Pathfinder 1E AP Advice

[thullgrim]

When current campaign wraps up (three weeks to three months they way I go) I want to revisit Paizo's APs and cross something off my GM Bucket List. I'd like to run a AP from start to finish. Probably in PF1, I've tried PF2 repeatedly and keep bouncing off how tight the system is, though I have not looked at the Remaster.

So what I'm for from you all is:
(1) Advice on any APs you liked, ran, hated, loved and so on. Rise of the Runelords is not an option. Everything else is on the table. What I don't want is an unexpected BBEG coming off the top ropes in book 6 without warning. Something with a comprehensible plot from the PC's side would be great. I want your experiences from actually running or playing one of these things (in either PF1 or PF2). And yes I have Googled, and Googled and Googled...

(2) I want you advice on running an AP, prepping an AP, and living with the same adventure/campaign for an extended period time. It's not something I'm really good at. My interests are fickle. How do you stay motivated to finish one of these things?

(3) The VTT. Odds are I'll be using the lightest possible implementation of Foundry I can get away and I'd consider moving it to something like Owlbear even. I'm not interested in the VTT bells and whistles, character sheets, endless clicking to target and release, automation or anything like that. I'm looking for a map and token system and players can keep their own character sheets and send them to me when I want to review them.

(4) Character options? What options would you allow or restrict? At this point I'm thinking 15 point attribute buy with Core Rulebook (Unchained for Rogue and Barbarian) with perhaps a couple of options from other books and allowing archetypes for the CRB classes. I'll allow the Campaign Trait, and one alternate racial trait swap.

At this point I have some time to prepare so I'd like to make the best use of it possible.

 

[payn]

When current campaign wraps up (three weeks to three months they way I go) I want to revisit Paizo's APs and cross something off my GM Bucket List. I'd like to run a AP from start to finish. Probably in PF1, I've tried PF2 repeatedly and keep bouncing off how tight the system is, though I have not looked at the Remaster.

I ran many APs from 2009 up until 2020. Love the PF1 era and would be happy to share my thoughts.

So what I'm for from you all is:
(1) Advice on any APs you liked, ran, hated, loved and so on. Rise of the Runelords is not an option. Everything else is on the table. What I don't want is an unexpected BBEG coming off the top ropes in book 6 without warning. Something with a comprehensible plot from the PC's side would be great. I want your experiences from actually running or playing one of these things (in either PF1 or PF2). And yes I have Googled, and Googled and Googled...

I'll be brief on the APs in total. Though, would be happy to go into detail if you have additional inquiries.

Recommend List:
Curse of the Crimson Throne: Urban campaign (mostly)

Jade Regent: The Golarion West meets East story (but most of it is spent traversing a continent.)

Carrion Crown: Ravenloft of Golarion. (AP is monster of the week per chapter.)

Iron Gods: Mad Max Golarion with a splash of sci-Fi (also some werid mythos stuff)

Mummy's Mask: Golarion's Egypt mystery adventure. (changes adventure type a lot which could be a strength)

War for the Crown: Political intrigue in Taldor. (Advise only if the group likes heavy dose of role play and political intrigue.)

Not Recommended list:
Serpent Skull: Golarion Indy Jones like adventure. (lot of issues with the development of this AP. First book is awesome though and could easily be run independent of the AP)

Second Darkness: Golarion drow adventure. (Didnt like this at all)

Kingmaker: Kingdom builder sandbox. (Normally id recommend this AP highly, but, the main villain does the out of no where routine...)

(2) I want you advice on running an AP, prepping an AP, and living with the same adventure/campaign for an extended period time. It's not something I'm really good at. My interests are fickle. How do you stay motivated to finish one of these things?

Im stubborn. The only times I have finished APs is when im in the GM seat. Telling one of these great stories across 10-15-20 levels is such a big draw to me. The prep, the reveal, and the sessions energize me to keep going. Players also need to be invested at least to see it through. Often, folks like starting over sooner than later. Stay in tune with them and make sure they are not getting bored. This might mean tailoring some of the AP material to your players. I'd think long and hard about your group before starting and consider if they are long campaign types. It takes me about 2 years to run an AP to conclusion running sessions 2x a month.

