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Skellan
December 6th, 2012, 10:54
There's a post on the paizo message boards suggesting that the adventure paths will get sanctioned this week. I am looking forward to seeing how they do this, I am certainly keen to run sanctioned AP's for Society characters :)

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2p67w&page=2?Sanctioned-APS

Trenloe
December 6th, 2012, 12:50
Yeah, that's the big announcement.

Can't tell you about it until the announcement - then you'll know anyway! ;)

hawkwind
December 6th, 2012, 13:38
it will be interesting to see how they pull this off. I find the AP's a bit long and rail roady. I am currently runoff the whispering way AP in my home game and I have had to abandon awarding xp's in favour of level when I say you do and reducing the number of encounters so I can actually finish the thing some day. I wish Paizo would do either shorter AP's or realise a few modules that were linked.

Blackfoot
December 6th, 2012, 14:27
While I was on the paizo site the other day I saw a link for sanctioned APs.. it had the 'Shattered Star' AP listed there. That link seems to have disappeared now but I wonder how exactly this is going to work.

Skellan
December 6th, 2012, 14:28
I am hoping that they will allow parts of them to be done standalone, e.g 1 book equals 3 levels.
We will have to see...

Gwaihir Scout
December 6th, 2012, 14:36
My guess is they'll treat certain sections of the APs like modules, but we'll see. I don't see them going too crazy, or they'd probably have to lock characters to the AP.

My regular game is going on hiatus in January while my brother's deployed, so I'm planning to run Runelords for PFS then.

lachancery
December 6th, 2012, 15:07
My regular game is going on hiatus in January while my brother's deployed, so I'm planning to run Runelords for PFS then.
Hmm. I see tough choices in my future in January... I've been thinking of starting the Kingmaker AP after the holidays too.

Blackfoot
December 6th, 2012, 15:08
Hmm. I see tough choices in my future in January... I've been thinking of starting the Kingmaker AP after the holidays too.
You could always go back to running your RM game. :D

Skellan
December 6th, 2012, 15:09
ooo kingmaker... that one looks awesome

Blackfoot
December 6th, 2012, 15:14
ooo kingmaker... that one looks awesome
Oh.. I wasn't saying I wouldn't sign up for Kingmaker. BTW :)

Skellan
December 6th, 2012, 15:17
I have my eye on Carrion Crown, after Blackfoot mentioned it the other day. I could have loads of fun with that one muahaha :D

Blackfoot
December 6th, 2012, 15:48
So many games.. so little time.

lachancery
December 6th, 2012, 19:48
You could always go back to running your RM game. :D
I could... ...but I have kinda fallen in love with Pathfinder/Paizo. :p

Tinculin
December 6th, 2012, 20:15
This sounds very exciting!

JohnD
December 6th, 2012, 20:22
You could always go back to running your RM game. :D
Seconded. :D

Gadreun
December 8th, 2012, 13:58
This is all very new and exciting...looking forward to reading more soon!

Trenloe
December 10th, 2012, 20:00
OK, so the announcement is out and I can finally talk about it (NDA restrictions stopped me mentioning anything before now): https://paizo.com/paizo&tab=paizo

Key highlights:

Only portions of each book of an adventure path are sanction for Pathfinder Society (PFS) play.
These have similar rules to what sanctioned modules have now: 3XP & 4PP, PC need to be within 1 level of the sanctioned level.
They can be played separately, in any order - just like they are separate modules.
You can get player and GM credit as normal - only once for each, unless it is a tier 1-2 sanctioned AP in which case you can get multiple credit if you apply it to a 1st level character.
The main difference is with home games not running PFS rules, i.e. more than likely people playing throught the whole campaign and not just the sanctioned sections. Players and GMs get a chronicle as if they had played with a PFS pregen - that is, they can apply the result (with lower gold) to a brand new 1st level PFS PC, or they can keep it until a legal PFS PC reaches the level of the sanctioned AP.
A sanctioned AP game must be all PFS legal PCs to play as a sanctioned AP game, or all "home grown" PCs if played as part of the campaign - see point #5.
This is currently only for the Shattered Star AP and the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition AP. If feedback is good, Paizo will probably release more sanctioned APs.

Trenloe
December 10th, 2012, 20:07
So, there are some people who are going to be very happy and some people who won't and some people who will struggle to get their head round it all...

