What Makes a Good Adventure Path?

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Jul 02, 2011 5:12 am

This question struck me while I was reading the Pathfinder thread. What does make a good adventure path? I really have no idea, I've only ever designed adventures tailored towards a specific group. Enlighten me.

K · Post by K » Sat Jul 02, 2011 5:25 am

-Hot chicks in the art.

-a narrative that starts at stabbing rats and effortlessly transitions to stabbing rat-gods.

-enough sand-boxing to not feel railroaded.

-a micro-setting. For example, really in-depth material on a single mining town can make for a better game than glossing over continents.

-novelty. Never underestimate the value of a new take on familiar elements.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Sat Jul 02, 2011 5:27 am

K wrote:-Hot chicks in the art.

Got it. Thanks.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Sat Jul 02, 2011 5:35 am

A good adventure path, eh? Okay, I'm going to leave out the obvious generalities (kickass plot, memorable NPCs, balanced encounters, killer artwork, etc.) and focus on what I think are not-so-obvious elements towards having a good adventure path. This reply is D&D-centric since I have the most experience with this game experience, but having played some good adventure paths and some shitty ones (even for 4E D&D) I can say that:

The setting should be relatively focused but still allow some room for exploration. Sometimes the PCs will feel like heading down to the bar for a drink. The best adventure paths I play generally tend to take place in cities for this reason. Now you can have some straight-up dungeon crawls, but as a DM my players liked it more when I gave their players an opportunity to fart around at the docks or red light district or whatever.
Either have a degree of urgency to them that must be completed in a reasonable time frame or are 'pick up as you feel like'. An adventure path where you're uncovering the secrets of La Mulana is fine, since that can be done over 20 in-game years. An adventure path where the world is ending in seven days because Sephiroth is summoning Meteor and is hiding in a temple guarded by Garland and Gilgamesh is also fine. An adventure path which concerns a bunch of zombies laying siege to Riva for a year is damn near unworkable.
Proper pacing of combat. Personally, adventure paths should be light on the combat because groups take different amount of time to get through any part, let along how much time each group has per session. I would personally get frustrated if a session consisted of nothing but back-to-back combat.
Alternate solutions. I know there is a degree of railroading inherent in adventure paths, but they should be written as if you expect every group to be a team of supergeniuses who are intent on 'solving' the plot early for the lulz. Either you need to come up with branching scenarios or come up with plausible and non-dickish ways to prevent a 'scry-teleport-gank MacGuffin' plan.
An adventure path should scale well to having more or fewer players. Basic game theory will, all things being equal, make things easier with more players but you should really be able to support from about 3 to 7 PCs. Meaning that you need to find a way to scale encounters if need be and also provide things for other party members to do.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Jul 03, 2011 5:22 am

I tend to be pretty forgiving of games if they have "some good ideas", because I can then use the stuff I liked and mostly ignore the rest. I rarely try running existing adventures without some significant modification.

For adventures specifically, I'd say that art is the most valuable thing to me. I can use Photoshop proficiently, so there's all sorts of ways I can repurpose good pictures. It's most of why I sometimes buy Pathfinder stuff.

TheFlatline · Post by **TheFlatline** » Sun Jul 03, 2011 8:51 am

I look for good pacing in prewritten adventures. Combat needs to be an exclamation point in a story, not the defacto state.

I hate random encounters or combat that doesn't serve the story. Ambush me once at night to remind me there's brigands on the road. Do it 5 or 6 times in my trip to where the adventure really begins and I feel like I'm stuck in limbo forever.

I also like adventures that encourage players to be creative and come up with unconventional solutions. To that end, those adventures tend to set up situations and stand back and tell the PCs to resolve them however the PCs want to. If they want to stab, then stab away. If they want to sneak, they can. If they want to bribe their way into the cave, well hell that's okay too because the adventure doesn't assume that you'll go get the dildo of magical friendship and take it to the dragon of many orifices to befriend to fly over the hillside making moaning noises to distract the guards in front of the cave so you can go in and use your dildo on the princess who is being held in another castle.

I also look for adventures that try to do something differently. In Warhammer Fantasy, I'm totally cribbing the storm status meter from the first pre-written "campaign" for other suitable adventures. As the plot ebbs and flows the storm kicks up and calms down, creating opportunities and making things difficult on everyone alike. It's good atmosphere, and is different enough that it makes the adventure memorable.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Sun Jul 03, 2011 3:50 pm

K wrote:-a narrative that starts at stabbing rats and effortlessly transitions to stabbing rat-gods.

