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

[RangerWickett]

One thought I had was how to let GMs know what an adventure contains. If I had enough of an art budget, I'd get an illustration of each big encounter, and the webpage for the adventure would showcase those with a brief vignette.

"Thrill as a mad scientist's flayed jaguars stalk the party while an earthquake floods his lab with necromantic oil!"

"Cheer as the party averts tragedy by thwarting assassins intent on detonating the magical capacitor an arcane warship - and the king with it!"

"Scream as a police precinct is overrun by tentacled horrors of some lunatic far realm!"

And then a brief description of the location, encounter level, and opponents.



Also, I'm curious about some of the suggestions of "make sure the scenes are universal enough that they can be transported to other settings." It's a damned tough line to tread, being easy to borrow on one hand while being memorable and original on the other.

I think our setting is distinctive with pseudo-French tieflings commanding fleets of ironclad steam warships while the PCs act as CIA/MI-6 agents in a nation trying to stave off a rebellion by druids and fey titans who don't like all this newfangled technology. It gives players a unique experience. And I don't think it's really _that_ hard to file off some of the names and slot it into an existing campaign. But I do wonder if trying to stand out turns some people off.

 

[Storminator]

Also, I'm curious about some of the suggestions of "make sure the scenes are universal enough that they can be transported to other settings." It's a damned tough line to tread, being easy to borrow on one hand while being memorable and original on the other.

I think our setting is distinctive with pseudo-French tieflings commanding fleets of ironclad steam warships while the PCs act as CIA/MI-6 agents in a nation trying to stave off a rebellion by druids and fey titans who don't like all this newfangled technology. It gives players a unique experience. And I don't think it's really _that_ hard to file off some of the names and slot it into an existing campaign. But I do wonder if trying to stand out turns some people off.

Maybe include some blurbs that demonstrate where your product can be used. That last paragraph sounds like I could work it into my Eberron game, but it'd be a hard sell for my Realms game.

Maybe you could build certain encounters that can be yanked, AND THEN LET US KNOW! Frex, some druid controlled animals and an elemental in the woods can be worked into a lot of settings. But I probably wouldn't look for that in the ZEITGEIST AP, because I am expecting gunwielding steampunk adventures.

PS

 

[the Jester]

Cergorich brought up something that I think is very important: If adventure #3 of the AP introduces a noble from a noble house that features prominently in adventure #8, you need to make sure that adventure #3 has enough info that I don't contradict what the pcs will learn about the house in #8. Likewise if we have an npc cameo and later he or she is going to appear again- it's great to have a lil vignette with a guy we'll see later, but without the right context, it only takes 2 seconds of roleplaying and suddenly he becomes inconsistent with the use that he'll be put to later on. I've seen exactly this problem before, though I couldn't tell you which AP it was- maybe Age of Worms? I don't recall the specifics, but it stuck out to me at the time.

Also, I'm curious about some of the suggestions of "make sure the scenes are universal enough that they can be transported to other settings." It's a damned tough line to tread, being easy to borrow on one hand while being memorable and original on the other.

I think our setting is distinctive with pseudo-French tieflings commanding fleets of ironclad steam warships while the PCs act as CIA/MI-6 agents in a nation trying to stave off a rebellion by druids and fey titans who don't like all this newfangled technology. It gives players a unique experience. And I don't think it's really _that_ hard to file off some of the names and slot it into an existing campaign. But I do wonder if trying to stand out turns some people off.

Though it isn't a turn off for me, it might make it impossible to use in my campaign- and that's the campaign that I run. The less I can lift from an AP, the less useful it is to me.

 

[Quickleaf]

One thought I had was how to let GMs know what an adventure contains. If I had enough of an art budget, I'd get an illustration of each big encounter, and the webpage for the adventure would showcase those with a brief vignette.

Actually not a bad idea, you could even do this as a one-page comic multi-panel. Personally I would find a sidebar just as good.

Also, I'm curious about some of the suggestions of "make sure the scenes are universal enough that they can be transported to other settings." It's a damned tough line to tread, being easy to borrow on one hand while being memorable and original on the other.

I wouldn't dwell on the *content* of the scene as much as I would the *presentation*. So you've got a scene which involves an ironclad warship with a tiefling general who the PCs want to abduct/assassinate. In my games those specifics can change - what's central are, say, the rules for a stealthy aquatic ship-boarding & the complication of the general's captive onboard. So I might in a sidebar call out these two central elements, and that the scene has a tie-in to a later scene called "Tiefling General's Revenge" (with caveat for what happens if the general is assassinated).

