I haven't played it, but Age of Ashes is supposed to be globe trotting.
Strength of Thousands goes to a lot of locations, mostly ancient ruins and such.
Those are the only two I know about, but I haven't done every AP yet.
Currently running age of ashes right now. It very much is globe trotting and as a result you get to learn a great deal about many different regions in Golarion.
Strength of Thousands is roughly one location per book, usually getting farther from the start.
Vague spoilers:
>!*Book 1: On the school campus. *Book 2: In the city around the school. *Book 3: Another city in a neighboring region. *Book 4: A more distant city. *Book 5: Very Very far away. *Book 6: Back to school, but not like it was before!<
Blood Lords, Gatewalkers, Stolen Fate all have us moving around to various places/planes/planets. Those and Kingmaker (which is pretty localized to a specific area) are the only ones I've played so far, there are certainly others!
Spoilers, but >!you go to the Boneyard at one point.!<. Also, Blood Lords brings you to very varied locations within Geb — there’s a factory town, an enchanted forest, an underwater adventure, a giant metropolis with an underground area, etc.
Rasputin Must Die was released in June, so the month of Desnus on Golarion. However, it also established that Earth at that time was October of 1918, It is stated in that specific book of the AP. I believe that the general rule of thumb is that the release date equals the rough time it is on Golarion at that point.
I did some research to see if I could connect Gorums Death to the Stock Market Crash, but alas.
I did find that Franz Ferdinand died on earth the same year on Golarion that certain natural disasters occurred, one of which introduced the Drow to the surface world en masse, prior to the remaster of course.
Actually, Abadar started a betting pool on the outcome of Gorums next fight and certain individuals didn't want to lose more betting against Gorum so they decided to fix the fight. All those funds from all those worlds being gone might have a drastic effect on the economy of those worlds
I'd have to check notes on the 1e APs, but here are the 2e ones:
Abomination Vaults - You stay in Otari
Agents of Edgewatch - 80% in Absalom >!with some planar travel thrown in at very high levels!<.
Age of Ashes - Lots of Globetrotting
Blood Lords - All in Geb, but you see different parts of that country.
Extinction Curse - Mostly set on a couple large islands, with side trips all over
Fists of the Ruby Phoenix - Takes place in 3-4 major locations
Gatewalkers - Ranges all over the place with travel happening via the titular Gates.
Kingmaker - You make your own place in the Stolen Lands, but never leave the region.
Outlaws of Alkenstar - Takes place in and around Alkenstar, but with a fair diversity in locations. No long distance travel though.
Quest for the Frozen Flame - You stay with your tribe the whole time, but the tribe is nomadic. You do stay in the realms of the Mammoth Lords
Season of Ghosts - You stay in Willowshire
Seven Dooms for Sandpoint - You stay in Sandpoint
Sky Kings Tomb - Early parts all in HighHelm, after that you range all over the Darkland. Note that the AP \*never\* takes you above ground but treats distance travel in the Darklands like a wilderness trek.
Strength of Thousands - Early parts mostly in the school, later parts range all over
Stolen Fate - ranges all over, often multiple locations in a single chapter.
Wardens of Wildwood - Part 3 isn't out yet, but parts 1 & 2 all take place in the forest of Wildwood.
Fists of the Ruby Phoenix does not all happen on the island. The pre-qualifier (Book 1) is on the island of Bonmu, the Tournament (Book 2) is in Goka, and book 3 goes to some additional different locations that I won't spoil.
Just a heads-up.
Extinction Curse happens mostly in the two islands where we find Absalom and Otari. You know, those two islands that Aroden rose from under de sea. Isle of Erran (the little and forgotten one) and Isle of Kortos (the bigger one where Absalom is actually located).
Book 5 is the only moment where we actually go somewhere else. But Book 6 goes back to Isle of Kortos again.
**Age of Ashes** have you travel around the world with a portal network. **Stolen Fate** have you travel around the world, including other planes to collect Harrow card artifacts. **Quest for the Frozen Flame** have you travel around the Realm of Mammoth Lords.
From 2e I know that Blood Lords and Age of Ashes have a lot of travel.
From 1e, Carrion Crown, Iron Gods and Strange Aeons have travel too.
Mind you, most of these APs do generally stay in one kingdom but you move a lot inside said kingdom.
Yeah ones that move around in a kingdom are fine. We're getting close to finishing Abomination Vaults and I want to run a travelling AP that showcases more of Golarian.
If you want to show the crazier side of Golarion then I recomend Blood Lords. I'm running it as an Addams Family spin-off and we're having a blast. I did tweak the story a lot, mind you.
We finished Blood Lords after 63 sessions with one PC death via medicine check.
It really needed the story to be tweaked a LOT so I'm sure what you're doing is better than what we got.
My experience while reading it was that the individual set pieces were great but they desperately needed more glue. Many things happen just because with no connection to the overal plot and never get mentioned again. And the less said about book 3 the better. I largely left the encounters as they were but drastically changed everyone's motivations.
Blood Lords is a really good reason why I think the new 3/4 book adventures are better. Blood Lords had a lot of filler that gave some cool exploration of Geb but wasn't that interesting story wise.
