honestly, i would love to run higher level stuff, but paizo should provide pregens for all their higher level adventures. it's hard to ask players to create 10th level PCs.
Paizo, please make Camilla from Wrath of the Righteous into a 11th level pregen character with the animist class :)
Would love having more direct or indirect sequel APs. Making a 10th (or higher) level character in second edition can be an ordeal, especially for newer players. It would be much easier to be able to bring old PCs over if the higher level APs had stronger thematic or at least locational connections. If I create a rootin' tootin' gritty cowboy for Outlaws of Alkenstar I might feel a little out of place if we end up transitioning to Curtain Call, but if I'm a newer player I might not have the system knowledge to create a high-level replacement. Or, on a more basic level I might not enjoy playing a character made for one genre and transferring them to another.honestly, i would love to run higher level stuff, but paizo should provide pregens for all their higher level adventures. it's hard to ask players to create 10th level PCs.
We can't get them to create PFS pregens for new classes, so there is no chance of this happening I suspect.
It's more work to create a high level character, but it's pretty doable if you work with folks. I've run Ruby Phoenix twice, once with a group of mostly PF2 newbies, and it was entirely doable with some hand holding and a character creation tool (like Pathbuilder).
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A module in Vyre after Hell's Rebels would be a dream come true for me.You can check out Curtain Call, you do end up in Vyre but the player's guide mentions this is not an AP for the Hell's Rebels and not to rely on them for help as NPC's, "Curtain Call is not their story."
My local shop is getting the 3 books in for me next week!
(And I wouldn't want it to be a continuation of Hell's Rebels / I wouldn't want it to involve the previous heroes.)
I am VERY excited to read this adventure!!
My players pretty frequently talk about missing Vyre and wanting me to run an adventure that takes place there.
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Strong, strong preference for both Direct sequels and to a lesser extent indirect sequels that can work as a standalone.
I love running 1-20 games and PF2E currently makes that very difficult for me to actually do since I don’t have time to go full homebrew and the only 1-20 with a foundry module (Blood lords) is one of the only 1-20s I’m not interested in at all.
Just a note though, indirect sequels as laid out in the OP oftentimes only work well for a fraction of campaigns. For example, Curtain Call only works if the 1-10 was in Avistan and the party members would be willing to abandon anything in their life to go work on an Opera. That honestly doesn’t feel very easy to use as a sequel to me. Ideally indirect sequels would have a widely applicable hook and be set up so that people from a wide variety of geographies make sense showing up. Of the current 11-20s, I’d argue Fists of the Ruby Phoenix is the only one that does that.
I’m glad to hear about the continuation section in Spore War, that kind of prompting is a good step forward should it continue.
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It's taken over 30 years to get some of the answers to questions that were laid out at the beginning of Warcraft and we're still not even close to done. It's exhausting.
You have roughly 5 years I think to put forth an answer to a mystery or to flesh out a faction you've prototyped in your fiction.
After that, the community has created its own answers, and they find them more interesting than whatever you can come up with. I think with TTRPG's, where GMs are constantly required to have answers to questions not contemplated by line developers, this is even more true.
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It's taken over 30 years to get some of the answers to questions that were laid out at the beginning of Warcraft and we're still not even close to done. It's exhausting.
You have roughly 5 years I think to put forth an answer to a mystery or to flesh out a faction you've prototyped in your fiction.
After that, the community has created its own answers, and they find them more interesting than whatever you can come up with. I think with TTRPG's, where GMs are constantly required to have answers to questions not contemplated by line developers, this is even more true.
Yeah, this is why I want to focus on the Inner Sea region and Tian Xia rather than go to Arcadia in the Adventure Path line. I prefer to resolve existing plotlines rather than expanding ever outward to brand new regions again.
I love running 1-20 games and PF2E currently makes that very difficult for me to actually do since I don’t have time to go full homebrew and the only 1-20 with a foundry module (Blood lords) is one of the only 1-20s I’m not interested in at all.
Just wanted to note that for the APs before that, the PDF to Foundry module can import watermarked AP PDFs (ie: the ones you get from Paizo) into Foundry. This isn't perfect and things may require some clean up, but as the work of one volunteer it's an amazing tool and will get you 95% of the way there in a few minutes. (There is another module for more recent adventurers that don't have a purchasable package like Shadows at Sundown.)
This is how I ran Extinction Curse and am running Strength of Thousands now.
