but they decided to go along with the book and ended up enjoying it.
The circus theme fades away more than I'd care for as well, though I did some work in book 5 and 6 to make it still relevant when I could. Still, the overall AP flows fairly well and by time you get to the later books you'd have a lot of introduction to why you're doing this and why its important.
But it's not even in the same league as SD in terms of any of these problems.
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I’m surprised Giantslayer is that lowly ranked. I heard it got repetitive but is it that bad?I have not played Giantslayer, but I heard that some people were disappointed that after they grew attached to protecting a town from orcs in the 1st module, they abandoned the town to battle giants in the 2nd module.
In a recent post in No more 6-parts APs? comment #80 Creative Director James Jacobs said,
I think that means that since Giantslayer could not start with low-level characters fighting giants, the 1st module had the wrong foes for the theme of the adventure path. In retrospect, it should have been a shorter adventure path starting with higher-level characters who could fight giants immediately.Kinda highlight one of the issues with 6 parts APs, filling 6 volumes with contents can be difficult.Especially if that idea doesn't really lend itself well to six volumes. One that immediately comes to mind is Giantslayer—that one would have probably done better as a high-level 3 part Adventure Path, because at low levels, giants are simply things you shouldn't be fighting at all, let alone in numbers.
the first volume of the Giantslayer AP is the best one.
Wow. The fact that Extinction Curse is barely above Second Darkness makes me sad. We had a ton of fun with Extinction Curse, while Second Darkness remains the only AP my gaming group decided to abandon without finishing.
To be fair to Extinction Curse, the number of mentions being fairly low is kinda skewing things here. It has 5 total mentions which is a single gaming group.
The PF1 APs are given a bit of a boost by the fact that they've been around a lot longer so have had more time to be mentioned, and so a lot of the PF2 APs wind up down with the absolute stinkers of PF1.
Neat way to make a ranking system overall though.
the first volume of the Giantslayer AP is the best one.I’m surprised Giantslayer is that lowly ranked. I heard it got repetitive but is it that bad?I have not played Giantslayer, but I heard that some people were disappointed that after they grew attached to protecting a town from orcs in the 1st module, they abandoned the town to battle giants in the 2nd module.
In a recent post in No more 6-parts APs? comment #80 Creative Director James Jacobs said,
I think that means that since Giantslayer could not start with low-level characters fighting giants, the 1st module had the wrong foes for the theme of the adventure path. In retrospect, it should have been a shorter adventure path starting with higher-level characters who could fight giants immediately.Kinda highlight one of the issues with 6 parts APs, filling 6 volumes with contents can be difficult.Especially if that idea doesn't really lend itself well to six volumes. One that immediately comes to mind is Giantslayer—that one would have probably done better as a high-level 3 part Adventure Path, because at low levels, giants are simply things you shouldn't be fighting at all, let alone in numbers.
And if the AP was about Orcs, that would have been great.
The problem is that the AP is about Giants.
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Wow. The fact that Extinction Curse is barely above Second Darkness makes me sad. We had a ton of fun with Extinction Curse, while Second Darkness remains the only AP my gaming group decided to abandon without finishing.To be fair to Extinction Curse, the number of mentions being fairly low is kinda skewing things here. It has 5 total mentions which is a single gaming group.
The PF1 APs are given a bit of a boost by the fact that they've been around a lot longer so have had more time to be mentioned, and so a lot of the PF2 APs wind up down with the absolute stinkers of PF1.
Neat way to make a ranking system overall though.
Thank you.
You are quite right of course. I would choose the smallest number of mentions for a PF1 AP (8 for Ruins of Azlant here) as the minimum number for an AP's overall score to be significant.
For PF2 APs, Fists of the Ruby Phoenix, Sky King's Tomb, Blood Lords and Extinction Curse have not yet reached this fateful number.
And even then, an AP with too few mentions just cannot reach the highest scores.
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Not to mention any AP since Blood Lords, since they haven't even made it onto the list.
It also makes the fact that Strength of Thousands made it to the top 5 all the more impressive.
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That makes me wonder, what is so good about Strength of Thousands? Is it because it’s in a fixed setting, which is a new setting being a magic school?
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That makes me wonder, what is so good about Strength of Thousands? Is it because it’s in a fixed setting, which is a new setting being a magic school?
Since The Raven Black's ratings were obtained by surveying this subforum, I decided to look at the data. Four threads here have multiple praise for Strength of Thousands.
In 2E APs missing something...? (July 2021) Zapp complains of thematic flaws in The Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, and Fist of the Ruby Phoenix. Several people point out that Strength of Thousands builds more connection between its theme and its adventures.
I reckon that the place to go for more experimental adventures are the Standalone Adventure products, not the company-flagship Adventure Paths.Strength of Thousands has an incredibly specific pitch, gives characters a specific free archetype to help support the fact that it really wants you to be arcane or primal, features years of in-setting time, and goes to space. You’re sure the AP line isn’t experimental?
James Goodman 960 in 2nd Edition APS.... (July 2021) complains that PF2 adventure paths are boring compared to PF1 adventure paths. People bring up Strength of Thousands as an example of an exciting adventure path. The Raven Black might have missed a negative comment (#78) about Strength of Thousands there:
One thing I noted from this conversation, is that we've talked a lot about the theme of APs, ...
I think that people get disappointed and frustrated when the pitch:
* Doesn't give you enough to care about: Age of Ashes - Dragons, Strange Aeons - Cthulhu
* Suggests the authors are leaning into one when in fact the game is about something different: Council of Thieves - not about building a thieves guild, Extinction Curse - not about being a circus, Strength of Thousands - not Harry Potter, Ironfang Invasion - not about being Robin Hood, Agents of Edgewatch - not a buddy-cop movie.
keftiu immedately responded,
…has anyone been “disappointed and frustrated” with Strength of Thousands? I’ve pretty much only seen glowing praise.
I recite to myself in my Strength of Thousands campaign, "This is not Harry Potter," when I make the teachers of the Magaambya Academy take serious measures to keep the students safe. They did not set up a bunch of deathtraps, such as three-headed guard dogs, that students might stumble into; instead, a few Magaambya service projects are more dangerous than could be reasonably expected.
Yqatuba asked What 2e AP do you think they should turn into a video game? And why? (April 2022) Strength of Thousands was one of the suggestions. Players loved its "engaging cast of characters."
Strength of Thousands. The Magaambya setting and Academic subsystem allows for memorable NPC interactions and numerous sidequests, and the main story is suitably epic. Plus, voiced Anchor Root.
And The Rot Grub started a praise thread for Strength of Thousands, Strength of Thousands quietly pioneers a new change in the AP structure (July 2021)
I started Strength of Thousands this March. My players are having great fun with the student theme. They built their characters as students who have had a few adventures already rather than as professional adventurers or valorous heroes. The adventure path is flexible enough that I was able to customize it to this interest, such as inventing a few classes for them to take, such as "Basic Arcane Spellcasting," "Rivers of the Mwangi Expanse," and "Flight School."