Pathfinder 1E Starting Serpent's Skull AP -- Any advice?

My 3.5E homebrew campaign came to an end last October, when the 18th level PCs beat the Big Bad. After taking the holiday season to hang out with our families, spend time with our children, and all that crap, we are finally ready to start gaming again. The group took a vote, and predictably, they decided to use the Pathfinder rules for the next campaign. (I say "predictably," because I had given each of them the Pathfinder Core Rules for Christmas. )

Last weekend, we all sat down as a group and looked over the different adventure paths on the Paizo website. To avoid spoilers, we only read the summary page and the book covers. Then the players took a vote, and decided that they would like to play the "Serpent's Skull" adventure path. I purchased the PDFs, I printed out the Player's Guide for everyone, and everyone went home excited about it.

A day or two later, I read some of the online reviews about the campaign. Let me tell you, the Internet is not in love with this adventure path.

That brings me to my question for the forum. Does anyone have any advice on how to run this particular adventure path? I really don't want it to suck.

I can only comment as a player.

There were times going through it that I wanted to get off the train (i.e. Railroad). For me, the rewards in the AP were just not worth the effort the PCs have to endure, and it felt very crowded with many groups vying for the same thing. As a player, I couldn't help but feel many times that my characters would have simply gone somewhere else to adventure under the circumstances (risks were far greater than the so-called rewards). Now, it's not *all* bad, but if I had it to do over again, I'd have picked a different AP.

As to how to make it better, maybe delete all but one of the competing factions and give the PCs time to make their own magic items.

I will say this, though - if we hadn't had a gunslinger in the party, we would not have gotten through it.

This AP made me want to get away from Paizo's APs for a while - and I'm glad I did. I'm currently running Frog God's Slumbering Tsar, and it's sandbox-y format is delightful!

DaveMage said:

I can only comment as a player.

There were times going through it that I wanted to get off the train (i.e. Railroad). For me, the rewards in the AP were just not worth the effort the PCs have to endure, and it felt very crowded with many groups vying for the same thing. As a player, I couldn't help but feel many times that my characters would have simply gone somewhere else to adventure under the circumstances (risks were far greater than the so-called rewards). Now, it's not *all* bad, but if I had it to do over again, I'd have picked a different AP.

As to how to make it better, maybe delete all but one of the competing factions and give the PCs time to make their own magic items.

I will say this, though - if we hadn't had a gunslinger in the party, we would not have gotten through it

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Yow. Sounds like I've got my work ahead of me. Thanks for the feedback, Dave.

That is good advice about cutting down on the factions. I can easily see my players getting bored with having to keep track of multiple NPCs and agendas. I'll pick one or two, and omit the rest. Was there a faction that you thought was more interesting than the others?

From what I can tell, the internet has two big problems with this AP: the "railroad" plot, and the grind of the dungeon toward the end of the story. Half of my players enjoy playing the game as a kind of combat simulation, so I'm not too terribly worried about battle grind...but story grind is a different thing. I can definitely see them getting bored with a railroad plot. I'll look around for other modules and adventures that I can inject into the game somehow, to break up the monotony. "The Isle of Dread" seems like it would fit in without too much elbow grease...are there any other tropical-themed ones you might recommend?

Again, thanks for the input. I'll put it to good use.

Regarding factions, there's the Gorilla King and the Aspis Consortium that probably make the most sense to keep in addition to the Pathfinders. We had to decide as players which faction to join, so we joined the Pathfinders, although I'm not sure doing so was the right choice in hindsight as they seemed to be relatively weak.

My group was not big on role-playing (they are very combat/tactic-oriented), so if your group is better than mine at doing so then you may get more out of the AP that we did. However, the times we did role-play, it often seemed to me that the AP was going in a particular direction regardless of the interactions with NPCs. (But again, role-playing was not my group's strong suit. )

CleverNickName said:

The group took a vote, and predictably, they decided to use the Pathfinder rules for the next campaign. (I say "predictably," because I had given each of them the Pathfinder Core Rules for Christmas. )

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Subtle.

