D&D 4E Pemertonian Scene Framing and 4e DMing Restarted

[Kurtomatic]

This is a bit of a derail, but I'll take another bite and attempt to re-track.

The fundamental problem of all APs is they are too long for a single story arc. Even Kingmaker is only really sandboxy for the first 3 or 4 books, and even then each book is a silo'd sandbox (not that it would be hard to mix'em, but that would be harsh on the PCs for sure). Most Paizo APs offer some flexibility within each book, but the whole storyline is always book 1, book 2, book 3, etc, in order. Epic story arcs are cool, but a single, linear arc for 14+ levels? Not so much.

Here's what a lot of creative PF DM's do with the APs. They run multi-arc campaigns by selectively merging elements from 2-3 APs by cross-threading them in various ways. There's always one or two weaker books in any AP; cross-threading gives both the DM and the players more room to move around in their respective spaces.

So, for example, Curse of the Crimson Throne is primarily a city campaign set in the land of Varisia, which is like home base for Paizo's house setting. There are several APs that feature Varisia in one form or another (frex, Rise of the Runelords), and a metric butt-load of separate modules for this region. In a multi-threaded approach, you can have two or three main arcs, and players can jump between them according to mood. So when the party is in Korvosa, they'll become embroiled in the local crises, and maybe they'll pursue that (CotCT), or maybe they'll try to escape the city and go back to dungoneering in the lost ruins (RotRL), or whatever.

The trick is, you have to be adept at aggressively re-leveling content and re-purposing the Paizo-scripted narrative. I've considered compressing CotCT down into a Reader's Digest/Greatest Hits version at levels 6-12. In this scenario, at level 1, if the PCs enter (or start in) Korvosa, old King Whatshisname is still around, and only later after establishing significant relationships with local inhabitants (some 5 or so levels later) does the excrement hit rotating air recirculator. That would really ramp up the emotional impact (pressure) of the opening events. You've got whole chapters hitting the operating room floor when you do this, but there plenty more flesh where that came from.

Okay, so similar to S'mon, I'm thinking of running a 3.5-era campaign; in my case it's Ptolus. Now this city campaign is not an AP, per se. It has included adventure material 1-20, and there are at least two epic story arcs going all the way to level 20 (real save-the-world stuff in some cases). There are also a slew of shorter arcs, various conspiracies, agendas, and conflicts laying in wait. You could run a couple of linear APs out it if you really had to. Better is using all these parallel and crossing plot threads to create a mult-dimensional narrative landscape, and then let character advocacy and a dash of protaganism self-guide the campaign through that landscape. That's my subtext while participating on this forum thread.

So similarly, I think APs can be done the same way, but you need other story lines (or some strong protaganism) to weave into the campaign besides the stock plotline.

 

[pemerton]

I have found that players are pretty accepting of these 'offers you can't refuse' (see what I did there), mostly due to the social contract at the table. In fact, my experience as a player is by the time you've slogged your way into the 5th book of an AP, you're quite happy to see these triggers take over, because that means you are Finally Getting Somewhere.

Now, I recognize that this isn't scene-framing, but scripted events do express an element of protaganism; that's what they're there for, a kind of primitive proto-scene framing device to bring the PCs into the action. I think this also meets the description of pressure, right?

I've never actually played, or even read, a Paizo adventure path.

But two adventure path-ish adventures I do know are Dead Gods (2nd ed Planescape) and Expedition to the Demonweb Pit (3E). These seem to rely on the players following the GM lead independently of its relationship to the PCs. For me, this is the railroad-y element.

Also, they appy pressure, but (i) it is often procedural rather than dramatic pressure, and (ii) it has a self-defeating tendency.

Elaborating these: (i) Playing 4e there tends to be quite a bit of procedural pressure, because of the way combat resolution works (tactically and mechanically heavy), but at least as I play it I try to make the procedural pressure dramatic also - eg because it triggers thematically laden parts of a character, or invites them to make thematically laden choices. This is hard to achieve if you just run an adventure from a module in a by-the-numbers fashion.