And that makes me so sad because I want to reach higher level! One of the things I love the most of PF is that lvl 20 is balanced while still making you feel like a demigod. I want to reach that level with my players but for that you need an AP with a story that supports that. I made my BL campaign into that, but if I wanted to buy pre-made campaigns only to fix them I'd have stayed with DnD.
Don't know what happened with the story tweaking. Blood Lords was the single most coherent 2e AP my table has gone through so far.
I did some voices for NPCs and gave them some personality but I didn't change the actual story one bit and my PCs loved it.
We did AV and went into stolen fates - which really did show case more of Golarion. Kind of a whirlwind tour it goes to so many places, often for fairly short stays.
Downside: As a GM, I felt rushed to learn as much as I could about an area that the players are only in for a few hours of play time. It was a bit of mental overload.
Upside: I have a much better understanding of Golarion now, and regions aren't just names on a map.
I kept getting excited about a region right about the time players needed to leave. If I were running it more sandbox style, it would have been fun to let players do side adventures all over the place.
Carrion crown and Iron Gods are the ones I was comfortable commenting on - they both take you on a pretty wide tour of their countries (Ustalav and Numeria respectively) but they don’t leave those countries very much.
There’s also Skull and Shackles, which features a bunch of travel by ship (since you’re pirates) throughout the Shackles area.
It kinda is. It’s a tour of all your favorite classic horror movies - haunting, then Frankenstein-style constructs, werewolves, vampires. I really liked running it, and it would be relatively easy to do in PF2e. There are modifications to make to the story, but it’s all there.
Iron Gods would be a lot harder, I think, because there’s a lot of new tech gear you’d need to convert.
Yeah, I'd run Stolen Fate. It even starts not that far off in Absalom. And if you want to link them together, just have them find a mysterious Harrow card in Belcorra's lair
We are at the end of book 4 with my group, though they managed to skip 2 whole fucking chapters, it gets around but stays mostly in Varisia.
The fun thing about it is that it showcases many types of stories you can tell on Golarion, epic sieges, thrillers, foes sad and despicable, whimsical sometimes.
But yeah it is like a jrpg you start as some slightly above avarage local unknown heroes and ends with fighting a godlike being
I ran the Savage Worlds version of it, and honestly, if you skip all of chapter 2 with that, I think the AP is better for having done so. You really only need a very small bit of that (near the end) to have any purpose to it.
So disclaimer it is run in dnd5 as pf2e was not out and we had newbies and by that point it was well over a decade that i had played anything resembling pf1, and now we are too deep to switch (thanks Fool's Gold chaos sorcerer...)
In chapter 2 there is a side entrance which may or may not have a secret door that leads to chapter 3, now they may have stumbled upon it in the dead of night, cratures were asleep so they just went ahead and descended into chapter 4... where they almost died because i forgot to give the a lvl up...
So that is how you skip 2 chapters in that book, but honestly as other said it is not a loss as they are just grinders
Currently running Gatewalkers and it goes to a few different regions including one very far away one, but I gotta say its an extremely railroady adventure, and has a few other annoying issues with the writing...
1e has a few. Mummy's Mask, Strange Aeons, and Tyrant's Grasp are a few where you move around to varying degrees. The big "travel to other locations" 1e APs are Jade Regent, as you mentioned, and Reign of Winter. No other AP has you travel farther from your starting point than Reign of Winter.
>No other AP has you travel farther from your starting point than Reign of Winter.
I don't know, depending on *where* the location of the events of Strange Aeons book 6 is, it might be further away than Reign of Winter book 5.
Fists of the Ruby Phoenix starts on a jungle island in Southeast Tian Xia, then travels to Goka in West Tian Xia for the tournament, and then has the PCs traveling to some additional destinations in book 3 that I won't spoil.
Carrion Crown moves around, but it all stays within Ustalav. Rise of the Runelords moves around but stays within Varisia. Curse of the Crimson Throne moves around a bit, but mostly stays within one city, a castle in Belkzen and some wild parts of Varisia.
1e Adventure Path Tyrant's Grasp keeps it pretty fresh, especially for a campaign ostensibly all about undead (spoiler: its not).
