Oh great, now I angered a big fish...
I really don't mean any insult with the question. I admit I haven't read WotBS and realize now I might need to edit my question, possibly put it into the General Forums even.
I guess I meant to ask something along the lines of, "What are the best elements of professional adventures and paths that we can take away for our own games? How can we use them to get better? And what specifically have you taken away from published adventures in order to improve your game?"
lol, I'm sure you're fine. Notice Russ's winky smiley.
What Paizo has done a great job of is making sure they fire on all cylinders: interesting plot, interesting challenges, interesting characters, and interesting locations.
I can imagine them having four check boxes for every adventure, and taht they keep brainstorming until all four boxes are checked. Some authors tend to hew more to interesting challenges and locations, others go for characters and plot. When all four are original and compelling, well then you've got a great adventure.
Now I played a bit of Savage Tide and have read the more recent APs in order to mine inspiration, so I don't have tons of play experience to see if the following critique actually shows up in game. But for my tastes, early Paizo adventures, indeed most published adventures, have more filler combats than I would put in my games.
I recall with some remorse the thieves' headquarters at the end of the first Savage Tide adventure, which was a bit sprawling, and didn't have a driving tempo that I could see. The villains were cool, the overall idea of a half-flooded pirate-esque thieves guild was great, but the challenge came in the form of many small encounters, rather than making a few more dynamic encounters that require more than simply hacking at your opponents.
Recent Paizo offerings, though, have had much less of that, which I think is good. Most every combat now has a narrative purpose, instead of just being there to get the PCs experience points. For a storytelling-oriented DM like me, that's golden.