(ii) What I mean by self-defeating pressure is this: if the players know that the plot event will trigger when they say the magic word whatever else happens; or if the players know that the confrontation with the (pre-determined) BBEG will eventuate whatever else happens; then how real is the pressure? What is really at stake - it seems to become more about gamist pride ("We finished the AP without losing a single PC!") than about dramatic/narrativist play. Now obvioulsy there's nothing wrong with that sort of gamist play and gamist pride - there's a whole computer game industry built around it, and I think it's clever RPG design to leverage that market - but I think it's different from scene-framing play as I understand it.

Is there a trap you can find yourself in with scene-framing, where strong protaganism has led you to one coincidence too many? Is there a risk of being a bit too Dramatically Correct? No-myth play in particular seems like it would be pretty unrelenting in this regard.

I think it's also worth bearing in mind that strong protaganism is the key for a lot of people. No-one says that when you look back what happened can't seem far-fetched, cheesy or wierd. Scene-framing, as a technique, can help facilitate the protaganism. It doesn't control the aesthetics.

I just wanted to add to chaochou here.

As I've often said, in a lot of ways my game and my fantasy RPGing aesthetics are pretty mainstream: orcs, goblins, medieval towns, necromancers etc.

With that in mind, here's a precis of one segment of my 4e campaign:

* The PCs had been staying with some witches. Their relationship was ambivalent - they had rescued one of the witches from a hydra, as part of a pact with the witches, but there was certainly not full trust. Another sister of the witches turned up at night and led the witches to attack the PCs. A fight ensued - the PCs failed to talk the witches down, but did succeed in persuading the one they rescued not to join in the fight. After killing all her sister, they reached a deal with the rescued witch where she would leave the area and not bother the PCs, but take up residence in an old goblin lair in the southern forest (that the PCs had earlier cleared of goblins).

* While resting up in the witches' house, the PCs were approached by some dwarven soldiers. The dwarves had been on patrol, got attacked by hobgoblins, and fell back in good order but got lost in the mountains, and had some wounded who could barely travel. They had been visited by an angel from Moradin, who told them that a powerful cleric could be found in the area. Now, as it happened, some of these dwarves were old rivals of Derrik, the dwarf PC, from the days (before the campaign started) when he had been an under-achieving, much derided member of the dwarven army. (Derrik's backstory was that you could not progess in dwarf society until you'd killed you first goblin; but every time the goblins attacked Derrik was somewhere else - running an errand, cleaning the latrines etc - and so had never graduated to full adulthood despite years more service than his agemates. So he had eventually deserted and struck off on his own to try and make his mark on the world.)

So the dwarves (Gutboy, Balto and Aggro) started mocking Derrik - What are you doing here? Where are the latrines? And where's that cleric the angel promised us? When Derrik's player, in character, replied that he was that cleric, the NPCs mocked him more - until he knocked them all down with a sweep of his polearm in a display of fighter-cleric-ish might - at which point they express amazement, apologised and became his servitors instead.

* The PCs and dwarves moved on and came to a village. In the night it was attacked by the hobgoblins. The PCs fought off the hobgoblins but the village was mostly burned down. And the hobgoblins had an imp with them the PCs had met before, and also turned out to be linked up with the PCs other enemies. The PCs killed the hobgoblins and the imp, drove off a cultist cleric and captured a behemoth.

