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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Olaf the Stout" data-source="post: 6232446" data-attributes="member: 13703">For me, I’ve found with the adventure paths a couple of things make them even better.  Beware, spoilers for the Shackled City and Age of Worms AP are below.1.  ForeshadowingWherever possible, the early adventures in the AP should be used to foreshadow things that are revealed later on the campaign.  The longer the gap between the foreshadowing and the reveal, the more impact it has, as it makes the players think “Wow, that was right in front of our faces this whole time.”One of the best moments in my Shackled City AP campaign was the Beholder showing up in the first adventure.  Just me putting the Beholder mini on the table had some of my players in shock, especially when they realised that it was an actual Beholder, and not some illusion.  Even better though was that, about 10 adventures later, the Beholder is revealed to be the party’s patron.Now some of my players were like “Aha!  I knew he was evil!” but that still didn’t make the reveal any less cool of a moment.  It also made the subsequent combat with the Beholder so much more than just another fight.Similarly, near the end of the Shackled City AP the PC’s face off against Hookface, an ancient red dragon.  Despite having never seen Hookface before the combat, this encounter was memorable because I’d foreshadowed his appearance numerous times during the campaign.  The party had hear rumours of a red dragon, had been told tales of an ancient red dragon that supposedly lived in the area, etc.  So by the time they spotted a massive red dragon in the air, they immediately knew who it was.2.  An effective way of giving the players the background informationThis is a bit of a harder one to do, but I’ve found that showing, rather than telling, the PC’s is the best way to achieve this and is very effective when done well.  Having a wealth of background information is all well and good, but it has so much more impact when it isn’t simply dumped on the players in slabs.My group is currently playing the Age of Worms AP.  In the current adventure they travel to the ancient city of Kuluth-Mar, which is where the main villain of the campaign rose to power centuries ago.  While there, the party experience several visions of what happened long ago.  They provide a lot really good background information but, at the same time, aren’t too detailed, and leave the PC’s with many unanswered questions.  So it pushes the players on to want to find out more.Similarly, in my Shackled City AP, a poster called delvesdeep wrote up a series of Haunted Dreams that the PC’s start having at night as the campaign goes on.  These dreams are pretty abstract and confusing to begin with but, over time, tell the backstory of how Adimarchus became trapped in his cage (sidenote: These dreams completely change the backstory of the campaign as it makes Adimarchus an angel who was set-up and tragically fell into madness due to betrayal.  In my opinion, they also make the campaign so much more awesome!).By starting out abstract, they intrigue the players as they try and figure out just what they mean.  As they go along it slowly fills them in on the backstory, so it isn’t dumped on them all in one hit.  It also invests them a lot more in the story.Those two things, to me, make a huge difference in making an AP feel like a massive sweeping campaign, rather than a series of connected adventures.</blockquote>

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