This is a branch off the APs Hall Of Fame thread.
I don't have the cash to buy all the Pathfinder 2nd Edition adventure paths. I'd like to know which 2E APs to grab first.
I already have Age Of Ashes and Abomination Vaults.
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Just to clarify, we have the entire run of PF 1E Adventure Paths.
We liked
* - Rise of the Runelords (done - stepped over the 1st half of Hook Mountain)
* - Curse of the Crimson Throne (complete)
* - Legacy of Fire (in progress)
* - Skull & Shackles (in progress)
* - Iron Gods (in progress)
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For my money, I've had the most success GMing Fists of the Ruby Phoenix. Run it for two groups and both have had a blast with it. It's got some of everything and has a good mix of exploration/combat/RP. It has a lot of room for a GM to customize it by adding or changing things and having it feel natural. The theme allows for all kinds of characters: the story primarily cares that you want to win the tournament, selfish characters can run this just as well as heroic ones. Being high level, any crazy backstory your players want to use is perfectly fine because when it starts, they're already a big deal (or pair it up with a 1-10 AP like Abomination Vaults to make a longer campaign).
I've also GM'd Extinction Curse and am in the process of GMing Strength of Thousands. I like them both. In particular I rate Extinction Curse higher than a lot of other folks do, based on how much my party enjoyed it. The circus rules are meh, but they're easily ignored without it really affecting anything, and the book 5 transition is awkward, but for the most part it worked well for my group who leaned into the circus identity and learning about things Aroden had done was really interesting.
SoT is great if your group has the mindset for it, but you need to set expectations going in that it's an AP where characters need to be prepared to handle problems in ways other than overwhelming violence.
As a player... I've played Shadows at Sundown, which isn't an AP but if you've played Curse of the Crimson Throne has a lot to recommend it since it's a direct followup. My group had a blast going back to Korvosa with new characters (or the brother of my previous character in my case), seeing our old characters being a big deal (and overshadowing my new character which was hilarious), and just having stuff from CotCT we had done be tied back into the new game by the GM.
I'm playing Kingmaker right now, and I'm of two minds of it. Narratively I quite like it. Some of my group is having a harder time with it being more open ended and sandboox than a more linear AP, but it's working for me and we've built a really cool story with our kingdom. The other end of it is the campaign specific rules and that is... not as good. The Kingdom rules are a mess and need major house ruling to really be workable (some folks on the forums have put in a lot of effort there to create a package that helps a lot). Unlike Extinction Curse, ignoring the kingdom part of Kingmaker is a big deal. (I don't have enough experience with the army rules to comment there aside from saying that I'm not sure how many players in our group other than me have actually read them or actually want to engage with yet another set of rules. It's a lot.)
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Just to clarify, we have the entire run of PF 1E Adventure Paths.
We liked
* - Rise of the Runelords (done - stepped over the 1st half of Hook Mountain)
* - Curse of the Crimson Throne (complete)
* - Legacy of Fire (in progress)
* - Skull & Shackles (in progress)
* - Iron Gods (in progress)
well... what do you like about them? are there things you want to do which those didn't?
i assume that you are the DM for at least some of these in progress APs... are there things that you are looking forward to? Why? Things that you wish that they did?
Without knowing what you want / enjoy in an adventure path, it's hard to give a recommendation.
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Kingmaker feels like an easy sell, so I won't try to push that one too hard. If you have run Rise, Seven Dooms is a natural follow-up that would be fun. Season of Ghosts in narratively one of my most favorite. Curtain Call is also going to be very popular. Take what I say with a grain of salt if you must though haha.
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Kingmaker feels like an easy sell, so I won't try to push that one too hard. If you have run Rise, Seven Dooms is a natural follow-up that would be fun. Season of Ghosts in narratively one of my most favorite. Curtain Call is also going to be very popular. Take what I say with a grain of salt if you must though haha.
also, if you are gaming on a budget, Seven Dooms is a single volume, which should be less pricey than going with one of the three volume APs.
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Also a very good point!
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I'm playing Kingmaker right now, and I'm of two minds of it. Narratively I quite like it. Some of my group is having a harder time with it being more open ended...
For my group, we ran Chapter 4 (Rivers Run Red) with the kingdom rules largely as written, and then we switched to the "kingdom in the background" sidebars. I think this struck a decent balance of not bogging the campaign down too much with the kingdom rules while also giving my players the feeling that they built the foundation of their kingdom themselves.
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It really depends on the group. I know some groups love the rules and minutiae of building a kingdom. Other groups ignore them entirely.
Kingmaker feels like an easy sell, so I won't try to push that one too hard. If you have run Rise, Seven Dooms is a natural follow-up that would be fun. Season of Ghosts in narratively one of my most favorite. Curtain Call is also going to be very popular. Take what I say with a grain of salt if you must though haha.also, if you are gaming on a budget, Seven Dooms is a single volume, which should be less pricey than going with one of the three volume APs.
Adding Rusthenge is not a big cost addition also.
Because, of course, my budget is tighter then I'd like.
I'm playing Kingmaker right now, and I'm of two minds of it. Narratively I quite like it. Some of my group is having a harder time with it being more open ended...For my group, we ran Chapter 4 (Rivers Run Red) with the kingdom rules largely as written, and then we switched to the "kingdom in the background" sidebars. I think this struck a decent balance of not bogging the campaign down too much with the kingdom rules while also giving my players the feeling that they built the foundation of their kingdom themselves.
For our next turn, I'm doing it with the GM between games after the other players gave suggestions on the direction they want. Then we can focus the actual game time on the adventuring part, which people generally are more interested in.
Like, people enjoy setting the direction of the kingdom and seeing things happen, but the minutae of doing it not so much because its a lot of rules/time/rolling and those rules have some significant issues (which we have largely house ruled out now). So we'll try this, and maybe kingdom in the background is a fallback if it doesn't really address the issue.