-novelty. Never underestimate the value of a new take on familiar elements.

As a player who has played most of Paizo's adventure paths (going back to Dungeon), at least in part, these are the two most important things for me. I don't care about hot chicks since I don't usually see the art, and I don't care about being railroaded because that's what I signed up for.

The only thing I'd add is:
-Keep the number of completely nonsensical plot points to a minimum.

(You wouldn't believe how hard that one seems to be.)

DragonChild · Post by **DragonChild** » Sun Jul 03, 2011 4:57 pm

hogarth wrote: As a player who has played most of Paizo's adventure paths (going back to Dungeon), at least in part, these are the two most important things for me.

I don't suppose you'd be willing to do a review? I'm interested both from a buying perspective and from a "how did they get that wrong?" one.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 3:05 pm

Okay, here's my comments on the ones I've played and/or read about. Note that these are just my opinions. K, for instance, would probably have less tolerance for railroading and would be more interested in whether bits and pieces could be cannibalised for another campaign. Whereas I'm more interested in a story that I can play through from beginning to end without a lot of side quests.

Most of them have an inevitable variation in the quality of modules in the adventure path; I haven't pointed out which individual instalments are better or worse than average unless it's especially noteworthy.

Shackled City

Pros:
-Best value for money: $30 for a 400 page book with glossy, full-colour pages.
-Most of the adventures take place in the neighbourhood of a single city and they do a pretty good job of fleshing it out.
-Decent variety of iconic D&D monsters (dragons, demons, beholders, evil wizards, etc.).
-Some interesting opportunities to make an impact on the game world (gaining control of part of a layer of the Abyss or being elected mayor of the city).

Cons:
-Does a poor job of foreshadowing some of the bad guys.
-There's a false climax two adventures before the real ending; the second-last adventure (Strike on Shatterhorn) especially anti-climactic ("here's some random bad guys you missed in the previous adventure!").
-The number of dungeons underneath the city (at least 5 or 6, IIRC) stretches credulity a tad.

Age of Worms

Pros:
-Cool "classic" D&D enemies (e.g. kill the dracolich Dragotha, kill the demigod Kyuss).
-Interesting theme (undead apocalypse).
-Average quality of adventures is fairly good.

Cons:
-There's lots of undead, so difficulty will vary wildly based on the party (e.g. Radiant Servant of Pelor = easy mode, PHB-only Rogue = hard mode).
-First two adventures take place in your hometown, then you spend the rest of the adventures wandering around the world.
-One module (Encounter at Blackwall Keep) involves repeated encounters with under-CRed enemies (level 5+ characters against lizardmen).

Savage Tide

Pros:
-Cool "classic" D&D enemies (e.g. visit the Isle of Dread, kill Demogorgon).
-Fun recurring villain (Vanthus Vanderboren).
-Does a pretty good job with the setting (first three modules in one city, then the next few on the Isle of Dread).
-Average quality of adventures is fairly good.

Cons:
-A few of the adventures involve running errands and sucking up to demon lords and other "I'm more powerful than you" folks.
-There's one strict railroad part where the party is expected to be shipwrecked.
-Various other modules involve running errands for your NPC employer; may be a problem if you don't like the NPC.

Rise of the Runelords

Pros:
-Decent variety of classic D&D monsters (e.g. ogres, giants, demons, dragons)
-Does a pretty good job at keeping a consistent setting; most adventures take place in your hometown and the surrounding area.

Cons:
-One module (Skinsaw Murders) has a ridiculously tough end boss.
-One module (Hook Mountain Massacre) has "eating a baby while raping a baby"-style gratuitous ickiness.
-One module (Sins of the Saviours) revolves completely around getting some superweapons that turn out to be not super at all.
-You don't learn about the "real" bad guy until about halfway through; the first half of the adventure path is mostly unrelated to the second half.

Curse of the Crimson Throne

Pros:
-Passably good setting (a seedy city).
-Does a good job setting up the overall bad guy from (almost) the start.

