My question is in the title.
Basically I have been asked by a friend to GM an adventure path for a special event and it has been suggested that we try taking one from the START to the FINISH. Not in one session obviously but we've got a little over a week to do this in. I can't remember the numbers but I was quoted something along the lines of assuming there'd be ~120hrs of play in that time.
Now, assuming my players are veteran gamers and have their characters planned 1-20 and dont get bogged down in rules or looking things up, which AP's are possible?
Because honestly, i've got my doubts at it being achievable. I do, however, want some other opinions on this.
The current shortlist as requested to me is, in order of preference:
Way of the Wicked (Not Paizo but still an AP.)
Wrath of the Righteous
Rise of the Runelords
I also need to think about how i'd go about prepping and running such an event... but the AP choice comes first and I feel it of critical importance.
I have heard stories of marathons that last a week to complete Emerald Spire. That was just the content, no RP involved. I am confident in saying that you'll be unlikely to finish an AP in a week.
However, if you wish to try, I'd pick one that doesn't have much in the way of kingdom building, business management, or any other sort of outside resource management.
For my groups it has taken between 4 and 6 six hour sessions or so to finish each book in an adventure path, although we weren't rushing. Haven't played them all by any means, but they seem to have similar amount of content.
Way of the Wicked has a fair amount of side systems (book 1, book 2) and open-endedness. Wrath has a tendency to get straight up busted by failing to understand how powerful Mythic tiers are. RotRL sounds good.
If you look for a "short AP" I would take a look at the new "extended" Adventure Modules which are 3-5 level adventure path
With my group, it usually takes us 150-200 hours of gameplay to wrap up an AP. We finished 3 so far.
For my groups it has taken between 4 and 6 six hour sessions or so to finish each book in an adventure path
...which works out at around 180 hours.
I doubt you'd get it done in 120.
It would also be a severe strain on the GM. Normally the GM studies up in advance on everything that's likely to come up in the next session in the days leading up to the game. Doing that for the entire AP is practically impossible. Without that prep time, they GM will be looking things up constantly, which will slow things down significantly.
|
My group doesn't AP that much, but it takes at least 4 5-hour sessions to get through a book, and that's assuming we skip the boring stuff. "There are 6 skeletons.. you're lvl 4, they die. Moving on!"
I'm guessing between 120 and 180 hours, depending on how much your group dawdles. If you do no RP, skip all boring encounters, and the DM avoids tactics that slow things down (like traps) then it's closer to 120 hours. If you RP everything, force every encounter (even the APL-2 or more ones), use traps just enough to force everyone to search every door and hallway, and use lots of puzzles, then you're going to easily shoot well past 180 hours.
EDIT: I should also note that it goes faster if the DM removes XP. Just set up some pre-determined checkpoints where everyone levels instead.
Also, a thing to bear in mind is the group. Role-play heavy groups take longer. Six man groups take longer than four man groups. Groups where players show up late or don't show up at all take longer than groups that are on time and focused... there's a lot of variation there.
If you read ahead its usually easy to shoehorn in additional content and just as easy to cut some things out that you feel distract from or fail to advance the story. An example of that in Runelords is the Asylum at the beginning of book 2.
AP's are not quick - they aren't intended to be - but the wonderful thing about them is that they provide a framework with which you can do almost anything
Trying to run any AP in a calendar week is going to be rough. If you're looking at doing one, I would make sure to chart out what are the high points you want to run and trim down encounters as needed. APs tend to stick to Normal Progression and there's usually filler to move between Adventures and levels.
Try to avoid extra systems. For this reason Wrath of the Righteous probably isn't a good plan; Mythic rules are going to slow things down and at least one scenario uses a bunch of Mass Unit combat.|
Rise of the Runelords is potentially do-able. It's on the fast XP track and doesn't have a lot of system, so if you have a rough schedule and start skipping encounters if you fall behind, 120 hours *might* be possible.
So, a few points on how I planned to approach this.
First of all xp and levelling is all handled on a milestone system wherein once the players reach the point where the AP says they should be X level they then become X level.
Second random encounters will be entirely cinematic, as will travel which should cut out abit of the fluff.
Now I've run AP's before. Infact i've run ROTRL to almost the very end. So I know that what i've put foward here looks almost impossible and that's really why i'm seeking advice.
As has been pointed out the biggest issue is actually that the GM has to do as much prep upfront and will be constantly reading ahead and looking up as the game progresses. This isn't a huge issue for me as I work well from pre-written material and have a bunch of tablets for a GM screen all with companion apps.