Think of it like this:

It opens up a lot more sanctioned modules (because that is what these essentially are) to PFS players who don't play adventure paths. Especially opening up much higher level play than is readily available now.
It allows people who are playing a home adventure path outside of PFS (i.e. the whole campaign) to get PFS credit if they want.

Of course, people playing these as PFS sanctioned AP "modules" will not get the full adventure path experience, but it will give them the chance to play cool portions of an AP in the organised play Society framework.

Gwaihir Scout
December 10th, 2012, 20:20
The bit about your characters using home rules counting as pregens for your PFS credit is quite generous.

Runelords has sections which can be used as PFS modules for 3-5, 4-6, 8-10, 12-14, 14-16, and 16-18. Each gives 3 XP and 4 PP, like other modules. I'm willing to run these if there's enough interest (I have the first two converted already). As I mentioned earlier, I'm also thinking of running the full AP starting in January, and this is the method I'd recommend for experiencing the content.

Skellan
December 10th, 2012, 21:13
This can only be a good thing as there is now lots more content, especially at higher levels, and I am chomping at the bit to get players to higher level play. You are right Gwaihir that the APs should really be experience as a whole, but there are so many of them and they are so epic, that I doubt many people would be able to play all of them in their entirety, so opening up content seems a good idea to me.

I will get these AP's and give them a look over

I agree that the home game credit is a bit generous. I suppose it is essentially giving GM style credit for people in home games. I guess this is designed to increase society membership, but I would have preferred a different way of doing it, perhaps a chronicle with smaller rewards for completing the whole adventure path.

I'd love to be involved if you run any parts of these AP, especially if you already have them built Gwaihir :)

lachancery
December 10th, 2012, 21:30
The bit about your characters using home rules counting as pregens for your PFS credit is quite generous.

Runelords has sections which can be used as PFS modules for 3-5, 4-6, 8-10, 12-14, 14-16, and 16-18. Each gives 3 XP and 4 PP, like other modules. I'm willing to run these if there's enough interest (I have the first two converted already). As I mentioned earlier, I'm also thinking of running the full AP starting in January, and this is the method I'd recommend for experiencing the content.
If I understood Trenloe's message properly, PFS characters would not play the whole AP; they would just get the sanctioned portions of each book?

So, (correct me if I'm wrong), you could run the AP as PFS, just running the series of sanctioned portions, or you could run the AP with non-PFS characters? If I understood that part correctly, you could then issue chronicle sheets to each player to be applied against one of their PFS character of the appropriate level?

Did I get it right?

Skellan
December 10th, 2012, 21:48
Think so. Though i noticed it said that you have to accept the chronicle, so I guess if you die in the home game your pfs character would get marked dead on the chronicle. (is this right?)

Gwaihir Scout
December 10th, 2012, 22:06
I'd love to be involved if you run any parts of these AP, especially if you already have them built Gwaihir :)

Because of the nature of what they're doing, all the modules (at least in Runelords) are dungeon crawls of one type or another.

The 3-5 (Burnt Offerings) will take at least two sessions, probably three. The 4-6 (The Skinsaw Murders) should only take two sessions. I'm flying to my parents' for Christmas in less than two weeks, so this is going to have to wait until January.

Again, while these make good modules, they are also the climactic parts of two excellent AP chapters and it'll mean a lot more if you know the background from playing the whole AP. As it is, I'm going to have to invent reasons for Sheila Hiedmarch to send Pathfinders to handle these problems.

Trenloe
December 10th, 2012, 22:31
If I understood Trenloe's message properly, PFS characters would not play the whole AP; they would just get the sanctioned portions of each book?
Yes, correct. The problem will be that for some APs the sanctioned portions may have too many levels difference between each episode and the PFS character may have to adventure "elsewhere" to get enough XP to get to the right level for the next AP episode.


So, (correct me if I'm wrong), you could run the AP as PFS, just running the series of sanctioned portions, or you could run the AP with non-PFS characters? If I understood that part correctly, you could then issue chronicle sheets to each player to be applied against one of their PFS character of the appropriate level?

Did I get it right?
Yes - as long as the relevant portions of the AP were completed in order to give a full PFS chronicle. Each sanctioned AP has a number of locations that are listed and these have to be completed to get the full chronicle. It will be interesting to see how these pan out, as the AP I'm familiar with (Rise of the Runelords) has specific missions for most of the sanctioned portion - so you should get the full chronicle if you complete the "mission" (as Gwaihir says, each GM will need to come up with a society briefing or backstory to get the Pathfinder Society there), not just "doing" all of the stated locations.

