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In my game session yesterday, Tuesday January 21, my players derailed the plot in Spoken on the Song Wind by applying common sense. They have done that before. Does this happen for other GMs or does my gamemastering style especially encourage this?
Trivial Spoiler ahead, not worth a spoiler mask.
The situation is that three 2nd-level students at the Magaambya School of Magic were camped in a sunken courtyard next to the Hababe Building. They preferred the outdoors to a dormitory room. They asked their friends, the 4th-level PCs, to look into a mystery. Their mystic senses detected something mysterious about the basement storeroom of the Hababe Building. However, whenever they approached the door to the storeroom a nearby terra-cotta soldier would animate and chase them away while wielding a lethal sword. It would return to its position if they ran far enough away.
Oops, I had invented the last two sentences myself. Instead, the module said,
THE GUARDIAN ANIMATES MODERATE 4
Whenever a creature approaches the storeroom door, the statue grinds to life, shaking off years of dust and raising its sword and shield.
Creature: Once activated, the statue attacks everyone in the area until it’s destroyed. If no enemies are within 60 feet, it returns to its spot next to the stairs, but reanimates when anyone else approaches the door.
I just figured that the NPC students had approached the door themselves.
The module assumed that the PCs would fight and destroy the terra-cotta soldier and then investigate the storeroom themselves, a 6-room map of encounters.
The player characters confirmed that the statue would animate and chase them, including the kineticist who stood still to take lethal damage from the sword. Fortunately, the champion negated the damage with his Glimpse of Redemption reaction. They ran away so that the statue returned to its original position.
Then they changed the plot. They decided against destroying school property by fighting the statue. Instead, one PC sent her bird animal companion with a note to fetch a teacher. They selected Izem Mezitani, a 14th-level archaeologist. Ordinarily, Izem Mezitani would not be introduced until the 4th module in Strength of Thousands. But I had wanted more teachers in the early campaign, so I had introduced most teachers from all modules back in the 1st module.
Izem confirmed that the statue was programmed to animate under certain conditions, but protecting a storeroom by killing students was not in that program. They sneaked past the statue with a silly video-game technique: they put a bucket over its head (I required a DC 20 Stealth check to place the bucket properly). Izem accompanied them into the storeroom until he called a halt because the hazards inside were too dangerous for students.
Thus, the PCs received only half the experience points offered by the Hababe Building mission and none of the loot. On the other hand, my players said they liked that a faculty member seriously cared about the welfare of the students. And they got to watch from a safe distance as four faculty members finished exploring the storerooms with their high-level skills.
My players do not care about XP and loot. They care only about fun roleplaying and adventures. But this little adventure in the Hababe Building was derailed quite easily by applying common sense rather than heedlessly rushing into adventure.
I could name other instances, such as in Tide of Honor in Jade Regent when they returned the lost heirs to Minkai: "Then, metaphorically, the players pried up the rails of the railroad plot in the module and beat them into plowshares. They realized that they did not have to lead a rebellion against the corrupt oni-controlled government. Minkai was so devoted to tradition that the only things necessary were to prove that Emperor Higashiyama was dead and that Amaya and Ameiko were true heirs of Amatatsu. The Minkaians would accept them with open arms as the only legitimate rulers."
I am willing to improvise a new plot when my players chose to not follow the obvious plot. Yesterday's game session was just a more blatant example that usual. Is it usual for other gamemasters?
P.S. Other recent game sessions can be found at Virgil Tibbs, Playtest Rune Smith. The sting operation at the market to catch some robbers was the players' idea. The module simply had them Gathering Information around the city for clues.
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I view the plots of APs as guidelines, especially if we have reached the 6th volume of the AP. If this is fairly early on, read ahead and look for ramifications of your player's choices. If not... go with your gut. If your players have found an excellent solution, not in the AP, go with that as your new reality.
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I view the plots of APs as guidelines, especially if we have reached the 6th volume of the AP. If this is fairly early on, read ahead and look for ramifications of your player's choices. If not... go with your gut. If your players have found an excellent solution, not in the AP, go with that as your new reality.
I have had to patch modules back together with baling wire and duct tape before, such as Tide of Honor in Jade Regent and both Palace of Fallen Stars and The Divinity Drive in Iron Gods. Therefore, I am not worried. I know I have the improvisation skills to let them defy the plot.
Instead, I wonder at the contrast between real-life expectations and tabletop-roleplaying-game expectations. The module writers have an expectation that adventurers will rush into adventure. In Strength of Thousands my players declared that their PCs will focus on being students rather than adventurers, so they stray from the module writer's expectation more often than usual by sticking closer to real-life common sense.
I probably should avoid running The Extinction Curse in which the PCs start as circus performers. The players might focus on a profitable circus and forget about the rest of the adventure. (I read this aloud to my wife. She responded, "Well, yeah.")
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I mean it happens. It's important that if you're running a given AP your players are willing to buy into its overall premise (ex: don't be playing Extinction Curse if your group is going to go 'why is this massive danger being left to a circus troupe to handle') but PCs will come up with clever ideas (or hard-swerve ideas they think are clever) all the time and adjusting around it can be part of the fun.
Major example from the group I ran Age of Ashes for:
...except my players didn't actually use the key.
Instead, recalling that multiple other activation of new gates - including the prior one - had triggered dangerous hazards, and knowing from the evidence they'd found where that gate led to - Hermea - they decided instead to travel there the long way. They traveled to a few cities , and purchased a ship and a crew to sail from Kintargo to Hermea by sea.
Obviously this threw quite the wrench into my expected plans for them: they were skipping a full level's worth of encounters. But they plan made sense so I adapted. I made some roleplaying experiences and encounters around them finding a shipwright able to make what they needed and a captain willing to take them all the way to that isolationist isle. I created a few of my own encounters for them along the journey to replace the multitude of scripted ones they would never see: a bone ship emerging from a storm, some water elementals and brine dragons patrolling the island, etc. Even with all that they were still about a half-chapter behind party level for the rest of the AP, but I made sure to take a closer look at and slightly adjust if needed the encounters so that was not too catastrophic.
It was certainly different than expected, but it worked well enough and it kept the player's sense of agency and excitement about their choices intact. And that's just part of both the challenge and the joy of GMing
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Mathmuse, yes, your gamemastering style especially encourages this, which is a great GM attribute. If your players felt they couldn't play their PCs apart from serving a linear plot, that'd lessen their experience (and yours judging from the joy you've expressed numerous times). As Jacobs describes it, Paizo provides a snapshot, with much dynamism expected to adjust to player actions as suits the table's playstyle. So such deviations aren't so deviant; your table operates at what I'd call the better fringes of any supposed boundaries.
As your wife noted, "duh", as in maybe for Extinction Curse you'd need to add (maybe even stress given the AP's stress toward performance) "...with a craving to adventure beyond the circus someday" to PC build advice. For this AP, the time gaps allow for greater flexibility in character development so that you might suggest elements of the PCs growing offscreen in ways that foster aggressive defense of the school & other students. Or perhaps a meta-acceptance that like in Harry Potter & umpteen anime, the students (later teachers) will have to tackle fatal threats as part of the "what parent would ever send their child here?!" sub-genre of fantasy. I'm watching a pair of anime now that have been casual about students attacking each other with lethal force, with some kids chummy with their opponent while blood's still wet. That might lead to less realism, yes, but there's amusement to be had if one strikes the right tone.
I don't look at this as "the plot." This is creative roleplay versus a designed combat encounter.
My players do this all the time. I encourage it when a combat encounter doesn't fit how the players would interact with it. My players don't like to randomly murder everything in every scenario. They are more likely to talk with encounters first.
Encounters should be open-ended in these types of games as combat may be the straight-forward solution that many take, there are still plenty of times players do something different with skills, magic, or talking.
You have to be ready for it as a DM. I still recall in Rise of the Runelords that I tossed a minor rumor about some crime lord family in Sandpoint. Suddenly this rumor became the focus of the adventure as the PCs worked to take over the criminal underworld in Sandpoint. I had to come up with a criminal network and figure out how it all worked on the fly because they were intent on doing this rather than pursuing the adventure plot. So they took over the criminal underworld in Sandpoint and surrounding area, then engaged the main plot again using the criminal network they took over.
Players building tracks and taking the train somewhere else is what they do. You have to roll with it as a DM.
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Mathmuse, you're right to avoid Extinction Curse. I signed up for the circus, and then got pulled away to save the world, and I didn't want to go. I wanted to keep going with circus shenanigans.
Actually this might be worth doing an entire thread about... I cannot stand when an adventure does not deliver on its core promise. I was promised circus shenanigans, and I'm still disappointed that later volumes did not follow through.
