(no subject)
I've been running roleplaying games for a while. Lately I've been running adventure paths from Paizo, but with my own spin. They may have out-smarted me with this latest one, though.
So the way Paizo's adventure paths work is that they give us a series of adventures that are all connected and share a theme. For example, in the first one that I ran there was a series of progressively tougher goblin and then giant foes who harassed human settlements and tried to take over. The next one was about how the aristocracy of a certain city was corrupt and needed replacing. The third one was about revealing a deep, dark secret that a clandestine society of elves had been keeping for centuries. The fourth was about gnolls and genies trying to destroy the world. (I'm oversimplifying, perhaps, but it's vaguely accurate.)
So in the first one (when the bad guys were goblins and giants) my players played giant-kin goblins. In the second one (with corrupt aristocracy) my players were members of the aristocracy. In the third one, they played members of the elvish secret society and were given the assignment of keeping the secret. In the fourth one they decided not to do it backward and instead just played undead who were cursed by the main genie centuries ago.
We look at these as challenges and try to make sure that we get the full experience of the story while still putting our own spin on it. In the process we often don't play exactly the game that Paizo sold us, and instead do things our own way in our own time.
Until yesterday, at least.
I received chapter one of the latest path, and started reading the foreword (by James Jacobs).
In the next six volumes, we’ll be presenting a very unusual Adventure Path. In Kingmaker, there’s still an underlying story-this one involving a bitter nymph princess and a crazed bandit lord and trolls and barbarians and missing villages and superstitious kobolds and drunk thugs and so much more-but how that story unfolds is going to be left in large part up to your players. In each adventure in Kingmaker, you’ll find more than one quest-you’ll find several of them for the PCs to complete. And don’t be surprised if your players make up their own quests as they explore the land!
And there’s more! Not only are we tackling a more non-linear approach to adventure construction (which means that it’s very likely your PCs won’t even follow the order in which encounters are presented in this book-chances are good they’ll work through this adventure’s chapters and encounters in a completely unique order), but as the Kingmaker Adventure Path unfolds, your PCs will settle towns, gather followers, raise nations, and fight wars. That level of mayhem doesn’t really get underway until the next volume, of course, but by the end of Kingmaker, chances are good that one of your PCs will, indeed, be king or queen of his or her own nation!
Seriously!? What am I supposed to do with that? Usually they tell me what to make my players do and I let them do what they want, but now!? They're telling me to let them do what they want!
I guess it's time to buckle down and turn this into a railroad...?
(n.b. for those who don't know me well: I'm kidding about being unhappy. This is absolutely my favourite type of game.)
So the way Paizo's adventure paths work is that they give us a series of adventures that are all connected and share a theme. For example, in the first one that I ran there was a series of progressively tougher goblin and then giant foes who harassed human settlements and tried to take over. The next one was about how the aristocracy of a certain city was corrupt and needed replacing. The third one was about revealing a deep, dark secret that a clandestine society of elves had been keeping for centuries. The fourth was about gnolls and genies trying to destroy the world. (I'm oversimplifying, perhaps, but it's vaguely accurate.)
So in the first one (when the bad guys were goblins and giants) my players played giant-kin goblins. In the second one (with corrupt aristocracy) my players were members of the aristocracy. In the third one, they played members of the elvish secret society and were given the assignment of keeping the secret. In the fourth one they decided not to do it backward and instead just played undead who were cursed by the main genie centuries ago.
We look at these as challenges and try to make sure that we get the full experience of the story while still putting our own spin on it. In the process we often don't play exactly the game that Paizo sold us, and instead do things our own way in our own time.
Until yesterday, at least.
I received chapter one of the latest path, and started reading the foreword (by James Jacobs).
In the next six volumes, we’ll be presenting a very unusual Adventure Path. In Kingmaker, there’s still an underlying story-this one involving a bitter nymph princess and a crazed bandit lord and trolls and barbarians and missing villages and superstitious kobolds and drunk thugs and so much more-but how that story unfolds is going to be left in large part up to your players. In each adventure in Kingmaker, you’ll find more than one quest-you’ll find several of them for the PCs to complete. And don’t be surprised if your players make up their own quests as they explore the land!
And there’s more! Not only are we tackling a more non-linear approach to adventure construction (which means that it’s very likely your PCs won’t even follow the order in which encounters are presented in this book-chances are good they’ll work through this adventure’s chapters and encounters in a completely unique order), but as the Kingmaker Adventure Path unfolds, your PCs will settle towns, gather followers, raise nations, and fight wars. That level of mayhem doesn’t really get underway until the next volume, of course, but by the end of Kingmaker, chances are good that one of your PCs will, indeed, be king or queen of his or her own nation!
Seriously!? What am I supposed to do with that? Usually they tell me what to make my players do and I let them do what they want, but now!? They're telling me to let them do what they want!
I guess it's time to buckle down and turn this into a railroad...?
(n.b. for those who don't know me well: I'm kidding about being unhappy. This is absolutely my favourite type of game.)