Most major RPGs have more content than you could ever hope to experience in a traditional multiplayer environment. Let's use the advantages of solo play to explore one of the most content rich franchises out there: Pathfinder.
I'm currently running a group through the third book in the Starfinder Adventure Path, "Against the Aeon Throne". It's a ton of fun, but it also reminded me of the fact that it takes ages to get anything done with a group. Whether it's due to scheduling conflicts or sidequest distractions, it will take several months (if not years) to finish a full campaign.
Don't get me wrong, I love it when my players engage with the world around them and do a few sidequests here and there. For example, the last four sessions have revolved around a week-long shady gambling tournament while the PC's starship is getting repaired. Fun, but not really conducive when it comes to progressing the story of the published adventure.
With that in mind, I came back to a plan I had floating around my head for a few years now:
To chronologically play through all the published Pathfinder (First Edition) content.
If you've read my post about how I approach prewritten adventures, then you know that I prefer to think of it like running a group of "perfect" (N)PCs. They follow every plot hook and behave in a way that the original author envisioned. This allows me to experience the published material in a way that closely follows the intended story. It definitely feels more like running an adventure instead of playing one, but that's not a problem because I really like being a GM.
Railroading isn't an issue here - it's actually encouraged! Just remember not do it in your multiplayer games. Please.
The Plan
Not only do I want to experience the stories of the published adventures and campaigns, I also want to get a feel for how Paizo as a company developed and how their product identity evolved over time. In order to facilitate that style of play, I came up with the following guidelines:
- Only use content that was available at the time of release.
- Yes, that means using the D&D 3.5 rules for the first few years of releases.
- Try to approach the products with the knowledge that they came out in a very different time.
- Accept that there might be questionable content or design decisions that might seem antiquated by today's standards.
- Learn to love the rough edges. Don't min/max or abuse broken combos.
- Embrace the core strength of Pathfinder: Character Building!
- Every adventure and campaign gets its own group of player characters.
- Characters don't need to be global heroes. They can simply exist within the context of that story.
- Immerse yourself into the world of Golarion
- Suspend your disbelief - it's a kitchen sink setting and not everything has to make sense.
- Include products such as novels, comics, audiodramas, etc.
- Take note of anything you particularly enjoy and use it for other projects.
- Read the credits and research what else these people have made.
- Try out different GM emulators and solo tools.
- My own GEMulator isn't really suited for this kind of play, which means that I get to experiment with all the other tools that are out there.
- Don't rely on these emulators. Only use them when they make sense for the adventure.
Where to start
Paizo has published an overwhelming amount of products since 2005. I'm going to need assistance to keep track of everything. As a reference for the release schedule, I'm using the very helpful Pathfinder Release Calendar from the Pathfinder Wiki. At the bottom of the page, you can choose specific years and the entries seem to be sorted bottom to top. To keep track of everything I own and have played, I'm using this Google Doc from this Reddit thread. All credit to the respective authors.
The actual core rulebook for Pathfinder was released in August 2009 (Alpha was February 2008) so all the content before that is using the D&D 3.5 rules. I've actually never played any of the older D&D editions, so this is an exciting start for me.
The 3.5 books are obviously long out of print, but you can pick some of them up as a PDF or print-on-demand from DrivethruRPG. I don't have the budget to go crazy with these, so the Player's Handbook will have to do for now.
Pathfinder was the first roleplaying game I've ever bought and played, which means that I own waaay too much of it. I have a ton of various books, PDFs, and I even own some of the physical tiles/mats from the GameMastery line. Most of these purchases were barely used during my sessions, so I'm looking forward to finally dive into all the extra chronicles, source books, and whatever else I forgot I own.
I'm starting with the year 2005 and their first GameMastery Encounters product: Throne of the Gorilla King. I'm not even going to attempt to find the original miniatures, but they should be easy to replace or proxy with something from my collection. Sadly, I can't find a way where you could legally buy this mini-adventure, but I'm sure the PDFs are floating around somewhere out there.
EDIT: After writing this post, I realized that the first Compleat Encounter release was actually the Dark Elf Sanctum. Not a major difference, but it means that the Wiki doesn't have the entries properly sorted by release date.
Will I make a new group of characters for every mini-adventure? Probably not. Instead, I plan on having a roster of several parties (different level tiers) that I can drop into these smaller standalone adventures. If possible, I'm going to try to connect anything with a similar setting and atmosphere.
I'm fully expecting this to go somewhere I didn't anticipate. Ultimately, this is just a project for my personal entertainment and as long as I'm having fun with it, it's going in the right direction.
Do you have a game or franchise that you've always wanted to explore in more depth? Hopefully, this post gave you some inspiration and a few ideas for how you could approach such a long-term project.
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