The Gaming Den

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Dogbert is too vague on the details for me to agree with him that the Adventure Path is an idiot plot

Basically, this is what I'm talking about (spoilered to avoid image spam):

James Blish wrote: Idiot Plot: A plot which is kept in motion solely by virtue of the fact that everybody involved is an idiot

An idiot plot requires all involved parties to be idiots because all it takes is someone asking the most basic questions about the situation at hand for the "plot" to be solved in five minutes or less.

Only a naive GM assumes his players won't ask questions about the things in front of their eyes, and only a crap GM actively stonewalls players who do ask.

I hope that clarifies my point.

I wish to know more about "Burt Offerings"

Koumei wrote:I wish to know more about "Burt Offerings"

While I suspect that you might be being facetious here, I'll copy the adventure synopsis here. "Burnt Offerings" is the first adventure in the "Rise of the Runelords" adventure path.

Adventure Synopsis wrote: The PCs arrive in Sandpoint to attend the Swallowtail Festival (a ritual to consecrate the town’s new cathedral) and end up defending the town from a goblin raid. In the days to follow, the PCs come to terms with their newfound local fame, making friends and contacts among Sandpoint’s citizens. As rumors of massing goblin armies build, the disappearance of a local tavern owner leads the PCs to uncover treachery within Sandpoint Glassworks and the existence of an ancient catacomb below the town. An investigation of these discoveries reveals two things; that monsters dwell below the city and that the goblin raid on the town is but the first. In order to save Sandpoint, the PCs must travel to Thistletop, the lair of the most powerful goblin tribe in the region, where they can confront the woman whose madness and wrath presents such a menace, yet who is herself the tip of a much larger conspiracy that will soon threaten all of Varisia.

No, that comic promised me Burt Offerings. Presumably offerings for (or from?) someone named Burt but perhaps it's a person, first name Burt, last name Offerings.

Koumei wrote:No, that comic promised me Burt Offerings. Presumably offerings for (or from?) someone named Burt but perhaps it's a person, first name Burt, last name Offerings.

Here's what google search at "Burt Offerings" produced

Not disappointed.

Any published adventure is going to have to make assumptions about what people are most likely to do. Better adventures consider several possible options and provide suggestions to the GM on how that would resolve.

Sure, it's possible to find out more information and get a jump on the expected pace of the adventures.

I think you're complaining that the adventure path concept is inherently limiting, because the more likely you are to depart from expected actions the less likely the 'next module' will make sense. That might be a fair criticism.

On an individual basis the adventures are pretty decent (again, haven't read the recent ones). They also have adventures that are not directly tied into an ongoing plot. The stand-alone adventures are also pretty decent.

If a DM is expecting to run an Adventure Path, they should become familiar with the path (start to finish) so they can be flexible enough to allow folks to 'hop off the rails'. That's hard to do if you start the AP before it has been completely released, but isn't too bad if you're starting after the release. I'm not saying you need to read 5000+ pages just to run the APs, but reading the 'synopsis' at the beginning of each adventure will absolutely make sense.

An published Adventure is a lot like a recipe. If you're a novice, you'll follow the recipe very closely. If you're an experienced cook you'll add some variations that make the recipe uniquely yours and suited to your palate. But published adventures are not bad because they are less flexible than a GM designing everything from scratch to suit the tastes of his own group. Even if you're capable of making everything from scratch, sometimes it's easier to grab some frozen puff pastry and do everything else from scratch...

There's a bunch of ways to get good value from the APs, from running the series start to finish to rifling through them for maps and 'set piece' encounters for your own adventures.

deaddmwalking wrote:I think you're complaining that the adventure path concept is inherently limiting, because the more likely you are to depart from expected actions the less likely the 'next module' will make sense. That might be a fair criticism.

No, he is saying you could write literally an infinite number of adventure paths in which investigation by the PCs does not skip entire adventures, but Piazo are shitty writers who don't write those paths.

I mean, for god sakes you are expected to break a bad guy out of jail in on Book and later he will be the main bad guy of a later book. If you do anything smart at all, you just don't fucking break him out and that destroys and entire book.

I was told recently that "At some point, players need to buy into the premise of the scenario and its story progression." I was not terribly convinced.

deaddmwalking wrote: I think you're complaining that the adventure path concept is inherently limiting, because the more likely you are to depart from expected actions the less likely the 'next module' will make sense. That might be a fair criticism.

