The rain, nearly constant within the jungle, comes down in sheets between the broken gaps of the forest canopy here, the clouds above almost black and flashing with lightning.
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Let's look at a specific example area from the module: You are not meant to charge into every fight swinging, but to explore and puzzle out the encounters, like it was an old school game. The reason I bring this up is Cult of Cinder has the same type of old-school exploration/puzzle encounter structure. Let me get nostalgic here: back in the days of AD&D 2e and earlier, things like CR or monster Level or the 'adventuring day' hadn't been invented yet and each fight was potentially life-threatening since players only had their experience and judgment to determine whether a fight was winnable (Can you take a young black dragon at level 3? A troll at level 1?) But the game still ran, because the games weren't so much about fighting monsters, but figuring out whether you should attempt to fight the monster or sneak by it or talk to it or trick it and so on.Īside: This incidentally is why some older advice seems really bizarre to modern players - take the concept of reserves, that is the players holding back a wizard or other spellcaster with a couple of high level spells to facilitate a retreat or rescue if the rest of the party gets in trouble - you never see that in modern play and most would (I think) argue against it as a tactic since it decreases your action economy/dpr which makes the fight harder.
HERO LAB ONLINE PF2 ADVENTURE PATH SERIES
I was talking about not stripping 90% of the module out until it is nothing but a series of combats. I wasn't talking about adding material (although you certainly can). Sidenote: I’m not involved with society, but I’m pretty sure they have a special “campaign mode” for running APs that gives them a lot more leeway in how they run things. If you aren’t, and it sounds like you aren’t, then you need sit down and have a talk to your players about it. GMs are playing the game too, and they should be having fun as well.
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And if most pathfinder GMs don’t/won’t run it that way, then how can it be a “real” experience?Īnd I’m 100% percent sure that the “real” pathfinder experience doesn’t leave the GM miserable. And if you look at the Paizo boards for the Age of Ashes, you will quickly see that most (all?) of the GMs there aren’t trying to run it like that either. Personally, I love the old-school exploration and puzzle solving aspect of the game so cutting those out in favor of an endless stream of combats would just kill it for me. I think your players have placed you in a bad situation: they want the game played in a specific way without houserules/interpretations but you need those things to run it successfully because the specific way they want is not how it is intended to be played: not a single pathfinder GM I know has tried running an AP the way your players want it and I’m sure most of them would say no to running it that way because it wouldn’t be fun for them. Like Fire, adventure paths and rules make good servants but poor masters.
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Following any structural outlines from GMG wouldn't be useful - my only guide is the Core Rulebook and the contents of the Age of Ashes AP adventures. It goes from encounter-to-encounter, precisely as written in the published module. Honestly, it feels like my role is more an interpreter of Paizo's team than a GM, as if I'm a referee of an Organized Play event or scientist in a playtest. They want to get the "real" PF2 experience, not something I've layered with house rules or redesigned to make it better balanced. I have been tasked by my players to run PF2's Age of Ashes in as close to a scientific, controlled test as possible. However, for all the debate about the GMG and its entry about the Dungeon Crawl recipe, it's largely not relevant to my group's issue. I bought the GMG for PF1 and it was a good resource for that system, and I'd likely find parts of this one useful if I were creating my own adventures.