(3) The VTT. Odds are I'll be using the lightest possible implementation of Foundry I can get away and I'd consider moving it to something like Owlbear even. I'm not interested in the VTT bells and whistles, character sheets, endless clicking to target and release, automation or anything like that. I'm looking for a map and token system and players can keep their own character sheets and send them to me when I want to review them.

Roll20 is an ok option too if you want to stay simple. Though, Ive founf Foundry to be great with its bells and whistles.

(4) Character options? What options would you allow or restrict? At this point I'm thinking 15 point attribute buy with Core Rulebook (Unchained for Rogue and Barbarian) with perhaps a couple of options from other books and allowing archetypes for the CRB classes. I'll allow the Campaign Trait, and one alternate racial trait swap.

At this point I have some time to prepare so I'd like to make the best use of it possible.

Im a bit more generous than that. 20 point buy CRB and APG allowed with exception of gunslinger and summoner. Those two classes were more headaches than they are worth. Although, the magus and alchemist can be problematic for players not good about doing their homework. As GM I need you to at least know how your PC works, so a few folks ive said no to these for. I fully approve of unchained rogue!

I highly recommend the player's guides they are informative for charop and give a taste of the campaign flavor. Bonus, they are free.

Finally, I would browse the Paizo forums for any AP you plan to run. Folks give a lot of feedback on things they added and or changed as they ran them. I found it to be a wealth of info when I was GMing PF1.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

I've only run the one AP - Reign of Winter. It goes from level 1 - 17.

Ran the whole thing. Mixed feelings.

The first 2 books are pretty good. They make a coherent whole. You discover the evil witch's plot, you go to her land and start working toward stopping it. There's plenty of role play opportunities dealing with revolutionaries and the winter witches. It hangs together thematically and plot-wise. This gets your group to about level 7/8.

The Ice Witch's land of Irresen is well described in these two books. Plus there are Golarion supplements that cover Irresen proper (Irresen Land of Eternal Winter), and one that gives details about a few Golarion cities, including the capital, Whitethrone. (The name of the book escapes me.) So there's plenty of resources for fleshing out the early part of this AP.


From here the AP becomes a fetch quest across time and space.

I'm not a fan of fetch quests, nor of loosely themed adventures.

Book 3 is a large dungeon crawl. I dislike dungeon crawls. But as they go this one's pretty good. Actually has RP opportunity. The dungeon's big conceit - it's actually 3 dungeons with teleport gates linking them - is completely wasted on the players. They'll probably never realise, nor does it actually effect play.

Book 4 changes genre to planetary romance. Not that you'd know. The adventure itself is fine. There's lots of details about the planet your on. You could make it a mini campaign all of its own. The main action is the PCs have to infiltrate the bad guy's fortress and take out the white dragon king what lives there.

Book 5 is whacky. PC's visit planet Earth. Our Earth, or very like it. It's 1917 and the PCs have to take on Rasputin (ra! ra!) Dodging cannon and machine gun fire and tanks as they go. As a weird stand alone it's kinda fun. My players enjoyed it.

Book 6 - the PCs have the macguffins and must now challenge the Queen of Irresen in her sanctum sanctorum. It's another dungeon crawl. This one not very good. And the adversaries are just not up to scratch. None of them presented more than a speed bump. Even the Queen, who I bumped up with extra allies and a thoroughly re-worked spell list, could not slow down the paladin. The other PCs admittedly struggled a bit because I used a lot of area control spells.


How to stick to it? Don't know. It depends on your group. My bunch were happy enough with it as our only game for - I wanna say 2 and bit years. I will be honest and say that, by the end of the Rasputin adventure, I was over it. I was working real hard for a TPK. Got 2 of the PCs with Destruction spells. But the others survived and we stuck with it.

I think you could make an excellent, tightly themed and plotted AP out of the first 2 books and the supplements I mentioned. But it would require a bit or work. Probably a lot of work. One thing you could do is make the PCs be natives of Irresen. Use some of the suggested material for Irresen specific feats and background options. You could even let someone play a Winter Witch. You could focus more on the revolution and get a lot more roleplay and faction action.

