Pathfinder 2E About Agents of Edgewatch

An interesting response. A couple thoughts:

CapnZapp said:

I'm disappointed Paizo really think their response is enough to get them into the clear.

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I'm not sure why you think Paizo thinks this? They're apologizing and donating part of their proceeds because they know this was a mistake, and are trying to do what they can to mitigate the mistake.

Now, some have suggested that it would be better if Paizo canceled or redid the AP. But the books were already printed a while ago, and Paizo has said that they literally can't afford to cancel the AP, or destroy what they've printed and rewrite it. So they're trying to do the best they can given their financial position. But from what they've said, I don't think anyone at Paizo "think{s} their response is enough to get them into the clear".

CapnZapp said:

First off, the module lets me down in my expectation we would get a real sense of time and place. The imagery of the module is all over the place. There's even pictures that could have been taken straight out of Victorian London (complete with genteelfolk in "modern" fashion).

What's the problem with that?

In order to get a handle on what the morality of the place says about expectations on local law enforcement, the fantasy game needs to tell us, or at least hint us in.

If Absalom gave off strong vibes of Ancient Rome, and was awash in details about who upheld the peace in that great old city (I actually don't know, and now I'm curious - during the Republic, wasn't the Senate nervous about soldiers in their city, and kept the legions as far away from the capital as possible? Later there was the Praetorian Guard, but did they bother with the crimes of regular folks? Anyway, I digress). Or, perhaps Tenochtitlan during the 1400s (religious priest cops?), or maybe Khanbaliq during the Yuan Dynasty (barbarian cops trying to understand a foreign civilization), or, for that matter, the capital of the Moon People that just does things differently. I mean, this is a fantasy game, there need to be no direct analog to any one (or three) historical methods of peacekeeping.

But there needs to be something. What we have now is pretty much nothing and everything. Do you play cops that has to comply with a modern protocol? Or is it the Wild West, where the fastest gun is the law? Or what?

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I think this one is actually just an unfortunate consequence of the pandemic. The AP's release was supposed to coincide with the release of "Absalom, City of Lost Omens", which answers the questions you're asking. (I think the idea was that by relegating details about the city to the Absalom sourcebook, they could fit more content into the AP itself.) But Erik Mona is the head writer of the book, and he's been fully occupied dealing with issues that have come up as a result of the pandemic, so the book's been delayed.

CapnZapp said:

They offer nightsticks as a nonlethal option

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Yeah, I agree that this was clearly a mistake.

(Somewhat ironic that the one page "nonlethal gear" section was the most tone-deaf part of the book!)

CapnZapp said:

The final piece of the puzzle is the added layer of official rulings in the Player's Guide.

There it says that basically heroes can't cause lethal damage, period. It basically allows players to play heroes fighting monsters, and hero cops fighting monster criminals specifically, but magically nobody gets hurt.

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Yeah, I wasn't enthusiastic about this either. I think the original AP's stance on non-lethal options was better (allowing the GM to either (a) use the optional rule of allowing PCs to choose to do non-lethal damage without penalty, or (b) make the avoidance of lethal force a challenge for the players to work round).

Happily, this is trivial to change, since the AP already provides you with these options.

CapnZapp said:

In conclusion, the only way to not be incredibly disappointed by this is to go into Agents of Edgewatch with open eyes: this is just like any other AP except you're in uniform. You still take names, you still fight monsters, you still keep their loot. Nothing changes.

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By and large, I think you're right that Paizo was trying to make this AP feel at least somewhat similar to the feel of more standard hack-and-slash APs.

That said, I don't think it's right to say that this is just like any other AP. For example, the percentage of encounters which can be resolved without violence is much, much higher than most APs. And pretty much every encounter with sentient opponents assumes that the party will either de-escalate the situation without resorting to violence or use non-lethal means to subdue them.

(I'll also flag that the those who are uncomfortable with the idea of playing the city watch can also follow the AP's suggestion to play as something like consultants or private investors/detectives. As far as I can tell, the AP should still run pretty smoothly with that substitution.)

So... how hard would it be for a DM to, if nothing else, say that no, you do in fact have to choose options that allow you to do nonlethal damage? Like daze, all of monk, and penalties to attack?

