Pathfinder 1E Have you played or run Paizo's Adventure Paths?

[ronin]

I have read thru AoW and planned to run it once we started a new campaign. Before that happened STAP came out and I decided to run that instead. It's been a blast so far and my group just encountered the demonic Vanthus at the end of the last session on the Isle of Dread. I am not really looking forward to the back to back dungeon crawls for the next two adventures but I am looking forward to running Khala.

Next session should be great since the players have been looking forward to laying the smackdown on Vanthus since the beginning of the campaign (I ended the session as he descended from the sky). So far it's been a fun campaign.

 

[Agamon]

Shackled City: Played this through the first 3 adventures before the group dissolved. I didn't find it all that great.

Age of Worms: Currently running this, we're at Spire of Long Shadows, and yeah it's nuts (the adventure, not the AP). This is the best AP, IMO. Whispering Cairn ruled, and up until now, all of the adventures have been great. WC and Champion's Belt in particular were fun. Looking forward to Prince of Redhand.

Savage Tide: Currently playing this. Good lord, getting there is not half the fun. Getting to Farshore has taken an annoyingly long time (we're just getting there now). Yes, I know it's a far ways away, but when your goal for three adventures is "get to Farshore", it gets a bit old. That said, now that we're there, I expect things will get better (is it metagaming much that I'm planning on taking Knight of the Silver Chalice as a PrC? I'm thinking by the time I can take it (11th level), I'll have a good reason to be taking it, in game).

 

[Agamon]

I played a character in Savage Tide to about 8th level, then he died. I played a second character from 8th to 10th, but then I had to move so I was forced to leave the campaign. That campaign was fraught with character death, but never a TPK.

Not sure if it's DMing styles or the APs themselves, but there's been 1 PC death up to 9th level in STAP (my PC, at L4), and 17 PC deaths in my AoW game up to L13, with only three of those in SoLS, we only really just started it. I think I'm going to modify that adventure wholesale, seeing as how it seems to be a campaign ending adventure, one way or the other.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

I am running Shackled City and am in the mid-level range with that path. I've played one 1st-level PC in Age of Worms. When she croaked, I didn't re-roll.

 

[humble minion]

Currently just starting out the 3rd Savage Tide adventure, though we still have a subplot - War of the Wielded - to wind up before Sasserine. Only one death so far, though I'm playing the adventures largely as-written despite having five quite powerful (35 point buy for stats, extra feats) PCs.

There's only been a few minor hitches so far. The 5ft corridors were a bit of a problem now and then, and a few of the locations were too small for the encounters set in them. I tweaked things slightly by having the PCs meet Rowyn in friendly circumstances before discovering she was the head of the Lotus Dragons, and by beefing up the Dragons' defenses (if the PCs escape from Parrot Island without using the elemental gem, the guild hall can be a boring pushover.) And I slotted Escape from Meenlock Prison in between There is no Honour and Bullywug Gambit, as well.

 

[Erik Mona]

This is a great thread. Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

--Erik Mona
Publisher
Paizo Publishing, LLC

 

[wolff96]

I'm running two different groups through Savage Tide right now.

One group is just starting "The Sea Wyvern's Wake". The other has just landed on the Isle of Dread. It's a little bit non-standard because one group is running RAW 3.5 and the other is an AE conversion of the adventure path. (A lot of work in the conversion, but I love Arcana Evolved.)

I love the AP and both groups have had a lot of fun with it so far. Now if I could only stop confusing which PCs go with which gaming group...

 

[Davelozzi]

This is a great thread. Thanks for all the feedback, everyone!

Thanks for all the adventures! As others have said, I'm glad to see you guys continuing the Adventure Paths with Pathfinder (I just received #1 in the mail last night), and I think the change to slightly shorter campaigns ending around 15th level is a smart choice.

As for the question, at hand, I have not had a chance to run any of these yet but I am dying to do so. I'd always run free-form campaigns but due to lack of time recently made the switch and started Red Hand of Doom which is going great so far. One of these APs will likely be next unless everyone is ready to jump into 4e, in which case it will depend on what is available when we get to that point.

 

[el-remmen]

While I only ran the 2nd of the Savage Tide adventures in my "Second Son of a Second Son" campaign (see sig), that being Bullywug's Gambit - I plan to run the AP, sort of. . . I am taking the outline of the path from the issue before the first adventure and building adventures along those lines based on what that suggests to me and fits the setting, stealing gratutiously from those adventures from the rest of the path I do happen to have, supplemented by older Dungeon adventures from 1E/2E days, which I generally like a whole lot better than the 3E ones.

Since my campaigns do not go above 10th to 12th level all the extraplanar stuff is out as is any Demogorgon connection.

 

[James Jacobs]

To echo Erik: This is indeed a great and helpful thread!

As for why things skew away from high level, I suspect the main reason is that high level play is just too complex and unfortunately not as much fun as a result. Also... you've got to account for attrition, either from TPKs that take the fun out of a game on down to groups just getting tired of a campaign. AND: It takes a long time to finish these things; in our office Age of Worms campaign, we just recently started Champion's Belt, and we started playing that campaign before the first adventure came out!

Looking at our sales, we've certainly seen the same trend there; more issues sold at the start of the campaigns than at the end.

Anyway, them's the main reasons that our first Pathfinder campaign doesn't go all the way to 20th level.