Windjammer
Adventurer
Paizo's flagship product are their so-called 'Adventure Paths'. These consist of 6 modules which are intended to jointly deliver a campaign using the D&D 3.5 (now: Pathfinder RPG) ruleset for PCs from level 1 to 15. Ever since Paizo started doing these Adventure Paths (APs for short) there was a vocal minority among their fanbase who complained that the APs as a whole suffered from two intertwined design issues:
1. Mega-railroady. The campaign was premised on an unfolding 'plot' whose major plot points was set in stone. The PCs could be as stupid or clever as they like, this metaplot would unfold as determined at square 1.
2. NPC driven. The action of the plot (1.) unfolds because NPCs set in motion their major plans. PCs (and their players) are delegated to stop these plans.
Especially 2. was a bit unattractive, as it was just the same 'Stop Dr Evil!!!' every single time over the past 4 years. Austin Powers is sexier than Dr Evil and his Mini-Me, but on the whole, it's Dr Evil who gets to set in motion his own camp on the moon to unleash destruction on the world. In short, he gets to do all sort of cool stuff and the PCs are just there to foil him. Not very interesting.
So as of yesterday, Paizo has now released for the first time an adventure path which tries to re-instate player pro-activity and also tune down some of the assumed meta-plot and rail-roadiness in their flagship product. The AP is called 'Kingmaker', and is touted by Paizo as a hybrid between a campaign-with-plot and a sandbox: players have to scout the wilderlands to the south of civilized lands, tame the wilds, establish a new barony, and fight off any forces that assault their new kingdom. In short, it's the players whose characters set in motion their plan, and the DM is their to throw adversary forces at them to foil these plans. In short, a beautiful return to the Expert set for Basic D&D/BECMI.
The interesting thing will be to see whether Paizo can pull it off while at the same time not losing their customers they have picked up thanks to, and not despite of, trends 1. and 2. above.
As of yesterday, the first instalment of the AP - Stolen Land - went live for subscribers as a download. The accompanying 'Player's Guide' also went live and is available for a free download here. I'm going to show you a small resolution sample and strongly encourage you to download the original guide at Paizo. It's beautiful, it's free, it's a watershed in mainstream campaign design. Here we go:
All content copyright by Paizo of course.
So on the top left corner we got the new cover and page background art. It emphasizes hex crawling. Which is cool. Hex crawling is the essence of sandbox play. It's also heartwarming to see this in a time when commercial publishers have all but forgotten that until as recent as 2 years ago all Paizo Basic 'Flipmats' and Chessex battlemaps had little hexmaps on their reverse sides to cater for hexcrawling games. The idea of these reverse sides is that players trace their progress in the unknown lands by crawling from hex to hex and jotting down terrain detail.
Which gets us to the graphic (displayed above) in the right half. It's an A4-sized plain hex map for the players to use. The Players Guide explains the function thus:
Which caused me to throw a hissy fit on the Paizo forums, and reference an article in Paizo's own print-run of Dragon Magazine. Cue adrenaline rush and nerdrage:
Fortunately, as it turned out this was simply a misunderstanding of mine.
The main region shown in the detailed map shows the starting region of the players. The campaign has them map the terrain to the south (the 'River Kingdoms'), only a fraction of which is shown in the map. Here are two salient replies, the second by Paizo's own James Jacobs.
So I guess I'm glad that I was mistaken. This matter settled (and to be honest, I just thought the Monte Cook quote was important to bring up in the OP regardless)...
I am interested to hear people's impression of this newest experiment by Paizo. It's futile to try to predict how the Kingmaker Adventure Path will unfold, but first impressions are always interesting to hear and easy to give.
Plus I'm interested to hear how much mapped terrain you usually give your players in a hex-crawling game when they start out. I only give mine a single hex on the world map which stretches 40 miles across (that's 0.5 % of what Paizo gives you). So let me know how much you give your players and why.
Thanks and happy gaming!
PS. I hope this doesn't need saying but... a Paizo adventure path is 90% an edition-neutral product and thus can be utilized for any edition of D&D. Simply swap out the monster stat blocks for your favourite edition, and let the actual adventure and its assumptions about campaign design override your favourite edition's default stance on that issue.