* The PCs, the remnants of the dwarves and the remnants of the village moved on to a town, the PC ranger riding on his captured behemoth - which they subsequently slaughtered to help relieve the town of its food shortage. Over the next few days in the town the PCs thwarted three cults - an Orcus cult, a Demogorgon/Dagon cult and a Vecna cult - killing somewhere in the neighbourhood of 40 people in the process (or close to 1% of the town's population). The PCs, in the process of doing this, also saved the town' Baron from being killed; outed and defeated his evil advisor (who was their long-time nemesis); discovered that his niece was a Vecna cultist, rescued her from Kas, made an alliance with Kas in the process (and gave Kas back his Sword) and ended up having to kill the niece when she tried to escape their custody and killed her chambermaids and guards in the process; as a result sent the Baron into a nervous breakdown; lodged a writ in the town's clerical court to recover possession of an abadoned temple of Erathis and Ioun that had wererats squating in it; etc

Looked back upon as a sequence of events, this can all seem hugely contrived; and the players have certainly shaken their heads at the death toll that accompanies their PCs. But in play the contrivance isn't what's salient - what's salient is the situations the PCs are in, and the players' responses to that.

Also, the above took place over several months of real time, playing fortnightly/three-weekly sessions of 3 to 4 hours. So from the point of view of the real world, what is important is that every session feels like the players are doing something, taking their PCs where they want to take them. That this produces a ficitonal scenario which wouldn't be very good as a novel or a film is secondary - it's about the participant experience, rather than production for the satisfaction of a 3rd party audience.

Do you think that if the players in a game don't know they're in a module or AP, that it would be indistinguishable from a scene-framed approach, as long as the outcome of a given scene flows logically according to the narrative?

Personally, I think there are big issues here. My main reason for that view is that the key to scene-framing is player-driven logic - there is no "logic of the narrative" independently of the players and what their PCs do.

I'll explain further by picking up on S'mon's reply.

This is about what I'm hoping for when I run 'Curse of the Crimson Throne' some time in the next 6-12 months

<snip>

Current thoughts include

- enmeshing the PCs in with major PCs right from the start, so it feels 'all about them' , all about the PCs.
- be willing to depart drastically from the 'script', treating it as a buffet to sample not a railtrack to follow, while looking for suitable points to resume scripted timeline.

<snip>

I'm thinking that major NPCs could be old flames, old foes, old mentors and battle comrades etc.

What you say here reminds me of some comments in the free BW supplement Burning THACO":

True to the Burning Wheel philosophy, players have important responsibilities too. The GM will share some information about the module. It's the players' responsibility to look for an angle in the module that they find interesting and want to pursue. Then discuss it with the group and write it into your beliefs!

Mix it up. You can use both generic beliefs that give you a reason for dungeoneering and adventuring, and personalized beliefs that give you a reason for going on this particular adventure. . .

I recommend discarding any of the old notions that the players should be completely surprised by what's coming. Show the players the cover of the module you're running. Read them the back cover blurb. If it has an intro section, consider reading that to them.

You don't have to reveal every twist and secret; just give them a broad overview. In other words, if the module is about delving into the Lost Temple of Whatsit to recover the Orb of Destiny that was stolen by Whosit during the reign of Thatguy, etc., tell the players! Then all of them should write at least one belief that takes them on the quest . . .

t seems that every module I pick up has the structural integrity of mushy peas. You'll have to take it into your own
hands. Front load conflict. The first module I ran . . . had the players join up with a caravan in a town and described days of journey before it got to the point that something happened (other than random encounters, natch).
We're talking potentially hours of play before something significant happens.

Don't let that happen. As a Burning Wheel GM, you have a ton of information at your disposal that D&D DMs don't. You have your players' characters' Beliefs, Instincts and Traits. You know what they got excited about when you gave them the briefing on the module. And in addition, like a DM, you have module itself. Use those tools to create conflicts and issues the players will have to address. If your module starts with pages of journey and exposition before anything happens, give the players a few sentences of synopsis and fast forward to the good stuff.

At the same time, use this opportunity to foreshadow the big stuff . . .

