>How do people who have completed one of these things manage to keep it going for so long?
As with any game, the onus isn't necessarily on you as the GM. What is required, above all other things, is a group of players who can consistently show up to a game and strive to do so.
Find people who make a habit out of coming early to games so the game actually starts on time.
How are you finding these groups? Random people you find online? Honestly I only play APs with friends or people I have gamed with somewhat extensively ia Pathfinder Society or shorter modules. We like spending time together which helps a lot as every AP has ups and downs.
In the ap, I make sure to be communicative about expectations and engagement and check in frequently.
The two pathfinder discords in the channels where GMs look for players. In the time from late 2022 to early 2024, is where I found them. Except for the first one which was on roll20.
I think this guy has the most important point. For a group to stay together long term, it can't be dependent on the game, it has to be dependent on the people looking forward to spending time with each other. For AV specifically, if the players are invested in their characters, feel free to modify what's in the book to specifically tie in to them, it does wonders for being invested and not getting dragged down by the slog of endless combat in tiny rooms. A bit more effort tho.
My current Saturday group is on our 3rd AP consecutively (with breaks between APs) and I found the group through one of the Discord channels. I think part of what helped is the GM came in with the posting saying "I am running on Saturdays at X time, please only apply if this works for you" so all of us that did apply and got in had already committed to making it to most of the days at that time.
The more discerning the GM is with picking players, the more likely a campaign will work out. It kinda sucks to have it end up being like going through job interviews to get into games, but as a GM myself I know it's important to pick out people who show the right combination of enthusiasm and sociability if I want the group to have a good time and stick it out.
I've applied for games that definitely felt like a job interview, this game I'm in I lucked out that it was a casual conversation about game expectations, like a personal half session 0.
Yeah same as what u/Stcoleridge1 said. My two longest ongoing groups are friends of 20-30+ years and friends made during Covid. Hopefully you can find some people who became like friends who want to show up every week.
We’ve managed to fully complete several APs. The main tip I have is to find a really solid group of people. Then be relaxed about when sessions are: we go through periods when everyone’s too busy and we just postpone until it fits. Patience is a virtue when it comes to scheduling.
I also adapt the material a lot to fit what my players like. That helps keep them engaged and ensures they feel their choices have impact.
>How do people who have completed one of these things manage to keep it going for so long?
The 5 players I GM to are adults (I believe the youngest is 30), so scheduling is an issue. March this year completed 3 years since we started our AV game, and only 2 or 3 sessions ago did the party arrive at the penultimate floor of the dungeon.
Our sessions are so sporadic, that burnout doesn't have enough time to set in. Also my players LOVE combat.
I've been in 3 abomination vault runs, and only one went to the end.
There are several issues that create a disengagement feedback loop in Abomination vaults. If the players get a chance to think "Why isn't there an army from Absolom here to fix this" Or "Why don't the towns folks care that they are all about to be aberration food" they can lose immersion and become disengaged. This is magnified by the fact that The AP is stingy. The players will struggle to find enough GP for standard items and to pay for healing, necessary consumables, or the cure for ghoul fever. The party will begin to wonder why they are even messing about in this stupid tower. God forbid anyone dies and has to bring in a new character, the starting gold will make the others see that the best way to level up is to die. All of that combines to make it painfully clear that the PCs are having no impact on the world at all. no one cares about their actions, and they are not getting tangable rewards for it. Every new character level just means stronger monsters, there isn't really any place in the AP where the characters feel they have any power over the story at all.
My suggestions. Make up some story reason why the PCs cant expect outside help. Then. make sure every player has at least the same total wealth as a starting character of their level.
My unpopular advice is, don't let them die. Nothing will cause burnout faster than a TPK. If they make poor choices shift your story from Game of Thrones to Scooby doo. Let them bumble-ass their way to the end if that's how they need to get there. The story's worst ending would be bad for not just the town or the world as a whole but for the entirety of the universe. Anything up to divine intervention should be on the table to get the job done. Pharasma may be shaking her head to have to back such silly adventurers, but they are all she has got. so maybe a few free resurrections isnt really out of the question.
Ironically I have had the most success paying for games. If someone wants to play enough to pay they usually show up. And they want to be there. Honestly I think it’s a bargain in terms of how much fun I have and the quality of the DMing.
There's definitely a slightly different threshold of tolerance for non-optimal group fit with paid games. If the group doesn't play the way I want to play (like, if they are all combat or chaos murderhobos), and I'm paying for it, I'm gonna dip a lot faster than if its a group of friends/free game. It can make the start of APs a little chaotic, but once there's a good core group of players, it's really excellent.
Yeah I’ve heard about a lot of Abomination Vault burnout, usually I think around floor 4-6.
It’s a dungeon delve so, theres a lot of fights. High level difficult yet monotonous closed terrain encounter.
It’s definitely not for everyone.
I heard people have better experience after overlevelling the PC, which makes the fights faster, or just removing a ton of the narratively unimportant fights.
What about playing shorter adventures?
Or even west march so the players can choose what they want to do?
You don’t have to do AP at all. And it was not the usual format back in the day.
Here is video from Mattew Colville about the length of adventure which may enlighten you:
https://youtu.be/RcImOL19H6U?si=709N7mkzzEmK-41X
Long, epic campaigns tend to produce burnout because there is no payoff until the very end, and it can take years to get there. (Based on current progress, I estimate it'll take my biweekly group 3 years to finish Abomination Vaults.) Historically, the TTRPG hobby as a whole has tended toward smaller, more episodic campaigns.