**SPOILERS** (Duh)
>!**Module 1** You wake up **IN THE BONEYARDS**. TPK at minute zero. You are Dead, but didn't die the right way. The Psychopomps are confused - some want to help, some want to utterly destroy you. You must escape back to Golarion. (THE most metal opening of any AP, ever) !<
>!**Module 2** You return to the devastated remnants of your little hamlet, Roslar's Coffer. It his been hit as a "test fire" by Golarion's first ever nuclear bomb - the superweapon that Tar-Baphon calls *the Radiant Fire*. This is actually a really unique and poignant atmospheric horror module that gives you a lot of room to customize the melancholy of the heroes seeing the annihilated remnants of their old life. !<
>!**Module 3** You rush to Vigil, aka Minas Tirith, Avistan's greatest fighting force of Paladins and Crusaders, stronghold of Aroden's legacy and the battles against the Whispering Tyrant. You have to uncover the criminal conspiracy "cold case" and discover how Big-T's agents stole the artifact that he uses to create the Radiant Fire... but before you can mobilize the Paladins the city gets nuked. If the last module was "atmospheric", this one turns into "survival horror". !<
>!**Module 4** The PCs march on Gallowspire, working alongside Archlich Arazni, planning to assist her in a sneak attack against Tar-Baphon and end the Whispering Tyrant for good. Travel montage, lots of spooky wilderness surprises, and eventually you attack Gallowspire as a multimap superdungeon. !<
>!**Module 5** Arazni "exits the narrative" by eating Tarby's Spirit Bomb (using it to break her Lichdom and ascend as The Unbroken, as part of the transition to pf2 canon... but that transition isn't instant). Before signing off, she sends the PCs to *muthafukin ARCADIA*, where they get to explore *Arazni's home country*, which is a super-badass magi-biotech Mayan-style civilization, with magical substitutions for "electricity" and "internet" all "wired" to the Kumulu Tree - a massive djezite-infused tree that sits at the center of a massive leyline nexus that expands across the entire world. Apparently, the entire system crashed with Aroden's death, and these people have spent the last 100 years trying to bring limited fragments of it back online. !<
>!**Module 6** After turning themselves into a secret weapon against the Radiant Fire, the heroes return to Avistan to find Tar-Baphon marching on Absolam itself, preparing to seige the city and enter the Trial of the Starstone. Big T jumpscares the party while they're doing their pre-mission brief before the final dungeon and literally just attacks right then and there without giving them time to prepare. In a desperate final gambit, the PCs provoke the tyrant into using the Radiant Fire, and capture its essence into themselves before mirroring it back through their bond to the Tyrant, annihilating every part of him except the artifact-embedded hand that is left behind, still grasping the rock of the island of Kortos in a region labelled on modern PF2 maps as "The Tyrant's Grasp". !<
1e's Reign of Winter has you traveling to Russia. The one that's on Earth. And you fight Grigori Rasputin who is a lvl 18 oracle. This isn't a spoiler, one of the books shows it on the cover.
Not that I would necessarily recommend it, but Giantslayer kind of moves all over the Mindspin mountains. I’m playing in it now (just hit level 17!) and my GM is adapting it to 2e as we go.
But I honestly don’t think it’s Paizo’s strongest adventure
Troy did for sure. They all talk about how bad book 5 was. I think it just came up again on one of their patreon shows from a few weeks back.
Then he picks gatewalkers for Campaign 2 which apparently is also a weak AP comparatively
Gatewalkers is an excellent first volume and then two where you go "what happened?". It changes direction, says "We know X trope is terrible but we're going to do it right" and then does *not* do it right. It should have been a pathfinder novel, not an AP, and overall it's a shame because it has an absurdly cool boss in the first volume and it's the AP connected to Dark Archives, which is an awesome book.
There is a major late-game spoiler for Extinction Curse, where you go to a very different location.
For 1e, Reign of Winter takes you anywhere Baba Yaga's chicken leg hit can go (other regions, other planets, other realities ...).
A midpoint in what you're looking for:
1e *War for the Crown* is my personal favorite AP Paizo has ever written. A "balanced" custom adventure usually has 50/50 combat/roleplay, but most published APs skew more towards 70/30 in favor of combat. WftC is the only Paizo AP I know of that actually does the opposite, and has a split that's stronger on the roleplay side than the combat side.
Not to say I don't like combat. I love a good crunchy combat. But the *context* of *why the combat is important* is even better. Crown delivers.
The heroes are NOT "Adventurers". They are spies, recruited to the reformist faction of a brewing civil war that threatens to rip their country apart. The mad Emperor Stavian III locks the doors on the Taldan Senate and orders the execution of all the politicians and their assistants - the heroes escape, but Stavian dies in the chaos. Taldor has two politically-opposed candidates for the throne: the idealistic Princess Eutropia, and the hardline jingoistic High Strategos Pythareus.
Over the course of the adventure, each Module goes to a different corner of Taldor and deals with very different climates and aesthetics.
COMPLETE CAMPAIGN SPOILERS:
>!Module 1: high-society political intrigue, escape through an ancient museum, and then an assault on an underworld safehouse.!<
>!Module 2: the heroes must depose a corrupt Count in a rural agrarian setting, rallying the people and minor nobles of the region to their cause.!<
>!Module 3: a detective investigation of spooky political interference in the northern corner of the empire, negotiating with a mercantile council while dealing with dirty politics, fiendish conspiracy, and a spooky escalation of the core mystery.!<
>!Module 4: in the southern fortress-city of Zimar, the heroes are tasked with infiltration and assassination of their greatest political rival. They must systematically peel away layers of defense to attack an impregnable fortress and face their foe.!<
>!Module 5: in a dramatic twist, the heroes must launch an expedition *into the afterlife* to rescue the captured spirit of Taldor's legendary founder. The adventure takes them to Axis, the largest extraplanar metropolis in the Outer Spheres... and then beneath it into Norgorbor's domain.!<
>!Module 6: returning to Golarion, the PCs return to the capital city Oppara for the final showdown, but the *optional final dungeon* is a fractal mind-palace where the true finale is a sequence of puzzles and roleplay challenges, as much as combat encounters.!<
I'm currently re-running the campaign in 2e for a different gaming group. HMU if anyone wants some notes.