Yeah, to have a series of linked adventures that go for 20 levels of play, you have to do some railroading, there's really no question about it. You're just not going to be able to preplan an entire 20 level campaign all in advance without making a bunch of assumptions about what scenes/adventures the PCs will end up encountering.

At best, you end up pulling off a Mass Effect style, where your make people think they're making important decisions, when in fact, they have little effect on what actually happens.

Though it is possible to allow people to abandon the path (which is a little hard if it is a 'destroy the world plot') and/or find ways to intersect with the plot later if the PCs do things that weren't anticipated.

Essentially, to run them well, you have to be willing to add some material. Depending on the group it may be quite a lot.

Koumei wrote:No, that comic promised me Burt Offerings. Presumably offerings for (or from?) someone named Burt but perhaps it's a person, first name Burt, last name Offerings.

Careful what you wish for... now have at you!

Anyway, that's why I prefer canned material with either no plot at all, or at least a premise as basic as possible.

Stupid plots are stupid indeed. I think that's a different complaint than the one you were delivering before. I actually have had measured success running APs (which I think is odd since I'd avoided running written adventures because of some bad experiences in RPGA). The only problems I've ever had, as far as my groups have been concerned, were the times where new rules were introduced in those APs.

For me the background info they give for the players, politics in the area, and the little NPC info hasn't been bad either. I mean really, if your concern is the players can find out about the plot in advance and make attempts to stop it (which I think is a good thing that you should just roll with and don't see as a particular problem in general) then you're given more than enough background information and materials to make adjustments without having to do everything from scratch.

Dogbert wrote:Anyway, that's why I prefer canned material with either no plot at all, or at least a premise as basic as possible.

In my experience, GMs who say "I hate canned plots because they're always so stupid" come up with even shittier campaigns on their own. It's possible you're an exception, of course.

TOZ wrote:I was told recently that "At some point, players need to buy into the premise of the scenario and its story progression." I was not terribly convinced.

I do think, that they are willfully confusing two different things. Players do need to buy into the basic premise. After all, not much adventuring can be had, if PCs refuse to sign up on the inital quest and want to do some other thing. But "buying into story progression"? Does that mean obligingly accepting the rails?

TOZ wrote:I was told recently that "At some point, players need to buy into the premise of the scenario and its story progression." I was not terribly convinced.

It's true, especially for APs that go from level 1 to level 16, but it's also the responsibility of the scenario to make the players willing to accept it.

It's like movies and suspension of disbelief: you have to suspend your disbelief to appreciate a movie. But if the movie is too shitty, you simply can't do it.

I think the intent of that statement is that if you break out a module and say "lets play this, its all about the underdark" you have the assumption that your players will not go off and become pirates. They buy in and generally build PCs who might go on an underdark adventure. Not Pirates.

Or further "I want to set this game in eberron and do lots of political stuff" you then expect the players not to play illiterate barbarians from Mars.

Or "Im doing a sandbox, I expect your PCs to have a motivation" would mean you expect the PCs to have a motivation or two they want to follow.

Each of which I'd agree with.

Or it could mean that you have to railroad, I don't know the full context.

FatR wrote:I do think, that they are willfully confusing two different things. Players do need to buy into the basic premise. After all, not much adventuring can be had, if PCs refuse to sign up on the inital quest and want to do some other thing. But "buying into story progression"? Does that mean obligingly accepting the rails?

It means the GM should say up front: "This adventure path is about saving the world and killing Demogorgon. If your PC isn't interested in saving the world and killing Demogorgon (for instance, if your PC is only interested in finding his long-lost daughter), you're probably better off using a different PC. Also, the adventures involve doing a bunch of errands for an NPC. If your PC is not interested in running errands for an NPC, see above."

For clarification, it was in response to a certain module expecting the PCs to go on an airship chase, and the players saying 'why chase them when I can Greater Teleport onto their ship from here?'

That sounds VERY familiar. I think we kinda broke that scene with GTeleport. I am not even sure that ship was out of DDoor range, so really, what the fuck, writers. What the actual fuck.

