Who Actually Has Time for Bloated Adventures?

[Retreater]

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.

This is only a "half-path" (one of the 1-10 level, 3-volume sets).
I'm used to finishing a level 1-13 5e campaign adventure (such as Curse of Strahd) in 6 months.
There's just so much filler in these Paizo adventures. If it were all relevant, I wouldn't feel so put out. I'm honestly exhausted trying to keep up with 8 factions, 50+ hexcrawl locations, and a century of history that isn't obviously pertinent to the adventure.

 

[billd91]

Are they not including summaries of the AP in the first volume, or include supplemental information about the story expected to unfold in the chapter? Have you read the other volumes in the AP?

 

[Jahydin]

I've ran two complete Adventure Paths now and both took about a year playing 8-12 hours a week. I certainly got quite the bang for my buck!

That said, I never intended to run either to completion; it just sort of happened. Just read through the first volume and commit to finishing just that one. Then if everyone is on board, grab the next one and repeat. For me it was all about the Journey, not so much the destination after all.

The most important bit of advice I can give is make sure combats go as fast as possible. Make sure everyone is engaged, knows what they want to do before their turn comes up, rolling attack and damage at once, etc.. For the GM, be smart about when you can end combats early. Not everything has to be ran "to the death".

That said, if you like the system and just don't want the longer APs, there are standalone adventures if you're looking for something more traditional.

 

[Yora]

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.

There's long been a nasty rumor that these adventures are really written to be read and not to be played.
And it always feels like there's some truth to it.

 

[dragoner]

There's long been a nasty rumor that these adventures are really written to be read and not to be played.
And it always feels like there's some truth to it.

It is both, and writers have a masochistic nature, because if they just wrote novels to audience would be larger. lol

 

[damiller]

There's long been a nasty rumor that these adventures are really written to be read and not to be played.
And it always feels like there's some truth to it.

Rumor or not, that is the problem I have with the way adventures are presented.

In Impro by Keith Johnstone he says we "shouldn't really think of making up stories, but of interrupting routines."

As a GM for a long time I thought "I have to write stories." Then I read this, and I saw a clip with Seth Rogen about the difference between Plot and Story. TLDW: Plot is what is happening Story is What is it about.

I translated that into this: Plot: What is happening; Story: What the players do with/to/at/around those happenings.

I now never worry about the "story". That's the players business (at least in my games, which are "traditional" rpgs (ie roles and responsiblity at the table are distinct and rarely overlap.)

And I have been tinkering with Keith Johnstone's formula: interrupting routines (this adventure design formula can also be found in S John Ross' Risus Companion.)

My way of doing this goes like this: (it crystalized for me just this morning. It is the first thing I thought of when I woke up. The other day the first thing I thought of when I woke up was Disney's Blackhole is just Moby Dick in Space. So be warned.)

1. Adventure Plot: Write one down, or pick on from say S John Ross' Big List of RPG Plots.
2. Think of 2-3 things that will happen - the PCs can't do anything about these things, they are part of the plot, they will happen - its kind of a timeline (or a railroad if you prefer, which I am fine with since I will be telling the players they are on this adventure not another)
3. Grab some more of the RPG Plots from the list
   1. flesh them out
   2. make them self contained
   3. drop them into the adventure at various points when needed or wanted
   4. see how the characters resolve this interruptions
   5. then keep going with the adventure plot or interruption till:
      1. players die
      2. gm dies
      3. adventure ends
      4. heat death of the universe

Again, and really good example of what could be done to help a GM is in Toast of the Town by S John Ross (am I a fan boy? no just a fan of well written material) at the back of that adventure is a one page "timeline" of the adventure. While I don't consider it an adventure, its more like a campaign, based on the sheer GIRTH of the module, he claims its a one shot.

Anyway, this seems excessive so I'll stop.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I expect a campaign to last hundreds of hours, played in four-hour weekly sessions. So a single product that could be run that long? Outstanding! Very cost-efficient.

 

[Retreater]

Are they not including summaries of the AP in the first volume, or include supplemental information about the story expected to unfold in the chapter? Have you read the other volumes in the AP?

Yes. There's a vague paragraph on each volume in the first book. Not really enough to set expectations or to tell me what to focus on.
For example, you learn the party "recruits a motley league of unlikely followers" - is that training wild beasts, is that making friends with half of the 8 factions (and how do I know which are the important ones), etc.
As far as the chapter highlight goes, it's basically "cross this massive area and do stuff." You have 3 factions of enemies. You have 3 different (and very similar) groups of rebels.
I've skimmed through all the volumes, but only deeply reading the current one. I'm having enough difficulty keeping it all straight without trying to memorize 300 pages of content.

The most important bit of advice I can give is make sure combats go as fast as possible. Make sure everyone is engaged, knows what they want to do before their turn comes up, rolling attack and damage at once, etc.. For the GM, be smart about when you can end combats early. Not everything has to be ran "to the death".

We're playing online, so that's a challenge. It feels like a snail's pace to me.

I expect a campaign to last hundreds of hours, played in four-hour weekly sessions. So a single product that could be run that long? Outstanding! Very cost-efficient.

For me, I value quality over quantity. My free time is pretty precious, and I don't want to spend considerable amounts of it trying to distill what's important in an Adventure Path I've already purchased.
Like, if I were to spend an equal amount of time preparing the game as running the game, certainly that should be sufficient? In the case of this AP, it would be double. I would need about 6 hours of prep for each weekly 3 hour game.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

My gut feeling is that you are over preparing and worrying about minutiae that are never noticed by the players.
It kind of reminds me of me 20 years ago.
It seems to me that it is futile to try and track the activities of 50 odd faction or to remember the minutae of lore hidden in caves and dungeons scattered around the landscape.
If you are doing tons of work to run published adventures then you should ask yourself why? Do your players notice? I suspect that they would not and you are doing the work for your own satisfaction. That is, to overcome what you perceive as short comings in the adventure. If that is the case perhaps you would be better off writing your own?
If you want my advice to pre written adventures:
The characters do not need to engage with everything that is written down. Only that, with which they actually engage with has relevance. The rest is fluff and mutable.
Factions that have the leadership disrupted should split, factions that have had leaders killed and a had severe losses should dissolve. If the faction is important to central plot later then that is being done by fresh forces from the outside and different leaders (even if they have the same stats).
Don't worry about how fast you are getting through the AP that has no relevance to anything.

 

[billd91]

I've skimmed through all the volumes, but only deeply reading the current one. I'm having enough difficulty keeping it all straight without trying to memorize 300 pages of content.

It's not about memorizing 300 pages of content. It's about learning the gist of where things are expected to go so you can contextualize the earlier adventures you're running. You're the one complaining about knowing what encounters to cut out and figuring out which factions to focus on. The only way you're going to know that is to read ahead.