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Message: <blockquote data-quote="amnuxoll" data-source="post: 5067380" data-attributes="member: 13028">I own all the Adventure Path books and have read them all *except* Crimson Throne which a friend of mine is currently running for us.  So, I have played Crimson Throne.  I've also DMed Legacy of Fire (see below).I want to preface by saying that _all_ of these APs are good and I'd be happy to run any of them.  But, some are better than others.  Based on my experience, I rank them in the following order from best to worst:1.  Crimson ThroneI may be biased here since I have a great DM and I can let my imagination fill in gaps that I'd notice if I were the DM.  But we are having a great time with this one.  It's a city-based campaign with a lot of intrigue and plot twists.   I've noticed that the standing opinion on the web is that this is the best.  Incidentally, we're running it with a significantly customized version of Iron Heroes rules.  2.  Council of ThievesThe final volume of this one isn't out yet but I'm pretty confident the path is a winner unless that last book is a dud.  Like Crimsom Throne, it's a city-based campaign that keeps the PCs guessing and toys with the characters' minds and egos a bit.  It does a better job of mixing things up than Throne does.  There is a play built into the second act that could either make or break the campaign so I don't recommend it unless you have avid roleplayers in your group.  I rank it behind Throne because of the iffy-ness of the play and because it starts off somewhat "meh".  If you run this, start with book 2.3.  Legacy of FireI DMed this last Summer...or part of it anyway.  If I was ranking these APs solely on flavor, Legacy wins by a wide margin.  It's a wonderfully immersive setting.  Unfortunately, it ends poorly.  The first three mods are great.  By the time you get to the latter half of book 4 the players begin to realize how the story is going to end and that kind of ruined it for my group since the mystery was gone it just turns into a series of good but not great dungeon crawls in books 5 & 6.  Easy to fix though.  If I ran it again I'd just put the final fight from book 6 into book 4 and leave book 5 out altogether.  If I did that, then this one becomes my favorite AP instead of 3rd place, so it's definitely worth playing.  (Incidentally, if you'd like to run it with D&D 4e I've converted much of it to that system.)4.  Rise of the RunelordsThis was the first one they did as Paizo and it's clear that they were under the gun and trying a little too hard to make it awesome.  The story feels disconnected like six separate stories rather than one connected arc.  However, those six stories are rather good.  I could see a really excellent campaign falling out of just taking one or two of the books and building a campaign around that.5.  Second DarknessThis doesn't feel like it will drag the players into the story the way the other APs do.  The story poses an "end of the world" scenario as a motivation for the PCs but a) it's not made completely clear to the PCs right away and b) it feels cliché.   I can see the players wondering a lot "What are we doing again?  And why are we doing this?"  If they go ahead and follow through there are some good parts to it.  Also, it's an awesome alternative way to present the drow race.</blockquote>

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