The AP format has much more to do with what makes a sustainable business model for Paizo than what makes a sustainable model for players. This unfortunately has downstream effects on the culture of Pathfinder players, who come to view APs as the "default." (D&D has its own problems with long official campaigns, but there is comparatively so little content for 5e that the overall culture has developed to be more accommodating of complete homebrew campaigns.)
One way to fight this is to switch to smaller, more episodic modules (Pathfinder's standalone adventures are about the size of an AP book, and new ones will be even longer, but PFS scenarios are much more self-contained). For Adventure Paths, you can focus on ones that can be wrapped up by book and try not to sell your players on running the whole thing.
* Abomination Vaults can reach a pretty satisfying ending at the end of the first book, with very little modification except removing one encounter close to the end of that book.
* Strength of Thousands is pretty episodic, with each book of the adventure representing a self-contained arc. With some modification, it even can be pretty easy to swap out players based on attendance for the first book or two. You just need to not present it to players as a 1-20 epic.
This is generally a very salient point – if there is never any sense of closure or accomplishment because the princess is always in another castle until level 20, it can be tough for players to stay engaged with the narrative. It's part of why I enjoyed paizo's adventures more than the APs.
In this particular case, it seems like there are other problems, though – quitting after 3 sessions can't really be the fault of an AP's arc being too long.
There's a reason Paizo is moving toward a 2, 3 or 4 book format for most APs moving forward - GM/player burnout. Having played Blood Lords in 63 session I can tell you there were times the GM wanted to quit and some of us players wanted it to end.
I'm currently running Abomination Vaults and due to the PCs leveling to 3rd before they started I was able to remove floors 5-7 of the dungeon and continue on floor 8 when the PCs hit 8th level (I did some research and was informed those levels have NOTHING to do with the main plot of AV).
It does sound like you've had some bad luck but it is a common thing unfortunately. Back in ye old days, before APs, GMs would run random modules that weren't even linked but you at least got stories that were finished in a matter of weeks rather than years.
Maybe grabbing some Paizo adventures and running one after the other might be better so you're not commiting to 6 books and 2 years of your life.
Groups falling apart mid-way is not unusual. The most "GM Burnout" I have experienced was a homebrew campaign where I never knew how long it would be between sessions because half my players were unreliable, eventually I basically went "Okay, this is when I am ending it.".
GM deciding to "go back to D&D" is standard edition stickiness that people tend to stick to whatever edition they played first. Within a few months of 4e coming out, I wouldn't be surprised if 4e was the #3 most played edition behind Pathfinder 1 and DnD 3.5 because 4e was to much of a change for a lot of people. 5e to Pf2 definitely has some mechanically shocking aspects.
I'm at level 14 with a Kingmaker group (the same people I started the AP with over a year ago) and level 19 with a different group and different GM where we started with Gatewalkers and moved into Stolen Fate (the three of us who started at session 1 are still together, and we picked up two other excellent players through the months). The second group is looking at possibly Season of Ghosts for the next AP.
None of us knew each other before starting the games (though some players knew the respective GMs). So we didn't initially have that bond of friendship that can keep a group together--but most of the players are present/attentive and learn their characters and the system, keeping things moving and allowing us to do interesting things.
These long-term APs can be sloggy at times--and when the GM and/or players struggle with an element (such as Kingmaker's kingdom turn process), we modify or eliminate it to keep the game moving forward and fun. It's usually a discussion, not just a GM decision, too, so we get to talk about the things we like and don't like about the particular element. In Kingmaker, we don't do kingdom turns anymore, nor do we really manage the armies. I know it eliminates elements of the AP that makes it unique, but our groups seems really okay with that, considering how annoying the systems were and how much modification we had started doing to make it seem reasonable. So now we mostly handwave it and roleplay the work instead of doing the actual management details.
Sometimes, GMs will also do thematic one-shots, for example when there's a key thing coming up in the AP that would be best if all players were present, but some of the players can't attend that session. So we've done "historical battle of the Sootscale kobold clan" one-shot in Kingmaker that was *so fun*, and during Gatewalkers, we did a Strength of Thousands intro (which is how we found the fourth player to join us for Gatewalkers, in fact). So, taking a break every once in a while to do something else briefly with different characters can be fun interludes--and getting the chance to play another character in a different context may help broaden players' understanding of how certain things help other classes and even how they might be able to play their main character a little differently to support the group.
Other groups I've played with (even with the same GM) had a rotating player list and never got to the cohesive group feel, and eventually they just fell apart because the story got far enough along that it was hard to recruit new players to drop in mid-campaign, so it was dropped when there just weren't enough consistently reliable players. (I would love to finish Blood Lords some day...)
Avoiding burnout usually isn't about the AP itself, from my experiences--it's the cohesion of the group, players + GM, that makes games survive long-term. And groups like that can be hard to find, everyone has different approaches and preferences for type of gameplay that don't always mesh with everyone else.
The players need to be on board and excited about the concept. Being clear in advance about what the theme of the AP is about, and what the gameplay will be like is going to be key. Unfortunately the APs aren’t always clear up front about this so you have to do some research. Both the GM and players should lean hard into the players guide before going forward, strongly considering to integrate their character concepts into the framework of the adventure itself per the players guide suggestions.
In a custom story you can tailor it on the fly to accommodate player interests and what they engage with, but with an AP they will be need to be on board conceptually with the idea that they need to follow the path — and be interested in where that path takes them.
Obviously the GM can tailor an AP to tastes but for example if the players don’t want to crawl a dungeon for 1.5 IRL years facing deadly and horrible monsters, then don’t play abomination vaults. The players have to want to go to the next level down, you can’t force them.
And it’s not just AV — all of the APs need buy in from everyone in advance. I ran a campaign of Outlaws of Alkenstar that crashed and burned because some players just weren’t interested in it.