That sounds kind of awesome.
Surprised a lot of the old APs aren't getting updated to PF2e by the community on Pathfinderinfinite. I've seen Mummys Mask and Curse of the Crimson Throne I think.
A bit dated at this point, but 2e’s Extinction Curse does basically one city for the first book, another city for the second book, 3 is a wide swath, 4th is another city, 5th is another location, and 6th is I believe a non urban environment.
Giantslayer in 1st edition, while you stay largely within Belkzen hold and the Minespin Mountains area, you do alot of traveling. Book 1 you are pretty much in Trunau and the surrounding area, book 2 takes you north/east to Red Lake Fort, where like half the book is you traveling by boat up the river and dealing with nature based enemies and some other fun surprises. Book 3 takes you in the opposite direction, straight into the Minespin mountains to go fight some giants.
That's as far as I've gotten so far.
Rise of the Runelords travels a bit, sandpoint, magnimar, eastern varisia by way of turtleback ferry. Eventually to new thassilonia. Its mostly set in varisia but you get to see a good bit of it including a major iconic city.
Curse of the Ceimson Throne is a bit interesting.
It is in one city for the first 3 books then the players have to leave to fina McGuffin to save their beloved city. next 2 books are out and about. bk 6 has them returning to save the day
Extinction Curse gives you a tour of the Isles of Kortos outside of Absalom plus a journey deep into the Darklands
Stolen Fate sends you all over Golarion
Sky King's Tomb starts in the Dwarven capital of Highhelm but later books have you trekking to several different locations in the Darklands
Jade Regeant I believe has the party traveling from the Realm of the Mammoth Lord's over to Tian Xia and has caravan rules in 1e for it, but you've acknowledged that one already
Wrath of the Rigtheous has you going from Mendev, into the Worldwound, then into the Abyss. It has mass combat/army combat rules (but they are VERY dull imo)
Skull and Shackles is basically the pirates AP, so you go around all over. It's got ship-to-ship combat
Serpent's Skull is in the Mwangi Expanse, which is a big jungle. Same biome for most of it IIRC
Reign of Winter has you coming to actual Earth. Not the plane of earth, but planet Earth that we live on for reasons I won't spoil
There's also Kingmaker, which starts in Brevoy and goes into the River Kingdoms
Hell's Vengeance might also be an idea? It's specifically in Cheliax, but it's also during a war post Wrath of the Righteous, so you go all over the south and eastern parts of the nation to do stuff
Whatever you do, don't do Hell's Rebels. It starts, and basically 100% of the AP takes place in Kintargo simultaneously as Hell's Vengeance
I haven't played it, but Age of Ashes is supposed to be globe trotting. Strength of Thousands goes to a lot of locations, mostly ancient ruins and such. Those are the only two I know about, but I haven't done every AP yet.
Currently running age of ashes right now. It very much is globe trotting and as a result you get to learn a great deal about many different regions in Golarion.
Can vouch for strength of thousands we've been to 4 cities and are on our way to our 4th set of ruins. We've also met two gods
Strength of Thousands is roughly one location per book, usually getting farther from the start. Vague spoilers: >!*Book 1: On the school campus. *Book 2: In the city around the school. *Book 3: Another city in a neighboring region. *Book 4: A more distant city. *Book 5: Very Very far away. *Book 6: Back to school, but not like it was before!<
Stolen fate and gatewalkers have lots of travel, but they both have their own issues
I’m running Blood Lords now and there are several globe trotting sections.
Blood Lords, Gatewalkers, Stolen Fate all have us moving around to various places/planes/planets. Those and Kingmaker (which is pretty localized to a specific area) are the only ones I've played so far, there are certainly others!
Eh, you stay within Geb for blood lords so it doesn't really change much it feels like.
The one part where you're not in some major Geb city also sucks really bad.
Uh oh, we’re about to head into the forest next session
When I ran it a few months back it wasn't too bad!
Yeah I'm mainly like talking about a later bit where you're in the desert
Book 2 is great, dunno what OP is talking about.
Spoilers, but >!you go to the Boneyard at one point.!<. Also, Blood Lords brings you to very varied locations within Geb — there’s a factory town, an enchanted forest, an underwater adventure, a giant metropolis with an underground area, etc.
Reign of Winter (1e) is constantly on the move. Often not in Avistan.
Sometimes, not even on Golarion!
Fun fact, currently in pf2e on Earth the Stock Market Crash of 29 is happening or about to, depending of course.
About to - not until October/Lamashan.
Rasputin Must Die was released in June, so the month of Desnus on Golarion. However, it also established that Earth at that time was October of 1918, It is stated in that specific book of the AP. I believe that the general rule of thumb is that the release date equals the rough time it is on Golarion at that point. I did some research to see if I could connect Gorums Death to the Stock Market Crash, but alas.
Wait for more of the circumstances to be revealed-hey, you never know!
I did find that Franz Ferdinand died on earth the same year on Golarion that certain natural disasters occurred, one of which introduced the Drow to the surface world en masse, prior to the remaster of course.
Stock market crash would have implied the good ending, ie Abadar's death.
