Adventure pathing: Your thoughts?

[K]

So, when Paizo had Dungeon Magazine they had this thing where they'd run one adventure per issue that was part of a larger Meta-plot. Basically, it was a whole campaign in a series of issues. That's the Adventure Path (AP).

Now, the only other adventure that I can think of like an AP is Red Hand of Doom, but that's for 6-11. I haven't played any of he mega-adventures like Temple of Elemental Evil, but I assume they have the same range.

My question is: why doesn't anyone print an entire campaign? I mean, even Paizo dribbles them out over the course of a year (even now with their own line of APs).

How many pages could it take? Paizo's APs are filled to brim with fluff like pages and pages of fiction that is fvcking unrelated to the AP or adventure it was printed with and monster stat blocks, so how hard could be to spit out a 100 page softcover campaign for under $20 that uses mostly stock monsters and magic items?

[Avoraciopoctules]

I'm thinking that it's more lucrative to sell campaigns chopped into pieces. The price is somewhere around $20 for a Pathfinder adventure path chunk. 5 or 6 in each, plus flavor supplements, and you are probably making more money overall. You also get people buying 1 or 2 pieces when otherwise they might pass the whole thing up, and it is easier to spread a single campaign's worth of stuff over a large timeframe. Possibly better opportunities to tie the adventure in with your other content, though that's debatable.

That said:
http://www.sinisteradventures.com/index ... &Itemid=44

At least one studio working on huge "mega-adventures"

[Prak]

Well, hell, just looking at the Razor Coast adventure path on that site they seem really promising, but, I haven't looked at the actual adventure, so, honestly, I'm basing that opinion on the fact that Wayne Reynold's art is on the cover and it sounds really interesting. But hell, the adventure actually flat out sounds more interesting than any derivative tolkien flavoured bs adventure I've seen in Dungeon...

[TheFlatline]

Green Ronin did Black Sails over Freeport, which is a 3 or 4 act pirate campaign, with something like 5 or 6 full adventures per act. I think I paid 25 or 30 bucks for it way back when I first bought it.

It was an enjoyable professional campaign. Sort of non-linear in how you tackled objectives, fun to play a swashbuckling campaign, but the in-character dialog is ATROCIOUS. Like, cringe-worthy atrocious.

[Lich-Loved]

Well, hell, just looking at the Razor Coast adventure path on that site they seem really promising, but, I haven't looked at the actual adventure, so, honestly, I'm basing that opinion on the fact that Wayne Reynold's art is on the cover and it sounds really interesting. But hell, the adventure actually flat out sounds more interesting than any derivative tolkien flavoured bs adventure I've seen in Dungeon...

Nick Logue is the owner of Sinister Adventures. He is and has been a major contributor to Dungeon magazine, including writing a number of their Adventure Path modules. If you like Nick Logue's work, you like Dungeon adventures, at least in part. He and a guy by the name of Richard Pett are pretty extreme adventure writers known for putting edgy content into Dungeon adventures. They have a bit of a running gag on who can get the most extreme concepts/descriptions/whatever published.

Nick set off on his own about a year or so ago to start his own publishing company in an attempt to make it in the business. Sinister Adventures is one of his lines.

[Prak]

well, I don't think I ever saw much of the Dungeon adventure paths, and I may have over generalized, but Dungeon did have a lot of adventures that are what I described, derivative, overly tolkien toned crap.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Linear campaigns can end up almost completely useless when the players go completely off the rails. IMO it's better to have smaller chapters that can be used as stand-alone adventures but which also have some mind-blowing meta-plot tying them together.

[Username17]

The longer the script goes, the less likely it will be useful to the end. People will want to d other things, players will leave town, the game will peter out.

But beyond that, games rarely survive transforming from tier to tier. That is, when you get to a satisfying breakpoint in the hero's journey, it is natural to want to put "the end" into the book and put it down. Some players will want to start up a new book with the same characters right away, but a number of people will want to do something else for a while - and that's a real campaign killer.

A serious problem that most versions of D&D have is that the breaks between tiers are not obviously the same from one player to another. A Wizard jumps tiers when he starts conjuring and decides to start playing a strategy game as a wizard king - but depending on spell selection that could be anywhere from 7th level to 17th. For every 7th level wizard who packs in the animate dead and charm monster to start his own sub party of ass kickers, there's a Wizard who went all the way to 13th level so he could get delayed blast fireball and nuke even harder. So where "The End" is supposed to scroll in varies wildly between table to table - not adventure path to adventure path.

So really, I think The Red Hand of Doom is about as long as people really care about having an adventure arc. These campaign event books cover as much ground as a D&D game can tolerate.

Which is not to say that it's the most that any RPG could Tolerate. AD&D advanced more slowly, and gave out less world changing power. That game was able to handle a campaign event of the magnitude of the G-D-Q adventure cycle - starting with stabbing Hill Giants in the face and ending with a climactic battle with Lolth in the Demon Web Pits.