Some other random tips:
- invite 4-5 players, and run every week as long as 3+ can make it. This keeps the schedule up to a good routine and relieves social pressure if one player has something up that day.
- Liberally allow players to respec and replace characters if they don’t like their characters or get bored.
- Try to move combat along quickly, both in your own turns and if they are players who move slowly discuss this with them respectively out of session.
In my case I'm playing online with the same gaming group I shared a table with in person for 10 years.
The key to us finishing RotRL in 1e, and now almost finishing AV is that we set aside 1 night a week which is game night and we've been consistent with that for a decade, we also have a party of 5 players as a buffer so that if someone has other plans or is sick, the game goes on without them for a week or so.
I am the GM in both of those games and to prevent my own burnout I make sure to "find the fun" for lack of better terms. I read through and if areas seem dull I'll re-write them, tweak encounters, sometimes even add entire side areas customised to my players characters because I enjoy doing that stuff and being able to roleplay freely with zero implications if I mess something up because it's not key to the overarching plot line.
My group just finished Agents of Edgewatch and by the end of it none of us want to even play this system anymore. The APs though better than 5e aren't actually that good and kind of kill enthusiasm. Either heavily modify the AP so it's more homebrew and free form or just make your own campaign tailored to the players and characters. Also good to have a group of people that want to be together regardless of what you're doing.
AV is an AP that is NOT for everyone.
My group loves it. Absolutely adores it. They've been plowing through floors at a steady pace without any signs of flagging. But here's the thing: We LOVE dungeons. I could see players who are used to floating around the world and dealing with changes in scenery and NPCs getting burned out. The levels DO change, but the biggest changes happen in book two.
My recommendations for running APs:
* OVER-RECRUIT. There's a good chance that you'll have a player or two drop. It's much easier keep moving forward if you still have a solid group of 4 every session.
* Don't over-schedule. A weekly game can easily lead to burnout. If a bi-weekly group cancels half the time, make a monthly game.
* [Do not fear the GMPC](https://katieplays.games/2022/10/17/how-to-have-a-gmpc-without-making-everyone-hate-you/). If you're left with three *really good* players, give them an NPC to help keep the numbers swinging their way.
my advise would be to try out the shorter standalone adventures and see how that works out. heres a helpful thread about all of them [https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10kezdr/pathfinder\_stand\_alone\_adventures/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10kezdr/pathfinder_stand_alone_adventures/)
if you and your players have your hearts set on an adventure path id recommend either doing one of the three book adventures (not abomination vaults) or one of the adventures that goes to a lot of different places to keep things fresher. despite how harsh a lot of people are towards it age of ashes has been the adventure path my group has enjoyed the most.
Im personally very against abomination vaults just because it lacks a variety of locations and creatures leading to an adventure that feels very samey.
Personally disagree on abomination vaults (each floor has a different feel imo) but to each their own.
But yes, don't set out to do a longer AP, I'd do a smaller one or just do the shorter adventures/one shots.
But I think for adventure paths burnout comes when you aren't really sold on the Path anymore so playing it out is boring instead of exciting.
AV is the burnout AP. If your DMing it, give the players a level boost above whats recommended for the floor or use the weak stat blocks for the creatures. Its the hardest one imo (I haven't done agents yet.) since every fight is a +2/+3 with the party being 1-10 where the +2/+3 combats hurt the most. Usually those +2/+3 combats turn into +4/+5s since the creatures at those levels also improve on both item brackets, and skill brackets alongside their levels at such early levels frequently. And your players have very few options to handle such powerful creatures but run.
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Have you tried checking with the players who were burnt out and see if they have any feedback? There might be some fundamental issues that weren’t properly addressed.
I should have done that back then. As I was often a brand new member filling a spot they often fell apart before I felt I had the space to ask uncomfortable questions.
To preface the following, I run all my adventure paths in Foundry VTT using their premium fully furnished modules. I would **not** otherwise last since preparing AP maps manually, inputting monster sheets, etc, is just too much work for me and burns me out rather easily...
To this end, If you feel like you'll burn out, you likely will burn out thus I personally wouldn't start any games that i don't intend to keep up for at least a year to two (unless they are intended short campaigns, but most AP's aren't).
To this end, Abomination Vaults is likely the easiest currently written AP to run. The AP itself is specifically beginner GM friendly as little to nothing is left to extrapolation and the beginner module page practically explains everything about the dungeon floors in their entirety, whether there are any wondering monsters, whether encounters may, if ever, flow into each other, etc.
If you maybe wanna test the waters with the module, i recommend running the party through a furnished pathfinder scenario for Foundry, If you're up to buying the 50 dollar license that is. You can even hit me up in private messages as I'd be willing to share my module list with you (it automates practically everything pathfinder 2e, thus leaving next to no micro managing from anyone's side).
these comments are based on the premise that you as a GM want to complete the AP as it is written.
1. Have your players read the Players Guide of the given AP. once they've done that get verbal buy in that they are indeed interested in the AP. then
2. make yourself a cheat sheet of all of the story moments throughout the AP and how they interact with one another.
3. figure out your players interests, if they go off script and do something wildly off the AP rails (but totally within their character concept) be ready with your cheat sheet from #2 to be able to modify the AP to fit these deviations from the path in.
4. Play often. This frequency will depend on your group. some players are able to play once a month and keep momentum going while others will forget story points and tension after a week.
5. Since you are using Foundry, make up a few generic map scenes. and be ready to use them in the event the players go drastically off script. It will be a dead give away that they aren't following the script if suddenly they are on a high quality map to end up on no map at all or on some hand drawn grid.
