Scales of War Adventure Path... How is it?

[James Jacobs]

Ummm...not to pick nits, but weren't Chris Youngs and Dave N. (pre-axing natch) folks who worked on the Shackled City....in fact, wasn't Chris Youngs (aka Chris Thommason {sp?} )the editor of Dungeon at the time of the Shackled City AP?

This speaks to me volumes about whether they knew in advance what the issues/concerns of a vast undertaking like an AP are, i.e. attempts to fob this off as beginner's mistortune are somewhat off base...Chris Youngs in particular
should darned well have known what he was getting into.

Cheers,
Colin

The idea of doing a series of linked adventures was indeed Chris's idea, and Shackled City did indeed launch while he was in charge of Dungeon. I'd go as far as to say that single idea saved Dungeon from going out of print before it hit issue #100, in fact. And Dave Noonan did indeed write adventures for that first Adventure Path. But the majority of developing and editing and work on evolving the Adventure Path concept was handled by Erik Mona and myself (we took over Dungeon at approximately the 3rd adventure in Shackled City's schedule, and I'd been involved in the process from the start, having written the 2nd adventure). What we learned from Shackled City was pretty enormous—and its looking like the current Scales of War AP is going through the same growing pains we went through with Shackled City.

And as far as I can tell, a LOT of folks are indeed running APs. The Adventure Path messageboards at Paizo are consistently among the busiest and largest on our site, and feedback at conventions and via reader mail/email supports the fact that a lot of folk are playing them.

A lot of folk DO only read them or mine them for ideas. And that's fine as well... in fact, one of my philosophies is to make adventures as much fun to read as they are to play.

 

[13garth13]

Well then I cheerfully retract my less than informed statements in light of the inside scoop from someone who actually knows what they are talking about

Thanks for weighing in, James.

Cheers,
Colin

 

[Rechan]

I've read through all of the adventures for this adventure path and found them wanting. They are very very repetitive in terms of monsters used in the early adventures, and if I'd run them I would have altered them significantly. Basically I feel like they just used the Kobold, Goblin, and Orc entries in the MM and rarely if ever bothered to gin up new varieties of these kinds.

I disagree; the second adventure had a ton of new orcs in it. Plus Orogs.

(And I loved the Cave Troll. )

 

[Jack99]

(And I loved the Cave Troll. )

It made my players cry - it is an awesome monster.

 

[Shroomy]

It made my players cry - it is an awesome monster.

One of the best things about 4e are the monsters that use PCs as weapons and/or body shields.

 

[Wormwood]

One of the best things about 4e are the monsters that use PCs as weapons and/or body shields.

I'll admit that I've shamelessly copy/pasted that power for a number of different monsters.

Too damned good to pass up.

 

[Rechan]

I'll admit that I've shamelessly copy/pasted that power for a number of different monsters.

Too damned good to pass up.

Yeah. I gave it to a Balgura (and made him an elite). Was a great battle.

 

[malraux]

I'll admit that I've shamelessly copy/pasted that power for a number of different monsters.

Too damned good to pass up.

A hearty THIS to that. I was building a monster earlier today and was thinking that I wanted to emulate the 3e cloaker ability to split damage between it and the grabbed creature. After a few short seconds of thought, I brought up the bugbear strangler in the compendium and started cutting and pasting.

 

[catsclaw227]

Thanks James for popping in and giving your thoughts.

I am running Scales and it's my fourth AP in the past 3-4 years. I dig them. We have done:

1. The Drow War - Mongoose
2. Savatage Tide
3. Age of Worms
4. Scales of War

 

[esparkhu]

DnD Telephone game

Siege at Bordrin's Watch - has zero connection to the first adventure. Which is a bit strange, as it means the DM has to do work right out of the gate to keep the AP flowing... which kinda defeats the purpose of running the AP to begin with.

Shadowrift of Umbraforge - gets off to a bad start when it retroactively turns a stock nameless straight-out-the-MM monster from Siege into a named NPC that was supposed to be carrying a MacGuffin. No MacGuffin, no adventure. That would have been nice to know when running Siege, eh?

I've been DMing a Scales of War group and I have to say the whole adventure path seems disjointed. The NPCs and plot don't flow from one adventure to the next. It feels like each writer works independent of any kind of overarching plan and just tries to build on what has been written before.

Actually it feels alot like a game of DnD telephone.