A lot of obstacles and opposition in modules is filler. It's there to take up time, to provide a reason for the niche skills of one type of character, or to make the experience seem "real." It's ok to leave a few of these in for old time's sake, but mostly, unless it's something your players will really get a kick out of, just go ahead and invoke the Say Yes or Roll Dice rule. Give maybe a sentence describing how the characters overcame the obstacle and move on.​

I think to try to get a protagonistic game going using a module, this advice is pretty good.

The issue with an AP is keeping it going for a whole campaign. And letting the PCs choose their enemies, their allies, etc. Your buffet approach makes sense - getting things back into the AP scenario looks harder, to me.

I'd be using maps, locations, and personalities, but really be ready to let the scripted plot go. (This may requires a willingness to level encounters up and down - in 4e that's not too bad, though.) When I ran Bastion of Broken Souls (in RM), the module scripted in a fight between the PCs and the exiled god, but my PCs tracked him down to befriend him, and they did so. At which point the adventure then took a completely different direction (but the module background and personalities were still in play).

My understanding is AB is dreadfully difficult to source, isn't available in PDF (not even the scurvy scallywags seem to have this one), and only partially refactored into the Gold edition. Do you (or anyone else) know if the GM advice in AB is included in Gold, or if there is valuable GM guidance unique to AB that can't be found currently in print?

I haven't read Gold cover-to-cover; rather, I've gone through it comparing to the Revised books. But as best I can tell there is none of AB in it except splitting mail armour into light and heavy, and the upgrade in effectiveness to the Block action.

For me, a big part of what makes AB good is that it is so frank about what the game is aiming at; what will and won't work in that respect; what some of the limitations/constraints of the system are; etc. Plus the examples of how things can be adjudicated, how scenes can be framed, etc.

 

[pemerton]

In this scenario, at level 1, if the PCs enter (or start in) Korvosa, old King Whatshisname is still around, and only later after establishing significant relationships with local inhabitants (some 5 or so levels later) does the excrement hit rotating air recirculator.

My personal preference is that it be all drama all the time, from 1st level.

 

[Kurtomatic]

Thanks very much for your time Pemerton.

I've never actually played, or even read, a Paizo adventure path.

They have their moments of brilliance, and tons of nifty reusable content and assets (very nice maps, etc). But run as written they strongly trend to relentless railroad beat-downs (IMO). I compare vanilla AP campaigns to the original Pirates of the Caribbean park ride (please stay seated at all times!).

(ii) What I mean by self-defeating pressure is this: if the players know that the plot event will trigger when they say the magic word whatever else happens; or if the players know that the confrontation with the (pre-determined) BBEG will eventuate whatever else happens; than how real is the pressure? What is really at stake - it seems to become more about gamist pride ("We finished the AP without losing a single PC!") than about dramatic/narrativist play. Now obvioulsy there's nothing wrong with that sort of gamist play and gamist pride - there's a whole compute game industry built around it, and I think it's clever RPG design to leverage that market - but I think it's different from scene-framing play as I understand it.

You are quite correct! What happens in my experience is one or two players who are willing to care enough about the narrative to overlook its flaws are granted some authority by the rest of the group to keep up with the story, while everyone else enjoys kicking some ass and some spot roleplaying when something really interesting happens.

I just wanted to add to chaochou here...<SNIP>

Point taken.

In fact, a really in-your-face coincidence cascade might be a really fun sequence of beats. If the world really is Totally Just About You for a few hours, that could put the scare in.

And thanks for the Burning THAC0 link. I'll give the 'spoiler-preview' concept some more thought; I've tried similar things in the past. On of the best assets Paizo provides for their APs are free player's campaign guides that often contain some pretty strong spoilers or hints (whoops!), and this puts a whole new light on that.

I'd be using maps, locations, and personalities, but really be ready to let the scripted plot go.

Again, this is quite correct.

The very best bits of the very best APs are:

• A bucket-full of cool NPCs.
• A bunch of neato story-turns and set-peices.
• A handful of really memorable dungeons.

All of which are fungible.