I think 4e could almost support a 1-30 campaign, because the characters really never transform into anything else. Unfortunately, I can't imagine playing a 4e game that long without killing myself. With a game with the right mix of changes without substantively transformative change, it seems that you could sell people on much longer adventures than is presently being done.

But 3rd edition D&D is going to go for 6 level jumps, because people will stick with a campaign after they have become a lord or a magical girl long enough to have the showdown with the final boss - but only if that's in the foreseeable future. A 10 level campaign is simply too likely to have people wanting to retire part way through.

-Username17

[magnuskn]

But 3rd edition D&D is going to go for 6 level jumps, because people will stick with a campaign after they have become a lord or a magical girl long enough to have the showdown with the final boss - but only if that's in the foreseeable future. A 10 level campaign is simply too likely to have people wanting to retire part way through.

-Username17

Funnily enough I've been playing with the same core set of people for 10 years now and we've done about six plus campaigns going from level 1 to 20, two of them in AD&D 2nd Edition.

[Danchild]

My DMing style runs toward sandboxing. I am not above laying down railroad tracks occasionally, but I have learned not to freak out when the PC's go off the rails.

The difficulty in AP's as presented is getting the players to play the module as the author intended. I have never been able to do this. That is not to say that I find AP's or boxed set adventures useless, they are a great resource. I tend to steal the idea's and encounters and reorganise them to suit the needs of a campaign. As an aside, this is almost required is you have players that subscribe to the same magazine.

A certain amount structure is useful. Too much can be a hindrance. If an AP relies on the PC's following a set timetable, finding some hidden McGuffin or making nice with key NPC's, then it may fail spectacularly at your table.

[hogarth]

My question is: why doesn't anyone print an entire campaign? I mean, even Paizo dribbles them out over the course of a year (even now with their own line of APs).

It's a cashflow thing, i.e. they dribble them out so that their employees can eat a cheeseburger every day instead of eating 365 cheeseburgers once a year.

By the way, I think the adventure paths are great; I've played in too many games where the GM obviously has no clue what will happen next and then the death spiral starts.

[Koumei]

I think 4e could almost support a 1-30 campaign, because the characters really never transform into anything else. Unfortunately, I can't imagine playing a 4e game that long without killing myself.

I'm totally with you there. Heck, just as I read "I think 4e could almost support a 1-30 campaign", I was already thinking "Who could live through all that?"

[hogarth]

But 3rd edition D&D is going to go for 6 level jumps, because people will stick with a campaign after they have become a lord or a magical girl long enough to have the showdown with the final boss - but only if that's in the foreseeable future. A 10 level campaign is simply too likely to have people wanting to retire part way through.

-Username17

Funnily enough I've been playing with the same core set of people for 10 years now and we've done about six plus campaigns going from level 1 to 20, two of them in AD&D 2nd Edition.

As Frank said, it depends greatly on whether your wizard's favourite 7th level spell is Simulacrum or Empowered Cone of Cold (for instance).

I agree with Frank's statement that adventure paths tend to disintegrate at higher levels, but I've found that every 3E game I've played has disintegrated at higher levels; that's not something unique to adventure paths.

[Blicero]

As Frank said, it depends greatly on whether your wizard's favourite 7th level spell is Simulacrum or Empowered Cone of Cold (for instance).

I agree with Frank's statement that adventure paths tend to disintegrate at higher levels, but I've found that every 3E game I've played has disintegrated at higher levels; that's not something unique to adventure paths.

I can't agree with this enough. The highest level 3E game I've ever run was at 16th level. But even that was a special circumstance: the characters were all 12th-ish level, then they absorbed the power of the dying gods and got boosted 3-4 levels so they'd be strong enough to take down the BBEG. And even though these characters were wizards who focused on evocation and pretty much straight-up fighters, encounters and rounds still took obscenely long to resolve. I honestly don't know how anyone could sustain a high-level campaign.

Attempts to make high-level more playable, like that Dungeon Delve WotC did a couple years back, invariably end up with characters that are grossly simplified (good) and neutered (v. bad) of anything they could do.

But I suspect APs are more susceptible to this simply because they're inherently designed to take a party from 1st-20th level and are clearly divided into segments at which it's comparatively easier for the players do go off the rails and do something else that will entirely negate the written plot. Whereas with more organic campaigns, it would be easier for the DM to integrate whatever the PCs decide to do into his overarching planned story.

[Crissa]

Kenzer and Co were making campaign worlds... Anyone try those out? These seemed well written.

-Crissa

[Kaelik]

Which is why we still need Frank to write his "This is how high level adventure is supposed to go." brief.

[Roy]

Which is why we still need Frank to write his "This is how high level adventure is supposed to go." brief.