I haven't played nor read this AP, so I have no worthy advice about it.

However, would it be possible to have the players re-vote, after having read reviews of other AP's? And, to have them contribute money toward purchasing PDF's?

We have a serpent skull campaign on hiatus for now. I rather enjoyed it, except for the fact that the DM was not making enough effort to sell us the storyline and the exotic "african-like" continent.

It is good (at least until the end of book three)

With the ship wreck on the island have fun with that exploration. Make those NPCs shine as they can become important later. Build up the survival on a jungle island aspect and then slowly allow that to become exploration of the island and the many wrecks for supplies. Once they get to the lighthouse emphasis the connection with it to the lost city as that's what is going to drive the campaign.

When you get back to civilization and then to the journey across the continent see which factions the PCs like and hate and just use them. Mention the others but have them fall back or fail. I felt it was important to embrace the environment to really let that part shine.

Then when we got to the hidden city the exploration of it and discovered in it lead the way. I cut out the underground city as I felt it was adding too much grind so we just had the final confrontation in the above ground city.

Thank you for the input, [MENTION=232]Crothian[/MENTION]. It's nice to have another DM's input on the AP and how it played. I like the idea of emphasizing the survival aspects of the first adventure, instead of just handwaving it as a minor inconvenience. There is more to surviving a shipwreck than just finding a way home, in my opinion.

[MENTION=17308]Stereofm[/MENTION], what about the end of Book Three did you have the biggest problem with? Any advice on how to avoid pitfalls and boredom?

We rolled up some characters last night; it looks like the party is going to consist of:

- a dwarf cleric
- a half-elf barbarian (plans to multiclass with druid)
- a half-elf rouge (plans to multiclass with ranger)
- a human alchemist
- an elf magus

The barbarian/druid would like to focus on the wild shape ability, augmenting it with rage abilities. The rogue/ranger would like to be more of an outdoorsy, tracker-scout type character instead of the typical urban cutpurse. The cleric is going to be a kind of battlefield medic who uses Dodge, Mobility, sanctuary, etc. to move through melee to heal his allies. The magus was the logical choice for the player who wanted a fighter/wizard but didn't want to multiclass. And the alchemist is your garden-variety mad scientist, very intelligent and very chaotic, who just wants to mix things up. *rimshot*

I think the overall feel of the group is more steampunk than high fantasy...if their custom minis at HeroForge are any indication. (They all have corsets and top hats and goggles and stuff, and the alchemist looks like Dr. Jekyll. It wasn't what I was expecting, but I have no problem with it.) So now I'm looking for ways to add a little bit of steampunk flavor to the game...just cosmetics, nothing game-changing. I think I will make the Jenivere a tramp steamer or a zeppelin, for example.

We kick it off in 4 weeks (spring break), so I have plenty of time to tweak things a bit.

The best advice?

Shrink it.

For me -IMO/YMMV - most Pathfinder adventure paths are at least twice the length they need to be in order to explore the story. So shrink it by getting rid of about half of the encounters and then aim to finish around level 10 or so rather than the high teens.

I like the Paizo stuff but it's full of grind and things that are required to ensure that the adventure path fits precisely fix volumes. Take the basic ideas which are great and aggressively trim and I am sure you will have a much better experience than the "grinders".

SPOILERS Abound !!!

We are two game sessions (3 hours each) from finishing according to the DM.









Book 1 - Do something about the disease checks in the first book. Perhaps after they get the disease once and recover they are immune. After almost a TPK because everyone was sick, we told the DM that this was no fun and do something else, so he stopped doing the checks. Give lots of hints about the Mother of Cannibals. Lost our Barbarian and Ranger in that battle.

Book 2-4 - These were good. I like the city, then travel, then "dungeon" feel to it.

Book 5-6 - BORING !!!! Kick down the door. Kill the serpent dudes. Take their stuff. Kick down the next door. Kill more serpent dudes. Take their stuff. Repeat. Low on resources, teleport back to base camp, rest a night, teleport back to where we left off. Repeat.