Cons:
-The recommended initial adventure hook is a bit misleading. You all team up to get revenge on a bad guy and then you defeat him partway through the first adventure, so you may have no reason to stay together after that.
-The adventure path starts building up to a possible revolution in the city, but then sends the PCs on a series of typical fetch quests instead.
-There's a couple of places where NPCs do cool stuff that clearly breaks the D&D rules (e.g. killing a mid-level ranger by stabbing him with a crossbow bolt) while the PCs sit around watching or only hear about it second hand.

Second Darkness

Pros:
-None known.

Cons:
-For no particular reason, you start out running a casino, and once you get the casino running properly you leave town and never return.
-Plot is head-slappingly stupid at points. For instance, the PCs are expected to go into an unknown pocket dimension in pursuit of a small army for poorly-defined reasons.
-Major railroading occurs when the PCs are expected to shift their souls into some drow corpses and infiltrate a drow city (where "infiltrating" entails getting slapped around by other surprisingly unsuspicious drow for a while until they just tell you what you want to know).
-There's a group of "allied" NPCs who are so annoying and unhelpful that you wouldn't piss on their feet if their shoes were on fire. You're expected to run errands for said NPCs.
-Many combats are boring and easy; you fight groups of drow elf NPCs over and over again.
-There's a 1 level gap between two of the adventures, so if you want to run them in succession without any side adventures, you're out of luck.

Legacy of Fire

Pros:
-Exotic "Arabian Nights"-style setting (if you're into that).

Cons:
-There are back-to-back adventures that take place in pocket dimensions with no chance to buy supplies.

Council of Thieves

Pros:
-Takes place in and around a fairly well-detailed city.
-One adventure involves the PCs performing in a play (if you're into that).

Cons:
-Initial adventure hook is stupid; the PCs are expected to instantly join forces with a treasonous stranger that they meet in a bar and help her break another stranger out of jail.
-The council of thieves mentioned in the title is incredibly boring and you don't even cross paths with them until halfway through.
-The rationale for performing the play mentioned above is extremely dubious.

Kingmaker

Pros:
-More loosely defined than other adventure paths, with more of a "sandbox" feel (if you're into that).
-The PCs get the chance to run their own country, which is kind of cool.
-Consistent "wilderness" theme.

Cons:
-The system for running the country is okay at best, with a variety of loopholes (e.g. investing all of your taxes in magic item shops).

I haven't played any parts of Serpent's Skull or Carrion Crown yet. One criticism of Serpent's Skull that I've heard is that there's one adventure where the author messed it up so badly that the folks at Paizo had to hurriedly rewrite the thing from scratch; the result is a boring, repetitive mess.

Nihlin · Post by **Nihlin** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 7:04 pm

I've played through several of the Pathfinder APs, myself, and I largely agree with hogarth's assessments. Here are my responses and thoughts.

Curse of the Crimson Throne.

The adventure path starts building up to a possible revolution in the city, but then sends the PCs on a series of typical fetch quests instead.

I'm still playing though this, but so far this has been the biggest issue. I actually got to this point in the path recently. There's an NPC who essentially says "Lo, the BBEG has been possessed by the dread spirit of OldDeadThing! You must travel to lands of the Barbarian Guys, learn of their lore, and hopefully they can point you to some sort of Sword of PlotCoupon that you might return peace to the land!" Wait, I thought this was a city campaign?

Even worse, this comes just as serious opportunities for politics and manipulation are really opening up. And now we leave town for poorly defined reasons? Lol no. A little investigation has revealed that the BBEG, while gifted with bullshit regeneration, is not immune to ability damage, so we're ignoring the sword of whatever and staying in town.

Basically, if your players are rules-savvy or like serious political stuff, the path is 2 and a half mods, plus the last one. You'll need to fill in the middle. If you just want to kill mobs and watch cutscenes, you can play it as written.

Another annoyance: the mod assumes the players have no political insight whatsoever, and can't recognize a blatant power grab until an NPC explicitly tells them that it's going on. That's caused some weirdness.

Legacy of Fire

There are back-to-back adventures that take place in pocket dimensions with no chance to buy supplies.

Fair point. We didn't have a problem with it, but some groups might. Pity the wizard, for instance.

Here's another major pro from my experience: the plot is VERY friendly to a wide variety of character motivations, including evil and/or self-interested PCs. There's plenty of room for pure mercenaries and villain protagonists to get through with little or no awkward "okay... I guess we need to do this for no apparent character reason" stuff.