Just a note though, indirect sequels as laid out in the OP oftentimes only work well for a fraction of campaigns. For example, Curtain Call only works if the 1-10 was in Avistan and the party members would be willing to abandon anything in their life to go work on an Opera. That honestly doesn’t feel very easy to use as a sequel to me. Ideally indirect sequels would have a widely applicable hook and be set up so that people from a wide variety of geographies make sense showing up. Of the current 11-20s, I’d argue Fists of the Ruby Phoenix is the only one that does that.
I’m glad to hear about the continuation section in Spore War, that kind of prompting is a good step forward should it continue.
I did read the Curtain Call Players Guide and I agree that it's going to be a pretty tough fit as a sequel to some adventurers. Ruby Phoenix handles this very easily.
I think Stolen Fate also works, but it basically has nothing to do with what happened in the first half at all and is basically "you're powerful and so you were chosen to do this completely unrelated thing."
None of it really fits a long campaign the way a 6 book adventure does. Hell, the amusing thing is that I've run Ruby Phoenix for two groups, and both were just "this adventure sounds fun", so they weren't actually run as sequels to anything. People made up backstory explanations to be there and off we went.
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Yeah, this is why I want to focus on the Inner Sea region and Tian Xia rather than go to Arcadia in the Adventure Path line. I prefer to resolve existing plotlines rather than expanding ever outward to brand new regions again.It's taken over 30 years to get some of the answers to questions that were laid out at the beginning of Warcraft and we're still not even close to done. It's exhausting.
You have roughly 5 years I think to put forth an answer to a mystery or to flesh out a faction you've prototyped in your fiction.
After that, the community has created its own answers, and they find them more interesting than whatever you can come up with. I think with TTRPG's, where GMs are constantly required to have answers to questions not contemplated by line developers, this is even more true.
I've been excited about stuff teased for Arcadia in books published 6+ years ago. Why are those 'existing storylines' less worthy of being followed up on, compared to the thought of doing yet another Chelish or Varisian story?
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In my opinion it's about spacing things out so each area gets enough depth before moving on to the next.
The current pace is too fast for me and leaves me less invested in Golarion.
When we get to a new area, I want to be immersed in it for a longer time. Not back to back APs, but more than one over the course of 3 years.
The reason I don't want Arcadia YET is that it didn't have any seeds / plot hooks in the World Guide, or Legends, or the Character Guide (although I concede it did in Monsters of Myth).
So let's say Paizo delays plots they set up in 2019 for another 2 years. After 7 years, like Leon said, I've moved on.
It's more urgent to resolve the Razmir storyline, and kick off the big wars of the Inner Sea.
I am very interested in Ah Pook, Arcadia, but not if it's going to have such a short release window and with limited adventure support. The setting is best utilized in my opinion when it can support many adventures, like how Lost Omens: Absalom supports Extinction Curse, Agents of Edgewatch, Abomination Vaults (I assume, as I never read or played AV), and Stolen Fate.
I want depth, so I can take my players into a micro region (Geb, Shenmen, etc.) and have more than 10 pages of setting material. At the moment, it just feels not deep enough, with each region just being quick flashes in the pan.
Ultimately I'm not in marketing, analytics, or sales, I'm just expressing my opinion as a customer.
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I want depth, so I can take my players into a micro region (Geb, Shenmen, etc.) and have more than 10 pages of setting material. At the moment, it just feels not deep enough, with each region just being quick flashes in the pan.
Geb got large swathes of two Lost Omens books dedicated to the Impossible Lands, has Book of the Dead written by its monarch, and received a dedicated 6-book Adventure Path. I'm being sincere when I ask: what else could it possibly need?
Shenmen's in a similar boat; coverage in Book of the Dead and the two LO: Tian Xia releases, plus Season of Ghosts as its AP. There are definitely spots in Avistan, Garund, and Tian Xia that still haven't had the spotlight, but both of your examples have enjoyed plenty recently.
Arcadia excited me because Native-inspired stuff in TTRPGs has largely been a flat, racist mess for decades. Finally delivering on doing better by that after what's been a ten year wait since PF1's Distant Shores (2015) took us inside an Arcadian city? It feels overdue.
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No I'm using Geb and Shenmen as examples of a micro region (as opposed to macro like Impossible Lands). Ideally, Paizo can organize products around a theme (like Godsrain or Absalom) and have more support for regional adventures happening in that theme (setting book valid for more than 1 adventure) within a 2-3 year timeframe.
