"Adventure Paths": Which should I do?

[Remathilis]

All you sandboxers, out of the pool! This one's for module lovers!

I'm deciding that since my time to loving craft my own adventurers is suffering to this thing called "real life" I'm going to take the plunge and try doing an adventure path for my next Pathfinder game. Thing is, I'm not sure what one to run.

I have a few suggestions, mentioned below. While I'm not ready to run it yet (my current game has some life yet and I want to wrap it up properly) I want to look at what modules and materials to start buying so I can acquire them slowly, before we begin.

The Initial Options

Kingmaker (Paizo): Paizo's latest sounds like a blast, and it rife with old-school elements, from hexcrawling to dominion management. Its also fairly easy to get in PDF or print.
Council of Thieves (Paizo): A more traditional AP with lots of devil elements. Still easy to get, and bonus for being PF compatible already.
Legacy of Fire (Paizo): Genies, armies, and a non-traditional (IE non European) setting. Would require a smidge of touch up to run in PF, but nothing serious.
West to Empire (Goodman): Actually, its a collection of DCCs that was suggested as an AP in #35: Gazeeteer of the Known Realm. Goodman's adventures tend to be fun old-school dungeon romps, and this one (lacking a giant metaplot) allows me to put my own spin on things. OTOH: They're 3.5 mostly (and some 3.0) so it would require conversion, and they are OOP to boot (Ebay, here I come). It consists of the following DCCs: [sblock]DCC #35A: Halls of the Minotaur, DCC #29: Lair of the White Salamander, DCC #1: Idylls of the Rat King, DCC #27: Revenge of the Rat King, DCC #5: Aerie of the Crow God, DCC #19: The Volcano Caves, DCC #30: Vault of the Dragon Kings, DCC #12: The Blackguard’s Revenge, DCC #12.5: Iron Crypt of the Heretics, and DCC #13: Crypt of the Devil Lich[/sblock]
Saga of the Dragon Cult (Goodman): Another DCC AP, this one strings four classics (DCCs #2, 6, 10 and 17) together with an additional booklet that gives some setting a metaplot to it. It has all the drawbacks of the other one (OOP, 3.5) and it ends at 10th level.
The Wrath of Asharadon (WotC): The Original 3.0 AP that starts at Sunless Citadel and ends with Bastion of Broken Souls. Not too hard to find (though still OOP) and also 3.0 (with lots of conversion needed).
Red Hand of Doom (WotC) Ok, not an AP, but centering a campaign on RHoD would pretty much fill up the bulk of a good campaign. OOP (but easy to get), it would require some work to fill in the early and later levels.
Age of Worms (Paizo/WotC): The Classic. Set in Greyhawk, its a meatgrinder for the unprepared. A bit hard to get (though I think Paizo still has back issues) and would require some updating.
Other: Good suggestions go here.

Thoughts, comments, and experiences from former victims survivors.

 

[Wicht]

Kingmaker would get my first vote, though I had a good time running Rise of the Runelords as well. Legacy of Fire would be a close second or third.

I would stay away from mega-dungeon-crawl campaigns with one large dungeon after another. They tend to wear out faster.

 

[Windjammer]

Council of Thieves (Paizo): A more traditional AP with lots of devil elements. Still easy to get, and bonus for being PF compatible already.
Legacy of Fire (Paizo): Genies, armies, and a non-traditional (IE non European) setting. Would require a smidge of touch up to run in PF, but nothing serious.

If you can spare the ink to print off extant conversion stat blocks there's no work involved for you; hence no bonus to Council of Thieves and (slight) negative for Legacy of Fire.

I'm deciding that since my time to loving craft my own adventurers is suffering to this thing called "real life" I'm going to take the plunge and try doing an adventure path for my next Pathfinder game.

I've run/tried to run instalments of several of the Pathfinder adventure paths, and let me tell you they are without expection labour- and time-intensive to bring to the table. High on premises on what your players are gonna do and decide, it's really hard to cut out prep time as soon as your players go off the expected rails. I'm certainly not speaking for everyone, but in my experience there's lots in Paizo's stuff that needs filling in by the personal DM before it delivers a complete play experience. That's actually a feature, not a bug.

In light of that I'm tempted to think you're entering the adventure path thing with the wrong hopes.

WotC' stuff is in my experience MUCH less labour intense, but also more one-sided in what it delivers. Top recommendations would go to:
- Shattered Gates of Slaughtergarde (a level 1-6 campaign)
- Cormyr, Tearing of the Weave (level 4-8; FR module, but easy-peasy to convert to any setting - I ran it in Greyhawk)

WotC also did longer modules but (usually) for above level 8 play - all the Expedition to... campaign books. But these are just as labour intensive as Paizo's stuff, so I wouldn't recommend them.

And, oh, I own both adventure paths by Goodman Games and, to be fair, these aren't adventure paths in the Paizo sense of module 1 connecting to module 2. Rather, the second DCC box is simply a module collection, and the first box comes with a 20-page guide on how to string the individual modules into a campaign. Neither remotely delivers a fully cohesive campaign, and so requires a lot of thought to make it into something more tightly interwoven.