Hmm
While running Carrion Crown, I did once run into a minor confusion where, upon retrieving one of the tools the bad guys wanted for their ritual at the end of Book 4, the party decided that the only logical thing to do would be to take the tool and leave Ustalav to prevent the ritual from ever being completed.
Funny enough, I'd already solved that particular plot question, but it want until then that I realized I never laid down the exposition to stress that, just because they're missing one tool doesn't mean they can't complete the ritual or that they won't find an equally suitable tool to replace it.
A hasty explanation set them right, but I wish I'd left myself an NPC with some narrative authority to talk it over with them, or had done a better job setting up the idea that ritual implements are used to improve the efficacy of the rites, so removing one component at worst would make it more likely to fail assuming they did have the only implement that could fill that role.
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I would have given your players full XP and also an appropriate reward, instead of finding it as treasure the teacher or the academy could provide something.
It is a slippery slope though, and Strength of Thousands seems to be a risky environment for "let the grownups handle this". A bit suspension of disbelief is often required, and out of game the players would probably agree that a campaign that ends with the "real heroes" resolving it is not fun to play.
My players also called for help when they realized there was a cadre of violent, unninvited snersons doing something obviously nefarious on campus.
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Strength of Thousands definitely requires a bit of classic YA "the adults aren't actually up to the job" energy. Fortunately its a standard genre trope, and so easy to fold in.
For Extinction Curse, I actually appreciate an AP that has an early exit window if the PCs feel they have completed the arc they cared about. Three books turns out to be a pretty good AP length, so if you think of it as two 3-book APs maybe it works better.
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My players also called for help when they realized there was a cadre of violent, unninvited snersons doing something obviously nefarious on campus.I would too, sounds very intimidating. I completely failed Recalling Knowledge on these monsters.
In Steven Universe the conspiracy theorist Ronaldo believed snake persons, or snersons, were up to no good. As soon as it was revealed that there were snake people performing a conspiracy on campus, my group started calling them snersons, completely ruining their gravitas.
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[..]
Oh no.
Just a heads up, but I'm an L10 player in SoT, and it is going to get so, so much worse than "Why don't we ask a teacher for help?" pretty quick. The "plot nonsense" plaguing that AP had to become a running joke at our table, because otherwise it would have killed our fun. "Who in the city needs help tying their laces today, I wonder?" type jokes.
I super duper recommend you as a GM who is willing to perform triage on situations like that, read the books up until the PCs leave the city behind, asap. Don't wait and try to improvise without that fore-knowledge.
It'll make a world of a difference if you are able to know ahead of time what actually comes back around later, what does not, and therefore what's "safe" to invent and add to the existing material.
While I've not played many APs, SoT has had by far the worst "Why don't we just do X?" --> GM gives me the thousand yard stare --> "OK, never mind, we don't do that obviously rational thing." because of how little the AP expects PCs to act like thinking beings with agency.
SoT also has the very worst murder-hobo moment I've seen or heard of in an AP, and that entire "mini arc" needs a whole lot of fixing.
Instead, they send the PCs to investigate reports of buskers (street musicians) being stolen from. Yes, the cops first reach out to ask for help from the magic school because of a small spree of thefts against musicians. No, it's not an assassination attempt against the PCs by the snersons, nor a setup / scheme in any way, the chime-callers are honestly helpless and incompetent.
The PCs just learned that the whole city is being infiltrated by snakefolk in disguise, and they are already feeling like this mob-boss is a side-quest, but maybe it'll be related somehow. While the expectation that this arc will get the PCs close to resolving the mob boss, there is 0 progress made there, other than this unrelated cell of criminal bending the knee.
Instead, the PCs are expected to ask the buskers, then go to the criminal's house. Once there, it is kill on sight, no surrender for the thieves. We caught the apparent house-boss alive, and of course, 0 info about the city's top crime boss we're looking for could be retrieved. Instead, the module expects the PCs to kill everyone, take everything of value from the dead, and to claim (steal) the pile of victim's money + magical musical instrument for themselves. The absurdity of the "strong community" AP where you spend time arguing about stolen packages suddenly going full murder-hobo, where you even steal the goods you were sent to recover, was an outright wtf moment.
And of course, two "mini arcs" later it's back to overly-idealized fluff, where the PCs are asked to help carefully subdue a mated pair of drakes and relocate their nest.
These (predatory) drakes are "majestic creatures" of course, and worthy of respect & relocation.
Never mind all the people the PCs just killed without a second thought, and I'm sure them being lizard-folk and (canonically disadvantaged) non-humans was a completely irrelevant detail (major yikes).
Criminal boss murdering with impunity? Who?
The one that brazenly put their name on an arson attack against the school to intimidate us, and have killed at least 12 chime-callers (not-cops) recently? Don't worry about that, I'm sure a teacher will just hand you their location sooner or later.
Go preserve nature and capture these drakes!
Snersons impersonating students? Forget about it!
You honestly could / should outright remove / cut that specific mini-arc with the buskers, imo. I don't think it's worth "fixing."
Unless the name-drop of the crime boss counts, it's pure filler, and is so irrelevant it's not even a red herring. It's just "world filling" of the city's street life that is so poorly done that our PCs characterizations all shifted toward being more "welp, time to start killing again" & unflinchingly cold-hearted and retaliatory when attacked. Thankfully, none of our PCs are Nantambu natives, and have backstories that fit with "empathy switch: off" style moments.
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I would have given your players full XP and also an appropriate reward, instead of finding it as treasure the teacher or the academy could provide something.
It is a slippery slope though, and Strength of Thousands seems to be a risky environment for "let the grownups handle this". A bit suspension of disbelief is often required, and out of game the players would probably agree that a campaign that ends with the "real heroes" resolving it is not fun to play.
The party will receive their XP from other sources. The players wanted to roleplay attending classes, so I invent class field trips and arcane demonstrations, some of which provide more XP. I wrote up one field trip at River into Darkness Revisited.
When I ran Iron Gods the players skipped some quests and invented some new quests. The XP balanced out. In Ironfang Invasion the players did the same, but they invented enough new quests that they ended up with an extra level at the end of the 3rd module Assault on Longshadow. Since I was converting that adventure path from PF1 to PF2, I adjusted for the level change with little additional effort. I decided to rewrite the adventure path to end at 20th level instead of 17th level.
As Hilary Moon Murphy said in comment #2, "I view the plots of APs as guidelines."
As for letting the adults handle it, after just two seasons (the Magaambya schedule uses a four quarters per year, calling each quarter a "season") the PCs have been promoted to conversant rank, the equivalent of graduate students. I talked some of the players into having their characters teach a class the next season. They are quickly becoming the adults here. A player, my elder daughter, sent me the suggestion, "Tiny fun thought for adventures when we're full teachers: we get called for help by our more protagonisty students, as we're now the responsible adults."
Strength of Thousands definitely requires a bit of classic YA "the adults aren't actually up to the job" energy. Fortunately its a standard genre trope, and so easy to fold in.
Most of my players hate rescuing victims who halplessly sat and waited for rescue. They feel better if the local people tried their best before the PCs show up to help. I rewrote the beginning of Trail of the Hunted, 1st module of Ironfang Invasion, to give the village of Phaendar a competent civil defense that was overwhelmed by the Ironfang invasion, replacing some scenes in which villagers crawled into a corner to hide.
"The adults aren't actually up to the job" would bother them the same way, especially since the Magaambya is famed across Golarion for the skill of its wizards and druids. (Check out the recent Paizo Blog The Rival Academies (Part 2).) Instead, I created a backstory that many of the Magaambya faculty are off in Lastwall, AKA the Gravelands, to fight against Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant. The remaining faculty is spread thin and relying more on their attendants (undergraduate students) and conversants (graduate students) to run the campus.
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I had so many problems with the AP, I had to do major surgery throughout. It also never felt like a magic school adventure, it felt like a political intrigue game with incompetent or hostile people in power. Also a huge empty hole in the AP where school-centric content should have been.
We felt like we were encouraged to run it like ALL of the teachers were either incredibly overworked, out in the field, or indisposed, and the school experience was essentially a do-or-die gauntlet of self-learning while fighting for your life so that the school could quickly get some new staff to start handling some of the endless problems they have on their hands. Your actual education was tertiary. The academic subsystem was mind bogglingly boring chore and massive oversimplification of what we really wanted to play.
The Magaambya felt like a black company in japan, and the city was so deeply under its sway that you couldn't rely on them for anything.
I regularly had to completely go off the tracks so that I could fulfill the original "magical school" promise to my players. I had to homebrew a school dance, magic staff creation lessons, student interactions, a party of rival students, extra-curricular activities, and high level magic school activities like plane hopping research.
