Are Mega-Adventures / APs Bad?

[Bavix]

20-Year Old 20th-level PCs

IMO, runniing the APs and keeping up with the encounter challenges isn't the problem, it's the time in which the APs happen that warps all bounds of reality and campaign cohesion.

Almost all APs (especially the Dungeon magazine ones), happen in a span of a few months. If I'm not badly mistaken, Age of Worms occurs in under a year of campaign time with one adventure leading into another with little room (as to time or XP) to throw in more than a few sideline adventures. I'm sorry, but a 20-year old 20th-level character is ridiculous and destroys the verisimilitude of every game world ever published and the mechanics of the game system itself.

Take Greyhawk for example, Mordenkainen and most of the other "epic" heroes are only just above 20th level and they are all old and wise adventurers with decades of experience behind them. Unfortunately, after playing one of the adventure paths, those teenaged upstarts and apprentices can rival the power of a campaign setting's most powerful NPCs in less than a year. This is mostly a system problem. 3E advances WAY too quickly and that problem really shows when it comes to adventure paths.

 

[Odhanan]

I'm sorry, but a 20-year old 20th-level character is ridiculous and destroys the verisimilitude of every game world ever published and the mechanics of the game system itself.

It does not challenge mine, mainly because I consider the PCs in DnD to be heroes of the world, special people that are different from other people (including big names like Mord) of the fiction world.

Now that said, you can run DnD adventures and let months or years of downtime between published adventures to recreate the feel of advancement you want without having to alter the amount of XP earned.

Or you design your own and there, you can do the same thing, or divide the XP earned by the PCs to tailor their progression like you want, which then bars you from using long-running, single-arcs adventures where you couldn't squeeze a pause from time to time.

 

[Obergnom]

When running an AP you are more referee than storymaker. For some this is appealing, because they don't have time to make a story, or perhaps a table can't find someone who is really good at making a story.

Yep, you are right, if a DM plans a story, he will sooner or later know the possible end. The best campaigns I have both played in and DMed were Sandbox Campaigns, though. Where you do not really create a campaign, but "wait" for the PCs to do something and react. I had a blast being a player in Vault of Larrin Karr. My character (a wizard) had all kinds of plans how to find the treasure. Non of them involved actually looking for hints. Other characters were more into hunting Orcs etc... great fun.

Some players, if not told ahead of time to do otherwise, will create an extensive background about their character without consulting the DM or even waiting a few sessions to see what the campaign is all about. With an AP, it's vital that the DM work with a player to create characters that will have fun interacting with the important NPCs in the campaign.

Yes, that can be a huge problem. I just do not think its really appealing to create characters for APs. When creating characters for the Savage Tide, we were very thrilled to do some pirate stuff. But of course, you get carried away. While it is fun to plan to have a ship of your own one day, that fun lessens once your DM tells you: "Yeah, you will be able to travel around on a ship for sometime during the Campaign" ... so, it does not matter wether I am motivated to do that for my character I will get a ship, even if I am a dwarven fighter? Oh well, but I do see the high points in playing APs. It is just not really my cup of tea. (We abondened Savage Tide after a short time, but that was for out of game reasons)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

From a player's point of view, I generally like the Adventure Paths, because there is an ongoing storyline. It makes it easier to interact with the game world, because certain NPCs and spaces usually stay constant.
A good DM with some time on his hand could achieve the same, but it's hard to get these two things together (at least in my group, where everybody has regular work taking most of their day time - and not everybody is a good DM )

The Age of Worms and the Shackled City adventure path both posed some problems to it, at least in the beginning. Age of Worms stayed deadly, I think (one character death per session is expected), but Shackled City stabilized once we got a mostly balanced party (as far as a Fighter, Ranger and Bard plus Barbarian cohort and a Cleric can be considered "balanced". )
(The death in AoW appear not to be related to our character levels or party composition. It is just that deadly. )

 

[Flynn]

Take Greyhawk for example, Mordenkainen and most of the other "epic" heroes are only just above 20th level and they are all old and wise adventurers with decades of experience behind them. Unfortunately, after playing one of the adventure paths, those teenaged upstarts and apprentices can rival the power of a campaign setting's most powerful NPCs in less than a year. This is mostly a system problem. 3E advances WAY too quickly and that problem really shows when it comes to adventure paths.

In my opinion, this is not a failing in 3E game mechanically, as it can happen in previous editions of D&D. (There's a nice thread here that demonstrates this fact very well, by comparing 1E advancement to 3E advancement over the course of 1E modules. Advancement is pretty comparable until 10th level, where advancement in 1E slows down to half that of 3E). Instead, I would posit that this result is based on pacing, and most APs and mega-modules do not make pacing a focus in plot development. This is a GM skill/training or campaign/AP development issue, not a game mechanic issue.

With Regards,
Flynn

 

[clarkvalentine]

A somewhat radical option: In a mega-adventure that relies on being a certain level at a certain place in the plot, stop giving out XP and just have the PCs level up when appropriate. It's been working for my group for years now.

 

[takasi]

A somewhat radical option: In a mega-adventure that relies on being a certain level at a certain place in the plot, stop giving out XP and just have the PCs level up when appropriate. It's been working for my group for years now.

That's exactly what we're doing for Savage Tide (they're at 16th level right now). The players seem to enjoy this style.

I also tried doing this in an exploration-centric, Sword Coast Forgotten Realms game. We'll see how that one goes.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Just to add my own experiences, A friend of mine solo'd me through the now infamous Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil. I played two characters, and we collectively controlled three NPC cohorts.


Spoilers ahead...















Once you get into the guts of the adventure, there are 15 or 16 levels of pure dungeon crawl as you delve deeper and deeper into a series of mines. My DM and I found this absolutely tedious beyond belief. So, in lieu of exploring each and every nook and cranny to level, he was more than happy to allow me to leave and explore his own plot that he had on the go while we were inside the dungeon.

The funniest way we dealt with the situation was when we encountered some kind of scorpion-demon (?) who was all hell-bent on revenge against some guy on the lower levels. Like good heroes, we, um... let him go. Through the rest of the dungeon. Killing everything in its path. And what's more, because of 3.0's damage reduction rules, nothing on the lower levels could conceivably kill it on their own.

Mind you, these are the same heroes who ate the apple on the dark altar and survived the soul-sucking of another one after activating it with the four elemental items... and got a +4 holy falchion as a reward for the deaths of the random NPCs and monsters around...

WORST ADVENTURE EVER!

For me that is no joke. That module soured me on mega adventures forever and burned me out on d20 for a couple years.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

duplicate.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

IMO, runniing the APs and keeping up with the encounter challenges isn't the problem, it's the time in which the APs happen that warps all bounds of reality and campaign cohesion.

Almost all APs (especially the Dungeon magazine ones), happen in a span of a few months. If I'm not badly mistaken, Age of Worms occurs in under a year of campaign time with one adventure leading into another with little room (as to time or XP) to throw in more than a few sideline adventures. I'm sorry, but a 20-year old 20th-level character is ridiculous and destroys the verisimilitude of every game world ever published and the mechanics of the game system itself.

Take Greyhawk for example, Mordenkainen and most of the other "epic" heroes are only just above 20th level and they are all old and wise adventurers with decades of experience behind them. Unfortunately, after playing one of the adventure paths, those teenaged upstarts and apprentices can rival the power of a campaign setting's most powerful NPCs in less than a year. This is mostly a system problem. 3E advances WAY too quickly and that problem really shows when it comes to adventure paths.

I found this to be a problem for me as well.