I love both DCC 'adventure path' boxes, but again you ought to have a good understanding of what to expect.

 

[Gilladian]

If you DO want a dungeon-based campaign, I'd suggest subscribing to Monte's Dungeon-a-Day campaign. He's up to 11 levels now, and it is fantastic fun.

It is a traditional mega-dungeon, but not limited TO the dungeon - there's a nice town, an island jungle locale, a "level" set in a ruined tower, and a trip to the ghostly castle above the dungeon, as well as LOTS of potential stories involving NPCs, dungeon history, puzzles, and more.

I'm torn between this and Kingmaker for my next campaign!

 

[S'mon]

Many of us sandboxers do use modules, y'know... the original point of a module was to plop it into the DM's ongoing (sandbox) campaign.

Re APs, I agree with prior comments that they don't really save time vs a sandbox, unless you're just doing 1-dungeon-after-another - in which case you'll get a better result just by choosing the level-appropriate modules you like and spending an hour on a linking premise. Eg for my last (3.5) linear campaign I had the PCs as agents of the aging King sent on various missions battling evil about his realm. I constructed links/plot out of bits in the modules, ie:

B7 Rahasia - evil Arabic Cleric, The Rahib, takes over Elf temple
B5 Horror on the Hill - the hobgoblin king has supplies for an army
DCC Palace of Shadows - evil wizard has imprisoned The King of the West
DCC The Slithering Overlord - a Spirit Naga has stolen the sacred Sun Disks

So I got a plot with infiltration/invasion by an Arabic nation of a Sun-worshipping realm. I topped it with

X5 Master of the Desert Nomads - PCs trek to assassinate The Master

I added a smidgen of The Song of Roland and I basically had my 20-session campaign, with Willow Vale, a goodly realm revering The Unconquered Sun, menaced by the plots of the Bafomet-revering Master of the Desert Nomads, escalating to full-scale invasion. It was linear, but felt a lot less railroady than many modern APs. And it took very little work beyond reading the adventures.

By contrast Council of Thieves or Kingmaker look like a lot of work (I bought #1 of each) - eg there is tons of Golarion background and it's not clear how much can be discarded or ignored. Kingmaker is particularly bad with detailing a home kingdom that apparently won't actually be used in the AP. The #1 adventures themselves cover 2 (Council) or 3 (Kingmaker) levels and seem fairly short and a bit insubstantial, but there is tons of backgrounf info to digest first.

 

[RangerWickett]

Since you're an EN World community supporter, have you taken a look at War of the Burning Sky? It's 3.5, and as a community supporter you get access to the first five adventures free (and the later ones too, one every few months).

And if you have any questions about the campaign saga, the creators are always around here to help out.

 

[Remathilis]

Well, to make what I want a little clearer...

The prime thing that is tiring me out is "dungeon prep". That is, having an adventure that is level appropriate, thematic, and interesting by drawing my own maps, stocking the dungeon with monsters/traps/etc (and fiddling with the numbers to make it appropriate to the PCs level), balancing treasure, lather, rinse, repeat.

My groups not against dungeons, as long as there is a reason to go there and short breaks in between. I can handle creating that much, but I want the dungeons stocked and ready to go!

I chose the two Goodman ones as examples of "light APs" where the DM adds his own special sauce in, vs. Paizo's more traditional story-based APs. Both appeal for different reasons. I could technically just run module-to-module (as Windjammer said, the Goodman ones are essentially that) and that is a possibility as well, but I wanted to first see if any of the "professionally done" APs were worth it first.

 

[Remathilis]

Since you're an EN World community supporter, have you taken a look at War of the Burning Sky? It's 3.5, and as a community supporter you get access to the first five adventures free (and the later ones too, one every few months).

And if you have any questions about the campaign saga, the creators are always around here to help out.

Duh! I forgot about WotBS. Thanks.

 

[Darrin Drader]

I'm finally at the tail end of running Rise of the Runelords, and it's been an incredible amount of fun. I can't help but plug Legacy of Fire since I wrote one of the adventures for it, but I really think RotR is destined to be one of those classic series of adventures that players and GMs alike will remember. I'd steer you there first.

 

[Wicht]

I'm finally at the tail end of running Rise of the Runelords, and it's been an incredible amount of fun. I can't help but plug Legacy of Fire since I wrote one of the adventures for it, but I really think RotR is destined to be one of those classic series of adventures that players and GMs alike will remember. I'd steer you there first.

I've bveen saying this for a year. I think among Pathfinder players Rise of the Runelords is going to be akin to a modern Keep on the Borderlands. My kids still talk about it and it now colors how they view almost all their other gaming experiences.

My main beef with RotRLs was actually the 5th module. I sped it up and cut out a lot of the material to move the story along. I saw it as a real potential slow-down in the campaign.