Yeah, the fame of the academy both for skill and values, makes it difficult to dismiss the teachers who should very much protect their students and not have some perverse "pain will do them good" mentality. (Okay, maybe given the metaphysics of PC growth, that might actually be a good concept to believe in! It's just not realistic, even if putting pressure on clusters of motley friends w/ diverse skills often yields nation-saving icons.)
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While I've not played many APs, SoT has had by far the worst "Why don't we just do X?" --> GM gives me the thousand yard stare --> "OK, never mind, we don't do that obviously rational thing." because of how little the AP expects PCs to act like thinking beings with agency.
I was wondering whether it was just me. Thanks for the reality check.
SoT also has the very worst murder-hobo moment I've seen or heard of in an AP, and that entire "mini arc" needs a whole lot of fixing.
L5 plot spoiler omitted
You honestly could / should outright remove / cut that specific mini-arc with the buskers, imo. I don't think it's worth "fixing."
I ran that last week, chronicled at Virgil Tibbs, Rune Smith comments #8-11. All the robbers (I increased their number to five) were captured alive. I am going to add an additional scene in which the PCs attend the trial of the robbers as witnesses.
At 1st level in the 1st module, Kindled Magic, the PCs were asked to clear some gremlins out of a storeroom without killing them. They took that requirement to heart. They do not kill intelligent creatures. However, the spellcasters do use lethal force, since switching spells to nonlethal damage requires a feat. Afterwards their healer Jinx Fuun uses the Stabilize cantrip to keep their targets alive.
The PCs also do not loot. In Kindled Magic they found some +1 Handwraps of Mighty Fists left behind in some laundry in their dormitory. Instead of claiming them--two PCs make unarmed Strikes--they tracked down the student who had forgotten them. She generously said that they could keep them, because she had made them as an assignment in her Magical Crafting class and did not use them herself.
Once the PCs reached conversant rank, Learned One Janatimo assigned them to work with the local police, the Chime Ringers. As part of that duty, supply master Xhokan lent them enchanted weapons and gear appropriate for their level. They just reached 5th level with the XP from the Hababe Building encounter, so Xhokan just enchanted their armor or explorer's clothing with +1 armor potency runes, too.
At one point, the PCs are introduced to the city's ~police. They can do absolutely nothing to help locate a crime boss / assassin who is free to murder anyone they wish and is fully untouchable.
Instead, they send the PCs to investigate reports of buskers (street musicians) being stolen from. Yes, the cops first reach out to ask for help from the magic school because of a small spree of thefts against musicians. No, it's not an assassination attempt against the PCs by the snersons, nor a setup / scheme in any way, the chime-callers are honestly helpless and incompetent.
Chime Ringer Virgil Tibbs started the PCs with investigating the robbery of the buskers because the PCs were students. He was not going to pit inexperienced students against the notorious crime boss Froglegs. He figured the robbers were just a bunch of 2nd-level rogues after easy targets. He and the party were surprised that the robbers consisted of four rogues and a necromancer ranging from 3rd level to 7th level.
In my next game session on Tuesday January 28, I will return to playtesting runesmith Virgil Tibbs. The PCs will aid Virgil in returning the musical instruments to the buskers, because one busker without his musical instrument took a job as a dock worker in the West Docks, a rough neigborhood. There they will have a "random" encounter with some Giant Hermit Crabs attracted to Nantambu by the same mysterious call that attracts insects and spiders.
Also, my wife is a musician. She takes musical instruments seriously.
And of course, two "mini arcs" later it's back to overly-idealized fluff, where the PCs are asked to help carefully subdue a mated pair of drakes and relocate their nest.
These (predatory) drakes are "majestic creatures" of course, and worthy of respect & relocation.
For the griffon encounter at the end of Kindled Magic I had replaced the griffons with wyverns for greater challenge to the oversized seven-member party. But that makes the jungle drake encounter too similar. I am planning on replacing the jungle drakes with zinbas, a Mwangi species which some people consider sacred. Due to the zinba's 10th level I will delay the encounter until the party is 7th level.
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** spoiler omitted **...
All in all, this feels like a very inaccurate representation of the book, or perhaps an accurate representation of player/gm error. Like really, book 2 is when you complain? Book 4 I get, but book 2?
Trip.H described him- or herself as a player. Therefore, this is how their GM represented the book to the players. The same GM who gave a thousand yard stare whenever Trip.H made a rational suggestion that differed from the module's plot.
And in the robber story, the module makes no suggestion that the PCs need to capture the robbers alive. The robbers fight them with lethal damage, so the PCs might respond likewise. Loakan is mentioned as fighting to the death, though she surrendered in my game. The stolen musical instruments are listed in the treasure of the room with no suggestions to the GM about how to return the instruments to the buskers.
Creature: This room belongs to a lanky lizardfolk bruiser named Loakan. She’s currently sitting on her bed, perusing a new book of recipes she just bought. She’s furious at being interrupted by intruders and attacks with a loud snarl.
Unlike Mashkudu and Kiru, who flee with their lives if hard-pressed, the stubborn Loakan doesn’t ever leave a fight. She pursues foes that flee but doesn’t leave sight of the shack.
Interrogating Reth: Even though Reth doesn’t surrender, the heroes might capture him and want to learn what he knows. ...
Treasure: Several neat stacks of coins sit on the table: 40 gp, 40 sp, and 80 cp. The chest is locked (it can be opened with three successful DC 20 Thievery checks to Pick the Lock, or a successful DC 25 Athletics check to Force it Open) and contains 75 gp, three virtuoso handheld musical instruments (a hand drum, lyre, and shekere) and a reed flute lesser maestro’s instrument.
I had wondered whether the robbers would avoid killing the PCs, who were wearing bead necklaces that marked them as Magaambya students. Surely, killing a student would call down the wrath of the Magaambya on them, right? And robbers have common sense, too, right? Fortunately, my players had their characters back away to safety when heavily damaged, so the robbers had a clear indication that the students might give up if hurt enough.
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I do remember a PC rolling well to press the Chime-Caller for info, and then being told that there was an increase in crime recently, and that Froglegs had killed so many Chime-Callers, that they had unofficially stopped taking actions that would provoke more murders from Froglegs. The specific NPC said he would agree to try to gather info about them on the sly, and hand it off to us to handle so that he (& his family) would have a good chance of surviving.
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The encounter w/ the thieves started for us when my PC began to loudly Repair their broken front door after knocking on the broken door returned no reply. Once they saw we were from the Magaambya, they attacked us with full killing intent. After I think a full round of failed diplomacy while being actively stabbed, we responded w/ lethal force, and learned via failed stabilize that they were dropping dead-dead.
No idea what "non-lethal tools" you are talking about using, because the AP gave us no such tools. We actually killed the gremlin assassin @ L1 who was likely supposed to successfully run away (they almost killed one of us, so the gloves were already off).
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Because the thieves were dying outright, we did invoke non-lethal the hard way for the last one. I think we had already gotten Froglegs name from the Chime-Caller, but either way, there were no real clues whatsoever. The captive thief said they'd rather be killed on the spot than even attempt to reveal info about Froglegs, which sounded rather scripted/prewritten. And that dialogue line was repeated again after that chase sequence. (and that bad powder ploy was another Froglegs backed ~attack against the school)
Given how absurdly gold-starved the PCs will be in SoT, it's 100% obvious they expected the PCs to take that loot pile in the thieves den. You don't write "a lute worth 10 gp" unless you expect that gp value to be liquidated. And the mix of normal instruments like the magic reed flute, plus blank and non-descriptive [# of PCs] "virtuoso instruments" is absurdly sus as intended for PC taking.
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The campus arson attack used supplies sold by Ubanu, but the attack was committed by Froglegs directly as a warning to drop the investigation.
That arson attack only happens after you get the backstory for Froglegs, once a lowly tripkee burglar who stole from and eventually killed "Habu the Cudgel," the previous (human?) big bad crime lord. That old retiree NPC was the first person to openly talk about Froglegs (likely possible to fail that and he wont talk).
And of course, Froglegs magically knows he spoke of them and has him killed even when he immediately took the first boat away from the city.
My notes also say that Ubanu was tricked by snersons impersonating Magaambyans into thinking the school owed him a debt, which is largely why he was willing to participate in the arson attack via Froglegs.
That does make me think there's a chance the GM might have tied that arson into Froglegs beyond what was written. If so, that only enhanced and repaired was thin/broken plot was there, as otherwise Ubanu is another irrelevant tangent that makes no damn sense. I'm sorry, but it's beyond stupid that someone who thinks they were ghosted on a payment by the oldest magic school in the world would leap to arson attack without so much as sending a letter with copies of the invoice first.
