NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Starfox" data-source="post: 6713640" data-attributes="member: 2303">Words of wisdom!The bye-in is essential. When I present an adventure path campaign, I don't keep secrets about it, and I don't allow players many initial secrets either. My intro to my current Wrath of the Righteous adventure path ran something like this: This is troupe play, it is about crusaders and mercenaries facing of against hordes and hordes of demons. The adventures are geared towards paladins. You will mostly have NPCs scouting for you, and casters can expect most enemies to have spell resistance. For this game I got 1 barbarian, 2 rangers, 2 paladins (one went to America to be with his wife, the other later retconned to oracle), and one fighter. Thus, I ended up with no actual paladins, but the group is still very suitable for the missions. Alignments are NG, LG, and LN. The players all bought into the concept and really hate demons and their ilk.For adventure 2 in this path, the players have a patron. The adventure presents this patron as very humble. Beginning the monologue that was supposed to recruit them, I got interrupted pretty early with "You got us at 'killing demons'. Just point the way!". My problem has had more to do with holding the players back from charging everything. Even in an adventure path focused on demons, there are moments when you're expected to talk.In another game set in the future-fantasy Dragonstar setting, the players were all soldiers. Each adventure was a mission, orders came from headquarters. You can go, or you can face court martial. As this was all a part of the premise of the campaign, we all had a blast. One of my more successful games.So, my answer is; everything lies in the bye-in. Be honest and sell the campaign for what it is, and adventure path about this and that. Try and avoid bait-and-switch, where the campaign starts on one leg and then shifts to something else entirely. This is actually a big problem with some published adventure paths; Savage Tide (which actually does this at least twice, depending on how you count), Jade Emperor, and parts 4 and 5 of Crimson Throne being prime examples. Encourage the players to make characters invested in the story - in Pazio adventure paths campaign traits help with this. If you do the foundations right, the rest will not be a problem.</blockquote>

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