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Why are those 'existing storylines' less worthy of being followed up on, compared to the thought of doing yet another Chelish or Varisian story?
I think it's not about being worthy, it's just about what you are actually interested in. I kinda can understand where CastleDour is coming from, because I'm actually even worse, and in my ideal egotistical little world, we would have never left Varisia in the first place, because I love that region so much, while my interest in non-medieval European fantasy is pretty much non-existent. A bit of Arabian nights (which is, at least partly for historic reasons, still European fantasy) added to the mix, and I'm fine.
Which is, by the way, a completely hypocritical stance, because I have been very vocally critizising WotC for pretty much doing exactly that with the Sword Coast, while ignoring most of the other fun parts of Faerun. And of course I'm talking about the other European-ish parts of Faerun, not about Maztica, Kara-Tur or even Chult.
That said, I don't think it needs to be an either or. Especially with the shorter APs, they can cover more ground easily, and given that most APs are still Inner Sea APs, I think blaming an Arcadia AP for not getting exactly what I want would be kind of unfair. Especially when I don't even have the time to peruse all the stuff that looks like it is written with me in mind.
I have struggled to play or run the high level APs we have so far.
The only one that my typical group has touched is Fists (which I am currently running), but the problem we are having with it is that none of the characters really have any reason to care very much about anything except the actual tournament. Like the whole group is strongly considering dropping book 3 entirely. There is excellent foreshadowing in the writing to give some clues, but the issue is that the character backstories were so heavily focused on getting to and caring about the tournament, that
Level 10 heroes really require a lot more backstory work than level 1 heroes. Having a group that has completed a previous adventure can do a ton of that back story work, but then the direct sequel is pretty dependent on the players having played that adventure (which is why I think folks feel like it sounds like a return to 6 part APs, just broken up over print cycles, which would probably only make selling those even harder). I would still love to play Curtain Call if I get the chance, as I think it is a great fit for the kinds of play style I love, and so I don't have useful things to say about its implementation. Although the odds of me finding a table to play it with are growing slim, so I might end up reading it in 5 or 6 months if I can't find a table to play it with.
The issue with "not sequels" for me, is that level 10+ characters really need more of a backstory than a background can really give them, especially the one to two paragraphs we are used to getting as backgrounds. So either the player's guides for higher level APs need to be about twice as big, with their own tool boxes that help give PCs treasure, uncommon options for feats and spells/maybe even some custom stuff for the upcoming campaign, or they kind of have to be written as if the characters are starting from scratch (only somehow at level 10 instead of level 1) which almost requires an "amnesia"-like plot, which has already been used once and shouldn't be over used. That is the only way I see for GMs not to have to do a ton of work creating the connecting tissue for their players with high level APs that are not direct sequels to other ones.
Another issue I see arising pretty soon for the adventure writers, is the fact that players want to play with all the new toys that keep coming out, but many of the new books, (going back to secrets of magic, dark archive and now War of the Immortals in particular) introduce new variant systems that don't necessarily play well together. Like players are going to want mythic stuff in published adventures, and we already have level 1-10 APs that introduces deviant abilities and artifacts but combining that stuff together is going to get kinda messy moving into a 10-20 AP, and the variant stuff from secrets of magic (like emotional casting) is probably just never going to see the light of day as being something featured in future APs. This is going to make mixing and matching APs tricky in the future when we have only a handful of APs that use mythic rules, or deviant abilities, or like, a hypothetical ley lines with an emphasis on ritual casting AP. I know the stand alone adventure line exists for essentially 2 book APs, and the problem with the AP line currently is that we currently have 3 APs (with Tusks) that don't start at either 1 or 10, so it is starting to get really complicated to think about stringing various APs together as a GM, because you are very likely to have to do work already. I think the AP line could really use some more support at this point from the stand alone line with an influx of level 1 to 4 adventures, level 6 to 10 adventures, and some really short level 4 to 6 filler pieces that can be used to cover those gaps. Some kind of way to easily see what PFS scenarios fit around APs and standalones could also help because right now it is hard to trace down "what could fit here?" and the scenarios are pretty good for that with variable levels, but that takes a lot of work again on the GMs part.
I really think the key might be for higher level player's guides to offer some of the uncommon/rare options/variant rules used in other AP's and their toolboxes to help encourage some of the connective tissue for using those lower level APs by building in ways to use things like artifacts, or deviant abilities, or special rituals, or special archetypes, or mythic rules, or vehicles, etc. etc.