Another pro: it's pacing. You basically either have things that need to get done whenever you get to them, or shit that's going down right now. There were plenty of times for us to build a base, explore the setting, set up portal networks, and so on.

Finally, plane hopping and friendly NPCs who can lead you to Wishes.

Kingmaker

This was just a fantastic hit with us, except for the very last mod. That was so disconnected from the rest of the path that we just skipped it and called it after 5 mods.

A point about the nation-building rules: according to the authors, its actually supposed to be pretty easy once you're established. The mods assume that your kingdom is growing and prospering, and the rules are set up to make it a challenge at first, then sort of go on autopilot. Since you don't actually get any free stuff or other mechanical benefits from having a big, prosperous nation, it's pretty much all fluff. Like, Magic Shops produce random items that you can elect to buy at the normal price. So, if you want a hometown Magic Mart to kit out at, you'd better build a lot of Magic Shops.

The basic effect of the kingdom rules is to lead to the following narrative arc for the kingdom:

1) Oh yeah we have a kingdom!
2) Shit is hard!
3) Okay, I'm figuring this out...
4) Oh, wow, check out what I discovered! We can totally build [magic shops/harbors/stuff] and become super rich!
5) Wooo! We're a major political power!
6) Campaign ends.

I think that's a pretty solid arc. Of course, being DnD, there's face-stabbing and exploring thrown in.

Also, I want to emphasize another plus for this mod: exploring big hex maps with site-based encounters. Old-school fun!

Con:
The army rules and how they're used. The game decides to bust out a mass combat subsystem significantly after armies of tiny men are obsolete. I mean, an 11th level party should be able to wipe out 10,000 low-morale humanoids themselves and not even earn XP.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Mon Jul 04, 2011 7:33 pm

All good points. Note that I haven't finished any of the adventure paths listed above, so my comments are partially based on hearsay; some games just died early, and some I'm still playing through (Age of Worms, Savage Tide, Rise of the Runelords, Legacy of Fire, Kingmaker).

Post by **fbmf** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 3:54 am

Which of the above are fully contained in Dungeon Mags?

(I apologize if this is dumb question and the answer is THEY ALL ARE. I suspect, though, that some of the later ones were published after Paizo lost Dungeon.)

Game On,
fbmf

K · Post by K » Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:13 am

Shackled City, Age of Worms, and Savage Tide.

Shackled City got a hardbound book later on.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 4:14 am

Shackled City, Age of Worms and Savage Tide are the Dungeon-era adventure paths and they go from level 1-20.

Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness and Legacy of Fire are 3.5E adventure paths under the Pathfinder imprint; they go from level 1-16.

Council of Thieves, Kingmaker, Serpent's Skull and Carrion Crown are PFRPG adventure paths and they max out somewhere between level 14 (CoT) and level 18 (Kingmaker).

Xur · Post by **Xur** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 2:39 pm

If you as a DM had to pick one AP, which one would it be?
Likewise, which AP would you like to play (again) as a player?

I'm asking because I have little experience with Paizo's APs, aside from two sessions of Savage Tide and the introduction from Kingmaker (the game is kinda gearing up and we will play it in maybe a month or so), but I thought about running one. So far I was thinking about running RHoD, but this thread really got me interested.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 3:13 pm

Xur wrote:If you as a DM had to pick one AP, which one would it be?

From a pragmatic standpoint, I'd pick Shackled City since it's the cheapest to legally obtain.

From a fun standpoint, I'd probably pick Age of Worms or Savage Tide.

Xur wrote:Likewise, which AP would you like to play (again) as a player?

Age of Worms, I guess.

Nihlin · Post by **Nihlin** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 5:36 pm

Xur wrote:If you as a DM had to pick one AP, which one would it be?

I ran this question by the DM. She's run Curse of the Crimson Throne (ongoing), Legacy of Fire, and Kingmaker, and read through large portions of Serpent's Skull and whatever the current one is.

Overall, she'd go with Kingmaker. She also said that the first Kingmaker module was the single best one they've done in terms of usability, organization, and overall utility to the GM. She liked the fact that any PC who is interested in the initial plot hook will be on board for the full AP with no need to shift motivation. She singled out the Kingdom Building rules as an organizational low point; judging from the forums, most people wind up writing up their own flowcharts and rules references, as the rules in the books lack quick reference tables or useful charts.