I am in a "creative slump" at the moment, need some input. Will be playing Jade Regent AP, rolled stats (17, 17, 16, 15, 14, 12) and can go crazy MAD. Thinking of cleric, but I am a bit curious about the Inquisitor. Alignment is somewhat limited, we used the Ultimate Campaign random background generator, which gave me 5 CP (malign associates with enemy or rival for justice, not sure this could be any more anime anti hero douchebag), so deity shit might be an issue, but there is no actual restrictions from the GM, so I could go for a Fiendish Vessel of Asmodeus, if I wanted to.

Any ideas for crazy shit you can pull of only with stupid high stats? Keep in mind I loath multiclassing. Class is not entirely set in stone, so could do anything, really. But divine would be "nice" for party synergy (so far bard, ranger, rogue, sorcerer). Looks very melee heavy, but squishy as fuck. I might even bite a bullet and do a "support cleric" *gags*. Obviously I cannot fucking make up my mind, so some possible directions are appreciated and non spoiler hints at what abilities are useful with this AP would not hurt. And if the AP sucks Rovagug balls, I can go completely off the rails without feeling bad and play a Trox or Kasatha (no really, those aren't Thri-Kreen, for reals) or something utterly bonkers like that.

TOZ wrote:For clarification, it was in response to a certain module expecting the PCs to go on an airship chase, and the players saying 'why chase them when I can Greater Teleport onto their ship from here?'

That's pretty dumb, but I'd probably classify it under "high level adventures are hard to write".

There's two things here that combine to explain each other you know.

1: Module sets don't give PCs information about the future, and assume PCs won't effectively investigate that future before it's at hand.

2: There's a lot of D&D spell effects (or even mundane movement rules) that explicitly bypass complex plot threads to deliver the party to the interesting conflicts as soon as they want to get there.


So, because you can defeat any plot, you don't get to see the plot. And because you don't get to see the plot, you can have plot-breaking powers from low level without spoiling long adventures. So the campaign arch is then just something to hold the DM's interest, and not really there for the players other than as after-the-fact exposition connecting their mini-plots.


But really, the Pathfinder module sets are written independently by different authors at the same time. They're designed to be swappable and support different tastes so you'll generally like something out of each set, not really to form a proper story other than in theme. "What happens if you don't save the world" doesn't come up if saving the world isn't really mentioned until book 6, you can totally just do something else and ignore it.

The Pathfinder Advanced Class guide is due to be released in August 2014, meaning that the developers think that 5E D&D is going to be the biggest TTRPG bomb in history, that the book itself is going to be a product that actually hurts the line in the long run and it would be better to quietly suppress it (like the 4E FRCS or Magic of Faerun), or that said developers are are hugely incompetent fuckups.

Any of those seem like reasonable possibilities to me. Hell, smart money is on all of those being simultaneously true.

tussock wrote:2: There's a lot of D&D spell effects (or even mundane movement rules) that explicitly bypass complex plot threads to deliver the party to the interesting conflicts as soon as they want to get there.

Agreed, and I'll always remember a funny example of this: One PFS module requires entering a temple whose door is guarded by a bound Planetar (or something whose CR is way above your level). I'm playing a pre-gen Druid 7 and suggest we ignore that entrance. The party's inquisitor replies "there's no other doors." Granted, he probably never played a full-caster at level 7, but the fact that the designers apparently had the same idea and didn't consider that a druid could just cast Stone Shape to remove a wall (even a wall leading to the final confrontation, if I had chosen lucky), a wizard could DimDoor in, and even a reasonably-built mundane could just destroy a wall by attacking it, is just silly. Of course, that's no different from any other editions' published adventures that I know of (excepting Tomb of Horrors).

As for plot in PFS, that's all assuming groups even follow the published plot. The people I play with regularly pull modules from different seasons (and usually not the current one) just to play something their character can get credit for.

Rawbeard wrote:Any ideas for crazy shit you can pull of only with stupid high stats?

Battle cleric, battle oracle, shape-shifting druid, paladin, and inquisitor come to mind immediately. They all have good points, especially if your party needs a tank (or 2, if you go druid). I've been interested in trying a Half-Orc Cleric of Desna myself, using the Half-Orc weapon proficiency with a Battleaxe, the Shaman's Apprentice racial trait and Diehard feat, and the Liberation and Travel domains. Tell us what you end up choosing, as I'm curious.