Skellan
December 10th, 2012, 23:36
The more I think about it, the more I like the sanctioned AP's. The gaps in xp from the chronicle sheets will mean that home players will still need to build up a pfs character but will just get a bonus chronicle to apply at some stages.

I suppose if you really wanted your pfs character to play the whole AP, you could do so in parallel to levelling up in sanctioned pfs games, but apply no exp/loot/chronicle/conditions. You would be doing it just for the story

Blackfoot
December 10th, 2012, 23:55
I am thinking if you ran the whole AP and stuck to PFS XP... but offered a few PFS scenarios as filler in the campaign when needed for leveling between sanctioned steps... particularly if you were selective with the scenarios... you could get a lot of play and story out of it.

Skellan
December 10th, 2012, 23:59
I am thinking if you ran the whole AP and stuck to PFS XP... but offered a few PFS scenarios as filler in the campaign when needed for leveling between sanctioned steps... particularly if you were selective with the scenarios... you could get a lot of play and story out of it.
Yeah, that would be cool :)

Trenloe
December 11th, 2012, 00:36
To get the benefit of the story you really have to play the full AP - which seems obvious, but I'm saying it just so that people realise that the whole AP is not sanctioned, only a section of each book.

For example the sanctioned section of RotRL Part 1 is the final part of the AP - you miss out on all of the background and a number of encounter areas before that. The sanctioned section of RotRL part 2 is not the climactic section of the book, it is the middle "dungeon crawl" section of part 2 - and the BBEG encountered there means nothing to you unless you played the early bits of book 1 - which aren't the sanctioned parts...

So, if you want to play the full AP to get the story I would really just play it as a full AP outside of PFS. If you were running your character as a legal PFS character you'd have to play a bunch of side PFS scenarios to keep up the right legal PFS level and these would break into the story line quite a bit (there might not be enough scenarios in the area of the AP, so there is the suspension of belief of you heading somewhere else for a few scenarios then coming back). There would be a number of AP flavours that would not be PFS legal - campaign traits for example.

Sanctioning APs for PFS play is more to allow people who don't have the availability or regular group to run the full AP, to play sections of it within the PFS organised play structure - and so more stores and conventions will be running sanctioned AP based games.

Sanctioning APs is also to entice people playing an AP into PFS - give them a chronicle sheet and it might make them think about playing some PFS games with a character and applying the AP chronicle sheet to a PFS character outside of the AP they are playing.

Blackfoot
December 11th, 2012, 00:39
I was wondering if they might make some of those traits and whatnot legal considering... I'm sure some of that type of thing will be sifted through as this thing comes together.

Skellan
December 11th, 2012, 01:09
or this is a good idea from the paizo boards

For those concerned about a loss/dilution of story, do what our local PFS group is doing (with my own personal twist): run the entire AP with an unregistered PFS-legal character and apply the credit to an identical PFS registered character. Sure, that means your society character will lag behind your AP character (unless you play other scenarios to make up the xp gap as you go), but that just gives you more time to have fun with your epic gnome barbarian.
This idea might not resonate with everyone, but it seems like a workable idea.

I suppose the great thing about this is that people can play the AP's however they prefer :)

Also, OMG there's like 120 000 gp on one chronicle sheet

Trenloe
December 11th, 2012, 01:23
or this is a good idea from the paizo boards

For those concerned about a loss/dilution of story, do what our local PFS group is doing (with my own personal twist): run the entire AP with an unregistered PFS-legal character and apply the credit to an identical PFS registered character. Sure, that means your society character will lag behind your AP character (unless you play other scenarios to make up the xp gap as you go), but that just gives you more time to have fun with your epic gnome barbarian.
This idea might not resonate with everyone, but it seems like a workable idea.
Yeah, that's one of the more workable ways of applying the sanctioned AP chronicles. If you're playing the whole AP, just play the whole AP with a non PFS PC. Then apply the chronicle to a PFS legal PC outside of the AP and do other PFS scenarios with them - make them close to the one you're playing in the AP or different - it's up to you how you apply your credit.

It also allows the GM to get more "Star" credit and PFS chronicles too...


I suppose the great thing about this is that people can play the AP's however they prefer :)
Absolutely - but people need to be aware of what they can and can't do in terms of switching between PFS legal sanctioned AP play and normal (non PFS legal) AP play.

