So, how exactly does and Adventure Path work?

[Shadowslayer]

I'm totally uninitiated to this fairly recent phenomenon, so I'm curious about a few things. My game store doesn't carry them, and I've never seen one to flip through it, hence the questions.

I realize what an adventure path is...a sequential bunch of adventures with an overall theme that will take a game up to X level, and basically constitutes a whole campaign. My question in a nutshell, is how do they get a party from 1st to 20th without railroading anyone? How much leeway is there to be had and still stay on track?

I've never been a railroad DM. My world is never cut and dried at the start of the campaign. I tend to start out with a general world-view, basic starting area, include some encounters and enough adventure to keep us going for a couple weeks, and a raft of adventure seeds. Then I write more depending on what directions the players seem to gravitate towards.

Unfortunately, I don't have time for a lot of this prep these days and am finding it harder and harder to DM this way. I'm thinking of giving adventure paths or adventure chains a look.

My first DM, back in the old days, always had the next string of adventures planned. (His path read like a D&D's greatest hits montage!) We started at Saltmarsh, battled the lizards, then the Sauhaugin, then did Baltron's Beacon...and on and on working up to Ravenloft, Ravenloft 2 and then Deserts of Desolation series. It never felt like a railroad. We were just easy to please and always bit the hooks.

Do current adventure paths assume this level of co-operation from the players. or are they designed with a lots of room for variations?

 

[Shroomy]

For the most part, they assume a level of cooperation between the players and the DM, at least in terms of the main plot. However, there is usually so much supplementary material that you can easily design other, shorter plots, that are much more personalized to the players' wishes.

 

[Steel_Wind]

An Adventure Path - any AP - requires a certain amont of rail-roading and active cooperation of the players to ignore the man behind the curtain to ensure that the PCs proceed along the campaign, in the general direction that is intended.

To some players and DMS, this is not a big issue. To some others, this is anathema. Guaging where you and your players fit along that spectrum is essential to your determination to run (or not run) an AP.

The Paizo APs are, after all, pre-set campaigns, from 1st to 20th (21st, even) level. It is a significant time commitment.

That does not mean that DM cannot go off script and accommodate new player ideas or modify the campaign to the DMs liking; however, if your group's gaming style is pure improvisation, you are not going to be happy with running a pre-canned module, let alone something as complex as a 650 page AP.

I know of players that are so opposed to "pre-set modules" that they will actively try to break an adventure the moment they determine that they are playing in one. There is no point debating if this is rational or not and which play style is "better" than the other.

It is what it is.

Suffice to say that there are some play styles that simply do not mix well at all no matter how hard you try. It is up to the DM to determine what works best for their own campaign and choose accordingly.

 

[Morrus]

Well, I'm assuming you know how a pre-written module plays out? Just imagine playing 12 or so of those in a row. They could be just 12 random modules you liked the look of, but in this case they're all connected in order.

By nature, like any published adventure, it's pre-written. Each adventure will be a saparate "unit" in its own right. The overall plot is predetermined (although it could have a large scope for variation, branches, different routes or even endings). It's usually posisble to just play a single module at random as an adventure in its own right, and most in an adventure path (or "Campaign Saga" ) will provide easy linking methods and hooks at the start and end of each.

 

[blargney the second]

You can always just ask your players if they want to play the adventure path.

 

[Raloc]

I find the APs are great to use for material for "freeform" type campaigns (I run mine pretty much the same way: I have an overarching story, but most of the campaign is dictated by which directions the PCs decide to explore). The latest issue has a really cool insectoid thing with an illithid-like head, really freaky. IMC, the PCs are currently looking for a portal to one of the the BBEG's fortress. The information they gained said it was "under" a lake. Some of the players assumed it meant it's at the bottom, while my more astute players realize the truth: It's literally under the lake, far far under in this case in the Lowerdark. They don't know the precise location yet, and are at the moment on the way to said lake. Eventually, I'll have them contact a certain guide that knows that area and is available for hire (might require something other than monetary reimbursement) far north of the lake. Anyway, for one reason or another, they will basically have to travel north (to Skullport, in fact, which will be their new "home base" city (they're mostly evil)) and then find the guide, and travel in the Underdark the full way back to the area with the lake. I'm going to put various adventures in between them so that they're ready for this particular BBEG (he's one of the lower ones in the hierarchy of the campaign) and the guardians of his fortress (a custom type of construct that I invented for the campaign). I can't wait to unleash a bunch of those insect squid things on them in one/some of the intermediary adventures. I know none of them get Dungeon, so it will be a nice surprise when I go, "You see this!"

 

[BlackMoria]

Adventure Paths deal with the railroad issue by using a 'carrot and stick' approach.

The 'carrot' is to try to make a compelling storyline that the players want to engage in the story. It does this by making friendly NPCs that, hopefully, the party becomes attached to. These NPC become plot devices by providing info, clues or quests and in some cases, become targets of the BBEG, requiring PC intervention to save their friend or mentor.

The 'stick' is consequences. Most APs have a threat that is very real and must be dealt with or very bad things happen. In Shackled City, the city of Cauldron will be destroyed and the Yugoloths will gain a significant foothold in the game world. In Age of Worm, the return of Kyuss will herald in a dark, malevolent era of undead and worms throughout the world.

Basically, if the PCs turn their back on the goings on, things degrade and get dire real quick, which impacts the game world. Designers of the APs generally go on the premise that the PCs want to stop this. Of course, if your players don't give a tinker's damn about the game world, then an AP is probably not a good idea for them.

Its a railroad without being a railroad by offering choices within the context of the plot. Most APs don't really care how Villain A gets stopped, as long as Villain A gets stopped before he completes his bit part in the Grand Plot of Doom.

 

[Shadowslayer]

You can always just ask your players if they want to play the adventure path.

Heh...yes I could. But I want to determine whether I myself want to run one. I just wondered how they work.

Thanks all for the replies.