I put a lot of work into the game prep when we got to higher levels. Especially spell choice for enemy casters. I also drew up stats for a lot of the major nobility of Irresen as my plan was to take the final battle to the Throne Room of the Queen. Didn't happen, players were too smart.

We played face to face so no idea about VTT for it. I just googled that Paizo has Foundry versions of their APs. So... maybe there's VTT for this one?

Hope this helps.

 

[payn]

I've only run the one AP - Reign of Winter. It goes from level 1 - 17.

Ran the whole thing. Mixed feelings.

The first 2 books are pretty good. They make a coherent whole. You discover the evil witch's plot, you go to her land and start working toward stopping it. There's plenty of role play opportunities dealing with revolutionaries and the winter witches. It hangs together thematically and plot-wise. This gets your group to about level 7/8.

The Ice Witch's land of Irresen is well described in these two books. Plus there are Golarion supplements that cover Irresen proper (Irresen Land of Eternal Winter), and one that gives details about a few Golarion cities, including the capital, Whitethrone. (The name of the book escapes me.) So there's plenty of resources for fleshing out the early part of this AP.


From here the AP becomes a fetch quest across time and space.

I'm not a fan of fetch quests, nor of loosely themed adventures.

Book 3 is a large dungeon crawl. I dislike dungeon crawls. But as they go this one's pretty good. Actually has RP opportunity. The dungeon's big conceit - it's actually 3 dungeons with teleport gates linking them - is completely wasted on the players. They'll probably never realise, nor does it actually effect play.

Book 4 changes genre to planetary romance. Not that you'd know. The adventure itself is fine. There's lots of details about the planet your on. You could make it a mini campaign all of its own. The main action is the PCs have to infiltrate the bad guy's fortress and take out the white dragon king what lives there.

Book 5 is whacky. PC's visit planet Earth. Our Earth, or very like it. It's 1917 and the PCs have to take on Rasputin (ra! ra!) Dodging cannon and machine gun fire and tanks as they go. As a weird stand alone it's kinda fun. My players enjoyed it.

Book 6 - the PCs have the macguffins and must now challenge the Queen of Irresen in her sanctum sanctorum. It's another dungeon crawl. This one not very good. And the adversaries are just not up to scratch. None of them presented more than a speed bump. Even the Queen, who I bumped up with extra allies and a thoroughly re-worked spell list, could not slow down the paladin. The other PCs admittedly struggled a bit because I used a lot of area control spells.


How to stick to it? Don't know. It depends on your group. My bunch were happy enough with it as our only game for - I wanna say 2 and bit years. I will be honest and say that, by the end of the Rasputin adventure, I was over it. I was working real hard for a TPK. Got 2 of the PCs with Destruction spells. But the others survived and we stuck with it.

I think you could make an excellent, tightly themed and plotted AP out of the first 2 books and the supplements I mentioned. But it would require a bit or work. Probably a lot of work. One thing could do is make the PCs be natives of Irresen. Use some of the suggested material for Irresen specific feats and background options. You could even let someone play a Winter Witch. You could focus more on the revolution and get a lot more roleplay and faction action.

I put a lot of work into the game prep when we got to higher levels. Especially spell choice for enemy casters. I also drew up stats for a lot of the major nobility of Irresen as my plan was to take the final battle to the Throne Room of the Queen. Didn't happen, players were too smart.

We played face to face so no idea about VTT for it. I just googled that Paizo has Foundry versions of their APs. So... maybe there's VTT for this one?

Hope this helps.

This is an excellent breakdown and an example of what I was talking about with forum discussion. You get a pretty decent run down of the entire AP chapter by chapter. It reminds me of a lot of my own prep which maybe could be useful advice.