She placed Legacy of Fire at a close second. She singled out the first Legacy of Fire module as very poor in comparison to the rest of the AP, but said that Legacy of Fire is otherwise quite good from the GM side. Aside from the first mod, she felt like plot hooks where flexible and reasonably well-motivated.

She feels that the Curse of the Crimson throne is full of "WoW tasks... I feel embarrassed as the GM to have to keep suggesting them."

She wanted to like Serpent's Skull, but its just proven too scattershot to really get into so far. She may run it someday, maybe not.

I think she's going to run the current AP next (some horror thing).

I've read through the whole of Second Darkness AP, and I'd only run it for players who intended to make fun of it, or at least not play it straight.

Xur wrote:Likewise, which AP would you like to play (again) as a player?

Kingmaker, then Legacy of Fire, then Rise of the Runelords, then (huge gap in quality here) Curse of the Crimson Throne.

Kingmaker was a rare breed: a sandbox AP that worked. The first two mods in particular were extremely solid, as evidenced by the huge amount of game-related stuff that was produced: character journals, maps, etc. We really got into it. Even the most dungeon-crawly mod had plenty of exploration and lots of ways to approach it. Plus, the mods were generally very accommodating to spellcasting PCs who actually use their spells wisely (rather than spamming fireball). As I said before, they eventually break out mass combat rules around mod 5, and that's unfortunate. It would have been better around mod 3. Also, mod 6 pulls out a BBEG that has been apparently behind every bad thing from the beginning. Unfortunately, they meticulously hide any trace of this even from curious and investigative PCs, so it just feels like a retcon/ass-pull. You have to be seriously determined to even learn of a manipulator at all before mod 6, and only the most paranoid of diviners will get enough to see a big picture.

Legacy of Fire has several very well-done dungeon crawls, with sensible ecology, good pacing, and a good mix of encounters. The BBEG is introduced early and established consistently as basically just a jerk. You wind up robbing his house at one point and find out that nobody likes him there, either. He's not a master plotter, and it isn't like everything that happens in the AP is actually his cunning plan. He's just a jackass with too much power who eventually needs to be put down before he kicks over your apple cart.

Rise of the Runelords is sort of a classic romp, with plenty of old-school vibe. It's low on originality, but everyone will recognize it as iconic DnD. It's also got the most press, and I've played it the least, so I'll leave it at that.

Curse of the Crimson throne has been an exercise in making an AP work despite itself. We frequently need to have GM-player conversations of the sort: "okay, you are completely off the rails. Can we talk about how to make this work?" NOTE: The GM prefers to use the mod as written as a strong rules constraint, neither nerfing nor buffing encounters, BBEG capabilities, and so on. Filling in blanks is fine, but outright changing things is not. If someone is supposed to be a master swordsman but actually has 11 levels of PHB Fighter, well, I guess they're self-deluded. If a boss gets owned in one round, that's how it goes. If a monster with the AWESOME subtype is going to score a TPK, well, better run for it. Thus, making stuff up is somewhat of a breech of the rules of the game, and requires us to re-evaluate the approach.

souran · Post by **souran** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 8:56 pm

If you want to "play D&D" there is no better AP than "Age of Worms." When I first started running D&D again I wish I had just found that AP and run it.

It has everything, and its story is one of the better ones as well. As some people have said it has some parts that can be a little bit on the hard side.

Instead I played the terrible AP from the compnay that bought up the right to publish Dragonlance materials (I had a friend who liked the DL novels and said it would be fun). Although that AP has some fun points, you have to deal with lots of DL shit that doesn't work, the second module is a disaster and extremly long, and the last part doesn't even make much sense.

Chamomile · Post by **Chamomile** » Tue Jul 05, 2011 9:34 pm

The Dragonlance setting lost me pretty soon after the Dragons of Summer whatever installment. Two world-changing events within the same generation is kind of hard to swallow. And then they threw us a third one just as the original party members were starting to die off. I was fine with the time travel plotline, because it took familiar faces and plopped them down far enough into the past that they could bring about huge changes in the world without putting the iron age to shame for political and/or geographic instability.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 3:56 am

Anyone have opinions on the more recent pathfinder adventure paths?