I assumed the intent of this AP is adventurers doing adventurer stuff, in a town setting vs dungeon or wilderness, with the flavor text but not restrictive mechanics of being city guards and having a boss. Instead of a noble giving a quest with a reward for adventurers its the captain of the guards. Instead of clearing out the wererats in the city sewers because a merchant pays the party, they are doing it because they are guards. i.e. its just flavor text but the same old same old.

Seems like they tried to delve too far into being city guards with the non lethal force stuff which pretty much breaks most of the rest of the games intent of players killing anything without a name and taking its posessions as their own.

Rhianni32 said:

If others were wanting this I do understand your frustration. But how is this AP different than any other Paizo or any game company makes? They put out material, a GM reads it and then edits to fit what they want and what their players want.

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For me, I don't want to change the entire concept of the Adventure Path. If the designers want the players to be cops, that's what it is. Especially in an Adventure Path, you don't know how little changes might become significant changes as the story progresses, and you end up making more work to fix an issue than just improvising and making up something on your own. (Same thing with that blasted circus AP - I'm not running that one either.)

That doesn't sound particularly interesting. I was already turned off by the AP by Paizo deciding to make all damage nonlethal in a fantasy game and making it seem as if any law enforcement that uses lethal force is automatically wrong. It was a ridiculous overreaction by Paizo in a fantasy game made for killing monsters and evil creatures as the primary means of advancement. If they wanted to offer nonlethal alternate rules for that handful of people who can't tell the difference between fiction and reality, then have at it. But this broad assumption that we're all dumb and can't tell the difference between fantasy cops in a world with dragons, demons, and H.P. Lovecraft types of creatures just to name a few is just strange.

If a customer can't tell this is a game for killing monsters and feeling like a fantasy hero, then I don't know that they should be playing this game to begin with. What's going on in the world isn't going to suddenly make fantasy gamers go, "Wait a minute. Maybe I need to be nicer to that orc warlord trying to destroy my village? Maybe there's just a misunderstanding between us." Or "It's time for me to stop judging that demon from The Abyss. Perhaps he's just from a different culture than I am." It's not going to make any more sense if I'm a cop trying to do nonlethal damage to a serial killer who ends up being a demon or a group of cultists engaged in human sacrifice to the Old Gods to destroy the city. I'm not taking them in or pulling my punches if they try to kill my cop character. That's an even worse lesson to teach to try using nonlethal force when someone is using lethal force against you. The module would get even dumber if everyone including the psychotic cultists started using nonlethal force against the police so they can be sensitive to real world issues. I can't even imagine thinking that is a sensible way to handle this AP. Do the monsters use nonlethal force too or is this a one-sided use of nonlethal force? As in the monsters get to kill you, but you somehow magically knock them all out?

It would have been a 100 times better if the AP writers or Paizo public relations had instead gone through each module prior to publishing and flagged encounters where the players should use nonlethal force. Then the DM can cue the players that this is a situation where they should follow the law and take the subjects in alive. And that not only should take in the subjects alive, but are legally obligated to take in the subjects alive. Not only would this have made them feel more like real cops knowing they are expected to follow the law too, but would have fit the game environment much better by letting the players clearly know when they can take off the cop gloves and fight for their lives versus do their job and capture troublemakers in a nonlethal way.

I do this all the time in my games. I clearly let my players know when a situation requires use of nonlethal force and that there are likely legal and reputation repercussions for killing enemies. I cued my players a few times in Extinction Curse when breaking up some brawls. It's a much smarter way to handle the situation than a blanket nonlethal force ruling. That ruling just shows a company overreacting in a way that makes their customer seem dumb. I've handled nonlethal force and sticky situations in towns or civilized areas often. If you cue the players, they handle it even better because they act in a restrained manner and roleplay in a more interesting way. Even in the Age of Ashes AP I've had players take in quite a few enemies to the authorities to ensure the entire party isn't filled with murderous, sociopathic psychotics. Sometimes players get to caught up in the war game aspect of these RPGs wanting to use their combat abilities and forget they're supposed to be characters in a story. I don't like them forgetting that. An overly bloodthirsty party isn't interesting to run.

