Pathfinder 2E Pathfinder 2e: is it RAW or RAI to always take 10 minutes and heal between encounters?

[kayman]

I read you thread and this leaves me with two choices , agreeing with what you said or trust my own experience running it and the professional work of James Jacobs ( James Jacobs - PathfinderWiki) I sincerely choose the latter.

Synopsis of my opinion: Abomination Vaults is a poorly constructed dungeon crawl with no relevant background, character motivation, or urgency. It features inconsequential encounters, tiny rooms that don't allow good tactical movement, illogical design and layout that was trashed in the editorial stages, and absent of any sort of clues of what is inside.

It is little more than a collection of rooms with no purpose to tie them together, no motivation to go on the quest, no urgency for the plot. It's an assembly of meaningless encounters, forced into a Gamemastery flip-mat design ill-suited for a megadungeoN

I for example dont agree with a single word of you statment.

IF the devs allowed i would like to respond in portuguese.

 

[kayman]

I mean, or you could accept that it has flaws, particularly from the subjective viewpoint of that group and their way of playing the game, that won't necessarily matter for you.

I love the guys, gals, and nonbinary pals at paizo quite a bit, but your arguments are just straight up appeals to authority.

This coming from a fairly ardent defender of the system

Acknowledge experience is completely different than defend authority

 

[kayman]

I mean, or you could accept that it has flaws, particularly from the subjective viewpoint of that group and their way of playing the game, that won't necessarily matter for you.

I love the guys, gals, and nonbinary pals at paizo quite a bit, but your arguments are just straight up appeals to authority.

This coming from a fairly ardent defender of the system.

I am an Anarcho Syndicalist who base my ideas on Hume Russell and Chomsky , so please let us stay in the RPG realm

 

[kayman]

I work in different world that you , I am a teacher in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro so please dont try to lecture me about the struggle against autorythy , violence , racism , etc.

 

[GreyLord]

This is really off-topic, but it seems to be how the thread is going.

I'm NOT a fan of PF2e currently. That said, I DID enjoy running Abomination Vaults as an AP for our group when we gave it a second try. There are some flaws with 2e that I think make it not appeal to me (meaning it may not be a bad system at all, could be really good, just a bad fit for me currently...who knows if it will be in the future or not), but I actually liked Abomination Vaults. It kind of goes with the flow of an old style type Dungeon Crawler.

Some of those (from D&D's past) were far more random and wierd than AV was).

I'm obviously not an expert on PF2e or it's APs, so...not much to contribute here. Just wanted to say, even if people see it as flawed, and it very well could be compared to most modern APs, I enjoyed AV myself.

 

[MaskedGuy]

I've been enjoying running Abomination Vaults, currently up to level 6 of the dungeon.

I do have nitpicks about it, but I kinda feel like deadliness is part of megadungeons more or less.

 

[Philip Benz]

I haven't played Abomination Vaults, and am purposefully avoiding reading any of it the wistful hope that one of my players will put on the DM hat and run it one of these days.

This said, from a plethora of comments I've picked up, it sounds like an old-school dungeon crawl of the PMT variety (in French, PMT= Porte, Monstre, Trésor, or "door, monster, treasure"). This can be great fun, if that's what you're looking for. But I do understand what Retreater is saying when he bemoans, "a poorly constructed dungeon crawl with no relevant background, character motivation, or urgency". Those are some of the things I'm constantly looking for in RPGs, and which I usually have to add in, when I adapt pre-written adventures.

An example from my current campaign: I've adapted to PF2 parts of books 2 & 3 of the old PF1 AP, Serpent's Skull. In book 3, the lost city of Saventh-Yhi has a great map, and quite an interesting assortment of inhabitants, I think of it as an open-air dungeon crawl. But it suffers from the same lack that Retreater is talking about. I had to create clues, mysteries to solve, intrigue with rival groups, and character motivations from whole cloth. The end result is very, very far from what's written on the pages of this AP. Which is fine, I love spicing things up with hidden lore and dark secrets. But the point is, all that is stuff you might expect a recent adventure to offer, straight out of the box.

I hope that if one of my players does ever get round to running Abomination Vaults, he does add in clues, motivations and mysteries. It would be a lot more fun that way.

 

[payn]

I haven't played Abomination Vaults, and am purposefully avoiding reading any of it the wistful hope that one of my players will put on the DM hat and run ot one of these days.

This said, from a plethora of comments I've picked up, it sounds like an old-school dungeon crawl of the PMT variety (in French, PMT= Porte, Monstre, Trésor, or "door, monster, treasure"). This can be great fun, if that's what you're looking for. But I do understand what Retreater is saying when he bemoans, "a poorly constructed dungeon crawl with no relevant background, character motivation, or urgency". Those are some of the things I'm constantly looking for in RPGs, and which I usually have to add in, when I adapt pre-written adventures.

An example from my current campaign: I've adapted to PF2 parts of books 2 & 3 of the old PF1 AP, Serpent's Skull. In book 3, the lost city of Saventh-Yhi has a great map, and quite an interesting assortment of inhabitants, I think of it as an open-air dungeon crawl. But it suffers from the same lack that Retreater is talking about. I had to create clues, mysteries to solve, intrigue with rival groups, and character motivations from whole cloth. The end result is very, very far from what's written on the pages of this AP. Which is fine, I love spicing things up with hidden lore and dark secrets. But the point is, all that is stuff you might expect a recent adventure to offer, straight out of the box.

I hope that if one of my players does ever get round to running Abomination Vaults, he does add in clues, motivations and mysteries. It would be a lot more fun that way.

I have ran many APs (I played in Serpent Skull and it was one of the worst for the things you say) and everyone of them required a bit of effort to make into a great adventure. The better ones supply you with ample story and tools to bring the AP to life. Sometimes the issue is with encounters, however, so those need adjustment too. The Paizo sub-forums were invaluable as a GM. I'd recommend you suggest your friend check that out for their AP prep. (You may need to look at Discord for this advice because I don't know if folks go to paizo much anymore).

 

[Retreater]

I for example dont agree with a single word of you statment.

IF the devs allowed i would like to respond in portuguese.

I can read only in English, but I could try Google translate. I do appreciate your comments, even if my experience with the AP is different than yours.
I don't take pleasure in prepping and running a game that isn't fun at the table, which is the experience both of my groups had with Age of Ashes and Abomination Vaults.
I have gathered that AV suffered in the editing (something James Jacobs eluded to in forum posts.)
An adventure that doesn't click with a group can spell the end of a group trying a system, particularly if it's early in the lifecycle of the edition. I've seen this with 4e as well.
Yes, a DM/GM can heavily tailor an adventure for their group. That is extra challenging to do for an AP, because it's difficult to see how all the parts go together. Had I known everything about AV, had access to all the reviews, forum posts, etc, I could've made it better. But at that point, it would've been easier to write my own adventure.

 

[MaskedGuy]

This said, from a plethora of comments I've picked up, it sounds like an old-school dungeon crawl of the PMT variety (in French, PMT= Porte, Monstre, Trésor, or "door, monster, treasure"). This can be great fun, if that's what you're looking for. But I do understand what Retreater is saying when he bemoans, "a poorly constructed dungeon crawl with no relevant background, character motivation, or urgency". Those are some of the things I'm constantly looking for in RPGs, and which I usually have to add in, when I adapt pre-written adventures.

Well thing is... I disagree with take there is no character motivation or urgency.

There is pretty much smoking gun pointed at city and pretty strong reason to look into it