Modules, it turns out, apparently DO sell

[Jack99]

what Monte Cook of dungeonaday.com and Wolfgang Baur at Kobold Quarterly give their customers at a charge - treating them as patrons with exclusive rights to communicate with the module authors - is given to you at Paizo for free.

As a patron of Open Design, you get much more than exclusive rights to communicate with the module authors. Saying Paizo gives their customers for free the same as Open Design charges for, seems very odd.

Do you have any experience as a patron?

 

[BryonD]

As a patron of Open Design, you get much more than exclusive rights to communicate with the module authors. Saying Paizo gives their customers for free the same as Open Design charges for, seems very odd.

Do you have any experience as a patron?

He stated a specific thing. Are you you saying the other don't charge for it? (I honestly don't know) or are you saying Paizo doesn't share it for free?

 

[Dannager]

I feel like the information your talking about is or isn't brought into the play experience by the individual DM and how much he wants to use it...

I've run a number of Pathfinder adventures, and I have to agree that I will often run across background information in the text (or even non-background stuff) that makes it more difficult for me to run the adventure as written. All of this fantastic story material is provided that is practically impossible for the players to discover during the course of normal play. This can lead to really odd, confusing moments such as that in Burnt Offerings where the PCs stand an almost inevitable chance of witnessing a sack of pickles fly out of a goblin tower. In actuality, the pickles were tossed out by a pair of goblin pickle thieves who assume they've been caught when they hear the alarm raised, but there's absolutely no way for the PCs to actually discover this (the only clue being that one of the pickle barrels has a hole in it). Sure, this is solid, amusing stuff to read if you're just browsing through the modules, but it certainly lends them a feeling of the adventure having been written to be read, rather than to be played. I have to imagine that a pretty significant chunk of Paizo's subscriber base is people who stand practically no chance of actually getting a group together and running a game, but like to imagine what it would be like to do just that while reading through the adventures.

 

[Imaro]

I've run a number of Pathfinder adventures, and I have to agree that I will often run across background information in the text (or even non-background stuff) that makes it more difficult for me to run the adventure as written. All of this fantastic story material is provided that is practically impossible for the players to discover during the course of normal play. This can lead to really odd, confusing moments such as that in Burnt Offerings where the PCs stand an almost inevitable chance of witnessing a sack of pickles fly out of a goblin tower. In actuality, the pickles were tossed out by a pair of goblin pickle thieves who assume they've been caught when they hear the alarm raised, but there's absolutely no way for the PCs to actually discover this (the only clue being that one of the pickle barrels has a hole in it). Sure, this is solid, amusing stuff to read if you're just browsing through the modules, but it certainly lends them a feeling of the adventure having been written to be read, rather than to be played. I have to imagine that a pretty significant chunk of Paizo's subscriber base is people who stand practically no chance of actually getting a group together and running a game, but like to imagine what it would be like to do just that while reading through the adventures.

Take this with a grain of salt, as I haven't actually read Burnt Offerings... but if you wanted that to be brought to the attention of the PC's why not have one of the goblins at the window while the other is hollering in Goblin about being caught and stolen pickles. Now granted if none of your players speak goblin this won't work but I believe with some imagination it's not hard to bring out the info you want the players to know in an adventure.

 

[Dannager]

Take this with a grain of salt, as I haven't actually read Burnt Offerings... but if you wanted that to be brought to the attention of the PC's why not have one of the goblins at the window while the other is hollering in Goblin about being caught and stolen pickles. Now granted if none of your players speak goblin this won't work but I believe with some imagination it's not hard to bring out the info you want the players to know in an adventure.

Well, that's sort of my point - as written, this is not something the goblins do. You can, as a DM, use a bit of foresight to anticipate that the information given isn't enough to give the PCs an idea of what exactly was going on, and then embellish or add interactions to compensate, but this is not something that the adventure itself explicitly encourages. This is a clear example of something being written for the reader, rather than for the DM or player. The PCs experience the barest shell of this interaction and are unaware of the full story. The DM does not have the chance to explain (without stepping out from behind the 4th wall) what exactly has occurred, but the reader knows all of it.

 

[Dark Mistress]

For me personally, if I can't get through reading an adventure... I don't want to run it. I know if I find it a boring, slog-fest to read... more than likely it's going to play out that way with my players as well, and I won't be excited to run it.

This I agree whole-heartedly with!

/M

I agree completely with that as well.

 

[James Jacobs]

Bloating an adventure with stuff that the PCs will never have a chance to learn is bad adventure design. The worst case example is something like: "This room was once a treasury, and it contained all manner of wondrous items and loot, including a talking robotic parrot who could fly and could recite poetry that granted bonuses to Wisdom-based abilities. Alas, looters have long since taken all of this treasure, and it is now an empty room with no clue to its previous use." There's been plenty of adventures that pull this stunt, and I try to make sure that no Paizo adventure ever tries it.