It would have presented a genuinely grey / "real" problem to resolve if Ubanu had honestly been ghosted by a senile prof who was convinced they had already paid, and had already refused Ubanu's reasonable requests for remediation. Using "it was the snersons fault!" flattens out all the interesting bits and makes it into yet another "beat up the bad guys" side quest.
Ugh.
I just remembered that I made sure to catch the head snerson alive, and they are in some bullsh.t self-induced half-coma so that my PC can visit and be a penpal for someone who just listens while still saying absolutely nothing of significance. (which was honestly the best way GM could've handled that, it's the AP writer that should've known that could happen)
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Many APs seem to be written from the perspective that the players can, and probably will, attempt to murderize their way through most obstacles. Parties are a notable exception. Parties are the venue of extended roleplaying experiences.
I have observed that Paizo modules are written for two types of players: those who will murderize their way through most obstacles and those who follow a more flavorful plot laid down by the writer. I gained my practice at improvisation because my players tend to chose another path with more roleplaying.
In the video game Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim every bad guy with an evil plan more complicated than banditry keeps a journal. Thus, the player can read about the plan in case the player character kills the bad guy before they can monologue about their evil plan. The two paths in a Paizo module resemble that.
Trip.H's GM who turned Strength of Thousands into an adventure path that does not deliver on its core promise, to borrow Hilary Moon Murphy's words, make me think of another facet of plot-breaking Common Sense. Sometimes as the GM I apply common sense and alter the plot before the players ever see it. This is invisible to the players, but I usually follow my players' style of alteration.
For example, in Vault of the Onyx Citadel, 6th module of Ironfang Invasion the PCs rescued a xiomorn Vault Keeper named Ziguch the Seventh Facet. Ziguch had been a caretaker of the Onyx Citadel and in gratitude he drew a map of the Onyx Citadel for the party. It seems obvious he would have the floor plan memorized. This meant that I did not have to apply the fog of war to hide rooms of the Onyx Citadel in Roll20. However, it also let the party plan a surgical strike that avoided most of the troops in the citadel.
Or earlier in Vault of the Onyx Citadel the PCs needed to accomplish some boring administration, such as dealing humanely with prisoners captured from the Ironfang Legion. Fortunately, they were in a war council with other factions of Nirmathas and neighboring countries, and the representative from Lastwall stepped up and volunteered to transport the prisoners to Lastwall. The module had not planned for prisoners, but the very diplomatic party accepted surrenders.
And more routinely, if the setting or the bad guy's plan has a giant plot hole in it, then I fix it beforehand. I will deliver on promises.
Mathmuse, you're right to avoid Extinction Curse. I signed up for the circus, and then got pulled away to save the world, and I didn't want to go. I wanted to keep going with circus shenanigans.
Actually this might be worth doing an entire thread about... I cannot stand when an adventure does not deliver on its core promise. I was promised circus shenanigans, and I'm still disappointed that later volumes did not follow through.
Hmm
I think a large part of the problem might be that books in the same AP are written by different people, so you can get vastly different feel and expectations. One persons view of a theme or trope might be different then another's so the story could start leaning one way or another. Two books later you might be very far from the original feel.
For SoT, I haven't played it, sounds like your supposed to be self motivated teens, not efficient problem solvers. YA adventures are all about having to take on responsibility because adults are busy with other problems. In Mathmuse's example the teacher should likely either ignore the request or take the time to figure out what they are doing and then tell them the guard is there for a reason, maybe don't mess with it.
Many APs seem like they have a hidden contract that suggests you play it a certain way, maybe it's a genre piece or heavily thematic. Not knowing or caring about that view can make a lot of the interactions in the story not work as intended. A noir detective story, a horror story and a heroic high fantasy story all ask for very different mindsets, yet can all be played with the same rules and even same characters.
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Mathmuse, you're right to avoid Extinction Curse. I signed up for the circus, and then got pulled away to save the world, and I didn't want to go. I wanted to keep going with circus shenanigans.
Actually this might be worth doing an entire thread about... I cannot stand when an adventure does not deliver on its core promise. I was promised circus shenanigans, and I'm still disappointed that later volumes did not follow through.
Hmm
I think a large part of the problem might be that books in the same AP are written by different people, so you can get vastly different feel and expectations. One persons view of a theme or trope might be different then another's so the story could start leaning one way or another. Two books later you might be very far from the original feel.
For SoT, I haven't played it, sounds like your supposed to be self motivated teens, not efficient problem solvers. YA adventures are all about having to take on responsibility because adults are busy with other problems. In Mathmuse's example the teacher should likely either ignore the request or take the time to figure out what they are doing and then tell them the guard is there for a reason, maybe don't mess with it.
Many APs seem like they have a hidden contract that suggests you play it a certain way, maybe it's a genre piece or heavily thematic. Not knowing or caring about that view can make a lot of the interactions in the story not work as intended. A noir detective story, a horror story and a heroic high fantasy story all ask for very different mindsets, yet can all be played with the same rules and even same characters.
This was my experience with Outlaws of Alkenstar, where book 2 is a giantic swerve that also ends up not mattering at all story wise. It seemed like someone had an idea for an (admittedly cool) dungeon but didn't know what to do with it. If I ever run it I'll have to rewrite most of the volume.
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Instead, I wonder at the contrast between real-life expectations and tabletop-roleplaying-game expectations. The module writers have an expectation that adventurers will rush into adventure. In Strength of Thousands my players declared that their PCs will focus on being students rather than adventurers, so they stray from the module writer's expectation more often than usual by sticking closer to real-life common sense.
SoT definitely assumes the players are go-getter types that want to solve problems themselves. If your players see a thing and want to do it, it works fine. But the school and its teachers are right there, and not having them help out when the PCs need it doesn't make any sense.
I had a case of that too.
I had Janatimo praise them for putting helping the workshop owner above their own pride by asking for help. He then led the ritual so they could get it done. They still got full credit.
In other spots in this book I had him drop hints that he was keeping tabs on them when they were on the more dangerous tasks and that he wasn't just throwing them to the wolves to see if they survive. That made it feel more believable, in that this is a "learn by doing" situation but he's not just throwing them to the wolves and abandoning them.
In terms of bringing people in alive, I've repeated for three books now that the Maaganbaya prefers nonlethal solutions whenever possible and views killing as a last resort. No one is going to be mad at them for killing thieves in self-defense, but likewise most thieves don't really want to die and will either flee or surrender if they think that gives them better odds. They're not suicidal. The book doesn't always say this but it makes it far mor believable if you run it that way.
I probably should avoid running The Extinction Curse in which the PCs start as circus performers. The players might focus on a profitable circus and forget about the rest of the adventure. (I read this aloud to my wife. She responded, "Well, yeah.")
I ran Extinction Curse and the first 3 books do a pretty good job of weaving the circus and the adventuring part together. You have an adventure to do, but the places you need to go for that are also places that it mostly makes sense for your circus to go to perform.
It's the latter half where that really falls off. Book 5 especially, while well written standalone, just doesn't feel like it fits in the adventure at all. Especially since there's an easier and more obvious way to do the same thing. This was the spot that my PCs balked, though they eventually decided to go along with it.
Actually this might be worth doing an entire thread about... I cannot stand when an adventure does not deliver on its core promise. I was promised circus shenanigans, and I'm still disappointed that later volumes did not follow through.
Second Darkness has entered the chat. I'm not sure any AP can top it in terms of "books 3-6 are a completely different adventure and require characters with completely different motivations than 1-2."
But yeah, its always frustrating when you go in expecting something from the players guide and then the AP just doesn't deliver that.
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I think a large part of the problem might be that books in the same AP are written by different people, so you can get vastly different feel and expectations. One persons view of a theme or trope might be different then another's so the story could start leaning one way or another. Two books later you might be very far from the original feel.
In the Iron Gods adventure path, Creative Director James Jacobs wrote in an introduction that the adventure path had several potential themes, such as science versus religion, the nature of godhood, native barbarians living off the land versus technology, etc. My players developed a strong theme of making and sharing items in contrast to the Technic League hoarding technology. Thus, even a single module can have several themes.
That is not to say that the modules all faithfully stick to the overall story. Sometimes they break away in a purely side quest. I remember one player asking in such a module, "Why are we here? I forgot our mission."
For SoT, I haven't played it, sounds like your supposed to be self motivated teens, not efficient problem solvers. YA adventures are all about having to take on responsibility because adults are busy with other problems. In Mathmuse's example the teacher should likely either ignore the request or take the time to figure out what they are doing and then tell them the guard is there for a reason, maybe don't mess with it.