I'm playing Kingmaker right now, and I'm of two minds of it. Narratively I quite like it. Some of my group is having a harder time with it being more open ended...For my group, we ran Chapter 4 (Rivers Run Red) with the kingdom rules largely as written, and then we switched to the "kingdom in the background" sidebars. I think this struck a decent balance of not bogging the campaign down too much with the kingdom rules while also giving my players the feeling that they built the foundation of their kingdom themselves.For our next turn, I'm doing it with the GM between games after the other players gave suggestions on the direction they want. Then we can focus the actual game time on the adventuring part, which people generally are more interested in.
Like, people enjoy setting the direction of the kingdom and seeing things happen, but the minutae of doing it not so much because its a lot of rules/time/rolling and those rules have some significant issues (which we have largely house ruled out now). So we'll try this, and maybe kingdom in the background is a fallback if it doesn't really address the issue.
That sounds like a pretty solid compromise to me. Are you doing the default "1 turn = 1 month" timeframe, or are you adjusting the pace to match where you are in the main adventure?
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I am running Quest for the Frozen Flame and my group is enjoying it. I did alter the backstory so it meshed better chronologically, but the AP provides a lot of opportunities for RP, dynamic combat encounters, a sandbox area, and a unique area of Golarion to explore.
Quest for the Frozen Flame so far has been my favorite Pathfinder 2e AP and what got me into running PF2 APs. Exploring northern tundra is one of my favorite campaign premises and Quest definitely delivers.
It certainly isn't without flaws, the main example being that the AP doesn't really give you a place to buy things until pretty late in the adventure, but that's an issue that I found pretty easy to solve.
I'll also second Fists of the Ruby Phoenix. And like Seven Dooms you can also get it in one volume.
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Quest for the Frozen Flame so far has been my favorite Pathfinder 2e AP and what got me into running PF2 APs. Exploring northern tundra is one of my favorite campaign premises and Quest definitely delivers.
It certainly isn't without flaws, the main example being that the AP doesn't really give you a place to buy things until pretty late in the adventure, but that's an issue that I found pretty easy to solve.
I'll also second Fists of the Ruby Phoenix. And like Seven Dooms you can also get it in one volume.
Though technically this thread has accomplished its mission (Rusthenge + Seven Dooms For Sandpoint), I do hope there is some value in keeping it going for a bit. :)
That sounds like a pretty solid compromise to me. Are you doing the default "1 turn = 1 month" timeframe, or are you adjusting the pace to match where you are in the main adventure?
We're doing 1 turn = 1 month. We've had a bunch of cases where we had to take several turns in a row because by default the kingdom XP is so slow that we got WAY ahead as characters vs the kingdom. GM basically gave us 12 turns with nothing happening just to try and get going, and we ended up going with triple kingdom XP. Even with that, we're still at risk of just getting well ahead in adventuring (and our capital and second town are also 3/4 full, space wise, and we're not close to kingdom level 9 to expand that).
I'm a big fan of Agents of Edgewatch and Blood Lords. I'm running Season of Ghosts now and it's a great AP.
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I'm in the process of running Sky King's Tomb and I really enjoy the context it provides to the history of the Dwarves. I added some content to a certain location in book 2
I've also run Agents of Edgewatch and it required some minor tweaking as well. I had each of my players write up at least three NPCs- an ally, an enemy, and a rival, which I wove into the story. With ABP and a salary/requisition system instead of loot-based pay, it was a big hit. Unfortunately, this was run in person and a couple of key players moved away, killing the game about mid book 4.
I really like the idea of Quest for the Frozen Flame, and if it had better Foundry support I'd probably run it next. As it is, I'm looking seriously at Season of Ghosts or Kingmaker as my next campaign. The last time I tried to run a Kingmaker campaign I cut the Kingdom rules out, but that group fizzled out.
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I'm in the process of running Sky King's Tomb and I really enjoy the context it provides to the history of the Dwarves. I added some content to a certain location in book 2 ** spoiler omitted **
I've also run Agents of Edgewatch and it required some minor tweaking as well. I had each of my players write up at least three NPCs- an ally, an enemy, and a rival, which I wove into the story. With ABP and a salary/requisition system instead of loot-based pay, it was a big hit. Unfortunately, this was run in person and a couple of key players moved away, killing the game about mid book 4.
I really like the idea of Quest for the Frozen Flame, and if it had better Foundry support I'd probably run it next. As it is, I'm looking seriously at Season of Ghosts or Kingmaker as my next campaign. The last time I tried to run a Kingmaker campaign I cut the Kingdom rules out, but that group fizzled out.
That sounds like a good idea in SKT... I'm running Session 0 this Tuesday!
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That sounds like a good idea in SKT... I'm running Session 0 this Tuesday!I'm in the process of running Sky King's Tomb and I really enjoy the context it provides to the history of the Dwarves. I added some content to a certain location in book 2 ** spoiler omitted **
I've also run Agents of Edgewatch and it required some minor tweaking as well. I had each of my players write up at least three NPCs- an ally, an enemy, and a rival, which I wove into the story. With ABP and a salary/requisition system instead of loot-based pay, it was a big hit. Unfortunately, this was run in person and a couple of key players moved away, killing the game about mid book 4.
I really like the idea of Quest for the Frozen Flame, and if it had better Foundry support I'd probably run it next. As it is, I'm looking seriously at Season of Ghosts or Kingmaker as my next campaign. The last time I tried to run a Kingmaker campaign I cut the Kingdom rules out, but that group fizzled out.
Let me know if you want some notes on the puzzles. I'm pretty proud of the lever room for the test of courage myself, even if I found out later I wasn't the first one to come up with it.