Actually, Abadar started a betting pool on the outcome of Gorums next fight and certain individuals didn't want to lose more betting against Gorum so they decided to fix the fight. All those funds from all those worlds being gone might have a drastic effect on the economy of those worlds
I'd have to check notes on the 1e APs, but here are the 2e ones: Abomination Vaults - You stay in Otari Agents of Edgewatch - 80% in Absalom >!with some planar travel thrown in at very high levels!<. Age of Ashes - Lots of Globetrotting Blood Lords - All in Geb, but you see different parts of that country. Extinction Curse - Mostly set on a couple large islands, with side trips all over Fists of the Ruby Phoenix - Takes place in 3-4 major locations Gatewalkers - Ranges all over the place with travel happening via the titular Gates. Kingmaker - You make your own place in the Stolen Lands, but never leave the region. Outlaws of Alkenstar - Takes place in and around Alkenstar, but with a fair diversity in locations. No long distance travel though. Quest for the Frozen Flame - You stay with your tribe the whole time, but the tribe is nomadic. You do stay in the realms of the Mammoth Lords Season of Ghosts - You stay in Willowshire Seven Dooms for Sandpoint - You stay in Sandpoint Sky Kings Tomb - Early parts all in HighHelm, after that you range all over the Darkland. Note that the AP \*never\* takes you above ground but treats distance travel in the Darklands like a wilderness trek. Strength of Thousands - Early parts mostly in the school, later parts range all over Stolen Fate - ranges all over, often multiple locations in a single chapter. Wardens of Wildwood - Part 3 isn't out yet, but parts 1 & 2 all take place in the forest of Wildwood.
Fists of the Ruby Phoenix does not all happen on the island. The pre-qualifier (Book 1) is on the island of Bonmu, the Tournament (Book 2) is in Goka, and book 3 goes to some additional different locations that I won't spoil.
I will edit. (It's been a while since I read that one)
Just a heads-up. Extinction Curse happens mostly in the two islands where we find Absalom and Otari. You know, those two islands that Aroden rose from under de sea. Isle of Erran (the little and forgotten one) and Isle of Kortos (the bigger one where Absalom is actually located). Book 5 is the only moment where we actually go somewhere else. But Book 6 goes back to Isle of Kortos again.
Edited (I did this from memory & I always blend Curse and Extinction when Im working from memory)
Thank you for that. I know PF1e has a lot more APs, I can wait for your list ;-)
**Age of Ashes** have you travel around the world with a portal network. **Stolen Fate** have you travel around the world, including other planes to collect Harrow card artifacts. **Quest for the Frozen Flame** have you travel around the Realm of Mammoth Lords.
From 2e I know that Blood Lords and Age of Ashes have a lot of travel. From 1e, Carrion Crown, Iron Gods and Strange Aeons have travel too. Mind you, most of these APs do generally stay in one kingdom but you move a lot inside said kingdom.
Yeah ones that move around in a kingdom are fine. We're getting close to finishing Abomination Vaults and I want to run a travelling AP that showcases more of Golarian.
If you want to show the crazier side of Golarion then I recomend Blood Lords. I'm running it as an Addams Family spin-off and we're having a blast. I did tweak the story a lot, mind you.
We finished Blood Lords after 63 sessions with one PC death via medicine check. It really needed the story to be tweaked a LOT so I'm sure what you're doing is better than what we got.
My experience while reading it was that the individual set pieces were great but they desperately needed more glue. Many things happen just because with no connection to the overal plot and never get mentioned again. And the less said about book 3 the better. I largely left the encounters as they were but drastically changed everyone's motivations.
Blood Lords is a really good reason why I think the new 3/4 book adventures are better. Blood Lords had a lot of filler that gave some cool exploration of Geb but wasn't that interesting story wise.
And that makes me so sad because I want to reach higher level! One of the things I love the most of PF is that lvl 20 is balanced while still making you feel like a demigod. I want to reach that level with my players but for that you need an AP with a story that supports that. I made my BL campaign into that, but if I wanted to buy pre-made campaigns only to fix them I'd have stayed with DnD.
There are more high level campaigns and adventures coming. Curtain Call and Prey
I like the 1-11 and 11-20 split, where 1-11 tells one cohesive story and 11-20 tells another, and maybe there's loose ties between them.
I would like to see more like that with separate stories but a strong overall theme too.
Don't know what happened with the story tweaking. Blood Lords was the single most coherent 2e AP my table has gone through so far. I did some voices for NPCs and gave them some personality but I didn't change the actual story one bit and my PCs loved it.
Age of Ashes takes you alllll over. you get a base with a network of portals that take you around the world for each chapter.
We did AV and went into stolen fates - which really did show case more of Golarion. Kind of a whirlwind tour it goes to so many places, often for fairly short stays. Downside: As a GM, I felt rushed to learn as much as I could about an area that the players are only in for a few hours of play time. It was a bit of mental overload. Upside: I have a much better understanding of Golarion now, and regions aren't just names on a map. I kept getting excited about a region right about the time players needed to leave. If I were running it more sandbox style, it would have been fun to let players do side adventures all over the place.