The DM knows from a glance at this sidebar (or graphic element) that "tiefling general" could be swapped out for ship captain, pirate lord, or traveling king. Likewise "abduct/assassinate" could become "warn of the real threat" or "send a message." However, the DM also knows that (1) aqueous ship boarding and (2) complication with captive, are not optional.

 

[Cergorach]

Make sure you have that art budget you need! ;-)

Also, I'm curious about some of the suggestions of "make sure the scenes are universal enough that they can be transported to other settings." It's a damned tough line to tread, being easy to borrow on one hand while being memorable and original on the other.

I wouldn't make anything 'universal', that's a bad way to go imho, and to be honest, there's no such thing as universal. Your scenes are what make your adventure what it is, it's OK to be unique, that's why folks buy it. What you should do is make adaption suggestions (as a side bar)

I think our setting is distinctive with pseudo-French tieflings commanding fleets of ironclad steam warships while the PCs act as CIA/MI-6 agents in a nation trying to stave off a rebellion by druids and fey titans who don't like all this newfangled technology. It gives players a unique experience. And I don't think it's really _that_ hard to file off some of the names and slot it into an existing campaign. But I do wonder if trying to stand out turns some people off.

is being 'pseudo-French' essential to the adventure plot, is being a tiefling? Could you switch them to something else if pseudo-French tieflings aren't appropriate to your setting? Ironclad steam warships , do they need to be steam powered? How about magic powered? What about giant ice floats crewed by Orcs, equipped with huge catapults? What about agents of a Noble/merchant house that don't want the disruption/change the druids or monster x want to force? Why do they rebel? Instead of technology, it's the encroachment of civilization, woods getting razed for extra fields, all that cattle generating way more excrement then is healthy for the environment, mining gold/silver/steel. Maybe it's about a homeland, humans have lived there for a few hundred years, after the fey-titans had been driven from their land by Y...

Don't spoon feed DMs, give suggestions, a setting specific creature might be replaced by a generic monster, steam punk might be replace by elemental magic, etc.

As others have said, you don't really have to cater to every genre, Zeitgeist is a 'steampunk' setting, do you really think that folks who want to run a low magic western europe campaign will buy your AP? But folks who are playing a D20 Iron Kingdoms campaign might, don't use specific IP names, but provide ideas that guide them in the right direction...

 

[Lwaxy]

I've yet to run or play in any games that were not at least a bit homebrewed. Right now, we basically have our own version of D&D/PF.

Never had any issues with APs at all. Converting pre-made stuff was always pretty easy.

We didn't always keep it in the setting either (but usually did). APs without a complete world around them are, of course, a lot easier to import if you want to have your own world.

 

[Quickleaf]

We didn't always keep it in the setting either (but usually did). APs without a complete world around them are, of course, a lot easier to import if you want to have your own world.

How do you produce a "setting-free" AP? I can see that for an adventure, but an AP needs to have some kind of setting framework to function. Right?

 

[Lwaxy]

Not really. Take Way of the Wicked. Can be inserted into any world. WotBS fits in about anywhere, too, unless you tend to flash out your world in every little detail - which I don't as it would take out surprises. Sure the shape of the land may vary, but I plan to use WotBS in my new homebrew and don't yet see any issues with it.

AoW, you can also insert anywhere where there are mountains or hills. Savage Tide just needs a coastal area, you can even import the city.

A cousin of mine runs Serpent's Skull in his homebrew world, only needed to change the names of some places and factions in the AP. Yeah he's run it on Golarion before but his other group refuses to play on a premade world (not with premade adventures though). Oh and he's running it as a GURPS game, too.

There is no such thing as "not adaptable" unless the genre is different. Sure it takes some work. But if I can create several homebrew settings (I think we have about 19 by now) I consider myself able to adapt an AP, too.

I may have some problems with some of the Golarion APs as they are rather specific, but I'm sure if I had a group wanting to play one of those on one of the homebrew worlds, I'd manage to adapt them. Luckily, my current players want to play the Golarion adventures on Golarion

 

[Jhaelen]

I don't think there's a lot you can do to make an AP useful to a homebrewer. About the best you can do is a compromise similar to the one that WotC did with their 4e Tomb of Horror module:
Don't have the AP modules cover the whole level range. Instead is has to be episodic, so you can fill in the gaps with your own adventures.

I like to 'steal' encounters from published modules to use in my homebrew adventures, but I've never used material from an AP, even though I own several. I think you're losing too much of what makes an AP great.

Imho, if you know you're going to (mostly) homebrew, you just don't buy an AP. That's okay!