I appreciate people sharing their experience and timeframes and they all lineup with the research i've already done. I'm still going to give it a try though as this is a special event for a friend.
What I'm taking away from this is that I should focus on a more 'linear' AP and just trim the fat wherever I can.
Hmm, it's a poser for sure, but any further advice would be happily received.
"During your travel from ORIGIN to DESTINATION over the next TIME you see INTERESTING DESCRIPTION and along the way ENCOUNTER at LOCATION and ENCOUNTER at OTHER LOCATION. You learn INTERESTING TRIVIA and whilst the PREVIOUS ENCOUNTER was taxing none of you are worse for wear as you approach DESTINATION."
What I meant was to build in the random encounters to narrative description of journeys. This way they players know that the world is alive and full of danger but random encounter are very seldom lethal. They would however know that whenever I did make them work through a seemingly random encounter that it was infact... not.
It's like telling the players how they have to hack their way through zombies to reach a necromancers layer as opposed to making them fight it. I mean, they're zombies so after a certain level it's pretty much auto win. Maybe tax them a few charges of a cure wand.
I've been running Iron Gods for about...6 months? I couldn't imagine getting through even a single book in a week with my group—much less six.
I might suggest Skull & Shackles. Much of the random-encounter swashbuckling can be compressed—particularly in the first adventure—and if you want to avoid bogging the pace down in lots of ship-to-ship combat, you might consider replacing Raiders of the Fever Sea with the Plunder and Peril module that came out last year.
Combine that with hand-waving most of the travel time, and you'll save a lot of time.
That said, I still think it's an unrealistic goal... but I'd be fascinated to see it work!
Might I suggest looking at the Giantslayer Marathon group. They do each book in about 48 hours +/-. Obviously they are doing a full playthrough, w/o the handwaiving. Might not be a bad place to start.
At the rate of 6 hours of play every two weeks, AP's take my group just about two years to finish.
We usually play for about 5 hours every two weeks. We finished Way of the Wicked in just over a year, Rise of the Runelords in just under a year and we just started Wrath of the Righteous.
We tend to drop the filler encounters and then beef up the others. I was the DM for Wicked and I was starting to get burned out by the end so we played out most of the interesting encounters in Book 6, dropped the others and then skipped to the end.
With Rise everyone was getting bored with Book 5 so when we finally completed it, Book 6 was greatly shortened.
Considering that we finished Book 1 of Wrath in 3 sessions I suspect it was shortened as well (but no less epic!).
I liked all 3 APs but Way of the Wicked is really well done especially if you aren't afraid to swap out some of the written encounters with your own.
It will vary a lot depending on he GM and the players.
I think I can get most groups through an AP in under 120 hours but that is assuming 6 to 8 hours sessions. However extensive RP would probably increase that by a lot.
Our group is pretty inefficient as we do a fair bit of socializing on game nights and the DM really likes to weave in side quests from other sources and such. We played RotRL but didn't manage to finish it--we got hopelessly mired in the Rune Forge IIRC and basically decided to call it a day. We are currently playing Council of Thieves and getting very close to completion. Both of these AP's lasted about 2.5 years with a weekly session averaging out to 6 hours of play each. So, if I'm correct because math is hard, we take something like 600-800 hours to play an AP.
The truth of it is that I've been having doubts as to the possibility of this venture hence why I sought other opinions. Make no mistake I'll be giving it my all regardless... I'm just hoping to gauge the scope of it all,
Replies have been really helpful so far and now I'm off to sleep on this before I make any real choices about what to do.
Carrion Crown is an excellent candidate for this goal as it is "built" for a pretty rapid pace of progress. They won't attain 20th, but that's true for almost all of the APs.
Oh ya, forgot to mention we were 14th level when we stalled in RotRL (I think...it's been awhile) and we'll likely finish CoT at 11th, maybe 12th level.
We played Kingmaker in 63 sessions, probably around 200 hrs.
I agree with the need for a linear AP and cutting it to the bare bones of the adventure. You also need complete cooperation with the players in what kind of characters they play. Even 1 Lone Wolf or Special Snowflake could delay things beyond repair.
How about somethink smaller, like Dragon´s Demand? It is supposed to be bigger than most adventures but not as big as a full AP. It takes the PCs from level 1 to level 7, which is still a pretty solid run.
My group did wrath of the righteous in 30 sessions. Call each session 6 hours or so for 180 hours. I guess you could cut that down if you are just going hardcore murderhobo route and take advantage of some of the super broken mythic options.
My group took something like 34, 4-6hr sessions to finish Rise of the Runelords.