What I'm looking for in commercial adventures

[Skyscraper]

I actaully try to challenge both our authors and us in-house at Paizo to keep things interesting with the Adventure Paths by mixing things up, and by adding some sort of new element to each one. This not only keeps us interested (which is important!), but helps to constantly expand what an Adventure Path is.

Thanks for your input, it's nice to hear this. I mean, most companies might declare this in writing, but in effect the product doesn't reflect this mentality because the approach is too consevative. The greatest example is the tendancy towards bluckbuster movies in Hollywood presently, at the expense of the lower-income quality movies that still exist but in lower numbers. (Quality is of course completely subjective here, I won't even try to insinuate the contrary.)

But in your case, you actually back up the statement with the product. Nicely done. Weren't you guys the first to bring in Adventure Paths at the outset? If not the actual inventors of the concept, to my knowledge you were the first to make it so popular. Anyway, hats off to the courage of innovation.

Sky

 

[IronWolf]

Can you elaborate a bit more? I'm debating whether to keep the subscription after Kingmaker is done.

Heh! I was debating the same thing, considering skipping Serpent's Skull since we are just now getting ramped up to start Kingmaker. But now I am wondering if I should keep the AP sub for some of the other mechanics Paizo is hacking on...

 

[Morrus]

Weren't you guys the first to bring in Adventure Paths at the outset? If not the actual inventors of the concept, to my knowledge you were the first to make it so popular.

I think Weis & Hickman might object to that characterization!

 

[renau1g]

Ok, maybe instead of calling it the most popular, the first non-super-railroaded one? IIRC wasn't the ones that followed the Dragonlance books some of the worst modules in the history of the game?

 

[renau1g]

Heh! I was debating the same thing, considering skipping Serpent's Skull since we are just now getting ramped up to start Kingmaker. But now I am wondering if I should keep the AP sub for some of the other mechanics Paizo is hacking on...

I would like to see P-cats writing though and like the idea of supporting a fellow enworlder, which is also why I've purchased ToH for 4e. I liked Ari's writing from his novels so I would like to see his adventure writing.

 

[Skyscraper]

I think Weis & Hickman might object to that characterization!

Yeah, I'm completely off-road with my attempt at putting a fence around that concept, heh. Series of modules have existed for quite some time.

How can the first (was it pre-WotC Dungeon Magazine? Man, that memory is not improving over the years) APs be defined? Was it their presentation and the level of intimacy between all modules?

Anyway, I had not seen the likes of it before Shackled City and company came out. Then again, perhaps very similar ones were already being produced and I was not aware of it.

Sky

 

[Saeviomagy]

I want an adventure that consists of a master timeline (as a day-by-day calendar that I tick off as days expire, and with hour-by-hour checklists for especially busy days), with level-variable (ie - encounters that still work if the PCs are a level higher or lower than the module assumes) encounters for the time-based events.

Additionally it will have a series of encounter locations that the PCs can initiate of their own accord.

Finally it should have a detailed home city that the PCs will remain in and remember even after the adventure is done, and that gets reused in a series of such adventures (so once you've bought the series, you have several in-game years of this home city evolving and being effected by the threats that arise).

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

For me, there are two types of modules I would buy:

Type A: Side-trek style for a grab off the shelf and run with little prep. This should be a small, focused set of encounters and characters that is pretty self-contained. Prefer the use of location based descriptions instead of a train of predesigned encounters, and incorperation of the '3 clues' rule
P-Kitty's 'Of Sound Mind' is an excellent example of this.

Type B: sand-box set-up with a major plot, the starting places for the major players, and enough detail to run it from there. A great example is the CP2020 module 'Chrome Berets'.. I have never seen it done better. This requires more prep time from the DM and often involves the DM determining the encounters on the fly as the players interact with the setup.
The Chrome Berets module did include a time-table of events that would happen regardless of the PCs involvement.


In either case, I want them detailed enough to let me be lazy, but not so detailed that I have to shoehorn them into my game world.

I would really like to see a 'module' that details a large city with various guild and noble factions, setting up not an adventure but a campaign based within the city walls. Hammerfast was a good start towards this, but the specificity limits its use.

 

[Morrus]

Yeah, I'm completely off-road with my attempt at putting a fence around that concept, heh. Series of modules have existed for quite some time.

How can the first (was it pre-WotC Dungeon Magazine? Man, that memory is not improving over the years) APs be defined? Was it their presentation and the level of intimacy between all modules?

Anyway, I had not seen the likes of it before Shackled City and company came out. Then again, perhaps very similar ones were already being produced and I was not aware of it.

Sky

Well, Dragonlance certainly met every definition of an AP that I can think of. A single, tight, continuous story over a dozen or more linked adventures. That was 20 years before Shackled City, etc.

And yes, these were certainly pre-WotC Dungeon Magazine by a couple of decades; they were pre-WotC's very existence!

There were other shorter linked series before that, and there have been others of varying lengths since that, but I think Dragonlance stands up as a solid example of an early adventure path. Opinions on its quality are fairly devisive (it was quite railroady), but it was certainly an entire campaign from 1st-18th level or so, with a single story divided into a series of adventures - which is, as far as I can tell - the definition of an adventure path.

Things like Night Below (which you could buy as a boxed set) qualify also. There were quite a lot long before Shackled City and Age of Worms.

 

[renau1g]

I do think Paizo's excellent work on Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tide really did a lot to popularize the AP's though.