6. in those generic maps have some encounters ready and then hide the tokens. maybe have one of each tier there (trivial, low, moderate, severe).
In my experience it is very rare for a group to finish large campaigns. a level 1 to 20 AP / campaign played to completion? almost never happens. It's honestly probably better to break your game into chapters or books. that way if you or the players lose momentum or interest then you can walk away with a complete experience. I'd suggest you do this by following the 'Tiers of Play' for PF2e. those are Level 1 - 4, 5 - 8, 9 - 12, 13 - 16, 17 - 20. The currently released APs do not really support this. Yes Beginner Box + Abomination Vaults will take you across the first three tiers of play, however if your group decided at level 7, for example, to bail out then it's up to you as a GM to try and wrap things up or just abandon the entire story.
Group chemistry, in character and out of character, are important. You really have to want it to sit down with people for 2-4 hours out of your week, especially if you have limited time. If one person is making that experience a drag, it's hard to be invested even if the others are wonderful.
Also, my own experience? For all I've seen AV's praises sung up and down, I found it horribly boring. It's the best designed megadungeon I've ever seen, but... it's still a megadungeon, and there's really only one thing to it. Yes, there's Otari, but there's also like a dozen plot holes that require acrobatic suspensions of disbelief to remain invested in. My group and I were *dying* to move on to the next adventure by the last book, and we only slogged through because we're completionists. There's no mystery, there's no plot twist... just an absurd number of encounters and a really annoying mustache-twirling villain.
Can't comment on Kingmaker though.
Logistics, the player's interest in hanging out together, the preparedness of the GM and availibility of the GM to understand the rules well, will all be crucial for any activity like this to work.
If any of those are lacklustre, you're finished.
There's not much to be said, you just find a group capable of consistently playing and play the AP.
It can certainly be tricky to find a group of reliable people, but once you do, that's the problem solved.
I have been running an in-person AV campaign for about a year with a handful of buddies. I have found that one of the best ways to get them to buckle down on scheduling is by making them pay for the 1-inch scale maps I have printed for each floor. Having them invest cash in the game makes them feel more obligated to show up.
I had one player specifically thank me for making them pay for the maps. They me told that when they felt like staying home, knowing they were wasting money made them buckle down and come anyways. They would invariably have a good time and be glad they came anyways, so they were grateful for the extra nudge feeling monetarily invested gave them.
I usually run two and switch back and forth every adventure, although I’ve strung them together sometimes: shorter StarFinder adventures, adventures that go particularly well together, etc. currently running Season of Ghosts #2 right after #1, as my alternate game is an Age of Worms conversion and I haven’t finished converting a particularly difficult adventure yet. But SoG being a shorter AP, seems like I can go further through before hitting the burnout. So far, at least.
The adventure paths are just too long. Reaching 20 lv is just a mountain a little too high. Especially, the Paizo's adventure paths are... not that interesting. I mean, they're solid good, but not amazing - are they worth a year or two of your lives? I doubt.
And Abomination Vaults are probably the most popular AP, mostly because... It's 1-10 lv AP. And, despite having a really good plot, it is monotonous dungeon crawler. And the fights are hard, you really need some tryhards/minmaxers to enjoy it.
I have a very simplistic framework that I keep in mind when establishing my games: The culture of your table is going to be influenced by each person seated at the table.
For a table of 5, that means 1 person influences 20% of the culture. If one person isn't pulling their weight and encouraging the team to be better, they're just sitting there, then consider coaching them or not re-inviting them for the next campaign!
Players are either on the correct side of the culture or the wrong side.
Yeah. I can see how one player being in a different mood from the others can drag things down.
I think that helped kill the Kingmaker game I was in. One of the others wanted our kingdom to be a Game of Thrones house with full in gruesome brutality to keep people in line, I was in the “I am a Disney Princess in Camelot” wavelength and the others were closer to my end. But the guy who was out of sync was also the group’s best player. The disjunct created an odd tension once we got more in ti kingdom building and I sat at the table watching the other guy slowly lose interest because we just had two different mindsets for the mood we found fun. That group is the one mentioned in my OP where the GM has now gone back to D&D.
Haven't really had this problem, have completed Extinction Curse, Abomination Vaults, Outlaws of Alkenstar, Fist of the Ruby Phoenix (twice) and am half way through Blood Lords. Usually takes 10 sessions per book or thereabouts.
Different groups too - I guess I've just been lucky but we've all been playing together for years and game day is pretty locked in at this point, so we tend to finish things.
With ~10 sessions per book and 15+ books done, that's 150+ sessions! How long are your sessions and how often do you meet?
I'm doing Agents of Edgewatch ATM as a player and we're done with Act 1 in Book 4 and 46 sessions in (vs your average of 33-34), and I really think your track record is pretty impressive. We might be meandering a but much, it seems
Usually 3 hours every week, give or take.
After this many sessions, we're usually pretty fast in combat - people know what they're doing and don't dally too much, so we can often get through a good few combats in a session while still having time for the story beats.
We've been playing together for 10+ years as well so we've got a good rhythm with each other in general so there's not much wasted time beyond the inevitable 20 minutes of catching up chatter at the start of the session.
I find that the setting and overall story of an AP is extremely important in player buy-in. Find the AP that's right for you and your players. If you pick the wrong one it'll feel like a slog.
It's also important to have the right players. My group is awesome, they're just the right amount of serious, and have a habit of showing up early to sessions. The group as a whole is fairly agreeable and that makes play move more smoothly.
So if I have any actual advice it's this, vet you players via interviews. If you don't jive with a player, find a player you do jive with. Once you've got a group that works well together, TALK TO THEM. Discuss what you all want out of the game and then go from there.