I wish to reshare the following quote (from a page or so back) and re-emphasize the need for more choices within each meta-region that allows various pathways to level 20.
I am a mathematician. I would call that a hierarchical organization by geography and theme. Other names could apply, because the hierarchy is not strict. Rather than a tree of higher-level modules above lower-level modules, the modules are more a layered web with many possible sequels to each lower-level module, thus, more generally it is a partially ordered set.
Let's proceed to a thought experiment with existing PF2 adventure paths. Abomination Vaults, Quest for the Frozen Flame, Outlaws of Alkenstar, Gatewalkers, Sky King's Tomb, and Seven Dooms for Sandpoint are all adventure paths that end at level 10. Fists of the Ruby Phoenix, Stolen Fate, and Curtain Call are all adventure paths that begin at level 11. They could match up if geography and theme make that plausible. I don't own these adventure paths, so my list of themes below is my impression of descriptions of the paths.
Ends-at-10 layer
Abomination Vaults is eldritch horror set on the Isle of Kortos.
Quest for the Frozen Flame is wilderness exploration in the Realm of the Mammoth Lords.
Outlaws of Alkenstar is a western set in Alkenstar.
Gatewalkers is a paranormal investigation set in the River Kingdoms.
Sky...
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This discussion is beginning to make me wonder if the happy medium for Adventure Paths might be three four-book APs per year rather than four three-book ones. A level 5-20 four book AP would probably appeal to a lot of experienced players, and with the plethora of low-level adventures that exist for Pathfinder 2E it is pretty likely that there would be a number of ways to progress a party from 1st level to 5th before starting the AP proper if that was the group's desire, and a level 1-15 four book AP would still be more manageable than a 1-20 six book AP while giving players a taste of higher-level play (and provide an opportunity to justify more 16th level adventures).
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Well, personally I would prefer new 6-part adventure paths, but that ain't on the menu.
From the options given, I personally think that the middle option, i.e. Indirect Sequels, is the best compromise of the three, in terms of economic success and storytelling.
Personally I'd prefer direct sequels and I wouldn't mind the Not Sequels option ocassionally as well, but making high-level AP's where you get the option to connect it to one of the existing lower-level AP's as well seems to me to be the logical way forward, since it leaves an entry through the lower-level AP's for GM's and players to take their characters forward. Creating a completely new 10th lvl character is a steep demand for anybody, but especially for newer players.
Also, I'd like to point out that an Indirect Sequel is just a No Sequel with more steps.
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So, I would agree with other comments here that a direct sequel sounds like the 6 part AP under another name. Not a bad thing, but books in the same AP can already be a bit disjointed, so I can only imagine what it would look like with two separate teams working possibly years apart.
Much more cohesive than any six-parters we got, I'd have to assume. Assuming that work on the second trio of module gets started half a year or later after release of the last module of the first trio of modules, the second team would have the advantage of being able to read the first three parts and work in NPC's and plots from them much easier than the concurrent writing style we have had in the past. That is assuming that the writers would bother to read through the first three modules, of course.
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I've been periodically checking in on this thread for a while, but didn't have much to add.
Personally, I prefer indirect sequels to direct sequels. For a direct sequel, you might as well just have Paizo go back to six-part adventure paths (just split up with a year or more in between halves).
The transition to an indirect sequel, especially of an AP that finishes with the PCs above 11th level, can usually be tweaked (either by modifying the end of the first AP or the start of the second AP; or both). For instance, from a thematic standpoint the upcoming Spore War AP would probably tie in well with the Wardens of Wildwood AP*. Or you can create higher level characters that can usually be more closely associated with the specific challenges/themes. And sometimes a group may not want to play through the first AP before starting the sequel. Indirect sequels usually make it easier to bring in new PCs than direct sequels, if you have character deaths or player replacements.
I was reading through the War of Immortals and a paragraph in the Mythic Gazetteer (pages 89-90) caught my eye: "As warshards fell on Katapesh, a single piece was pulled into the open caldera of Pale Mountain. This shard caused the exposed remains of Xotani the Firebleeder to stir. While the Spawn of Rovagug remains dead, the fact that its bones quiver and have caused smaller Xotanispawn to emerge from the mountain is very alarming. A figure from Katapesh’s past, the powerful jaathoom Nefeshti (inspirational female jaathoom cleric of Gozreh), has taken it upon herself to investigate Xotani’s state and gather a force to destroy the spawn’s remains once and for all. While a few powerful individuals are already working alongside Nefeshti, she’s hoping to add more to the ranks of her Templars of the Reborn Winds."