Deep down the player characters are all about the players. The players are free to go beyond the standard characters that fit the setting. Furthermore, I could not figure out whether the Magaambya is a high school or a college, so it became a mixture. It is a world-famous institution that takes teenage students looking for basic instruction in their first spells, career-oriented adults going for a professional education, and respected scholars hoping to learn the latest arcane research.
The statues are an old defense mechanism, rendered inert so long ago that no one on the campus remembers they were once animated. Salathiss [the serpentfolk bad guy] found a way to reactivate the western statue to kill or drive off any [people] who spend too much time near the storeroom door.
... Heroes who Investigate the statue and succeed at a DC 19 Arcana or Crafting check see that the statue was imbued with arcane energy within the past day.
The statue attacking students is definitely not its original programming.
Many APs seem like they have a hidden contract that suggests you play it a certain way, maybe it's a genre piece or heavily thematic. Not knowing or caring about that view can make a lot of the interactions in the story not work as intended. A noir detective story, a horror story and a heroic high fantasy story all ask for very different mindsets, yet can all be played with the same rules and even same characters.
And my contract with the players is to give them the adventure they want so long as it is plausible and does not require me to invent too much new material. For example, right in the title of Trail of the Hunted, 1st module of Ironfang Invasion, is the storyline. The Ironfang Legion hunts the PCs and other refugees from Phaendar village as they hide in the dangerous Fangwood Forest. Halfway through, my tactically-savvy players flipped the script and started hunting the Ironfang Legion in clever ambushes.
And my wife added that the Strength of Thousands adventure path is a story about community. in Kindled Magic they are supposed to get to know their dorm-mates and the faculty on campus. in Spoken on the Song Wind they spend more time out in the city of Nantambu that surrounds the Magaambya campus. She said that the Magaambya needs to be a community that the PCs want to participate in, not a death school.
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[...]
And my wife added that the Strength of Thousands adventure path is a story about community. in Kindled Magic they are supposed to get to know their dorm-mates and the faculty on campus. in Spoken on the Song Wind they spend more time out in the city of Nantambu that surrounds the Magaambya campus. She said that the Magaambya needs to be a community that the PCs want to participate in, not a death school.
Absolutely, yes. The player's guide and introductory segments layer that expectation on thick.
After spending a lot of time getting to meet all our classmates, we had a plot excuse to talk with Anchor Root once, and later the new campus arrivals gave us an excuse to talk w/ the Anadi mom again. I cannot remember a single other player-driven interaction with them. While I get that experienced GMs can go nuts with a blank check, that is no excuse for the actual AP product to fall so flat on its face in this regard.
Our dorm mates have never mattered once (by L10). There was no set-piece where they were endangered, no snerson impersonator, nor a reverse impersonator scenario where we need to convince the people living directly next to us of our identity.
Our new students have already gotten more screentime than the supposed community the AP set up for us. It's insane that the first time we had to help an endangered Magaambyan, it was after we've left the whole city behind.
SoT has been a treadmill of "new new new" instead of making use of what they already established and building upon it for something better.
It's honestly astounding how much potential has been squandered. It feels nearly criminal that the snerson plot was not better utilized (and that Froglegs was genuinely unrelated). The only reason I know that the snerson plot was the "real" one that's coming back later, and not Froglegs (who is the local community member, FFS...) is because of the McGuffin we are not allowed to protect/study/etc. Our party was going to keep it a secret for at least a while, and our poor GM basically had to go over the table and take the McGuffin away from us. SoT is so problematic, it not just the city/school that's incompetent beyond belief, but SoT even occasionally forces PCs to take their turn holding the idiot stick. Ugh.
I can't believe that in order to remain honest, I have to say that Gatewalkers was *much* more competently done, and handled longer NPC relationships like Sakuachi way better than SoT has thus far. That AP actually knows to give them plenty of "blank screen time" where they are specified to be present, for GMs to work with if they want, but also makes sure to write out enough "anchor moments" that they are still understood and utilized. (I'm not saying Gatewalkers was great, but I must honestly say it did all of these things better than the AP that was supposed to focus on them)
My SoT table tried to make excuses to involve other NPCs early on, but gave up. Thing like Teacher Ot being a L2 with only a 1d6 Daze cantrip to fight for his life was a joke too far, and our GM went out of his way to let us know that he fixed/changed that if/when he runs the AP for another table.
When every meaningful interaction with NPCs only cracks/breaks the immersion out of sheer stupidity, we're going to stop seeking out those interactions.
The biggest issue with SoT is that despite the promises of community and collectivism, it's just another "Wow, [you guys] are super special mega heroes, please go punch all the problems out of existence!" AP.
Gatewalkers, again, has the deviant abilities. Like it or not, they keep growing, and that "threat" by itself is more mechanical harmony w/ the narrative than what SoT has done. Once they mystery of "what's going on w/ my body" is gone, it's replaced by a foe that needs defeating, which is functional narrative--mechanical harmony.
SoT making scripted study rolls during downtime doesn't make any of the PCs more likely to befriend / cooperate. It *is* a magical school mechanic, but has 0 community in it.
I just keep getting aggravated that there's no chart for "buddy bonuses" or anything, where each NPC has their specialty and will give a +_ when studied alongside. Same goes for adventuring.
If the AP just had a single page of instructions on how the party is allowed to take a single student, teacher, etc, with them as a party member, that would have massively improved the narrative--mechanical harmony.
Every NPC w/ combat stats could have been subject to a "repay the favor" AP rule where they are willing to help you out once, including combat. A line or two for adjusting NPC stats if they were single foe VS party, etc, would have been huuuuge motivation for players to resolve things peacefully.
The SoT product itself thus far has done nothing but throw themes and aesthetics at the players, which is only skin deep. A professionally written ttrpg product is the *easiest* place where one can write mechanics out of thin air like that.
I'm not removing score points for "what I wish it was" or anything like that. The reason I would score SoT so low is that when players try to actually engage as the AP suggests, by making friends, the whole AP explodes, and every single NPC becomes a useless meat nugget.
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The whole AP as written seems to be a "dissonance machine" where the PCs are more or less alone in solving all the problems of a city, constantly baited into trying to talk things out, yet something as "unscripted" as capturing foes alive reveals the absurd artifice as the GM must improvise reasons why they can be of no mechanical help.
However it could / should have been abstracted, SoT needed some mechanical teeth to the themes of community & cooperation.
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Absolutely, yes. The player's guide and introductory segments layer that expectation on thick.
After spending a lot of time getting to meet all our classmates, we had a plot excuse to talk with Anchor Root once, and later the new campus arrivals gave us an excuse to talk w/ the Anadi mom again. I cannot remember a single other player-driven interaction with them. While I get that experienced GMs can go nuts with a blank check, that is no excuse for the actual AP product to fall so flat on its face in this regard.
I am shocked. The AP did not fall flat on its face. Instead, your GM cut the expected material out.
Let me provide some individual examples.
My SoT table tried to make excuses to involve other NPCs early on, but gave up. Thing like Teacher Ot being a L2 with only a 1d6 Daze cantrip to fight for his life was a joke too far, and our GM went out of his way to let us know that he fixed/changed that if/when he runs the AP for another table.
Teacher Takulu Ot has a gallery entry on pages 90 and 91 of Kindled Magic. He is a 4th-level arcane prepared caster. His 2nd-level spells are not especially useful in combat--comprehend language, glitterdust, see invisibility--but he does have them. He also has a Quick Lesson reaction to enhance allies, i.e., the player characters. The Daze cantrip does not heighten until the caster has 3rd-level spells, so unfortunately, it is stuck at only 1d6.
My players objected to a teacher being only 4th level, so I raised him to 6th level: River into Darkness Revisited, comment #2.
SoT making scripted study rolls during downtime doesn't make any of the PCs more likely to befriend / cooperate. It *is* a magical school mechanic, but has 0 community in it.
Okay, the Life in the Academy system is a true flaw in Strength of Thousands. The rules for it are in Archives of Nethys, so other readers can judge for themselves: Life in the Academy.
I did not like it, so I tried to invent a better version. I required three tries before I developed a system that my players like. I make a list of classes for each season, the students get to pick three, a successful Study or Cram roll for each class means they pass, and a critical success gave them an Accolade. Two accolades could be spent to buy an extra skill feat based on the classes they passed. I will post my system in a few months after I create all four seasons of classes.
I just keep getting aggravated that there's no chart for "buddy bonuses" or anything, where each NPC has their specialty and will give a +_ when studied alongside. Same goes for adventuring.
There is such a chart! Kindled Magic has a 6-page article, "Students of the Magaambya," that describes the nine dorm-mates. It does not give stat blocks, but I have been able to construct stat blocks from the descriptions. It also has a line called "Classroom Advantage" that gives a buddy benefit from studying together with that dorm-mate.