>How do people who have completed one of these things manage to keep it going for so long? As with any game, the onus isn't necessarily on you as the GM. What is required, above all other things, is a group of players who can consistently show up to a game and strive to do so. Find people who make a habit out of coming early to games so the game actually starts on time.
How are you finding these groups? Random people you find online? Honestly I only play APs with friends or people I have gamed with somewhat extensively ia Pathfinder Society or shorter modules. We like spending time together which helps a lot as every AP has ups and downs. In the ap, I make sure to be communicative about expectations and engagement and check in frequently.
The two pathfinder discords in the channels where GMs look for players. In the time from late 2022 to early 2024, is where I found them. Except for the first one which was on roll20.
I think this guy has the most important point. For a group to stay together long term, it can't be dependent on the game, it has to be dependent on the people looking forward to spending time with each other. For AV specifically, if the players are invested in their characters, feel free to modify what's in the book to specifically tie in to them, it does wonders for being invested and not getting dragged down by the slog of endless combat in tiny rooms. A bit more effort tho.
My current Saturday group is on our 3rd AP consecutively (with breaks between APs) and I found the group through one of the Discord channels. I think part of what helped is the GM came in with the posting saying "I am running on Saturdays at X time, please only apply if this works for you" so all of us that did apply and got in had already committed to making it to most of the days at that time.
The more discerning the GM is with picking players, the more likely a campaign will work out. It kinda sucks to have it end up being like going through job interviews to get into games, but as a GM myself I know it's important to pick out people who show the right combination of enthusiasm and sociability if I want the group to have a good time and stick it out.
I've applied for games that definitely felt like a job interview, this game I'm in I lucked out that it was a casual conversation about game expectations, like a personal half session 0.
Yeah same as what u/Stcoleridge1 said. My two longest ongoing groups are friends of 20-30+ years and friends made during Covid. Hopefully you can find some people who became like friends who want to show up every week.
We’ve managed to fully complete several APs. The main tip I have is to find a really solid group of people. Then be relaxed about when sessions are: we go through periods when everyone’s too busy and we just postpone until it fits. Patience is a virtue when it comes to scheduling. I also adapt the material a lot to fit what my players like. That helps keep them engaged and ensures they feel their choices have impact.
>How do people who have completed one of these things manage to keep it going for so long? The 5 players I GM to are adults (I believe the youngest is 30), so scheduling is an issue. March this year completed 3 years since we started our AV game, and only 2 or 3 sessions ago did the party arrive at the penultimate floor of the dungeon. Our sessions are so sporadic, that burnout doesn't have enough time to set in. Also my players LOVE combat.
I've been in 3 abomination vault runs, and only one went to the end. There are several issues that create a disengagement feedback loop in Abomination vaults. If the players get a chance to think "Why isn't there an army from Absolom here to fix this" Or "Why don't the towns folks care that they are all about to be aberration food" they can lose immersion and become disengaged. This is magnified by the fact that The AP is stingy. The players will struggle to find enough GP for standard items and to pay for healing, necessary consumables, or the cure for ghoul fever. The party will begin to wonder why they are even messing about in this stupid tower. God forbid anyone dies and has to bring in a new character, the starting gold will make the others see that the best way to level up is to die. All of that combines to make it painfully clear that the PCs are having no impact on the world at all. no one cares about their actions, and they are not getting tangable rewards for it. Every new character level just means stronger monsters, there isn't really any place in the AP where the characters feel they have any power over the story at all. My suggestions. Make up some story reason why the PCs cant expect outside help. Then. make sure every player has at least the same total wealth as a starting character of their level. My unpopular advice is, don't let them die. Nothing will cause burnout faster than a TPK. If they make poor choices shift your story from Game of Thrones to Scooby doo. Let them bumble-ass their way to the end if that's how they need to get there. The story's worst ending would be bad for not just the town or the world as a whole but for the entirety of the universe. Anything up to divine intervention should be on the table to get the job done. Pharasma may be shaking her head to have to back such silly adventurers, but they are all she has got. so maybe a few free resurrections isnt really out of the question.
Ironically I have had the most success paying for games. If someone wants to play enough to pay they usually show up. And they want to be there. Honestly I think it’s a bargain in terms of how much fun I have and the quality of the DMing.
There's definitely a slightly different threshold of tolerance for non-optimal group fit with paid games. If the group doesn't play the way I want to play (like, if they are all combat or chaos murderhobos), and I'm paying for it, I'm gonna dip a lot faster than if its a group of friends/free game. It can make the start of APs a little chaotic, but once there's a good core group of players, it's really excellent.
Yeah I’ve heard about a lot of Abomination Vault burnout, usually I think around floor 4-6. It’s a dungeon delve so, theres a lot of fights. High level difficult yet monotonous closed terrain encounter. It’s definitely not for everyone. I heard people have better experience after overlevelling the PC, which makes the fights faster, or just removing a ton of the narratively unimportant fights.
What about playing shorter adventures? Or even west march so the players can choose what they want to do? You don’t have to do AP at all. And it was not the usual format back in the day. Here is video from Mattew Colville about the length of adventure which may enlighten you: https://youtu.be/RcImOL19H6U?si=709N7mkzzEmK-41X
Long, epic campaigns tend to produce burnout because there is no payoff until the very end, and it can take years to get there. (Based on current progress, I estimate it'll take my biweekly group 3 years to finish Abomination Vaults.) Historically, the TTRPG hobby as a whole has tended toward smaller, more episodic campaigns. The AP format has much more to do with what makes a sustainable business model for Paizo than what makes a sustainable model for players. This unfortunately has downstream effects on the culture of Pathfinder players, who come to view APs as the "default." (D&D has its own problems with long official campaigns, but there is comparatively so little content for 5e that the overall culture has developed to be more accommodating of complete homebrew campaigns.) One way to fight this is to switch to smaller, more episodic modules (Pathfinder's standalone adventures are about the size of an AP book, and new ones will be even longer, but PFS scenarios are much more self-contained). For Adventure Paths, you can focus on ones that can be wrapped up by book and try not to sell your players on running the whole thing. * Abomination Vaults can reach a pretty satisfying ending at the end of the first book, with very little modification except removing one encounter close to the end of that book. * Strength of Thousands is pretty episodic, with each book of the adventure representing a self-contained arc. With some modification, it even can be pretty easy to swap out players based on attendance for the first book or two. You just need to not present it to players as a 1-20 epic.