1. Mega-railroady. The campaign was premised on an unfolding 'plot' whose major plot points was set in stone. The PCs could be as stupid or clever as they like, this metaplot would unfold as determined at square 1.
2. NPC driven. The action of the plot (1.) unfolds because NPCs set in motion their major plans. PCs (and their players) are delegated to stop these plans.
Especially 2. was a bit unattractive, as it was just the same 'Stop Dr Evil!!!' every single time over the past 4 years. Austin Powers is sexier than Dr Evil and his Mini-Me, but on the whole, it's Dr Evil who gets to set in motion his own camp on the moon to unleash destruction on the world. In short, he gets to do all sort of cool stuff and the PCs are just there to foil him. Not very interesting.
So as of yesterday, Paizo has now released for the first time an adventure path which tries to re-instate player pro-activity and also tune down some of the assumed meta-plot and rail-roadiness in their flagship product. The AP is called 'Kingmaker', and is touted by Paizo as a hybrid between a campaign-with-plot and a sandbox: players have to scout the wilderlands to the south of civilized lands, tame the wilds, establish a new barony, and fight off any forces that assault their new kingdom. In short, it's the players whose characters set in motion their plan, and the DM is their to throw adversary forces at them to foil these plans. In short, a beautiful return to the Expert set for Basic D&D/BECMI.
The interesting thing will be to see whether Paizo can pull it off while at the same time not losing their customers they have picked up thanks to, and not despite of, trends 1. and 2. above.
As of yesterday, the first instalment of the AP - Stolen Land - went live for subscribers as a download. The accompanying 'Player's Guide' also went live and is available for a free download here. I'm going to show you a small resolution sample and strongly encourage you to download the original guide at Paizo. It's beautiful, it's free, it's a watershed in mainstream campaign design. Here we go:
All content copyright by Paizo of course.
So on the top left corner we got the new cover and page background art. It emphasizes hex crawling. Which is cool. Hex crawling is the essence of sandbox play. It's also heartwarming to see this in a time when commercial publishers have all but forgotten that until as recent as 2 years ago all Paizo Basic 'Flipmats' and Chessex battlemaps had little hexmaps on their reverse sides to cater for hexcrawling games. The idea of these reverse sides is that players trace their progress in the unknown lands by crawling from hex to hex and jotting down terrain detail.
Which gets us to the graphic (displayed above) in the right half. It's an A4-sized plain hex map for the players to use. The Players Guide explains the function thus:
Which gets us to the last image displayed above - left bottom corner. It's a map of the region in full coloured glory, replete with accurate distances shown to reasonable scale, indicating all major terrain elements of the region - mountain and forest ranges, rivers - even political borders of the individual baronies the players are supposed to map.
Which caused me to throw a hissy fit on the Paizo forums, and reference an article in Paizo's own print-run of Dragon Magazine. Cue adrenaline rush and nerdrage:
me on Paizo said:
Fortunately, as it turned out this was simply a misunderstanding of mine.
The main region shown in the detailed map shows the starting region of the players. The campaign has them map the terrain to the south (the 'River Kingdoms'), only a fraction of which is shown in the map. Here are two salient replies, the second by Paizo's own James Jacobs.Helpful poster said:
James Jacobs said:
So I guess I'm glad that I was mistaken.
This matter settled (and to be honest, I just thought the Monte Cook quote was important to bring up in the OP regardless)...I am interested to hear people's impression of this newest experiment by Paizo. It's futile to try to predict how the Kingmaker Adventure Path will unfold, but first impressions are always interesting to hear and easy to give.
Plus I'm interested to hear how much mapped terrain you usually give your players in a hex-crawling game when they start out. I only give mine a single hex on the world map which stretches 40 miles across (that's 0.5 % of what Paizo gives you). So let me know how much you give your players and why.
Thanks and happy gaming!
PS. I hope this doesn't need saying but... a Paizo adventure path is 90% an edition-neutral product and thus can be utilized for any edition of D&D. Simply swap out the monster stat blocks for your favourite edition, and let the actual adventure and its assumptions about campaign design override your favourite edition's default stance on that issue.
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