Blackfoot
December 11th, 2012, 02:04
I know our group has literally been working on Rise of the Runelords for years... so I'm not sure how well it works to complete all of the AP.. unless you play more than once a week or something.

Gwaihir Scout
December 11th, 2012, 03:05
or this is a good idea from the paizo boards

For those concerned about a loss/dilution of story, do what our local PFS group is doing (with my own personal twist): run the entire AP with an unregistered PFS-legal character and apply the credit to an identical PFS registered character. Sure, that means your society character will lag behind your AP character (unless you play other scenarios to make up the xp gap as you go), but that just gives you more time to have fun with your epic gnome barbarian.
This idea might not resonate with everyone, but it seems like a workable idea.

That sounds great to start with, but your AP character is likely to have more wealth and random cool trinkets you'd never buy yourself than the PFS character. Worth a shot, I suppose. I like 20-point buy anyway, so I'd let people starting a campaign try it.

Blackfoot
December 11th, 2012, 03:07
Ooops! Wrong thread.. nothing to see here. :D

Trenloe
December 11th, 2012, 03:33
That sounds great to start with, but your AP character is likely to have more wealth and random cool trinkets you'd never buy yourself than the PFS character. Worth a shot, I suppose. I like 20-point buy anyway, so I'd let people starting a campaign try it.
In the end the player/s and GMs have to ask themselves what they want to get out of either playing only the sanctioned sections of an AP with PFS PCs, or playing the whole AP (not PFS PCs) and assigning the chronicle to a PFS PC - because those are really the 2 main options (other than playing the whole AP with a PFS PC but only applying XP from PFS scenarios - which is a mess).

When it comes down to it, playing just the sanctioned portions of an AP is not really playing the AP - you are playing 6 modules with an underlying story arc, but you're missing out on lots of the AP backstory and jumping from one module to the next.

I think the sanctioned portions of an AP should be looked at as 6 different sanctioned modules that can be played separately in any order by a legal PFS character of the correct level. If you're playing a full blown AP then just think of the PFS chronicle sheet as an added bonus you can apply to a PFS character outside of the AP.

lachancery
December 11th, 2012, 03:43
... playing the whole AP (not PFS PCs) and assigning the chronicle to a PFS PC
It's probably a matter of personal opinion, but that's the neat upside I see out of this announcement; I would play/GM a great adventure path, and as a side benefit, I would enrich my pool of PFS characters to have more opportunities to play different scenarios (because I would have more PFS characters of different levels).

I personally wouldn't try to link/sync a non-PFS character playing an AP with a PFS character collecting the chronicle sheets.


PS: Too bad Kingmaker hasn't been sanctioned. ;)

Trenloe
December 11th, 2012, 03:53
PS: Too bad Kingmaker hasn't been sanctioned. ;)
Yeah, too bad...

Hopefully the experiment will be a good one and it will be expanded to other adventure paths - I think you'll find it will first and foremost be applied to the current AP.

Sanctioning a single AP part is actually a lot of work - deciding on the section to use (the easy task), making sure the chronicle lists correct items from that section of the AP, coming up with cool boons, etc., etc... Some of the PFS venture officers are helping with this, but it is a big effort to properly sanction APs - so if other APs are added, don't expect all of them at once! :)

hawkwind
December 11th, 2012, 08:11
I was thinking of canceling my AP subscription until I digested this announcement. I am a year and a half into running the Carrion Crown and only half way through. There is no way I could run all the Aps I have currently even if I had the inclination. At least this way there is the chance of getting some play value out of some of the AP's I have and a reason to buy future ones apart from to read

Syndrome
December 15th, 2012, 05:54
i think its a good system to get more people in pfs play and yea i could see running a regular char through an ap and applying it to pfs char

hawkwind
December 17th, 2012, 21:41
the Thornkeep mega module looks good to run PFS style

Trenloe
December 17th, 2012, 22:27
the Thornkeep mega module looks good to run PFS style
Yeah, it is - each level is ran as a sanctioned module. Watch out for deaths though, we had quite a few at a recent convention in Australia - including a TPK! It is quite brutal...

hawkwind
December 18th, 2012, 09:43
Yeah, it is - each level is ran as a sanctioned module. Watch out for deaths though, we had quite a few at a recent convention in Australia - including a TPK! It is quite brutal...
sounds great! I am so running this

lachancery
December 18th, 2012, 13:23
sounds great! I am so running this
Haha! The punishing kind of GM, huh?

hawkwind
December 18th, 2012, 19:18
I put the K into TPK