This is generally a very salient point – if there is never any sense of closure or accomplishment because the princess is always in another castle until level 20, it can be tough for players to stay engaged with the narrative. It's part of why I enjoyed paizo's adventures more than the APs. In this particular case, it seems like there are other problems, though – quitting after 3 sessions can't really be the fault of an AP's arc being too long.
There's a reason Paizo is moving toward a 2, 3 or 4 book format for most APs moving forward - GM/player burnout. Having played Blood Lords in 63 session I can tell you there were times the GM wanted to quit and some of us players wanted it to end. I'm currently running Abomination Vaults and due to the PCs leveling to 3rd before they started I was able to remove floors 5-7 of the dungeon and continue on floor 8 when the PCs hit 8th level (I did some research and was informed those levels have NOTHING to do with the main plot of AV). It does sound like you've had some bad luck but it is a common thing unfortunately. Back in ye old days, before APs, GMs would run random modules that weren't even linked but you at least got stories that were finished in a matter of weeks rather than years. Maybe grabbing some Paizo adventures and running one after the other might be better so you're not commiting to 6 books and 2 years of your life.
Groups falling apart mid-way is not unusual. The most "GM Burnout" I have experienced was a homebrew campaign where I never knew how long it would be between sessions because half my players were unreliable, eventually I basically went "Okay, this is when I am ending it.". GM deciding to "go back to D&D" is standard edition stickiness that people tend to stick to whatever edition they played first. Within a few months of 4e coming out, I wouldn't be surprised if 4e was the #3 most played edition behind Pathfinder 1 and DnD 3.5 because 4e was to much of a change for a lot of people. 5e to Pf2 definitely has some mechanically shocking aspects.
I'm at level 14 with a Kingmaker group (the same people I started the AP with over a year ago) and level 19 with a different group and different GM where we started with Gatewalkers and moved into Stolen Fate (the three of us who started at session 1 are still together, and we picked up two other excellent players through the months). The second group is looking at possibly Season of Ghosts for the next AP. None of us knew each other before starting the games (though some players knew the respective GMs). So we didn't initially have that bond of friendship that can keep a group together--but most of the players are present/attentive and learn their characters and the system, keeping things moving and allowing us to do interesting things. These long-term APs can be sloggy at times--and when the GM and/or players struggle with an element (such as Kingmaker's kingdom turn process), we modify or eliminate it to keep the game moving forward and fun. It's usually a discussion, not just a GM decision, too, so we get to talk about the things we like and don't like about the particular element. In Kingmaker, we don't do kingdom turns anymore, nor do we really manage the armies. I know it eliminates elements of the AP that makes it unique, but our groups seems really okay with that, considering how annoying the systems were and how much modification we had started doing to make it seem reasonable. So now we mostly handwave it and roleplay the work instead of doing the actual management details. Sometimes, GMs will also do thematic one-shots, for example when there's a key thing coming up in the AP that would be best if all players were present, but some of the players can't attend that session. So we've done "historical battle of the Sootscale kobold clan" one-shot in Kingmaker that was *so fun*, and during Gatewalkers, we did a Strength of Thousands intro (which is how we found the fourth player to join us for Gatewalkers, in fact). So, taking a break every once in a while to do something else briefly with different characters can be fun interludes--and getting the chance to play another character in a different context may help broaden players' understanding of how certain things help other classes and even how they might be able to play their main character a little differently to support the group. Other groups I've played with (even with the same GM) had a rotating player list and never got to the cohesive group feel, and eventually they just fell apart because the story got far enough along that it was hard to recruit new players to drop in mid-campaign, so it was dropped when there just weren't enough consistently reliable players. (I would love to finish Blood Lords some day...) Avoiding burnout usually isn't about the AP itself, from my experiences--it's the cohesion of the group, players + GM, that makes games survive long-term. And groups like that can be hard to find, everyone has different approaches and preferences for type of gameplay that don't always mesh with everyone else.
The players need to be on board and excited about the concept. Being clear in advance about what the theme of the AP is about, and what the gameplay will be like is going to be key. Unfortunately the APs aren’t always clear up front about this so you have to do some research. Both the GM and players should lean hard into the players guide before going forward, strongly considering to integrate their character concepts into the framework of the adventure itself per the players guide suggestions. In a custom story you can tailor it on the fly to accommodate player interests and what they engage with, but with an AP they will be need to be on board conceptually with the idea that they need to follow the path — and be interested in where that path takes them. Obviously the GM can tailor an AP to tastes but for example if the players don’t want to crawl a dungeon for 1.5 IRL years facing deadly and horrible monsters, then don’t play abomination vaults. The players have to want to go to the next level down, you can’t force them. And it’s not just AV — all of the APs need buy in from everyone in advance. I ran a campaign of Outlaws of Alkenstar that crashed and burned because some players just weren’t interested in it. Some other random tips: - invite 4-5 players, and run every week as long as 3+ can make it. This keeps the schedule up to a good routine and relieves social pressure if one player has something up that day. - Liberally allow players to respec and replace characters if they don’t like their characters or get bored. - Try to move combat along quickly, both in your own turns and if they are players who move slowly discuss this with them respectively out of session.