I haven't read Gold cover-to-cover; rather, I've gone through it comparing to the Revised books. But as best I can tell there is none of AB in it except splitting mail armour into light and heavy, and the upgrade in effectiveness to the Block action.

For me, a big part of what makes AB good is that it is so frank about what the game is aiming at; what will and won't work in that respect; what some of the limitations/constraints of the system are; etc. Plus the examples of how things can be adjudicated, how scenes can be framed, etc.

Poops. I will likely need to be very patient or very lucky. Stuff Happens, hehe.

My personal preference is that it be all drama all the time, from 1st level.

Okay, a was a little terse there just to avoid unneeded spoilers on principle. I will say the Curse of the Crimson Throne tries very hard to make the PCs the center of the story. It is one of the most praised APs by Pathfinder fans, generally in the top 1 or 2 spot in the rankings.

CotCT tries to do just what you suggest: the opening involves some immediate revenge and tragedy. Paizo's APs encourage players to pick a campaign trait (similar to a regional feat) that ties the PC directly to a story NPC or other main story element, and provides a small mechanical bennie on the side. CotCT actually has a great opening for a protagonist-focused game.

... One such undesirable is Gaedren Lamm, a despicable low-life who missed his chance at being somebody big in Korvosa’s murky underworld. Well past his prime, the decrepit thief abducts orphans and forces them to support his despicable lifestyle with petty crime. Many of Korvosa’s lower class have had dealings with Lamm, and even a few of the city’s middle class and nobility have had their lives complicated by this foul old man. Yet no matter what he does, he always seems to slip away from the guards and avoid answering for his crimes.

Gaedren Lamm’s luck is about to change, though. For among those his actions have recently touched are several men and women destined to become some of Korvosa’s greatest heroes. And one of those heroes is you.

However, it then changes gears to a large, existential threat to the city of Korvosa, which the PCs are positioned to defend. The problem is, the story behind that threat has nothing to do with the PCs (at first), so the AP then has to try to tie the party's personal stories to the city's (through several side-adventures). The AP features a great cast of NPCs, and its their job to make you care about the city and the mysteries that threaten it. This works for some groups, and not so much for others. One the trends in the Paizo DM forums are groups that turn out pretty ambivalent about Korvosa, and aren't invested in defending it. The plot thickeners make this even harder by making mysterious stuff too mysterious and giving players easy outs if they take everything at face value. So you end up in some cases with parties perfectly willing to let the city burn to the ground. Not exactly what the designers intended.

Of course, in the kind of campaigning we're talking about, that is actually a pretty interesting outcome, and would provide significant grist for the protagonist mill later on. So yeah, buffet for sure.

 

[S'mon]

The issue with an AP is keeping it going for a whole campaign. And letting the PCs choose their enemies, their allies, etc. Your buffet approach makes sense - getting things back into the AP scenario looks harder, to me.

Yeah, it's definitely an issue; I'm thinking that the later books may end up not running anything like as written, some might not even be used. And there's things I'd quite *like* to do differently than written, anyway. But early on the low-level PCs are unlikely to be able to affect the large scale timeline scripted events, high level villain plots, etc.

 

[S'mon]

However, it then changes gears to a large, existential threat to the city of Korvosa, which the PCs are positioned to defend. The problem is, the story behind that threat has nothing to do with the PCs (at first), so the AP then has to try to tie the party's personal stories to the city's (through several side-adventures). The AP features a great cast of NPCs, and its their job to make you care about the city and the mysteries that threaten it. This works for some groups, and not so much for others. One the trends in the Paizo DM forums are groups that turn out pretty ambivalent about Korvosa, and aren't invested in defending it. The plot thickeners make this even harder by making mysterious stuff too mysterious and giving players easy outs if they take everything at face value. So you end up in some cases with parties perfectly willing to let the city burn to the ground. Not exactly what the designers intended.