+1.

[K]

My question is: why doesn't anyone print an entire campaign? I mean, even Paizo dribbles them out over the course of a year (even now with their own line of APs).

It's a cashflow thing, i.e. they dribble them out so that their employees can eat a cheeseburger every day instead of eating 365 cheeseburgers once a year.

By the way, I think the adventure paths are great; I've played in too many games where the GM obviously has no clue what will happen next and then the death spiral starts.

I don't buy that. I mean, they put out 100 page single adventure APs, and that many pages go to one adventure because pages and pages are filled with dead content like unrelated fiction, monster write-ups, and even setting material.

Take Spires of Xin-Halast:

Total pages: ........................95 pages
. Editorializing:................................. 2 pages
. Preview of the next AP:...................4 pages
. Pre-gen ........................................2 pages
. Unrelated fiction.............................6 pages
. New monsters..............................13 pages
. New magic items............................1 page
. Setting material about mountains.... 3 pages
. BBEG stats.....................................3 pages
. Adventure....................................55 pages

And that is before we look at how much of the adventure is pre-statted out monsters, sidebars, and art. Cut out everything but the art and you could easily fit entire campaigns in 95 pages in the same time it takes to write all that dead content.

I mean, good ideas for campaigns are not that hard. Frank and I once came up with a whole campaign while half-drunk, and we did it in under an hour. It was easily as good as any of these APs.

And even if you write up a whole campaign, that still doesn't stop people from doing single chapters of the campaign as one-offs in their own campaign.

[CatharzGodfoot]

I mean, good ideas for campaigns are not that hard. Frank and I once came up with a whole campaign while half-drunk, and we did it in under an hour. It was easily as good as any of these APs.

If they had the budget to hire lawyers and doctors then maybe they could do that too.

[Danchild]

High level games can be tricky to run, probably the most difficult part for me was to avoid the 'arms race' mentality between myself and the players.

I have run only 2 successful epic range campaigns, and bombed out completely on another attempt. The successful campaigns followed a rough formula:

At some point the PC's gain some kind of institutional control or authority. It could be some form of minor lordship or governance, a library/archive, a simulacrum zoo, mercenary company, a theives guild, temple or church. For the most part it is simply window dressing, but it gives the player an investment in the campaign world and is a great lauching pad for adventures. In order to be meaninful, the PC should get something like this long before the campaign is due to end. Not all players are interested in doing this, but most are willing to reap the benefits of associating with a PC with this kind of influence. Give players plenty of space to move though. 2 clerics establishing temples in the same city led to player conflict in one of my games. Luckily one player decided to capitulate before it turned into a full scale PvP.

Be prepared to hear no from your players. Some high level adventures are almost a negotiation between the DM and the players. Such as an exchange from a game I ran:
"No, I do not want to go to a remote continent in order to find a long abandoned necropolis, to uncover the hidden sanctum of some ancient arcanist in order to recover her spellbook! She obviously likes her privacy. It would be suicidally rude to disturb her. I would rather track down that duelist who insulted me 10 levels ago and humiliate him...again."

Allow players to retire their characters or have them fade into the background. Sometimes a player want's to try something different for a while. One of my players had a troupe of characters that would step in an out of a story occasionaly. If a majority want to try something else, then it probably time to start a new game.

If the PC's have world changing abilities, then they are going to start encountering opponents with the same. This requires careful handling as players do not typically enjoy facing clones of themselves more than once. Explaining how to do this for everyones enjoyment probably deserves a thread of its own.

A climactic ending that ties up every loose end is beyond my ability. Keep it short, simple and open ended, such as 'they lived happily ever after (for the most part)'or the characters ride off into the sunset. After slaying the dragon magus at the end of one of my campains, the players were happy with not even counting up it treasure, and game finished up with them riding it's plane-shifting mountain off into the multiverse.

A lot of these points have been made already, so i apologise for going over ground that had alreay been covered. I thought however that some of you may want to read my observations on high level games.

[hogarth]

And that is before we look at how much of the adventure is pre-statted out monsters, sidebars, and art. Cut out everything but the art and you could easily fit entire campaigns in 95 pages in the same time it takes to write all that dead content.

You missed the part that explains how that system would pay for cheeseburgers for the authors every month for a year. (Hint: People are irrational creatures that will pay $20 six times for a campaign, but not $120 one time.)

[Prak]

And that is before we look at how much of the adventure is pre-statted out monsters, sidebars, and art. Cut out everything but the art and you could easily fit entire campaigns in 95 pages in the same time it takes to write all that dead content.

You missed the part that explains how that system would pay for cheeseburgers for the authors every month for a year. (Hint: People are irrational creatures that will pay $20 six times for a campaign, but not $120 one time.)

