Adventure paths suck (for homebrewers). How to improve their utility?

[RangerWickett]

I admit, back in the days of print Dungeon magazine I had a subscription and loved reading the adventure paths, but I only ever ran one session of any of them. I can't even recall stealing any specific scenes for my home campaigns.

However, I do know that seeing a whole campaign planned from start to finish helped me prepare my own home games, to get a sense for how to plant seeds that could grow into major plot elements later, and to sprinkle NPCs and hints around copiously at low-level so they could pay off in high-level play. Of course, I got some of the same insights from reading Sagiro's storyhour, or reading people complain about LOST and Babylon 5's later seasons.

The first time I actually got excited to run a series of adventures from Dungeon was a trilogy set in Sharn with a criminal mastermind that reminded me of Moriarty. I set up a whole Eberron campaign with the PCs playing cops, and I foreshadowed all these events I was excited to run. And then just as the party reached the right level for the adventures, the game dissolved. But hell, at least I was inspired.

Now I publish adventure paths -- first WotBS, and now ZEITGEIST -- and I think for folks who run the whole campaign will get a great experience out of it. But what can I do to help homebrewing GMs? What have you been inspired by from adventures or adventure paths you've read? What do you think they could do better, layout-wise, or plot-wise, or maybe just advertising-wise to get you interested in checking them out?

 

[the Jester]

1. Never assume that the pcs will be on the side of the angels. Savage Tide was great about this.

2. My approach to looting adventure path stuff for my campaign often involves stripping out extraneous encounters in order to be able to fit more homebrewed stuff in and around it (so the party isn't "overleveled" by the time they're in the next adventure). So some encounters should be "skippable" without a major impact on the overall plot of the AP.

3. Parallel to 2, above, some encounters, npcs, etc should be easy to lift wholecloth for generic campaign purposes without major rewrites. For instance, looking at Savage Tide again, there are great pirate stats that you can use anywhere as well as stats for pirates infected by Abyssal influence (which are less generic but very cool for the adventure's needs).

 

[El Mahdi]

I'm a homebrewer, and I do like Adventure Paths.

What I do is distill the AP down to the core plots and sub-plots. Then I substitute the NPC's and the various involved groups (the players) for my own groups and NPC's (usually just a fluff or name change, unless it's also for another system).

Then I consider the set piece encounters just possible decision points in the PC's actions (as they traverse the plot). I even come up with some extra side treks the PC's might take (both before play/during my own prep, and as the campaign progresses based on the PC's actions...PC generated sub-plots). That way I can even mix a bit of sandbox in with the preset adventure.

This works for me because even as a homebrewer, I'm horrible at plot. Having a preset premise helps me immensely.

One can even change genre quite easily (usually).

Take the original Star Wars movie for instance (A New Hope, not the Episodes which shall not be named!).

Even though it's Sci-Fi (or more accurately Space Opera), it can easily be recast as a Medieval Fantasy Adventure.

Vader becomes the Black Knight. The Death Star becomes the Black Knight's Castle. The Emperor becomes a Lich King. Etc., Etc., Etc.

Granted, Star Wars is an easy one to convert, but I have yet to find any pre-printed adventure or AP, regardless of genre, that couldn't be changed to another genre fairly easily.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I'm no longer a homebrewing GM. Havent been one for about 5 years now. I subscribed to Dungeon right just before Age of Worms and have every issue up until the end of it's run. When Paizo went Pathfinder with their AP's I became a subscriber and have been one ever since.

The reason that I'm giving this background is that right now I don't homebrew because I dont have the time or the dedication to put the energy into something that the players may or may not be invested in. If it's SOMEONE ELSE'S work that the players feel that way about then I'm fine with it. Either way when I do run other peoples adventures I let the players know and I let them know that I'm going to be customizing it around them to an extent.