In fact, we try really hard to make sure that if we put in a lot of cool backstory to something that somehow there's a way for the PCs to learn that info. In a lot of cases, PCs will skip that stuff simply because they're not interested, but providing all that info is necessary so that when a player DOES pull a fast one and speaks with dead on a minor NPC villain or puts a huge number of ranks into knowledge skills and always wants to use them or the like, the information is there for the GM to provide.

We don't always pull it off. Authors love going on a bit too much about the secret parts of their adventures; I'm certainly no exception! But it's still important to give the GM cues in the text of the adventure as to how the PCs can learn about these things.

Most (I belive all, but I could be wrong) of our adventure paths have some sort of encounter or NPC in the last installment that is accompanied by text that says something like "You can use this NPC to answer any lingering questions the PCs have about the Adventure Path before you head into the final encounters."

As for things like the goblins and the pickles... there are plenty of ways for PCs to learn about that if they're not just stabbing goblins. They could sneak into the lair and watch the goblins, in which case details like "kill-gull" and the pickle scandal are there for GMs to use as things the PCs learn by spying. They could learn about the theft by charming a goblin or intimidating it or otherwise giving a goblin a hard time; babbling about stolen pickles is a great way for a GM to give a goblin some chatter for the PCs to enjoy. And at the very least, it DOES provide entertaining reading, and if there are parts of our adventures that only the GM ever truly gets to enjoy, I'm actually fine with that. GMs need to have fun too, after all!

 

[Imaro]

Well, that's sort of my point - as written, this is not something the goblins do. You can, as a DM, use a bit of foresight to anticipate that the information given isn't enough to give the PCs an idea of what exactly was going on, and then embellish or add interactions to compensate, but this is not something that the adventure itself explicitly encourages. This is a clear example of something being written for the reader, rather than for the DM or player. The PCs experience the barest shell of this interaction and are unaware of the full story. The DM does not have the chance to explain (without stepping out from behind the 4th wall) what exactly has occurred, but the reader knows all of it.

And I guess my point is that there is no way for an adventure writer to know what will and will not interest a particular group. Personally, as long as I can think of ways for the information and details to be relayed, then I would rather have interesting stuff to pick from... rather than nothing at all, or only the barest minimum. I think you also miss the category of DM who doesn't run a module as written but instead modifies and makes from it what he wants, for that type of DM the tidbit about pickles is a good thing because it sparks the imagination beyond simply figuring out how the goblins will kill the PC's.

I'm sorry but I don't believe in this "reader only" philosophy. The DM is the eyes and ears of the PC's in the game... the only information and details that are "Reader" only in an adventure... are those he chooses to make so.

 

[Wicht]

Well, that's sort of my point - as written, this is not something the goblins do. You can, as a DM, use a bit of foresight to anticipate that the information given isn't enough to give the PCs an idea of what exactly was going on, and then embellish or add interactions to compensate, but this is not something that the adventure itself explicitly encourages. This is a clear example of something being written for the reader, rather than for the DM or player. The PCs experience the barest shell of this interaction and are unaware of the full story. The DM does not have the chance to explain (without stepping out from behind the 4th wall) what exactly has occurred, but the reader knows all of it.

Personally, I find that when players witness things happening for which they have no explanation, (pickles flying out the window) they become more curious and wonder what is up. I've run that particular area twice now, once live and once for PbP. In the live game, the players intuitively leaped to the conclusion that the goblins with pickle juice all over them had been eating pickles but nothing more did they deduce iirc. Nevertheless, that extra bit of window dressing kept it from being, "you walk into a room. there are two goblins waiting. Like the last room." A little whimsy, in small doses, makes the story richer. In the PbP game, the goblins didn't hear the alarm and were in a pickle induced slumber and promptly got their heads bashed in by the barbarian.

And as Jacobs said, knowing some of what the goblins are doing helps if you have a group that wants to take prisoners (the barbarian cited above could have) and interogate them or if you have a group that wants to use diplomacy.

 

[smug]

I've run a number of Pathfinder adventures, and I have to agree that I will often run across background information in the text (or even non-background stuff) that makes it more difficult for me to run the adventure as written. All of this fantastic story material is provided that is practically impossible for the players to discover during the course of normal play. This can lead to really odd, confusing moments such as that in Burnt Offerings where the PCs stand an almost inevitable chance of witnessing a sack of pickles fly out of a goblin tower. In actuality, the pickles were tossed out by a pair of goblin pickle thieves who assume they've been caught when they hear the alarm raised, but there's absolutely no way for the PCs to actually discover this (the only clue being that one of the pickle barrels has a hole in it). Sure, this is solid, amusing stuff to read if you're just browsing through the modules, but it certainly lends them a feeling of the adventure having been written to be read, rather than to be played. I have to imagine that a pretty significant chunk of Paizo's subscriber base is people who stand practically no chance of actually getting a group together and running a game, but like to imagine what it would be like to do just that while reading through the adventures.

I've found the extra info to be really helpful, making it easier to decide how to play characters, etc, and add side-treks or additional subplots. If some of it's not used, well, that's the nature of background; I don't try to shoe-horn it all in. For me, Paizo's APs are the gold standard for modules I want to run, and when I run them, I flat-out love running them.