Who Actually Has Time for Bloated Adventures?

[Retreater]

So I'm running a PF2e Adventure Path - but this rant holds true even outside the specific system and adventure.
The current chapter of the book has 51 adventure sites. My group investigated 3 this week. At that rate, we're looking at 17 sessions of play to complete one chapter (1/9th) of the Adventure Path. Expanded, that's 153 sessions (or 38 months - just over 3 years) to complete a 1-10th level adventure.
Most of the locations have no bearing on the greater story of the campaign, but it's so hard to parse what is important because there's close to 300 pages and nothing to guide the GM about which of the 8 factions in this chapter alone are worth focusing upon and which have a consistent thread throughout the rest of the Adventure Path.
My wife suggests cutting some of the encounters - but how do I know which ones? Should I just dump all the loot they'd have missed onto their character sheets? How do I know if I'm cutting some vital relationship for the climactic encounter set to take place 3 years from now?
How do you successfully run something like this? Trying to stick to one of these heavily scripted adventures is more stress-inducing than an enjoyable hobby experience.

 

[Benjamin Olson]

Personally I feel any adventure too long to easily read through in one brief sitting (probably anything longer than 16 pages) really needs an apparatus of marginal notes or some such to explain the significance of everything as it comes up to someone flipping around through it.

 

[J.Quondam]

Have you poked around the internet (eg, Paizo forums) to see if anyone has posted suggestions for shortening the adventure? I know people have offered ways to pare down several APs over the years from WotC, Paizo, and others.

As for the general issue, I agree with the frustrations of long APs. Personally, their length (and my inability to keep it all in my head at once) is why I prefer shorter (mostly homebrewed) campaigns and/or hacked published modules.

 

[Lanefan]

So I'm running a PF2e Adventure Path - but this rant holds true even outside the specific system and adventure.
The current chapter of the book has 51 adventure sites. My group investigated 3 this week. At that rate, we're looking at 17 sessions of play to complete one chapter (1/9th) of the Adventure Path. Expanded, that's 153 sessions (or 38 months - just over 3 years) to complete a 1-10th level adventure.

Yeah, that sounds about right. Add in some side treks and you could get 5 years out of the AP, easily. Throw in a second parallel story and some stand-alones and you might even get it to ten.

Good value for money spent, I'd say.

Most of the locations have no bearing on the greater story of the campaign, but it's so hard to parse what is important because there's close to 300 pages and nothing to guide the GM about which of the 8 factions in this chapter alone are worth focusing upon and which have a consistent thread throughout the rest of the Adventure Path.
My wife suggests cutting some of the encounters - but how do I know which ones? Should I just dump all the loot they'd have missed onto their character sheets? How do I know if I'm cutting some vital relationship for the climactic encounter set to take place 3 years from now?

My answer is don't cut anything, but instead look to add to it. Settle in and either play through it or, if the players so choose, let them branch off from it into other things in the same setting and-or with the same characters.

How do you successfully run something like this? Trying to stick to one of these heavily scripted adventures is more stress-inducing than an enjoyable hobby experience.

First off, I'd read the AP through and try to see what the core story is, with an eye towards where I could add to it and-or change it to make it either a) more interesting or b) have more variety or c) not be a lead-'em-by-the-nose affair or d) how I could either continue it after the book runs out or e) merge it into an even bigger campaign.

Second off (and this has pretty much always been an issue with PF adventures), I'd strip out most if not all of the backstory and replace it with something that makes sense in the setting I'm using. This step can be tedious; but if you're running it completely stock in its own pre-fab setting, you can skip it.

Third off, I'd go into it (and any long campaign) assuming a completely open-ended time frame with no such thing as a defined "completion" or "end point" other than a) the point where nobody is interested in playing any further or b) the end of the GM's life.

 

[thullgrim]

Restarting my Iron Gods game this week and have decided I’m ruthlessly cutting anything that’s not (1) directly plot related or (2) adds something interesting along the way. I’ll be combing encounters so it’s not an endless string of 2 or 3 mobs per room. Enlarging the the play space to accommodate the larger encounters. Combining the encounters in PF2 would be problematic. However cutting a bunch of obvious chaff encounters combined with milestone leveling works really well.

In terms of loot, I’m not running it in PF1 or PF2 so I don’t have to abide by the treasure by level math. If I were though I’d look at a couple of things (1) plot related loot stays and gets relocated to a plot relevant encounter or location. (2) I’d figure out the total value of the loot I’m cutting and add it back in as monetary treasure, just make the hoards larger. This works well if your allowing them to shop for items. (3) include the cut loot elsewhere (see #2).

 

[kenada]

To help add some context and a point of reference, how long are sessions and what are these encounters about? Is an “adventure site” a keyed location in the book?

 

[aramis erak]

Aside from Lanefan's great advice, also remember that typical big-book adventures are often not a full adventure per site, but more a couple encounters at that site.

Others, the big location is a miniature-sourcebook with which to reuse the module later.

I've almost never had every encounter in any adventure over about 10 pages long use every encounter inside, nor have most had only the included encounters happen. The one that I have had a group hit every included location was Hoard of the Dragon Queen... and that, only one of the three groups did so.

 

[Lanefan]

I've almost never had every encounter in any adventure over about 10 pages long use every encounter inside, nor have most had only the included encounters happen. The one that I have had a group hit every included location was Hoard of the Dragon Queen... and that, only one of the three groups did so.

This raises a valid point: some groups are far more thorough than others when it comes to exploring and-or cleaning out every bit of the adventure site (these same groups will often also follow every red herring to its bitter end no matter what) as opposed to getting in, doing whatever the mission is, and getting out in the fastest/most efficient manner possible.

There's also the table-to-table (and even party-to-party within the same table) variable of how much time is spent in PC-PC roleplay, relationships, infighting, and so forth; i.e. good-fun gaming that doesn't necessarily advance the plot very much.

Which means, a site-based adventure that might take two sessions for one group could take ten or more for another.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

First off, I'd read the AP through and try to see what the core story is

Yeah, but they release installments monthly, not all in one big go.

This feels sloppy at best and a bad use of a DM's time to not have at least a text box explaining what matters in an AP. This shouldn't be on the fans to figure out.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeah, but they release installments monthly, not all in one big go.

Ah. I was assuming a book a la what WotC puts out.

This feels sloppy at best and a bad use of a DM's time to not have at least a text box explaining what matters in an AP. This shouldn't be on the fans to figure out.

Or at least what's intended to matter as written, as different tables will no doubt focus on different aspects of any AP and thus what might be important to one group could be near-irrelevant to another.