It's not always irrationality though. With some incomes it's easier to pay $20 every couple of months than $120 once

[magnuskn]

But 3rd edition D&D is going to go for 6 level jumps, because people will stick with a campaign after they have become a lord or a magical girl long enough to have the showdown with the final boss - but only if that's in the foreseeable future. A 10 level campaign is simply too likely to have people wanting to retire part way through.

-Username17

Funnily enough I've been playing with the same core set of people for 10 years now and we've done about six plus campaigns going from level 1 to 20, two of them in AD&D 2nd Edition.

As Frank said, it depends greatly on whether your wizard's favourite 7th level spell is Simulacrum or Empowered Cone of Cold (for instance).

I agree with Frank's statement that adventure paths tend to disintegrate at higher levels, but I've found that every 3E game I've played has disintegrated at higher levels; that's not something unique to adventure paths.

Well, I can attest to high level challenges not being fun for me as the GM, since my players stomped them mercilessly, but then again I am not the best encounter designer. Which is why I am now happily using Paizos adventure paths.

But while some of my player have a maddening tendency to make their characters almost impossible to be hit or affected by spells, funnily no one ever thought to break the system. I guess they actually like roleplaying more than powergaming. They are also good in not derailing the campaign ( or I am good at leading them by the nose and improvising to re-rail the happenings, who knows? ).

[hogarth]

It's not always irrationality though. With some incomes it's easier to pay $20 every couple of months than $120 once

Sure, I guess; there's another reason that someone wouldn't want to drop $120 on a single book. I paid about $40 for the Shackled City hardcover, and I think that's about the right price for me.

At any rate, the point is that Paizo wants to make money every month. So by their estimate, there's enough consumer demand for adventure paths to publish one every six months (note that the Dragon adventure paths were one every twelve months). So assuming they want to get some cash flow every month, that means that they'll split the path into six pieces. And by their estimate, the most anyone is willing to pay for each piece is $20 retail/$15 Amazon. And presumably they figure they can more easily charge $15-$20 for a 95 page book (with 50% filler material) than a 55 page book.

Take Spires of Xin-Halast:

Total pages: ........................95 pages
. Editorializing:................................. 2 pages
. Preview of the next AP:...................4 pages
. Pre-gen ........................................2 pages
. Unrelated fiction.............................6 pages
. New monsters..............................13 pages
. New magic items............................1 page
. Setting material about mountains.... 3 pages
. BBEG stats.....................................3 pages
. Adventure....................................55 pages

And that is before we look at how much of the adventure is pre-statted out monsters, sidebars, and art. Cut out everything but the art and you could easily fit entire campaigns in 95 pages in the same time it takes to write all that dead content.

You really think that pre-statted out monsters and sidebars count for 40 out of 55 pages (so that you can fit 6 adventure path segments into 95 pages)? As I noted, I have a copy of the Shackled City hardcover, which is 400 pages. I certainly don't think that it's 75% filler material; maybe 25%-30%, at most (although I wouldn't count setting material as filler, for example).

[Username17]

The original G-series is seriously 8 pages per segment, with an additional 8 pages of bonus material for Hall of the Fire Giant King. The combined Against The Giants adventure path is 32 pages long. The entire GDQ adventure path where you kill Lolth at the end is 128 pages. And that adventure path has about a million percent more enemies than any 3rd edition adventure. Bigger maps too.

The thing is: these full campaigns are deeply formulaic - even when the first adventure doesn't deal with an evil druid who ha kidnapped the daughter of a local NPC. Roughly speaking it breaks down into seven parts with the following caveats:

• You have three villain "types." The first you will use in the first three parts, the second in the next three parts, and the last in the finale.
• You will have seven named NPC badasses, one for each part.
• Each adventure will have a tie-in to the one after it, and provide a tie-in to the one two before to indicate that it's all one conspiracy, which of course it is.
• You will make one fantastic location for each segment of the adventure.
• Each segment will have a smattering of magical beasts in it.

Now obviously Giants, Drow, Demons has been done. Goblins, Dragons, Demons has been done too. And indeed, there is a rather short list of enemies that even are available for the high end and the low end. And these days, people want a fucking dragon in pretty much every part of the adventure path, because the fucking game is called Dungeons and Dragons.

So anyway, the adventure path itself has a "plot" this plot basically comes down to 14 declarative sentences, and you can write it in a couple of minutes. No big deal there. The entire adventure path is pretty much about 40,000 words plus maps, art, stat lines, and filler. Primary writing takes about a month for one author. Maps, art, and stat lines and filler take as much time as you feel like assigning to them and could easily be split into someone else's creative output. If you go super telegraphic like the old G-series, you can get the whole work into half that word count or less. You could write up Rift of the Frost Giant Jarl or an equivalent adventure segment over a weekend as a break from whatever you were doing.

The thing is: you don't have to release an adventure path segment every other month. You could release an entire adventure path every other month if you wanted to.

-Username17