LeadPal · Post by **LeadPal** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 6:51 am

I'm running Jade Regent. The most important thing to know about it is that it lives or dies on whether or not the PCs enjoy playing MTP with the NPCs travelling with them. The AP introduces a dumb little relationship minigame to help the interaction along, but it's unlikely to make anybody care by itself. One thing that helps is that the NPCs are usually the ones sucking the cock, rather than the party. The first two adventures actually go out of their way to fuck with the NPCs while the PCs play hero.

The eastern flavour is handled well; it's introduced at a pace that won't turn off regular players too much, while still giving weeaboos something to sperge about at all times. It's a very practical compromise. Introducing non-weeaboos halfway through might be difficult, though, since they'll have to be plunged headfirst.

The rules for caravan combat are a hilarious clusterfuck, even for Paizo. They're literally unplayable by Book Three--and a huge percentage of said book depends on them. The framework of that adventure is pretty solid, but there's a lot to write in. Otherwise, the caravan rules are wonky and mostly irrelevant.

Another problem is that Book Four is dominated by an extremely boring dungeon crawl. It's a four level linear crawl, the first two levels of which are entirely filled with static dumb muscle encounters. It's pure grind. Cutting out at least a level or two should be mandatory.

As an obsessive weeaboo I'm obligated to like the AP, but when I try to judge it with the weeaboo goggles off I find it hard to recommend anything.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 8:04 am

Serpent's Skull

is where you go off to King Kong's land to eradicate the last few survivors of an ancient genocide before they can revive their trapped God. The McGuffin being the lost city of El Dorado, or something, only it's really an excuse to test out some mass combat and friend rules. Oh, and you can work out which NPC group to ally with before the modules kinda forget they exist. Favoured enemy, reptilians.

Carrion Crown

is where there's Death cult looking to Crown a new Lich leader (which is foreshadowed in encounter #1), only you level up to 15 on all his minions and kill him first. There's a few twists and turns regarding a bunch of horrible shit that keeps happening to the cultists before you can murder them and find the location of your next victim. Favoured enemy, aberrations and undead.

Jade Regent

is where you walk half way around the world. Yes, I said walk. Yes, really. Their excuse for all this walking is that it's tradition or some shit, plus, you really care about that caravan thing. My problem being I do sort of care about caravans, and they don't do that. Oh, you do start in Sandpoint, which is the best town ever, but you'd care more if you'd played ...

Rise of the Runelords

has been re-released as a mega-module for the PFRPG. It's the one where pretty much everything is icky and eats babies so you don't have to feel bad about hunting the fuckers down back home and murdering them all. The Runelord stuff is kinda foreshadowed, it's just very subtle and hidden early on.

But they're all for Pathfinder, so it's kind of a grind and you're supposed to ignore all the things you have which would bypass the plot all the time if you were smart.

shadzar · Post by **shadzar** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 11:31 am

what exactly IS an adventure path? is it just a se4ries of plot hooks connected to an over-arching plot or mega adventure?

nockermensch · Post by **nockermensch** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 12:36 pm

LeadPal wrote:I'm running Jade Regent. The most important thing to know about it is that it lives or dies on whether or not the PCs enjoy playing MTP with the NPCs travelling with them. The AP introduces a dumb little relationship minigame to help the interaction along, but it's unlikely to make anybody care by itself. One thing that helps is that the NPCs are usually the ones sucking the cock, rather than the party. The first two adventures actually go out of their way to fuck with the NPCs while the PCs play hero.

I'm somehow getting "Dating Sim" vibes from what you just described and I'm not sure if this is a pro or a con.

hogarth · Post by **hogarth** » Tue Oct 23, 2012 1:14 pm

I'm currently playing Carrion Crown and I'm quite enjoying it. It seems to be fairly popular (probably the most popular of Paizo's adventure paths for the Pathfinder RPG so far), although the first couple of adventures have been quite undead-heavy.

I'm also currently playing the first adventure of Serpent's Skull. I'm less enthusiastic about it because there's not much story so far and I'm not that crazy about "sandbox" adventures.

Note that, starting with Kingmaker I think, Paizo's PFRPG adventure paths use Medium xp progression (~20 encounters per level) rather than the 3.5-like Fast xp progression (~13 encounters per level). That's a plus for some people and a minus for others.