• Read the entire synopsis of each chapter of the AP before starting.
  • This allows you to visualize the entire campaign and understand any changes you need/want to make. More importantly, it allows the PCs to widen their options of approaching the adventure while keeping it on track.
• Dont assume you must follow the advancement by the book. In this example level 1-17.
  • Every AP has at least one chapter that could possibly be abandoned. Sometimes it feels thematically shoehorned in. Other times its just a dungeon crawl becasue higher level PCs are more difficult to challenge over a day of adventure. This might add some work to your plate as you need to adjust CRs and things, but you might come out with a better consistent campaign experience.
• Add some NPCs, info drops, written notes etc.. to help PCs understand what is going on.
  • Paizo is notorious for writing in amazing scenarios and situations for the AP, but give no good way for a GM to convey that conceptually to the PCs. I find going a little out of the way to explain things can help the PCs better understand and enjoy the adventure. For example, 3 dungeons linked by teleporting is pretty damn cool. Provide some info, some how, to let the players engage that cool concept.

The APs are incredible, but they are not a perfect product. Keep in mind a few things. The 3E/PF1 system starts out as good as any, but quickly ramps up the PCs ability and go power. Challenging them through attrition can put a limit on adventure writing. These APs are monthly! So, yeah they need to be written and edited in a quick fashion to get to the consumer. Mistakes will be made. Play testing will be sparse, if at all. Each chapter is written by a new author so inconsistencies happen. They will take effort on your part to run successfully and the work is not done for you. Food for thought.

Cheers!

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Good advice, @payn.

And yeah, I agree that APs are an amazing concept. Even the ones that don't quite gel are still an impressive product just for the work that has gone into them. Kinda like the MCU. Not everything in the series is great, or even good, but the thing as a whole is an impressive feat just for the work and the concept.

 

[thullgrim]

I appreciate the commentary. I gave the players 6 AP options with descriptions and had them rank the ones they were interested in.

So it looks like I’ll start reading and preparing for Curse of the Crimson Throne. I’ll run the Anniversary Edition. I’d like more Kazavon action so there may be some changes in that direction.

 

[billd91]

I've run Council of Thieves (full), Curse of the Crimson Throne (3/4 then COVID hit), and played Skull and Shackles (full).
CoT tops out at a lower level in general and may be easier to keep focused on because it does run a bit shorter. Also an urban adventure, so easy to make use of a home base and friendly NPCs.
Skull and Shackles was great fun if you're into piracy and sailing. Can be somewhat sandboxy with lots to explore (and develop as a DM).
And I love the story of CotCT, I just didn't get to really finish it due to the lockdown and then changes in schedule, yadda, yadda.

 

[payn]

I appreciate the commentary. I gave the players 6 AP options with descriptions and had them rank the ones they were interested in.
View attachment 379038
So it looks like I’ll start reading and preparing for Curse of the Crimson Throne. I’ll run the Anniversary Edition. I’d like more Kazavon action so there may be some changes in that direction.

Anyone know if they redid the players guide for CotCT with the anniversary? I ask because on knock I have right off the bat is the campaign traits and group link. The party pretty much comes together to get this bad dude, and they get him right away. Staying together after that is kind of up in air. Our party worked it out for sake of the adventure, but I could see some folks going in different directions.

On the other hand, the tarrot card stuff was a ton of fun and is an excellent product from Paizo to add spice to the campaign.

 

[thullgrim]

They are still pretty tightly focused on the Gaedren but I think I can massage them some by including some cruelty from Gaedeen son who shows up later. I may be able to cobble together some new traits from information in the Korvosa book as well.

I’m looking forward to the Harrow Deck.

 

[Justice and Rule]

Anyone know if they redid the players guide for CotCT with the anniversary? I ask because on knock I have right off the bat is the campaign traits and group link. The party pretty much comes together to get this bad dude, and they get him right away. Staying together after that is kind of up in air. Our party worked it out for sake of the adventure, but I could see some folks going in different directions.

On the other hand, the tarrot card stuff was a ton of fun and is an excellent product from Paizo to add spice to the campaign.

That's not necessarily a bad thing if your players can go along with it. Being able to have an initial adventure, nail the bad guy, and then have a point where certain characters can continue on while others can be switched out (because the players might want to do something different) isn't necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be a cool way of switching gears! But also I don't think most books give such advice.