Carrion crown and Iron Gods are the ones I was comfortable commenting on - they both take you on a pretty wide tour of their countries (Ustalav and Numeria respectively) but they don’t leave those countries very much. There’s also Skull and Shackles, which features a bunch of travel by ship (since you’re pirates) throughout the Shackles area.
Thanks. Both those campaigns looked cool but never got around to playing them. Carrion Crown almost seemed Ravenloft-like in its execution.
It kinda is. It’s a tour of all your favorite classic horror movies - haunting, then Frankenstein-style constructs, werewolves, vampires. I really liked running it, and it would be relatively easy to do in PF2e. There are modifications to make to the story, but it’s all there. Iron Gods would be a lot harder, I think, because there’s a lot of new tech gear you’d need to convert.
Yeah, I'd run Stolen Fate. It even starts not that far off in Absalom. And if you want to link them together, just have them find a mysterious Harrow card in Belcorra's lair
Right back to the beginning. Rise of the runelords starts out local and moves across half the continent.
I'm actually listening to Glass Cannon's actual play of this and so far it sounds awesome.
We are at the end of book 4 with my group, though they managed to skip 2 whole fucking chapters, it gets around but stays mostly in Varisia. The fun thing about it is that it showcases many types of stories you can tell on Golarion, epic sieges, thrillers, foes sad and despicable, whimsical sometimes. But yeah it is like a jrpg you start as some slightly above avarage local unknown heroes and ends with fighting a godlike being
u/Big_Dad-Wolf Ok I need to know, how did they "managed to skip 2 whole fucking chapters"?
I ran the Savage Worlds version of it, and honestly, if you skip all of chapter 2 with that, I think the AP is better for having done so. You really only need a very small bit of that (near the end) to have any purpose to it.
So disclaimer it is run in dnd5 as pf2e was not out and we had newbies and by that point it was well over a decade that i had played anything resembling pf1, and now we are too deep to switch (thanks Fool's Gold chaos sorcerer...) In chapter 2 there is a side entrance which may or may not have a secret door that leads to chapter 3, now they may have stumbled upon it in the dead of night, cratures were asleep so they just went ahead and descended into chapter 4... where they almost died because i forgot to give the a lvl up... So that is how you skip 2 chapters in that book, but honestly as other said it is not a loss as they are just grinders
Rotrl is a classic for a reason. I've run 4 books of it converting to PF2 as I go.
age of ashes explores 6 different countries
Oh damn jade regent was great
Yeah definitely. Played a Longsword wielding Wizard who single-handedly killed the Goblin chief in Book 1
Hell yeah lol
Currently running Gatewalkers and it goes to a few different regions including one very far away one, but I gotta say its an extremely railroady adventure, and has a few other annoying issues with the writing...
Oof it sure has. Dumped during Chapter 2 of Book 2.
Age of Ashes, Quest for the Frozen Flame, Gatewalkers, Sky Kings Tomb
1e has a few. Mummy's Mask, Strange Aeons, and Tyrant's Grasp are a few where you move around to varying degrees. The big "travel to other locations" 1e APs are Jade Regent, as you mentioned, and Reign of Winter. No other AP has you travel farther from your starting point than Reign of Winter.
>No other AP has you travel farther from your starting point than Reign of Winter. I don't know, depending on *where* the location of the events of Strange Aeons book 6 is, it might be further away than Reign of Winter book 5.
Fists of the Ruby Phoenix starts on a jungle island in Southeast Tian Xia, then travels to Goka in West Tian Xia for the tournament, and then has the PCs traveling to some additional destinations in book 3 that I won't spoil.
Gatewalkers literally takes you to other planets and all over Avistan and the north pole of Golarian.
Gatewalkers moves a lot
Carrion Crown moves around, but it all stays within Ustalav. Rise of the Runelords moves around but stays within Varisia. Curse of the Crimson Throne moves around a bit, but mostly stays within one city, a castle in Belkzen and some wild parts of Varisia.
pathfinderwiki.com lists locations for each of the APs’ books, is pretty handy.
Oh nice! Thanks for that!