But before I dove 100% into running pre-published material? I pillaged stuff from Dungeon and other modules all the time. I'd take a map from here, NPC's from there, a monster from there. Hell, I'm pretty certain that I built a whole area of my old homebrew using nothing but villages and towns from about years worth of Dungeon Magazines. Utility wise there's PLENTY homebrew GM's can use from published adventures. And now with PDF's it's so much easier to file the serial numbers off of material and use it for your game.

Honestly one of the reasons why I love Paizo's AP's is that you get to experience the world through the adventures as opposed to having to sit down and read a prose novel or a gazetteer. Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne and Second Darkness all take place in or around Varisia so by the time that you've read through them you have a pretty good idea of the lay of the land. So much so that if you wanted to run adventures in the area but not use the AP plot materials at all you could effectively do so. You could if you wanted to, again file the serial numbers off of almost everything and still run adventures in the area.

That's what the major use of AP's and pre printed materials are. Usability. I dont have to draw maps any more unless I want to. I actually like rebuilding NPC's and leveled Monsters, but if I didnt want to? TONS Of stuff in the AP's.

 

[Quickleaf]

Great topic Ryan!

One of the best things an adventure path writer could do to make it "homebrewer-friendly" is vary the organizational structure and length of quests within the AP. So you've got the main plot with it's preset encounters, a handful of mini-dungeons, a random encounter table or two, a site-based quest, a "drop anywhere" encounter, etc.

As far as the presentation, the best thing i can think of is to call out interesting design bits or imminently swappable stuff. For example, if there's a mystery with some interesting new rules throw in a sidebar about adapting those rules for the DM's own mysteries. Or when presenting the adventure setting call out at the very beginning that "this takes place in a contested border region, for DMs who prefer to base the adventure in their homebrew worlds."

I am curious to hear others thoughts about this too. The idea of a "middle path" adventure (middle between sandbox and adventure path) is something of a gaming holy grail for me...

 

[TarionzCousin]

The first time I actually got excited to run a series of adventures from Dungeon was a trilogy set in Sharn with a criminal mastermind that reminded me of Moriarty. I set up a whole Eberron campaign with the PCs playing cops, and I foreshadowed all these events I was excited to run. And then just as the party reached the right level for the adventures, the game dissolved. But hell, at least I was inspired.

Was that Nick Logue's Chimes at Midnight and subsequent adventures? I started an Eberron campaign with plans to work those adventures in. But then two of the three players got divorced and the campaign imploded.

I think my main point dovetails with what Jester and Quickleaf have said: make some parts of the path (dare I say it?) "modular." If there is a great scenario I can pull out and put in my own campaign, I'm much more likely to use it. If I have to shoehorn my game to fit something in it isn't going to happen.

 

[Yora]

My main problem with all adventure paths I know about is, that they are way too long and take characters from 1st to 20th level in the span of a few weeks or months.
I would like to be able to integrate adventure paths into existing campaigns and spanning only one or two levels. But then it becomes important to be able to adjust the level, so you can play the adventures at different points during the parties career.

I think adventure paths should be more about the story than about encounters. Yes, it's additional work for GMs to build encounters and stats for NPCs, but the adventures should be more flexible to be able to be adjustable to groups of different size and levels.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

One more voice for modularity.

Although I absolutely love the idea of Adventure Paths, I'm probably not the only DM with a group which would need more than 10 years to run a full-blown AP. Anything of this magnitude is pretty much useless to me.

On the other hand, the overarching story is the main draw of an AP, so just extracting a single adventure from it would mean losing a lot. I'd rather be able to extract a defined part of an AP and use that as is, with a self-sufficient story line and a cool enemy.

So what about dividing an AP into, say, six parts, which are connected by the main plot/threat/BBEG, but nevertheless complete stories themselves? Make an outline available, so I can select a part of your AP without having to read it all.

 

[Cergorach]

I am a very visually oriented person, so the first thing I notice is art and layout, these things make me look further and keep me inspired. High quality art is great, but that necessarily gets me inspired, it's what's being depicted, don't get me wrong, high quality helps.