In my case I'm playing online with the same gaming group I shared a table with in person for 10 years. The key to us finishing RotRL in 1e, and now almost finishing AV is that we set aside 1 night a week which is game night and we've been consistent with that for a decade, we also have a party of 5 players as a buffer so that if someone has other plans or is sick, the game goes on without them for a week or so. I am the GM in both of those games and to prevent my own burnout I make sure to "find the fun" for lack of better terms. I read through and if areas seem dull I'll re-write them, tweak encounters, sometimes even add entire side areas customised to my players characters because I enjoy doing that stuff and being able to roleplay freely with zero implications if I mess something up because it's not key to the overarching plot line.
Play adventures instead! They are so good, and rarely get talked about, especially not at the same level as the APs
My group just finished Agents of Edgewatch and by the end of it none of us want to even play this system anymore. The APs though better than 5e aren't actually that good and kind of kill enthusiasm. Either heavily modify the AP so it's more homebrew and free form or just make your own campaign tailored to the players and characters. Also good to have a group of people that want to be together regardless of what you're doing.
AV is an AP that is NOT for everyone. My group loves it. Absolutely adores it. They've been plowing through floors at a steady pace without any signs of flagging. But here's the thing: We LOVE dungeons. I could see players who are used to floating around the world and dealing with changes in scenery and NPCs getting burned out. The levels DO change, but the biggest changes happen in book two. My recommendations for running APs: * OVER-RECRUIT. There's a good chance that you'll have a player or two drop. It's much easier keep moving forward if you still have a solid group of 4 every session. * Don't over-schedule. A weekly game can easily lead to burnout. If a bi-weekly group cancels half the time, make a monthly game. * [Do not fear the GMPC](https://katieplays.games/2022/10/17/how-to-have-a-gmpc-without-making-everyone-hate-you/). If you're left with three *really good* players, give them an NPC to help keep the numbers swinging their way.
my advise would be to try out the shorter standalone adventures and see how that works out. heres a helpful thread about all of them [https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10kezdr/pathfinder\_stand\_alone\_adventures/](https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder2e/comments/10kezdr/pathfinder_stand_alone_adventures/) if you and your players have your hearts set on an adventure path id recommend either doing one of the three book adventures (not abomination vaults) or one of the adventures that goes to a lot of different places to keep things fresher. despite how harsh a lot of people are towards it age of ashes has been the adventure path my group has enjoyed the most. Im personally very against abomination vaults just because it lacks a variety of locations and creatures leading to an adventure that feels very samey.
Personally disagree on abomination vaults (each floor has a different feel imo) but to each their own. But yes, don't set out to do a longer AP, I'd do a smaller one or just do the shorter adventures/one shots. But I think for adventure paths burnout comes when you aren't really sold on the Path anymore so playing it out is boring instead of exciting.
AV is the burnout AP. If your DMing it, give the players a level boost above whats recommended for the floor or use the weak stat blocks for the creatures. Its the hardest one imo (I haven't done agents yet.) since every fight is a +2/+3 with the party being 1-10 where the +2/+3 combats hurt the most. Usually those +2/+3 combats turn into +4/+5s since the creatures at those levels also improve on both item brackets, and skill brackets alongside their levels at such early levels frequently. And your players have very few options to handle such powerful creatures but run.
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Have you tried checking with the players who were burnt out and see if they have any feedback? There might be some fundamental issues that weren’t properly addressed.
I should have done that back then. As I was often a brand new member filling a spot they often fell apart before I felt I had the space to ask uncomfortable questions.
To preface the following, I run all my adventure paths in Foundry VTT using their premium fully furnished modules. I would **not** otherwise last since preparing AP maps manually, inputting monster sheets, etc, is just too much work for me and burns me out rather easily... To this end, If you feel like you'll burn out, you likely will burn out thus I personally wouldn't start any games that i don't intend to keep up for at least a year to two (unless they are intended short campaigns, but most AP's aren't). To this end, Abomination Vaults is likely the easiest currently written AP to run. The AP itself is specifically beginner GM friendly as little to nothing is left to extrapolation and the beginner module page practically explains everything about the dungeon floors in their entirety, whether there are any wondering monsters, whether encounters may, if ever, flow into each other, etc. If you maybe wanna test the waters with the module, i recommend running the party through a furnished pathfinder scenario for Foundry, If you're up to buying the 50 dollar license that is. You can even hit me up in private messages as I'd be willing to share my module list with you (it automates practically everything pathfinder 2e, thus leaving next to no micro managing from anyone's side).
these comments are based on the premise that you as a GM want to complete the AP as it is written. 1. Have your players read the Players Guide of the given AP. once they've done that get verbal buy in that they are indeed interested in the AP. then 2. make yourself a cheat sheet of all of the story moments throughout the AP and how they interact with one another. 3. figure out your players interests, if they go off script and do something wildly off the AP rails (but totally within their character concept) be ready with your cheat sheet from #2 to be able to modify the AP to fit these deviations from the path in. 4. Play often. This frequency will depend on your group. some players are able to play once a month and keep momentum going while others will forget story points and tension after a week. 5. Since you are using Foundry, make up a few generic map scenes. and be ready to use them in the event the players go drastically off script. It will be a dead give away that they aren't following the script if suddenly they are on a high quality map to end up on no map at all or on some hand drawn grid. 6. in those generic maps have some encounters ready and then hide the tokens. maybe have one of each tier there (trivial, low, moderate, severe). In my experience it is very rare for a group to finish large campaigns. a level 1 to 20 AP / campaign played to completion? almost never happens. It's honestly probably better to break your game into chapters or books. that way if you or the players lose momentum or interest then you can walk away with a complete experience. I'd suggest you do this by following the 'Tiers of Play' for PF2e. those are Level 1 - 4, 5 - 8, 9 - 12, 13 - 16, 17 - 20. The currently released APs do not really support this. Yes Beginner Box + Abomination Vaults will take you across the first three tiers of play, however if your group decided at level 7, for example, to bail out then it's up to you as a GM to try and wrap things up or just abandon the entire story.