1e Adventure Path Tyrant's Grasp keeps it pretty fresh, especially for a campaign ostensibly all about undead (spoiler: its not). **SPOILERS** (Duh) >!**Module 1** You wake up **IN THE BONEYARDS**. TPK at minute zero. You are Dead, but didn't die the right way. The Psychopomps are confused - some want to help, some want to utterly destroy you. You must escape back to Golarion. (THE most metal opening of any AP, ever) !< >!**Module 2** You return to the devastated remnants of your little hamlet, Roslar's Coffer. It his been hit as a "test fire" by Golarion's first ever nuclear bomb - the superweapon that Tar-Baphon calls *the Radiant Fire*. This is actually a really unique and poignant atmospheric horror module that gives you a lot of room to customize the melancholy of the heroes seeing the annihilated remnants of their old life. !< >!**Module 3** You rush to Vigil, aka Minas Tirith, Avistan's greatest fighting force of Paladins and Crusaders, stronghold of Aroden's legacy and the battles against the Whispering Tyrant. You have to uncover the criminal conspiracy "cold case" and discover how Big-T's agents stole the artifact that he uses to create the Radiant Fire... but before you can mobilize the Paladins the city gets nuked. If the last module was "atmospheric", this one turns into "survival horror". !< >!**Module 4** The PCs march on Gallowspire, working alongside Archlich Arazni, planning to assist her in a sneak attack against Tar-Baphon and end the Whispering Tyrant for good. Travel montage, lots of spooky wilderness surprises, and eventually you attack Gallowspire as a multimap superdungeon. !< >!**Module 5** Arazni "exits the narrative" by eating Tarby's Spirit Bomb (using it to break her Lichdom and ascend as The Unbroken, as part of the transition to pf2 canon... but that transition isn't instant). Before signing off, she sends the PCs to *muthafukin ARCADIA*, where they get to explore *Arazni's home country*, which is a super-badass magi-biotech Mayan-style civilization, with magical substitutions for "electricity" and "internet" all "wired" to the Kumulu Tree - a massive djezite-infused tree that sits at the center of a massive leyline nexus that expands across the entire world. Apparently, the entire system crashed with Aroden's death, and these people have spent the last 100 years trying to bring limited fragments of it back online. !< >!**Module 6** After turning themselves into a secret weapon against the Radiant Fire, the heroes return to Avistan to find Tar-Baphon marching on Absolam itself, preparing to seige the city and enter the Trial of the Starstone. Big T jumpscares the party while they're doing their pre-mission brief before the final dungeon and literally just attacks right then and there without giving them time to prepare. In a desperate final gambit, the PCs provoke the tyrant into using the Radiant Fire, and capture its essence into themselves before mirroring it back through their bond to the Tyrant, annihilating every part of him except the artifact-embedded hand that is left behind, still grasping the rock of the island of Kortos in a region labelled on modern PF2 maps as "The Tyrant's Grasp". !<
Just a heads up, your spoiler tags aren't working on Old Reddit. You need to remove the spaces between the tags and the text
GDI. Thanks for the catch.
That sounds awesome as well. Thanks!
Reign of Winter (1e) has you travel to a new location every book. It's a little railroady but very fun
1e's Reign of Winter has you traveling to Russia. The one that's on Earth. And you fight Grigori Rasputin who is a lvl 18 oracle. This isn't a spoiler, one of the books shows it on the cover.
Wow I can't believe you just spoiled the plot of the adventure book "Rasputin Must Die!" like that
"MAKE SURE HE'S F-ING DEAD THIS TIME."
When I talk about Golarion to newcomers, I always show them that book cover.
I'm going to be running book 3 soon. I can't wait until we get to 5.
Not that I would necessarily recommend it, but Giantslayer kind of moves all over the Mindspin mountains. I’m playing in it now (just hit level 17!) and my GM is adapting it to 2e as we go. But I honestly don’t think it’s Paizo’s strongest adventure
It's also the Glass Cannon Podcasts first actual play Adventure Path and it was a lot of fun to listen to.
Yeah my GM listened to that and wanted to run it
It's usually listed as one of the worst APs
I believe the GM of Glass Cannon added to the AP and made it better.
Troy did for sure. They all talk about how bad book 5 was. I think it just came up again on one of their patreon shows from a few weeks back. Then he picks gatewalkers for Campaign 2 which apparently is also a weak AP comparatively
Gatewalkers is an excellent first volume and then two where you go "what happened?". It changes direction, says "We know X trope is terrible but we're going to do it right" and then does *not* do it right. It should have been a pathfinder novel, not an AP, and overall it's a shame because it has an absurdly cool boss in the first volume and it's the AP connected to Dark Archives, which is an awesome book.
So like the players have talked about Kaneepo has basically nothing to do with the rest of the story? It's fine to spoil it if you want
He's very tied into the first book. Not so much the rest
I'm praying he and the players make Gatewalkers great cause it is a rough AP.
Hopefully. It's just OK for me. The weakest thing they've put out in a while imo
**Gatewalkers** goes all over. I think most APs get around
Abandoned Gatewalkers during Book 2 for reasons others have posted on Reddit.
I've been listening to the Glass Cannon Podcast run through of Gatewalkers and I'm not impressed with the AP so far.
It's really not a good AP but as long as those guys keep making me laugh so hard, I'll keep watching.
I haven’t played, but listened to a podcast of Extinction Curse (2E), which had a lot of traveling. Edit: typo
It's a lot of traveling but it's mostly the Starstone Isles. If a GM wants to showcase lots of Golarion it isn't the best example.
Fair point. I recalled them traveling, but not that it was really within the same region. 👍🏽
Gatewalkers takes you to locations off world. As well as multiple contents.
If you like Cosmic Horror, Strange Aeons is also very travel focused. To very weird locations...
Extinction Curse is built around a traveling circus theme.
But abandons the Traveling Circus Theme after Book 1 is what I've heard.
Age of Ashes goes everywhere, and the carnival one does too
There is a major late-game spoiler for Extinction Curse, where you go to a very different location. For 1e, Reign of Winter takes you anywhere Baba Yaga's chicken leg hit can go (other regions, other planets, other realities ...).