Anchor Root Treat your critical failures when you Study for Rain-Scribe classes as failures instead.Chizire You don’t get tired after you Cram for Cascade Bearer classes.
Esi Djana Treat your successes to Study for Tempest-Sun Mage classes as critical successes instead.
Haibram Thodja When you Cram for Rain-Scribe classes, you can Study three times rather than twice.
Ignaci Canterells When you Cram for Emerald Boughs classes, treat your critical failures as failures instead.
Etc.
If the AP just had a single page of instructions on how the party is allowed to take a single student, teacher, etc, with them as a party member, that would have massively improved the narrative--mechanical harmony.
The fellow students and faculty are designedd for social interactions rather than combat aid. Nevertheless, in section C8. FRIENDS IN NEED of the Infested Caverns in Kindled Magic, the party encounters Ignaci, Okoro, and Tzeniwe, who had entered from a separate entrance. I statted them out (I had already created Ignaci's stat block for River into Darkness Revisited) in case they teamed up. But since Ignaci was injured, the party helped them depart the caverns so that they could get Ignaci to the Magaambya's medical clinic.
Oh, the medical clinic was something else I added to the Magaambya. My common sense said that the Magaambya would provide health care for their students. I put it in Indigo Hall and created a conversant named Orrick Majiva to run it. Orrick accompanied the party into the Infested Caverns because I thought that the teachers sending the party into potentially dangerous caverns without conversant-rank guidance was unbelievable (another true flaw in the AP). That the caverns were deadly rather than moderately dangerous I view as an honest mistake by the teachers.
Did Trip.H's GM skip the event named Surprise! in which Tzeniwe's young children Zachva and Zanvi persuade the dormitory residents to hold a surprise birthday party for Tzeniwe? That was a good event for getting to know the NPCs.
My gut feeling is that the biggest obstacle to applying common sense in an adventure module is a GM who lacks common sense. And that I pander to my players' expectations so much that I am encouraging them to value common sense over following the plot.
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Apologies, I did get Ot's R2 spells mixed and said he was L2 when he's L4 w/ R2 spells.
A senior and ranked prof at a magic school doing 1d6 damage at his best is still "instant dissonance" material when the players see him roll for damage while a beast is eating them.
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That mentioned FRIENDS IN NEED event is exactly what I'm talking about in regard to SoT being a "dissonance machine."
If you as a GM have to stat out an NPC, then no, the AP has not given you the tools to use them for combat. But it sure has set up the whole table for yet another unfun moment of dissonance.
Instead of knowing and working within it's own limitations, SoT is the kind of AP that will put your NPC peers right there on a battle map, teasing the PCs with the possibility of a team up, but a GM will not be able to improvise their combat stats on the spot, so they instead make excuses so that all 3, and not just the injured one, leave in a hurry.
In order for players to be able to "accept the social contract" and play within the AP's boundaries, the AP needs to clearly communicate what is within the bounds, and what player-asks are out of bounds and beyond the AP's scope to provide. SoT is really bad at this. Some events, like that fight w/ Teacher Ot, do have NPCs fight, which gives players expectations for the future, which are then broken via events like FRIENDS IN NEED.
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For SoT to *not* constantly create such dissonance during real table play, the GM needs to do pre-session homework explicitly looking for, noticing, and then compensating for all those dissonance landmines.
That is *not* a sign of the AP being quality, and is a rather damning point of evidence to the opposite, imo.
In the moment, even a good GM who has not done that homework is going to be unable to improvise things like stat blocks, so you get problems with all those teasing dissonance moments.
Examples like the AP encouraging taking people alive, but none of them can meaningfully help / speak when captured.
Or the "expecting PCs to take (steal) busker property,"
or being forced to wait for months after discovering that hostile snersons have already infiltrated the academy, wasting critical time while snersons are doing who knows what (because you're scripted to make more study checks), etc.
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RE: the surprise party.
I specified "PC initiated moments" for a reason, as scripted "yank the PCs into a conversation" moments did happen.
I think we skipped the surprise party, it's not in my notes and I don't remember it. I think our GM may have read it and down-cycled it's info when we took the new arrivals to her, not sure.
I want to emphasize the "tease" part of this problem equation, as skipping things that do not have later payoff can genuinely improve the experience. It's a 1 to 20 AP, we do *not* need to stretch for time.
Content for the sake of it is an easy pitfall to slip into, but it's a real one. If that surprise party serves only fluff purposes, it can make this dissonance worse if the NPCs involved don't matter. Fluff can be fine and good, but there always needs to be a real "bone" that accompanies it. Scripted fluff alone is "bad" and can hurt the experience. (If players seek out and initiate fluff, that's different, and a sign of engaged and fun role-playing)
I am sad to learn that there was a chart for study buddies, and wonder if my GM had (another) speed bump due to being so stuck inside roll20's ecosystem. He's visibly struggled against the AP module a few times, and one handout file either being overlooked or being genuinely missing is very possible.
(To all yall: The sooner you migrate to playing w/ Foundry for your VTT, the sooner you'll have more fun and less migraines.)
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This was my experience with Outlaws of Alkenstar, where book 2 is a giantic swerve that also ends up not mattering at all story wise. It seemed like someone had an idea for an (admittedly cool) dungeon but didn't know what to do with it. If I ever run it I'll have to rewrite most of the volume.
I talked briefly with the GM of the new group I'm in about OoA, my previous group didn't enjoy it at all so we compared ideas. I think OoA issue is the theme seems to be steam punk western, but none of that really comes through. What we were looking for wasn't available and what was there seemed rather disjointed, a plot heist that's rather nonsensical, could have used more random jobs while being the outlaws, then having to escort guy who made the Mcguffin to random temple. More then most APs it feels like your just some randos doing some things.
I don't think it's far fetched to say that likely a majority of people see APs as a good base to run as is. While for best use they should be customized to fit you're group and the way they play either small bits or large swaths. So people can have vastly different experiences even within what many would likely see as the exact same adventure.
I think I would love to play FotRP with a GM who changes nearly every encounter each playthrough, making different teams to fight against and interact with, adding team related subplots and such.
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I want to emphasize the "tease" part of this problem equation, as skipping things that do not have later payoff can genuinely improve the experience. It's a 1 to 20 AP, we do *not* need to stretch for time.
Content for the sake of it is an easy pitfall to slip into, but it's a real one. If that surprise party serves only fluff purposes, it can make this dissonance worse if the NPCs involved don't matter. Fluff can be fine and good, but there always needs to be a real "bone" that accompanies it. Scripted fluff alone is "bad" and can hurt the experience.
Ah, we have a major difference in style. I view my job as a GM to provide opportunities for the PCs to demonstrate they are awesome. That demonstration does not have to be victory in combat. Instead, the PC could rally the townfolk with a rousing speech, or craft a major magic item, or pull off a heist, or even organize an entertaining birthday party. I put a Theatre class in the Magaambya class schedule and the PCs involved rolled Crafting and Performance checks to stage two successful plays. They recieved no experience points for it, but they did get a bonus to help pass their Theater class with Accolades. And they persuaded Noxolo and Tzeniwe to help with the costumes, because "Students of the Magaambya" said that they were interested in fashion and clothing. Bard Jinx Fuun wrote the 2nd play, "Bug Hunt." based on their insect battles, and I told them that a local Nantambu schoolteacher asked for the script so that the school could put on the play with their students.
Thus, to my players fluff can be victory.
This level of detail does slow down the gameplay. My Strength of Thousands campaign will run for over three years. We are ten months in now and only a quarter of the way through the 2nd module. So long as the players are having fun, we have no need to rush.
I have statted out the existing characters:
Ignaci Canterells, thaumaturge 2
Strands-of-Glowing-Dawn Tzeniwe, investigator 2
Okoro Obiyo. psychic 3
Niana Ot, glassblower 3 (Takulu Ot's wife)
Esi Djana, wizard 4
Muruwa, rogue 4 (mentioned in the 4th module, introduced in module Threshold of Knowledge)
Thema, druid 5
Mkosa, druid 5 (mentioned in War of Immortals)
Takulu Ot, wizard 6 (leveled up from 4th)
Lesedi, wizard 13
Izem Mezitani, archaelolgist 14
I have invented and statted out:
Orrick Majivu, sorcerer 4
Virgil Tibbs, runesmith 4 (going up to 5 soon)
Itoro Djana, athlete 6
By my standards, that is a routine amount of character creation. I frequently need to create new characters whenever the players stray from the plot as written.
Of those 14 statted characters, only 7 were allied with the party in combat. Virgil Tibbs is a playtest character, so he is essentially a party member.