It's been a long time since the Legacy of Fire AP (the last D&D 3.5 AP) and an indirect sequel (possibly using PCs from the Outlaws of Alkenstar?) would probably be a good fit for the new mythic rules. The PCs investigate events around Pale Mountain, become Templars of the Reborn Winds (mythic), help or be the primary ones to destroy the Xotanispawn, recover the warshard, and either prevent Xotani from rising again or fight an updated mythic version (if things go awry). The Eternal Legend or Wildspell mythic destinies could probably be appropriate choices when becoming mythic as a Templar at 12th-13th level, but the AP could also include a mythic destiny aligned with genies and/or the elements (possibly even being compatible with the kineticist).
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For high level play, I'm not looking necessarily for direct or even indirect sequels. What I really want in high level play is high stakes against great villains. An adventurer has a career arc which can encompass various enemies that don't have to be linked. But give me the good enemies!
Like if there isn't an epic Whispering Tyrant showdown in 2e, I'll be highly disappointed by the end of this edition run. :)
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My 2 CP: I would be way more interested in what you, James, want to make than in what the playerbase as a whole wants. Of course the players pay the bills, but I’ll always side with the artist.
I for my part will play anything you make.
Awww, thank you! Well in that case, check out Spore War and Shades of Blood, particularly the 2nd volumes of each, since I wrote both of those. I'm currently writing for an unannounced Adventure Path set to come out next year as well... but it'll be quite a bit before we make any announcements about that one!
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Incidentally, James, I have a vague recollection of you mentioning a goodly while ago that you were thinking about a high-level AP that would fit very well after Seven Dooms for Sandpoint - was this one of the ones that has come out since, or is it one still to be revealed?
This is something I had hoped we would have announced already but have not yet, but will soon... hopefully by the end of next month. AKA: I've done a LOT more than just "thinking" about this thing. Stay tuned!
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I prefer them either standalone or indirect.
After doing a 1-10, I suspect people are burnt out on the current setup and want to try something new.
Personally I have never seen a group even manage to finish a 1-10. They almost always shatter 5-7 levels in.
So I'd be in support of not only them not being sequels, but of having less APs and more adventures. However I suspect people like to purchases APs more even if they routinely fail at running or playing them...
The newest adventure that is actually 3 mini-adventures for different groups of PCs but to one overall story - that's how I'd recommend APs be. Each book made for a different set of PCs, but all tied together loosely.
You could then have a 1-3, a 9-11, and an 18-20 all in one 3-book 'AP' that is really 3 adventures across time and location that deal with one story beat.
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If the story is right we'll do a 6-part Adventure Path again, but we need to plan for something like that literally years in advance, so even if we DO decide this, we won't be talking about it for 2 to 3 years.I am sure btw that many people would love a blog post breakdown on your process for developing APs. Hell I think even your competitors would like to study it. It’s the premier adventure publication of all time and it would be fascinating to learn how you craft it, and also how this process has evolved over the years.
I suspect so, but at this point, the only way that information gets shared is internally with fellow employees or freelancers who we hire—not only do we not have a tradition or even an established line of advice books like this, but we already give away all the rules to the game. It's not really in our best interests to reveal all our secret herbs and spices!
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I have no preference. I want cool adventures. I prefer them built to the needs of the story. Some of the six part adventure paths felt too long and could have been done shorter. I prefer AP design fit whatever story is being told whether it's 2 to 4 books or 5 or 6.
I wouldn't mind if there were APs of different lengths with sequels that added a couple of loosely tied books that finish or that go off on a completely new adventure.
I play APs because I like the story. I freely admit I'm not a subscriber to every AP. I tend to pick APs that sound interesting to me as a DM.
I like APs with unique themes like Kingmaker or Agents or in a genre I enjoy like well done horror or mystery.
If I had my preference, I'd say operate without strict parameters making the APs the lengths necessary to tell the story. If an idea for another AP seems appropriate as a sequel, make a sequel. If the AP is done, then make something else.
From a mechanical standpoint, I'd prefer enough APs to run people from 1 to 20 whether it's a four book AP to level 12 or 14 followed by a two book AP from 15 to 20.