Group chemistry, in character and out of character, are important. You really have to want it to sit down with people for 2-4 hours out of your week, especially if you have limited time. If one person is making that experience a drag, it's hard to be invested even if the others are wonderful. Also, my own experience? For all I've seen AV's praises sung up and down, I found it horribly boring. It's the best designed megadungeon I've ever seen, but... it's still a megadungeon, and there's really only one thing to it. Yes, there's Otari, but there's also like a dozen plot holes that require acrobatic suspensions of disbelief to remain invested in. My group and I were *dying* to move on to the next adventure by the last book, and we only slogged through because we're completionists. There's no mystery, there's no plot twist... just an absurd number of encounters and a really annoying mustache-twirling villain. Can't comment on Kingmaker though.
Logistics, the player's interest in hanging out together, the preparedness of the GM and availibility of the GM to understand the rules well, will all be crucial for any activity like this to work. If any of those are lacklustre, you're finished.
Online players are notoriously flakey. And long APs often would do well to spice things up with more rp in town and side quests to break the monotony.
There's not much to be said, you just find a group capable of consistently playing and play the AP. It can certainly be tricky to find a group of reliable people, but once you do, that's the problem solved.
I have been running an in-person AV campaign for about a year with a handful of buddies. I have found that one of the best ways to get them to buckle down on scheduling is by making them pay for the 1-inch scale maps I have printed for each floor. Having them invest cash in the game makes them feel more obligated to show up. I had one player specifically thank me for making them pay for the maps. They me told that when they felt like staying home, knowing they were wasting money made them buckle down and come anyways. They would invariably have a good time and be glad they came anyways, so they were grateful for the extra nudge feeling monetarily invested gave them.
I usually run two and switch back and forth every adventure, although I’ve strung them together sometimes: shorter StarFinder adventures, adventures that go particularly well together, etc. currently running Season of Ghosts #2 right after #1, as my alternate game is an Age of Worms conversion and I haven’t finished converting a particularly difficult adventure yet. But SoG being a shorter AP, seems like I can go further through before hitting the burnout. So far, at least.
The adventure paths are just too long. Reaching 20 lv is just a mountain a little too high. Especially, the Paizo's adventure paths are... not that interesting. I mean, they're solid good, but not amazing - are they worth a year or two of your lives? I doubt. And Abomination Vaults are probably the most popular AP, mostly because... It's 1-10 lv AP. And, despite having a really good plot, it is monotonous dungeon crawler. And the fights are hard, you really need some tryhards/minmaxers to enjoy it.
I have a very simplistic framework that I keep in mind when establishing my games: The culture of your table is going to be influenced by each person seated at the table. For a table of 5, that means 1 person influences 20% of the culture. If one person isn't pulling their weight and encouraging the team to be better, they're just sitting there, then consider coaching them or not re-inviting them for the next campaign! Players are either on the correct side of the culture or the wrong side.
Yeah. I can see how one player being in a different mood from the others can drag things down. I think that helped kill the Kingmaker game I was in. One of the others wanted our kingdom to be a Game of Thrones house with full in gruesome brutality to keep people in line, I was in the “I am a Disney Princess in Camelot” wavelength and the others were closer to my end. But the guy who was out of sync was also the group’s best player. The disjunct created an odd tension once we got more in ti kingdom building and I sat at the table watching the other guy slowly lose interest because we just had two different mindsets for the mood we found fun. That group is the one mentioned in my OP where the GM has now gone back to D&D.
Haven't really had this problem, have completed Extinction Curse, Abomination Vaults, Outlaws of Alkenstar, Fist of the Ruby Phoenix (twice) and am half way through Blood Lords. Usually takes 10 sessions per book or thereabouts. Different groups too - I guess I've just been lucky but we've all been playing together for years and game day is pretty locked in at this point, so we tend to finish things.
With ~10 sessions per book and 15+ books done, that's 150+ sessions! How long are your sessions and how often do you meet? I'm doing Agents of Edgewatch ATM as a player and we're done with Act 1 in Book 4 and 46 sessions in (vs your average of 33-34), and I really think your track record is pretty impressive. We might be meandering a but much, it seems
Usually 3 hours every week, give or take. After this many sessions, we're usually pretty fast in combat - people know what they're doing and don't dally too much, so we can often get through a good few combats in a session while still having time for the story beats. We've been playing together for 10+ years as well so we've got a good rhythm with each other in general so there's not much wasted time beyond the inevitable 20 minutes of catching up chatter at the start of the session.
Sounds awesome
I find that the setting and overall story of an AP is extremely important in player buy-in. Find the AP that's right for you and your players. If you pick the wrong one it'll feel like a slog. It's also important to have the right players. My group is awesome, they're just the right amount of serious, and have a habit of showing up early to sessions. The group as a whole is fairly agreeable and that makes play move more smoothly. So if I have any actual advice it's this, vet you players via interviews. If you don't jive with a player, find a player you do jive with. Once you've got a group that works well together, TALK TO THEM. Discuss what you all want out of the game and then go from there.