Ignaci Canterells, Takulu Ot, and Itoro Djana fought alongside the party in the River into Darkness Revisited field trip;
the party helped Thema fight a fire;
Orrick Majivu accompanied them into the Infested Caverns;
Virgil Tibbs accompanied them for the Oba's Wondrous Creatures and Busker Woes battles;
and Izem Mezitani supervised them at the Hababe Building.
Lesedi arrived at the attack on the Introduction Ceremony just as the battle had ended (she was my deus ex machina in case the PCs lost that battle). Takulu Ot, Lesedi, Izem Mezitani, and other teachers were present for the attack on Tireless Hall, but I said that they were protecting the other students in the building and never rolled for them or their opponents. I had put the party by themselves in the west balconey. They fought without aid once they assured Takulu Ot that they did not help.
Esi Djana and Mkosa teamed up with Jinx Fuun and Cara'sseth in a sailboat race, but that is not combat.
A senior and ranked prof at a magic school doing 1d6 damage at his best is still "instant dissonance" material when the players see him roll for damage while a beast is eating them.
I view Takulu Ot as a junior-ranked teacher. The only named teachers with high rank are Janatimo, leader of the Uzunjati branch, and Oyamba, leader of the Tempest-Sun Mage branch. Nevertheless, my players did insist that Takulu Ot ought to be at least 6th level.
or being forced to wait for months after discovering that hostile snersons have already infiltrated the academy, wasting critical time while snersons are doing who knows what (because you're scripted to make more study checks), etc.
That timeline is stupid. I will try to have the snerson subplot resolved in four weeks in-game time. Thanks for the heads up.
I think I would love to play FotRP with a GM who changes nearly every encounter each playthrough, making different teams to fight against and interact with, adding team related subplots and such.
I have run the module The Ruby Phoenix Tournament during Forest of Spirits in my Jade Regent campaign. It featured the tournament the decade before Fists of the Ruby Phoenix. It did feature different teams, but I invented interesting battlegrounds for team competition myself. And only 3 PCs and 1 NPC wanted to participate in the tournament directly, so the other PCs and NPCs ran a fan club for their team from a noodle shop and followed up on the behind-the-scenes conspiracy in the module. The players themselves developed most of the new details, I just ran their ideas.
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I don't think it's far fetched to say that likely a majority of people see APs as a good base to run as is. While for best use they should be customized to fit you're group and the way they play either small bits or large swaths. So people can have vastly different experiences even within what many would likely see as the exact same adventure.
I think I would love to play FotRP with a GM who changes nearly every encounter each playthrough, making different teams to fight against and interact with, adding team related subplots and such.
I praise FotRP a lot, and one of the things I specifically mention is that it has a lot of easy customization points. The structure of it gives several places where it's quite easy for a GM to add/change stuff. I changed teams in both campaigns I ran, putting in cameos and callouts that the players in those games would respond to. One game had an Alkenstar marshal looking to arrest one of the PCs, another had the whole gambling thing greatly expanded because those players like to bet on MMA in real life, etc.
The adventure itself is pretty good and doesn't need major changes to run as-is, but it's also really easy compared to some others if you do want to customize it. And yeah: APs are best when you use them as the base material to work with, so I rate highly ones that make it easy to do that.
Lesedi arrived at the attack on the Introduction Ceremony just as the battle had ended (she was my deus ex machina in case the PCs lost that battle). Takulu Ot, Lesedi, Izem Mezitani, and other teachers were present for the attack on Tireless Hall, but I said that they were protecting the other students in the building and never rolled for them or their opponents. I had put the party by themselves in the west balconey. They fought without aid once they assured Takulu Ot that they did not help.
Esi Djana and Mkosa teamed up with Jinx Fuun and Cara'sseth in a sailboat race, but that is not combat.
Tireless Hall definitely needs an explanation of what everyone is doing during the attack. I described the room as being absolutely flooded and that keeping everyone busy, especially when they had to protect and avoid harming the civilians like one of the PCs parents who came to watch the ceremony, so AoE isn't really on the table.
I also had Mafika Ayuwari present since the PCs had met him in that book, and I described him as "he covered the entire northern half of the room by himself without letting the civilians in attendance get seriously hurt" because he's a legit badass. Several of my PCs had already played FotRP and his team gave their team real trouble, so I took extra care to make him look strong without having him just resolve the scene for them. It just wouldn't have been believable otherwise (though I could have had him not in attendance but I liked this better).
I view Takulu Ot as a junior-ranked teacher. The only named teachers with high rank are Janatimo, leader of the Uzunjati branch, and Oyamba, leader of the Tempest-Sun Mage branch. Nevertheless, my players did insist that Takulu Ot ought to be at least 6th level.
Takulu is clearly there for teaching insight and skill rather than spellcasting prowess. It's a case where he should have better noncombat stats vs combat stats as he's clearly not a warrior. It's something the AP doesn't use as much as it could in terms of "this guy has little in the way of offensive magic but is really good at teaching theory/whatever."
Also, Teacher Mafika Ayuwari is there for part of the AP, and we know his stats due to him also being in FotRP. Far as I can tell he's the highest level teacher in the entire school at 17.
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I think that part of the reason that I am loving Season of Ghosts is that it is fulfilling the fantasy of the premise. You're accidental protector-heroes of a village that has been overrun with monsters and undead, and you're trying to keep it safe. There's a bit of a monster of the week vibe, but there's also an ongoing plot and mystery that is really cool.
It's okay for my APs to have surprises and diversions - but I want it to carry through with the fantasy that was sold to the players. Season of Ghosts so far has been doing that beautifully.
The topic of this thread has drifted, but amusingly, the new topic still fits the title "Common Sense Versus The Plot." We are talking about the GM altering an adventure path to correct dissonance. Should the GM stick to the plot as written or override it when common sense identifies a misstep?
Dissonance, Merriam-Webster definition 1
1a: lack of agreement
quote the dissonance between the truth and what people want to believe
especially : inconsistency between the beliefs one holds or between one's actions and one's beliefs
1b: an instance of such inconsistency or disagreement
quote the mingling of bitter comedy and stark tragedy produces sharp dissonances—F. B. Millett
I myself routinely customize adventure paths to my players' tastes. In Iron Gods the players wanted to play with the alien high tech, so I altered the technology rules to make that easier. In Ironfang Invasion the players hate rescuing incompetent NPCs, so I gave the village of Phaendar a competent civil defense that failed only because the invasion was overwhelming. In Strength of Thousands my players told me that they wanted their PCs to feel more like students than adventurers, so I added courses to the AP and emphasized that the teachers were not deliberately sending their students into deadly challenges.
Note that I have to make changes regardless, because my games typically have oversized parties of 7 PCs. (8 is too hard for me to handle without an assistant GM.)
Changes have a ripple effect, each change forcing later changes. In the 1st module, Trail of the Hunted, of Ironfang Invasion the 6th-level mostly-blind ranger Aubrin the Green was supposed to die in the initial confused surprise or get so injured that she would be useless. Instead, Aubrin was not caught by surprise and the party rescued her from death by noble sacrifice with no additional injuries. Aubrin became the leader of the band of refugees. Instead of the party wandering through the forest constantly herding a cluster of incompetent villagers, Aubrin managed the refugees and sent the party ahead to scout before moving the refugee band, The PCs faced the same challenges as written, but not the same worries.
Common sense differs between different people. My common sense said to add more interactions with NPCs in Strength of Thousands even though in many cases those additional scenes offered no additional XP. My changes sometimes reduced XP when NPCs joining the party in combat lowered the threat level of the combat. I removed the Life in the Academy system to replace it with the PCs attending classes. In contrast, Trip.H's GM apparently focussed on combat and the Life in the Academy style. Since the module as written had no instances of the NPCs joining combat, that cut out scripted interaction with NPCs.
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I think the way to handle this is that "faculty members at a magical university do not offer their time freely and excessively to just anybody who asks."
Like the PCs identify "this magical statue is a hazard, and probably shouldn't be doing that" and tell a member of the faculty or staff is a reasonable way to handle the situation, they should get XP for "oh, here's your problem- the switch was set to evil" sort of solution. The general rule is "if you figure out a solution to prevent/bypass/avoid/etc. a fight, you get the XP for the fight."
But there should be no way that the professor would follow the PCs into the store-room. They were responsible for safety in a public places students might wander into, but it's not tenable to insist that "the contents of every locked room are safe enough for someone who is capable of bypassing the lock."
So you have the faculty member insisting the students "be careful in there" and "if you see my missing alembic, please grab it for me" but not following the PCs to get in the dungeon. The thing about deep storage at universities is that nobody really wants to go in there anyway.
