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Hey nerds!
I'm working on a revision of Tarondor’s Guide to Pathfinder Adventure Paths and I have created a poll where you can give me your opinions of the various Adventure Paths. Please give it a look:
Looking forward to seeing results, and comparing to how they've changed over time!
I'm going to need a LOT more people to fill out the poll in order to have a decent sample.
Uh, you might want to change the polling options from 1 - 7 in the intro text, if you are not offering 8 - 10 as options. Also, the options are multiple choice even in each individual adventure path, which isn't optimal.
As I say in the header, you have to use the slider at the bottom to access options 8-10. I can't help how Google decides to format its polls.
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As I say in the header, you have to use the slider at the bottom to access options 8-10. I can't help how Google decides to format its polls.
Whoops. Didn't see that. Well, I guess my selections will then appear as unnecessarily grumpy, given that the best thing I gave out was a 7. ^^
As I say in the header, you have to use the slider at the bottom to access options 8-10. I can't help how Google decides to format its polls.Whoops. Didn't see that. Well, I guess my selections will then appear as unnecessarily grumpy, given that the best thing I gave out was a 7. ^^
I'm pretty sure you can change them now. I'll go see if I can make that bit more prominent.
Looking forward to seeing results, and comparing to how they've changed over time!
The problem is that I have a very different format to my questions! This time I merely asked everyone to rate each AP they'd participated in from 1-10.
The first time around I had less idea of what would be useful before I began. I asked a bunch of questions that didn't help me write the guide and the most useful didn't ask for ratings but merely to pick their favorite three APs. It's a little bit of apples and oranges!
But with over 200 responses already in, I can see that Rise of the Runelords and Kingmaker remain very popular while Curse of the Crimson Throne remains highly regarded. Among 2e AP's, I can see that Gatewalkers fares poorly while Season of Ghosts may take the top spot from Curse of the Crimson Throne. Abomination Vaults is clearly the most reviewed of the 2e AP's. So far out of 230 responses, 149 gave a rating to AV.
I'll probably close the poll some time in mid January. Or sooner if the pace of response drops sharply.
I changed the poll to be easier to read on a mobile phone. The link above is dormant. HERE IS THE NEW LINK.
Saw it on Reddit and added my ratings again. I look forward to seeing the results, although the caveat that you need to have participated will probably make it so that you won't get many votes overall on the newest AP's. ;) I took the liberty of also adding votes on the AP's I'm currently running / playing and the ones which I absolutely plan to run and already have read extensively.
I changed the poll to be easier to read on a mobile phone. The link above is dormant. HERE IS THE NEW LINK.
Do the results from the previous poll carry over?
Or do I need to start over?
No need to start over. I have tabulated all the results from the first poll (the one with sliders). 299 people responded to that. The second (slider-less) poll is still open. So far, that one has 121 responses.
Was a big fan of your initial guide, glad to hear you're updating it.
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The poll (now with nearly 650 respones) reveals that some APs which were previously fan favorites are no longer front-runners while some new front-runners have emerged.
Abomination Vaults went WAY down in the polls. Rise of the Runelords fell several places. Season of Ghosts is the new #1 and Wardens of Wildwood is the new last place. I'll post the details in the new Guide when it comes out.
Interesting. Your new analysis should be interesting. We'll see how much recency bias comes into play.
Was surprised AV was ever popular. Just started SoG, was told its more RP heavy unlike most APs, I wonder if that's a big factor.
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Was surprised AV was ever popular. Just started SoG, was told its more RP heavy unlike most APs, I wonder if that's a big factor.
A lot of what came before AV had some really uneven "this was made while the system was under development" going on, along with some other problems. It was also the first 3 book AP, so a lot of groups probably finished it vs the longer ones (or at least finished it faster). But its popularity at the start may have brought folks to it that didn't actually want to do a megadungeoon. I think it's pretty good, at least, but some of what made it unique and a big deal at the time isn't unique anymore.
SoG is more RP heavy, but it also has a really awesome premise. Now that more people have had time to get into it, it's probably being helped out. The relatively new ones when the poll comes out are always at a disadvantage in terms of not many people have had a chance to play them.
The first version of the poll had a thing this time where when loaded it, the visible rankings only went to 7 and some people probably didn't realize it. That shouldn't skew things on one AP vs another, but its hard to say if it did.
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AV also appealed to a subset of the playerbase by being the first "old-school" AP for 2e because the other APs had more specific premises like circus performers or city watch. (Yes I know I'm forgetting Age of Ashes but for whatever reason people didn't count that one.)
Kinda curious if Strength of Thousands dropped too since it was also widely considered one of the best, but like AV I've seen criticisms of it come up more recently. Personally the run of AV to Quest of the Frozen Flame is still my favorite run of Paizo APs.
Strength of Thousands has actually improved its standing in four years. It's at #4 right now. Abomination Vaults is 19th.
Personally, I think the complaints about AV are overblown, but I'm an old-school fan of dungeon crawls. I also like Shattered Star and Seven Dooms for Sandpoint, both of which are dungeon crawls. If you're looking for a dungeon crawl, though, I think Seven Dooms for Sandpoint is the best that Paizo has produced, and the polls seem to bear that out. It's sitting at #5.
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Interesting. Your new analysis should be interesting. We'll see how much recency bias comes into play.
I believe that both Primacy (Rise of the Runelords) and Recency (Season of Ghosts) play a factor in the polls, yes.
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My group did FotRP after AV and it was much more enjoyable.
I happen to both dislike lower level play and dislike dungeons though.
Need more 5+ APs. Get people out of the low level rut and out of the fear of high level play.
My group did FotRP after AV and it was much more enjoyable.
I happen to both dislike lower level play and dislike dungeons though.
Need more 5+ APs. Get people out of the low level rut and out of the fear of high level play.
FotRP is an absolutely amazing and in some ways underrated AP. It's got a mix of everything, has a great theme, and is wide open for the GM and players to absolutely go full anime nutso on it if they want to.
I added in custom teams and cameos from past adventurers in both games I ran with it and the players had a blast with that. It's a very, very easy AP for a GM to insert stuff into and have it feel natural.
AV is a good dungeon crawl, but I suspect that because it was rated so highly some folks tried it out that aren't really into dungeon crawls and that hurt it now. This is quite the plunge and its hard to see what changed otherwise.
That said, it also has good third party support too expand on it like the excellent "Abomination Vaults Expanded" supplement to add extra stuff around Otari to make it less "all dungeon".
What I loved about FotRP's first book is that it gave the players a well defined time frame to work with from the start. Too many adventures don't find good ways to communicate this to the players, or even worse, don't even have such pre-defined deadlines at all (not even extremely permissive ones) – instead they're using quantum events that conveniently happen exactly when the party is ready for them, no matter how long that took. It really neuters an interesting part of the game.
Yeah, the whole AP has great pacing. Start off knowing how long you have to explore, then have a schedule for when the fights will happen. You always know when it's adventure time and when it's social/down time.
Would love to play it again with a GM who is more comfortable adding and changing things. My group had too many encounters that were push overs.