Who Actually Has Time for Bloated Adventures?

[aco175]

Maybe just figure out how many encounters you want to have per level and only use that amount. Not sure if there is a way to have the PCs decide on most of them and you just move the story along after that.

 

[damiller]

Ive always wished that premade adventures could be written in a more digestible way. Like a flow chart or something. Just easier than dense columns of text. But until writers of adventures are not paid by the word, that is not likely.

 

[Retreater]

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?

Sessions are about 3 hours, which is the best we can do with different time zones on a weeknight playing online.
The encounters are keyed in the book. They usually involve one of the eight factions of the module. So they can be potentially important about getting intel about the enemy organizations, making alliances with neutral parties, or helping existing allies.
Usually they're something like "this group of neutral people need your help tracking down a beast's nearby den." Or if you search this area, you can gain clues about an event that happened a century ago, which may or may not be actually useful later in the Adventure Path - because the GM and players can't distinguish between relevant data and red herrings due to the lack of guidance to the GM.

 

[kenada]

Sessions are about 3 hours, which is the best we can do with different time zones on a weeknight playing online.
The encounters are keyed in the book. They usually involve one of the eight factions of the module. So they can be potentially important about getting intel about the enemy organizations, making alliances with neutral parties, or helping existing allies.
Usually they're something like "this group of neutral people need your help tracking down a beast's nearby den." Or if you search this area, you can gain clues about an event that happened a century ago, which may or may not be actually useful later in the Adventure Path - because the GM and players can't distinguish between relevant data and red herrings due to the lack of guidance to the GM.

Thanks for the extra information. When I ran Kingmaker, it took 70~80 sessions over a year and a half to complete. Those were 8+ hour sessions though. To be honest, investigating three locations in a three hour session seems like a pretty good pace. If everyone’s enjoying it, you’re set for a good while. However, if not, there are some good suggestions here. In particular, the official forums or even the PF2 subreddit might be a good source of information or help to trim it down.

 

[dragoner]

As a writer you will get way more sales and five star reviews on a 200 page adventure, than a 20 page one that gets you 3 star reviews, and maybe not a even metal award.

 

[Retreater]

As a writer you will get way more sales and five star reviews on a 200 page adventure, than a 20 page one that gets you 3 star reviews, and maybe not a even metal award.

Maybe. But I've seen more acclaim recently for short adventures from Old School Essentials than anything created by Paizo.

 

[dragoner]

Maybe. But I've seen more acclaim recently for short adventures from Old School Essentials than anything created by Paizo.

The OSE adventures are all over the place, some short, some long, though it looks like the longer ones are more stars and metal awards (sales), there are shorter ones that have done good too though.

 

[Lord Mhoram]

I guess the answer would be me. I've run 5 and 10 year campaigns before. Personally any game that lasts less than a year, I consider a failure. Yes our group plays for the long haul.

 

[Dross]

Guess I'm going to be that guy.
{Sarcasm/}Only 3 years for an Ap that is way to short, how am I going to have PC backstories included and players wanting a home base and fixing it up etc. {\Sarcasm}
.

Unfortunately an AP needs to be a lot of things to a lot of people, so someone will see bloat.

Also as alluded to upthread, lenght can be important. I suspect that the $ cost/benefit for a long AP is better than for a short one.

Having wrote that. I agree some space should be devoted to how to cut down to the core path (wasn't intended but not sorry for the pun), what could be dropped etc.

With that guidance, there is the potential of long AP being more valuable since
*easier to run
*easier to scale to the group's wants
*other parts can be used elsewhere

 

[Celebrim]

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.

Sounds about right. Expect it to take longer than that though since you won't actually play every week.

Adventure Paths are intended to be full campaigns. A full campaign will easily take you five years whether we are talking about 1e AD&D or Pathfinder 2e or most anything in between.