Paizo Ends Pathfinder Adventure Path Softcovers, Switching to Quarterly Model

Paizo is ending its line of monthly Pathfinder Adventure Paths, with a new quarterly hardcover replacing the long-running product. Paizo announced the change yesterday on its blog, with the shift beginning next year. The new hardcover Adventure Paths will be a minimum of 256 pages and will have a retail price of $79.99, which is cheaper than the cost of purchasing four softcover adventure paths. Paizo also stated that they'll release one Adventure Path starting at Level 1, another ending at Level 20, with the remaining two falling somewhere in between. Each Adventure Path will cover 9-10 levels of play.

The first two Adventure Paths announced for this format are Hellbreakers and Hell's Destiny, which both cover the upcoming war between Andoran and Cheliax.

The Pathfinder Adventure Paths series started as an evolution of Paizo's monthly Pathfinder magazine series. To date, Paizo has released 222 Pathfinder Adventure Paths. Early Pathfinder Adventure Paths were for campaigns that lasted six issues and typically encompassed Level 1-Level 20 play. However, more recently, the Adventure Path structure has shortened and grown more flexible, with shorter length campaigns with more variable levels of play.

 

[Reynard]

Maybe, I know that supplemental material had its detractors because they felt like it was less adventure. Part of where the “APs meant to be read not played” meme nonsense comes from.

I'm not sure it was "meme nonsense." In an exchange on the forums where I said that the wordiness of the APs made them harder to run, James Jacobs replied directly and said that many customers only ever read them and so the prose was important.

 

[payn]

I'm not sure it was "meme nonsense." In an exchange on the forums where I said that the wordiness of the APs made them harder to run, James Jacobs replied directly and said that many customers only ever read them and so the prose was important.

Yes running every AP to a subscriber would be difficult in finding the time but reading them wouldn’t. I feel some context of this exchange is likely missing.

 

[Reynard]

Yes running every AP to a subscriber would be difficult in finding the time but reading them wouldn’t. I feel some context of this exchange is likely missing.

I said "Why are the APs so wordy? It would be easier to run there were more bullet points and fewer walls of text."

He said "A lot of our customers buy APs to read them so they are written for that purpose."

I don't think it is controversial to say that in general APs (and D&D adventures too) are not optimized for play in how they are written.