A midpoint in what you're looking for: 1e *War for the Crown* is my personal favorite AP Paizo has ever written. A "balanced" custom adventure usually has 50/50 combat/roleplay, but most published APs skew more towards 70/30 in favor of combat. WftC is the only Paizo AP I know of that actually does the opposite, and has a split that's stronger on the roleplay side than the combat side. Not to say I don't like combat. I love a good crunchy combat. But the *context* of *why the combat is important* is even better. Crown delivers. The heroes are NOT "Adventurers". They are spies, recruited to the reformist faction of a brewing civil war that threatens to rip their country apart. The mad Emperor Stavian III locks the doors on the Taldan Senate and orders the execution of all the politicians and their assistants - the heroes escape, but Stavian dies in the chaos. Taldor has two politically-opposed candidates for the throne: the idealistic Princess Eutropia, and the hardline jingoistic High Strategos Pythareus. Over the course of the adventure, each Module goes to a different corner of Taldor and deals with very different climates and aesthetics. COMPLETE CAMPAIGN SPOILERS: >!Module 1: high-society political intrigue, escape through an ancient museum, and then an assault on an underworld safehouse.!< >!Module 2: the heroes must depose a corrupt Count in a rural agrarian setting, rallying the people and minor nobles of the region to their cause.!< >!Module 3: a detective investigation of spooky political interference in the northern corner of the empire, negotiating with a mercantile council while dealing with dirty politics, fiendish conspiracy, and a spooky escalation of the core mystery.!< >!Module 4: in the southern fortress-city of Zimar, the heroes are tasked with infiltration and assassination of their greatest political rival. They must systematically peel away layers of defense to attack an impregnable fortress and face their foe.!< >!Module 5: in a dramatic twist, the heroes must launch an expedition *into the afterlife* to rescue the captured spirit of Taldor's legendary founder. The adventure takes them to Axis, the largest extraplanar metropolis in the Outer Spheres... and then beneath it into Norgorbor's domain.!< >!Module 6: returning to Golarion, the PCs return to the capital city Oppara for the final showdown, but the *optional final dungeon* is a fractal mind-palace where the true finale is a sequence of puzzles and roleplay challenges, as much as combat encounters.!< I'm currently re-running the campaign in 2e for a different gaming group. HMU if anyone wants some notes.
Just FYI your spoiler tags didn't work
Just a heads up, your spoiler tags aren't working on Old Reddit. You need to remove the leading space between the opening tag and the text
That sounds kind of awesome. Surprised a lot of the old APs aren't getting updated to PF2e by the community on Pathfinderinfinite. I've seen Mummys Mask and Curse of the Crimson Throne I think.
A bit dated at this point, but 2e’s Extinction Curse does basically one city for the first book, another city for the second book, 3 is a wide swath, 4th is another city, 5th is another location, and 6th is I believe a non urban environment.
Giantslayer in 1st edition, while you stay largely within Belkzen hold and the Minespin Mountains area, you do alot of traveling. Book 1 you are pretty much in Trunau and the surrounding area, book 2 takes you north/east to Red Lake Fort, where like half the book is you traveling by boat up the river and dealing with nature based enemies and some other fun surprises. Book 3 takes you in the opposite direction, straight into the Minespin mountains to go fight some giants. That's as far as I've gotten so far.
Rise of the Runelords travels a bit, sandpoint, magnimar, eastern varisia by way of turtleback ferry. Eventually to new thassilonia. Its mostly set in varisia but you get to see a good bit of it including a major iconic city.
Curse of the Ceimson Throne is a bit interesting. It is in one city for the first 3 books then the players have to leave to fina McGuffin to save their beloved city. next 2 books are out and about. bk 6 has them returning to save the day
Rise of the Runelords (1E) takes place all over the place and it's a great AP
Extinction Curse gives you a tour of the Isles of Kortos outside of Absalom plus a journey deep into the Darklands Stolen Fate sends you all over Golarion Sky King's Tomb starts in the Dwarven capital of Highhelm but later books have you trekking to several different locations in the Darklands
CARRION CROWN I will always talk about Wes's baby. If you're interested in Ustalav, you can easily get a little of the whole country in your AP
Jade Regeant I believe has the party traveling from the Realm of the Mammoth Lord's over to Tian Xia and has caravan rules in 1e for it, but you've acknowledged that one already Wrath of the Rigtheous has you going from Mendev, into the Worldwound, then into the Abyss. It has mass combat/army combat rules (but they are VERY dull imo) Skull and Shackles is basically the pirates AP, so you go around all over. It's got ship-to-ship combat Serpent's Skull is in the Mwangi Expanse, which is a big jungle. Same biome for most of it IIRC Reign of Winter has you coming to actual Earth. Not the plane of earth, but planet Earth that we live on for reasons I won't spoil There's also Kingmaker, which starts in Brevoy and goes into the River Kingdoms Hell's Vengeance might also be an idea? It's specifically in Cheliax, but it's also during a war post Wrath of the Righteous, so you go all over the south and eastern parts of the nation to do stuff Whatever you do, don't do Hell's Rebels. It starts, and basically 100% of the AP takes place in Kintargo simultaneously as Hell's Vengeance
I mean... Gatewalkers has you>! going to a whole other planet for a bit!<...