Yeah, this is the big issue I've been seeing. I think the problem is that the campaign is not designed around a typical D&D footloose-adventurer mindset. To work, the players need to be thinking like Batman, invested in and willing to protect Gotham no matter how bad it is. The trick is going to be making that plain and getting players in the right Batman-Noir mindset, where the darkness of the city is cool, dramatic and compelling, not 'screw this dump, we're outta here!'
I'll be running it in 4e, which has a few tools to help me, eg Inherent bonuses will de-emphasise the search for loot, and converting all encounters means I need to worry far less about encounter balance and grinding for XP. But it definitely looks like I need to do more than what the AP does in having the PCs have pre-established relations to major NPCs like Cressida Croft (the Commissioner Gordon analogue), and I'm thinking probably artist Trinia Sabor, the fencing-master Vencarlo Orisini, and others, maybe even Sabina Merrin the queen's bodyguard. Getting things off on the right foot with PC creation looks absolutely key here. I suspect this *could* be the most awesome campaign I've ever run - if it works.

 

[pemerton]

Thanks very much for your time Pemerton.

No worries. Thanks for wading through my wall of text!

it then changes gears to a large, existential threat to the city of Korvosa, which the PCs are positioned to defend. The problem is, the story behind that threat has nothing to do with the PCs (at first), so the AP then has to try to tie the party's personal stories to the city's (through several side-adventures). The AP features a great cast of NPCs, and its their job to make you care about the city and the mysteries that threaten it.

From the point of view of scene-framing play, the challenge here is that the city, the NPCs etc are placed by the GM (following the module writer), and the players have to be hooked in. Whereas the paradigm of scene-framing is the players hooking the GM - which also relates to No Myth play, with the GM creating the details of the situation around and in response to the players.

Obviously scene-framing techniques can be helpful and worthwhile outside the pure paradigm - for instance, the goblins and the evil advisor I talked about upthread were placed by me as key campaign features. But I used two fairly strong techniques to bring the players on-board: (i) I told the players, at the start of the campaign, that each of their PCs had to have a reason to be ready to fight goblins (this is a bit like the Burning THACO technique of reading the adventure intro so the players can build PC beliefs around it); and (ii) the evil advisor was not just an evil wizard, but a Vecna cultist (and the players were already invested in Vecna and undead for other reasons) and engaged to the Baron's niece, who was in turn clearly related to another NPC that the PCs had become connected to earlier in the course of the campaign.

The wizard was a Vecna-cultist in one of the modules I was drawing on, which was handy, but the relationship to the niece, and the decision to relate the Baron to the earlier NPC via his niece, were made when I needed ideas for hooking the PCs into the situation with the Baron in the town. Which is not quite No Myth - I worked it out a few sessions in advance, to make sure I got all the timelines right (the other NPC to whom the niece was related was from 100 years in the past, and the PCs had met her after the witches sent them temporarily back into the past). But in the same general neighbourhood as a technique - building the backstory around and in response to play having regard to the players' signals.

 

[pemerton]

To work, the players need to be thinking like Batman, invested in and willing to protect Gotham no matter how bad it is. The trick is going to be making that plain and getting players in the right Batman-Noir mindset, where the darkness of the city is cool, dramatic and compelling, not 'screw this dump, we're outta here!'

<snip>

Getting things off on the right foot with PC creation looks absolutely key here.

How would it go if you said straight up "We're playing a Batman/Gotham-style game here, so let's build some PCs who will work with that".

A warlord, a paladin, a cleric, a rogue, a bard - all could easily fit with the main theme. The wandering ranger or mercenary, the apprentice from an isolated tower who has come to town - these could be self-conscious counterpoints, who either frame the corruption of the city, or come to love it more fiercely than any native.

And of course there are dozens of ways in that I'm not thinking of. It seems like what you want to avoid is players building shiftless PCs with no conception of or attention to how they will relate to the city. From how you describe it, that sort of PC has the potential to hurt the game you're going for.