Some of my favorite gaming products are from a line of gaming systems I do not really like (ICE). That Shadow World logo is just cool, the maps are awesome. The same is true for Blade Storm and Eidolon - City in the Sky. Then we get right to it, "What's in a name". Seriously "Zeitgeist" is a crappy name (no offense), even when you know what it means, now "Zeitgeist - Gears of Revolution" is much better, it's a shame it was never marketed that way (I only just saw that whole title). When I think of Zeitgeist, I think of that magical steam ship, which is great.

I like things short, long, and itemized. I don't want to read through a couple of pages to get the plot. I want a short box explaining the plot, a subplot, or a situation. After that there can be as many pages as you want which detail the situation. I also don't want a novel, I want (short sections) with descriptive headers I can browse to. Think of the ingredient list of a recipe, you want a list and not have to read through a page to make your own list of needed ingredients.

It also depends about what kind of howebrewers your talking about, do they have their own world, sure. But do they want to play the adventure in their own cities and locales? If so, it's important that you seperate as much adventure from setting. The fun part of a homebrew is imho your option to add something from another setting if you think it cool. So advice on where to place a city or locale within your own setting would be helpful, or how to adapt your own city or locale to use with the adventure. Make lists of the cast, separate the major from the minor, add advice on how to integrate them in your setting. Put this advice in small boxes that indicate that it's for advice on running the adventure in your exciting campaign/setting.

Examples: One of the Major protagonists is the church of Blugh. Helpful would be Blughs alignment and portfolio, add what part of the portfolio is relevant to the adventure. It's interesting that Blugh is the god of Undead and Orcs, but if Undead is the only relevant part to the adventure say so, it makes finding a relevant god in your own setting much easier.

The royal Family of Omph is your patron, but what if your patron is currently a merchant company and your city has never had a royal family. Make a list what features of the family are important to the story line (especially down the road in the later parts that are not in that part of the adventure yet) and add advice on what is exactly needed from the patrons for the story and how to integrate them in your setting (could they be a rich and important merchant family or a royal family in exile).

Lists make things easier imho. A list of locations, a list of monsters, a list of NPCs, etc.

Adventure paths are imho aimed at making life easier for the DM/GM, if they need to be integrated into an existing setting, make it easy to port over. Also make it easy to do so on different levels, if it's a whole country that can be dropped in the setting, it's easier to do then having to trying to fit it in a already existing city that has been thoroughly explored by the players.

On the other hand don't fret to much, if it requires to much work, maybe this adventure path product isn't for this customer.

My favorite and most inspiring adventure is Burnt Offerings (first book from the Paizo Rise of the Runelords adventure path), it's just such an excellent starter for a classic adventure. The further down into the AP it goes, the less inspired I become...

 

[Gilladian]

As a homebrew DM, I cannot run AP's. I tried, twice, and I got incredibly bored both times and ended the campaign before the PCs passed the halfway point.

So although I own about 4 different whole paths, and pieces of others, I look at them as merely fodder for my own campaigns. For example, in my current campaign, the bandits from Kingmaker reside somewhere to the southeast of my campaign focal town, and the PCs have met up with them and their allies a couple of times. Dotted all over the map of the region are other set pieces from Kingmaker, ready whenever the PCs decide to explore thataway.

I'm also running the Dungeon-a-day megadungeon, but it leaves a lot of extra room for me to add and subtract material. I'm running an E6 campaign, anyway, so all the levels from 10 up are going to have to be massively rewritten, as well. That's keeping me busy, figuring out how to do it.

AP's should be easy to chop into smaller segments. I like richly plotted but short campaign arcs. 1-3 levels would be perfect for me. Portions should be removeable to use as set-piece encounters. There's one Paizo AP that had a segment set on a boat in a harbor. I used that in a ptolus campaign to very good effect. The story was completely different, but the locale was perfect.

Another time I used the first adventure in Age of Worms in a short-lived egyptian-style campaign. Perfect!

Give us great NPCs, locales that are universal enough to transport to other settings, and chunks of adventure that are useable separately, and I'll buy the AP. Or some of it, anyway.