Now that you are no longer bound by the six book AP, I say go to town creatively and make APs that are inspired, the necessary length to tell the story, and make it good and fun.
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The key to me, for fitting together APs, is not so much geography as credible character continuity, which may well be an aspect specific to the players I have to hand. Stolen Fate was easy to fit with characters from multiple 1-10 APs because it had "the cards selected YOU" as an opening and characters feeling they should investigate that even with a deal of reluctance worked for the players; on the other hand, for all the many and definite virtues of all the 1-10 APs, I've still to see a group finish one who would plausibly have any interest in Fists of the Ruby Phoenix, ten levels of characters invested in a life-or-death struggle for survival like Quest for Frozen Flame just does not pivot well into "and now you're going to leave everything you have spent the last ten levels investing in to go compete in the Magical Olympics on the other side of the world" for us. A 1-10 that focused on people adventuring purely for fame, fortune and fun, without any deeper stakes to care about, is I think what I would need to fit there, and I have no idea how plausible or commercial that might be.
I find this interesting, mostly because I've run Ruby Phoenix twice and I've found the setup pretty easy: either you're going because you want to test yourself for fame, or because the prize for winning is so powerful that it's going to be a big help in whatever other thing you're trying to do.
It's been an easy one to get started on in my experience. (It's also great in its own right, which is why I ended up running it twice! Both groups completed it.)
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I think my post addressed your first setup option for the groups I have/potentially have/have had to hand; the second makes sense in theory but I'm not sure I could make "you have completed this 1-10 story, now go to the Ruby Phoenix Tournament to get some extra power to nail down the ending" work particularly well without undercutting the 1-10, though that may well just be me.I find this interesting, mostly because I've run Ruby Phoenix twice and I've found the setup pretty easy: either you're going because you want to test yourself for fame, or because the prize for winning is so powerful that it's going to be a big help in whatever other thing you're trying to do.
Probably depends a lot on how the players feel. Players that don't feel like that character's story is "done" yet and want to play them again will be an easy sell because the player themself wants to accept it.
For a player that is happy with how the story ended? Significantly tougher, for sure. In that case just making a new level 11 character and treating it like a new campaign is also an option.
I feel like there's an unspoken assumption in the initial question that I'm betting has already been answered more clearly somewhere else but asking here seems more productive than trying to find it myself; Is the 6 part 1-20 Adventure Path format effectively retired and if so, why? Do they not sell well? Are they unpopular? I can definitely see potential pitfalls with the model as someone who could barely wrangle a game of Beginner Box to completion, I for sure see that making more shorter ones is a more sound business tactic, but I don't know that phasing them out entirely would be a good call. The mere existence of those APs left me feeling assured that yes, this system truly does work at all levels, continuously. I especially think Mythic rules could use a 1-20 AP to prove the ruleset is more functional than us naysayers give it credit for.
I'll stop rambling and answer the actual question though. Non-sequels seem like the most preferable format for someone of my situation who has sporadic games that fizzle out easily. It gives me the ability to start games at the high levels my players don't otherwise get to actually reach more easily. Indirect sequels work for this purpose as well but ironically the mere implication that this is supposed to be the conclusion of Some Other Adventure that I wouldn't be able to run gives me more work. Direct sequels are the least useful for me and frankly at face value I don't see the point of doing that over a good old-fashioned 1-20 AP
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I feel like there's an unspoken assumption in the initial question that I'm betting has already been answered more clearly somewhere else but asking here seems more productive than trying to find it myself; Is the 6 part 1-20 Adventure Path format effectively retired and if so, why? Do they not sell well? Are they unpopular? I can definitely see potential pitfalls with the model as someone who could barely wrangle a game of Beginner Box to completion, I for sure see that making more shorter ones is a more sound business tactic, but I don't know that phasing them out entirely would be a good call.
It's been said by Paizo folks a few times now that sales for later volumes of 1-20 APs fall off a cliff pretty sharply, and that the shorter ones have consistently sold better.
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Not only do the shorter ones sell better (in large part because there's twice as many opportunities to "get in on the ground floor" of the story), but they give customers twice as many opportuniteis to get excited about an Adventure Path (since we do four a year instead of two). The amount of time it takes the typical group to play through a 3 parter is generally more than 3 months, so by the time they're wrapping up, there's even MORE choices of where to go from there.