 

[S'mon]

How would it go if you said straight up "We're playing a Batman/Gotham-style game here, so let's build some PCs who will work with that".

Yeah, that's my plan. It needs to be "Down these mean streets a man must go. A man who is not himself mean..." and that's a relatively thin sliver of characterisation, and quite different from the shiftless Rogue PCs in the Punjar Saga swords & sorcery campaign I'm currrently running with the players most of whom I'll likely run CoTCT for - it'll be a paradigm shift for them. And this 'Batman-Noir' thing is not something Paizo make at all clear in their own introductory materials, IMO - it's something I picked up from looking over the AP, thinking about it, reading the Paizo boards, looking for traps etc. Because I am well aware that APs tend to be littered with such traps - vital design assumptions that the designers didn't think to mention.

Mind you, I don't want to do too much work on this right now - I might not be running it until January 2014, depending on how Punjar Saga goes, and while I don't want to go off half-cocked I don't want to over-prep and get bored with it, either. I'm focusing mostly on bits of prep like buying and painting the AP minis, thinking about NPC characterisation, possible alternatives and ways to lend dramatic weight to the adventure - eg from her backstory Queen Ileosa seems to have so much potential as a great tragic villain, up there with Darth Vader or Strahd, but the authors seem to have gone out of their way to make her as two-dimensional as possible and sap all the dramatic weight from the saga. James Jacobs' posts on the Paizo boards make clear he doesn't want the players empathising with her in any way - but why not? I want to do something about that.

 

[chaochou]

Yeah, this is the big issue I've been seeing. I think the problem is that the campaign is not designed around a typical D&D footloose-adventurer mindset. To work, the players need to be thinking like Batman, invested in and willing to protect Gotham no matter how bad it is. The trick is going to be making that plain and getting players in the right Batman-Noir mindset, where the darkness of the city is cool, dramatic and compelling, not 'screw this dump, we're outta here!'

To add to what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] said, and to reiterate something I posted maybe earlier in this thread or the other one: At the start of the game, you could have the players build the city. Brainstorm it. Let everyone imagine this place, and build on each other's ideas.

I tend to start this process rolling with a vague statement like: "So I see this place as kinda like Gotham, dark, with tall baroque spires and a chaotic patchwork of rooftops. What else?"

Usually after that, I ask questions to nail down ideas. So if someone says "It's built on the ruins of a much older city" I say "Why was that old city reduced to ruins?" and after we build that I ask "So, do we know anything about what's beneath the city now?" and so on.

Character ideas will link naturally to the setting as the setting becomes a reality, and then NPC ideas and associations can come from that. Maybe you have to re-write and re-purpose a lot of the NPCs, but at the end you have a living city which the players feel is home.

I've not ready any Paizo stuff, so I don't know the AP. But if there's lots of 'side quests' to make the player feel part of the city, well, you can now ditch those. But the players will (or at least, should) have ideas for stuff they wanted to do in this city as they created it. Stuff they were excited about. Stuff they deliberately left unknown, or mysterious, or at a point of conflict or tension. Run with those ideas instead.

One neat tool that Apocalypse World has is the idea of Fronts and Threats. A Front is a collection of inter-related threats. Threats are individual things that threaten and conflict with what a PC or group wants. AW uses a countdown clock (in AW it has 6 sections) to show the progress of the front.

Now in Apocalypse World, what PCs generally want is - in some sort of order - food, clean water, clothing, shelter, ammunition, electricity, companionship. And all those things are generally reliant on the presence of some sort of society around them. In other words, no man is an island. AW works on identifying these weaknesses, these basic needs, and pressuring them.

So, if I really wanted to run a game where the players cared about defending a city I would focus my efforts on stressing how the slow collapse of the city is depriving them of these essentials - be it arrows or axes or food, clean water, friendship. Dishonored achieves a similar effect (less sophisticated, but it's a single player video game) by adding in more rat swarms and plague victims as the chaos grows.