Like the reason to avoid "this NPC who is much higher level than you solves the problem trivially" be a part of gameplay is that it's not fun, not that the PCs don't get enough XP or loot this way. SoT is specifically like "magical graduate school" and any grad-student/faculty interaction in real life is likely to result in "the graduate student has more stuff on their plate after talking to the faculty member, not less."
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There were a lot of wild animal encounters in Reign of Winter meant to be combats that turned around completely thanks to our ranger and mammoth rider cavalier. The GM had to pivot a lot.
Similarly, in our Extinction Curse game, every encounter with a wild animal or an animal companion had us "rescuing the animal for the circus". Between the Druid and my Animal Handling Rogue Cavalier we succeeded at that way more often than you would think.
I think the way to handle this is that "faculty members at a magical university do not offer their time freely and excessively to just anybody who asks."
Like the PCs identify "this magical statue is a hazard, and probably shouldn't be doing that" and tell a member of the faculty or staff is a reasonable way to handle the situation, they should get XP for "oh, here's your problem- the switch was set to evil" sort of solution. The general rule is "if you figure out a solution to prevent/bypass/avoid/etc. a fight, you get the XP for the fight."
But there should be no way that the professor would follow the PCs into the store-room. ...
This provides me with an excellent example of the ripples of change.
When the PCs used Read Magic on the inert terra-cotta soldier to determine that new programming had been added to its original programming, they decided to contact a teacher. I said, "I have only four faculty statted out: Thema, Takulu Ot, Lesedi, and Izem Mezitani. Which one do you contact?"
My wife, whose character Jinx Fuun had the Sponsored by Teacher Ot background, said that Takulu and Niana Ot would likely be off campus birdwatching because it was the semester break between two seasons. Thus, the players decided on Izem Mezitani. I thought the choice was good, because I had had Izem teach a Stealth class in how to sneak past guardians at archaeological sites.
In addition, Izem Mezitani was the boss of Cara and Idris. In Kindled Magic the party had to defeat insect swarms that had infested a neglected Magaambya library. Wizard student Idris was aghast that a hundred books had been damaged. Idris and Cara volunteered for a service project to restore the damaged books. I liked their enthusiasm in roleplaying, so the faculty approved the Library Reclamation Project. I put archaeologist Izem Mezitani and conversant Muruwa in charge of the project. The relationship between the party and Izem was too close for Izem to brush them off.
Instead, Izem took the opportunity to teach them how to safely enter and search a potentially dangerous area, the storeroom. We professors (I am a former math professor) like to teach our subject. He lectured and they did the work. But once Cara became badly injured by critical hit with poison, he tended the wound and called a halt.
P.S. I like the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim reference with the "missing alembic."
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I think the way to handle this is that "faculty members at a magical university do not offer their time freely and excessively to just anybody who asks."
Like the PCs identify "this magical statue is a hazard, and probably shouldn't be doing that" and tell a member of the faculty or staff is a reasonable way to handle the situation, they should get XP for "oh, here's your problem- the switch was set to evil" sort of solution. The general rule is "if you figure out a solution to prevent/bypass/avoid/etc. a fight, you get the XP for the fight."
But there should be no way that the professor would follow the PCs into the store-room. They were responsible for safety in a public places students might wander into, but it's not tenable to insist that "the contents of every locked room are safe enough for someone who is capable of bypassing the lock."
So you have the faculty member insisting the students "be careful in there" and "if you see my missing alembic, please grab it for me" but not following the PCs to get in the dungeon. The thing about deep storage at universities is that nobody really wants to go in there anyway.
Like the reason to avoid "this NPC who is much higher level than you solves the problem trivially" be a part of gameplay is that it's not fun, not that the PCs don't get enough XP or loot this way. SoT is specifically like "magical graduate school" and any grad-student/faculty interaction in real life is likely to result in "the graduate student has more stuff on their plate after talking to the faculty member, not less."
The problem here is that the school is supposed to be safe, and a learning enviroment. If, in the real world, someone found loose tigers in an unused university building, the answer wouldn't be "well you're not supposed to go there anyway, if they eat you its your fault", it'd be "oh dear lord what?!" and it'd be dealt with. Not by the faculty, but critically, not by the students either. In pathfinder the threshold for "loose tigers" is much higher, of course, because the students can run around with swords and spells, but even then anyone with an iota of self preservation would go looking for people who they know can deal with this: the faculty.
The good thing about the magic school is that the teachers can turn those situations into learning experiences, since they are training "adventurers". But having the faculty straight up ignore obvious dangers to the student body on school grounds is incredibly jarring. Especially since the Magaambya isn't supposed to be a "kill or be killed" training from hell kind of school. Then answer shouldn't be "lol.lmao. ok well don't go there." it should be like what Mathmuse did "very well, lets see if I can teach you about how to deal with these situations."
I haven't read Strength of Thousands, but I hope the AP at least has guidelines for what to do if the students do what anybody would do and just go ask the teachers. Otherwise...chalk one up to space constraints I guess.
I can imagine the teachers' lounge where the older professors scoff at how easy nowadays student-adventurers have it with their dungeons being on campus. "In my day we had to travel to the Borderlands to get that much experience. And when we go to all this trouble, they pass up the opportunity! What do they want, experience downloaded in ancient flashbacks? Pfft. How do they expect to become esteemed scholars without themselves doing the killing?"
ETA: Of course that professor teaches Hobo-ology 101.
Look, I'm married to a university professor. Disfunctional administration and clueless faculty are the most realistic features possible for any campaign set in a school.
I offer my sympathies. I often refer to my wife as long-suffering. She used to help me grade homework. There is no greater love.
The teachers (the Magaambya does not call them professors) are clueless about the insect plague. My players have put the clues together about the Vesicant Egg, but did not have their characters deduce the same suspicions. Instead, they are waiting for the plot.
The administration is non-existent. The modules introduced the dining hall head cook, the supply center manager, and one groundskeeper, but those are staff rather than administration. I claim the teachers make administrative decisions when I need to explain decisions.
I haven't read Strength of Thousands, but I hope the AP at least has guidelines for what to do if the students do what anybody would do and just go ask the teachers. Otherwise...chalk one up to space constraints I guess.
I searched through Kindled Magic for such guidelines. I did not find them. The closest I found was an explanation why the teachers grossly underestimated the danger of the Infested Caverns. They make that underestimating-the-danger mistake a lot when the party is involved.
Instead, on page 7 of Kindled Magic, the same page as the advancement track, is a column labeled LEARNING EXPERIENCE. The first paragraph recommends giving the PCs free multiclass archetypes in spellcasting classes to explain why the characters with non-spellcasting classes are at a school of magic. The second paragraph explains non-combat XP. This would have been the best place for a guideline about the PCs asking teachers for assistance.
LEARNING EXPERIENCE
A campaign where students attend a magic school wouldn’t seem very magical unless all the heroes can cast spells. Every character gains the druid multiclass archetype (Core Rulebook 225) or wizard multiclass archetype (Core Rulebook 231) to reflect the primal and arcane teaching traditions of the school. More details are provided in the free Strength of Thousands Player’s Guide, and specific details about free archetypes can be found on page 194 of the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide.Throughout the Strength of Thousands Adventure Path, the heroes gain XP not from winning fights, but from solving mysteries, aiding others, or even just making friends. If character advancement in this campaign feels different than it does in other campaigns, that’s perfectly fine! There are plenty of thrilling combats in store, but much of the “magic school” experience comes from helping peers, earning teachers’ trust, or even getting into some trouble. Hopefully, your players learn early on—perhaps as soon as their initial interview with Teacher Ot—that their characters gain XP for these things. You should reward the heroes with full XP for creative solutions to bypassing hazards or monsters, as if the heroes had overcome the challenges in the usual manner; this might convince them to find inventive solutions to the inevitable combats.
The Strength of Thousands Player’s Guide also says nothing. It is a guide for players about the setting, not a guide for GMs about running the setting.
Look, I'm married to a university professor. Disfunctional administration and clueless faculty are the most realistic features possible for any campaign set in a school.
The other thing about Strength of Thousands is that the PCs should be viewed as grad students, rather than undergrads- these are people you can and should offload unpleasant work to, not people who need to be coddled.
Regarding the "love to teach" issue, I think that's easily handled by "well, this won't make much sense until you can cast 6th rank spells, can you do that yet? Oh well, we can resume this conversation once you learn some more." Like you're not going to give an off the cuff lecture on using the Residue theorem to integrate to people who haven't even learned how to do Contour integrals yet, and you certainly won't benefit from pointing out how this is a special case of Stokes' Theorem to people who haven't had Differential Topology.