Also, while I do understand folks wanna play a pC from 1st to 20th level (that's my preferred method of play), many MORE folks are eager to always be building new PCs to try out new character concepts, in part because we continue to publish so many interesting and intriguing new options for new characters (ancestries in particular are VERY popular, and you can't easily switch your ancestry over on an established character). More opportunities to start a new campaign plays better into that sort of player mindset, I suspect.
For the time being, 3 part Adventure Paths are here to stay, in other words.
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I'm currently about to start Book 3 of Sky King's Tomb with my Thursday knights, and about 1/3 of the way into Book 4 of Season of Ghosts with my Sunday knights and I have to say, Season of Ghosts has been narratively very satisfying including it's ticking clock (calendar). I actually managed to run it so we started Book 1 on last summer solstice, Book 2 on autumn equinox, Book 3 on winter solstice and Book 4 on spring equinox so it lines up even with the local weather, which I actually used as the weather in each session (we're playing in Japan). Kind of a side tangent for what to do about higher level APs, but I meant to say that I'm so grateful for the exception that was made to have a 4 part AP in the case of Season of Ghosts. In some ways, having a fourth book allowed the AP to do extra story telling (more room to breathe) that kind of got rushed in Sky King's Tomb.
And just to add to that, because it was based on a calendar, the story structure for each book is also very satisfying that makes it easy as a GM to jump around a little... each book has a set of events that can be played out as it fits the table narrative with dungeon delves to anchor or bookend the story beat milestones. I can see this book structure being useful even for someone not playing through Season of Ghosts... so perhaps that's an interesting way to compose higher level APs so the content can be adapted to whatever ongoing story the GM and players are playing. Book 1 is a "transition book" with a series of events that gradually demands more and more attention leading to a dungeon delve, etc., and then book 2 and 3 can fill out the story however is needed from there.
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Not only do the shorter ones sell better (in large part because there's twice as many opportunities to "get in on the ground floor" of the story), but they give customers twice as many opportuniteis to get excited about an Adventure Path (since we do four a year instead of two). The amount of time it takes the typical group to play through a 3 parter is generally more than 3 months, so by the time they're wrapping up, there's even MORE choices of where to go from there.
Also, while I do understand folks wanna play a pC from 1st to 20th level (that's my preferred method of play), many MORE folks are eager to always be building new PCs to try out new character concepts, in part because we continue to publish so many interesting and intriguing new options for new characters (ancestries in particular are VERY popular, and you can't easily switch your ancestry over on an established character). More opportunities to start a new campaign plays better into that sort of player mindset, I suspect.
For the time being, 3 part Adventure Paths are here to stay, in other words.
I can live with it, since the points you make are quite true. However, one thing I got to say, having AP's like Spore Wars, which pretty clearly is the "Elf AP", without an appropiate lead-in is a bit annoying.
I look at the 1-11 AP's on offer currently and we have Abomination Vaults (which I am already running and Fists of the Ruby Phoenix is the already agreed-upon follow-up), Gatewalkers (which is widely seen as one of the worst 2E AP's) and then Outlaw's of Alkenstar, Quest for the Frozen Flame, Sky King's Tomb and Triumph of the Tusk, which are all pretty inappropiate entries into an elf-centric AP. Warden's of Wildwood would probably be much more doable, but ends at level 13, which makes connecting it to Spore Wars quite hard (except if I would tell my guys that they don't level for the first module and rewrite all encounters, too).
Curtain Call also seems to have not really have an AP which leads well into another AP which is a lot about heavy roleplay and theater.
Again, I get the advantages you guys see with 3-parters, but it'd be nice to have the RP-heavy low-level AP which connects quite well (both in terms of theme and levels) to the high-level RP-heavy AP. Same with the elf-centric war AP.
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Creative Director
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I can live with it, since the points you make are quite true. However, one thing I got to say, having AP's like Spore Wars, which pretty clearly is the "Elf AP", without an appropiate lead-in is a bit annoying.
Sometimes it's okay to start a high level Adventure Path with fresh characters. Sometimes it's a breath of fresh air to not have to do the grind through lower levels again just to get to the adventure you and your group REALLY want to play, especially if by the time you get there, the group has broken up for whatever reason. Which, judging by the sell-through rates of all previous 1st to 20th level Adventure Paths, happened a lot. Hence 3 part ones. People buy and play part 1 of an Adventure Path far more often than any other parts, regardless of what level that part 1 is for. And so it makes sense from a financial standpoint and a customer satisfaction standpoint to sell more part 1s in a year.