Retreater said:

For me, I don't want to change the entire concept of the Adventure Path. If the designers want the players to be cops, that's what it is. Especially in an Adventure Path, you don't know how little changes might become significant changes as the story progresses, and you end up making more work to fix an issue than just improvising and making up something on your own. (Same thing with that blasted circus AP - I'm not running that one either.)

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I don't know about you, but when I change something in an AP I absolutely know its significance.
Thats because I don't ever run them in real time/as they're being released. If one sounds interesting? I'll pick up the first one or two installments to read though. If I'm still interested I'll get the rest. But the soonest the path will be released is 7 months from initial release. That way I know the whole story, how all the pieces do/dont fit together, & whether there's anything further down stream that i should know about/set up early on.

ccs said:

I don't know about you, but when I change something in an AP I absolutely know its significance.
Thats because I don't ever run them in real time/as they're being released. If one sounds interesting? I'll pick up the first one or two installments to read though. If I'm still interested I'll get the rest. But the soonest the path will be released is 7 months from initial release. That way I know the whole story, how all the pieces do/dont fit together, & whether there's anything further down stream that i should know about/set up early on.

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Honestly, I don't thoroughly read through all 6 volumes. I'm good to know what's in the immediate book I'm running - MAYBE a bit into the next book. When I had enough time to sift through 600 pages of gaming, I would do this, but then later be disappointed when the campaign ended early into Book 3 - which happened most times.
This is why I try to stick as close to the book as possible. Running it by the book helps cut down my prep time, reviewing months worth of session notes, thinking about what to change from session to session. Which is the whole point of running published adventures anyway.

Retreater said:

So give us something like Runelords,

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Sadly, I don't think we'll ever get an AP like Rise of the Runelords again from the big RPG publishers.

I've just reread the first four books prepping to run a group of newbies through it and I just can't see either Paizo or Wizards wanting to go that dark again given the current gaming milieu.

Green Onceler said:

Sadly, I don't think we'll ever get an AP like Rise of the Runelords again from the big RPG publishers.

I've just reread the first four books prepping to run a group of newbies through it and I just can't see either Paizo or Wizards wanting to go that dark again given the current gaming milieu.

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It doesn't have to be that dark (or even dark at all). I'm just thinking how that was an epic campaign. Being a circus or cops - not so much. That's stuff to bring out later in an edition's lifecycle. Age of Ashes isn't this way.
I think Paizo is approaching PF2's adventure content with the assumption that they're building on PF1, when instead it's more like a hard reset, content-wise.

We do not get to know details about what activities are prohibited or restricted in Absalom. We do not any details on how its law enforcement is expected to behave. Every nuance or complexity is hand-waved away. The takeaway seems to be that modern-day morality is in place, which significantly takes away from the fantastical aspect. (I don't mean that rape and murder must be allowed for a fantasy setting to feel different. But not saying anything at all definitely isn't helping) Just pointing to the rulebook description of "lawful alignment", which is essentially all you get to work with here, is no substitute for actual local laws and customs when it comes to fantasy gaming in my opinion.

And the worst part is that none of this matter anyway, since the AP puts you on a roller-coaster where you don't make decisions that matter; you simply follow the trail, help those clearly marked "innocent", and kill and loot those marked "guilty". There's no consequences for making mistakes because there are no wrong turns to make.

Again, you pretty much need to consider this to be just another AP where barbarians and wizards kill monsters and take their stuff. Barbarians and wizards in uniform, but without any meaningful differences from generic (lawful) heroes. If that isn't what you expected, my only recommendation is to keep your money. The only way to tell Paizo you find this effort unsatisfactory is to vote with your wallet. There is nothing here to build on if you want the players experience playing actual cops (city militia, town guards...) to be immersive to any degree. You need to create everything yourself.

On the other hand, if you're already done with Age of Ashes and Extinction Curse, and just need another path of adventures to fill your gaming nights, I guess this isn't any worse than the previous efforts.

It's just that the theme and setting gave hope to something more, that comprehensively isn't there and never was intended to be there.

To get to the point: Paizo imo doesn't deserve the attention from the IRL comparison, since there's nothing there that constitutes actual law enforcement. That's right, the drama isn't only negative, it's positive too - creating buzz along the "all PR is good PR" line that's making people talk about the AP in a way the content just doesn't merit.