Thread is full of spoilers, just read what I am giving you:
https://paizo.com/threads/rzs43v5l?So-w ... d-stuff#16Steel_Wind wrote:As for Agents of Edgewatch, that one, sadly, has a lot to recommend it and there is the basis for an excellent Absalom campaign. All the key ingredients are there...
And then they serve it up to GMs and players on a garbage can lid.
The problem with AoE is the developer's choice to have the PCs acquire treasure by looting the bad (and not so bad) guys - the so called privateer model -- fundamentally undermined the entire premise of the campaign. The PCs, officers of the law, are required to fund their patrol operations by stealing from those they arrest.
It's a plain conflict of interest. So BY DESIGN the players find themselves role-playing bad cops. No cop under a treasure model like that is lawful -- nor good, in my view. It's a case where the treasure model basically forces the PCs to play dirty cops who are all in the Neutral, Neutral (Evil), Chaotic Neutral, and even Chaotic Evil parts of the alignment spectrum. And this happens BY DESIGN, no less.
I played AoE, Vol 1 and this aspect of things was such a distraction to me that I couldn't wait for that volume to end. And we ended the campaign right afterwards.
As you might imagine, I have some strong views about that design, and some adjectives to attach to it which are both critical and unflattering.
Could we have changed the treasure model? Sure, absolutely. But changing something that is so plainly and obviously wrong in an AP's inherent design should not be necessary.
I thought about giving players the option of playing the AP as written as corrupt cops, or reworking the funding model so that looting lawbreakers isn't necessary. But in the end, I don't see the point of the rework. There are so many APs to play if you want to play good guys, that we should cherish every one made for an evil or neutral party, and that's what
AoE is as written. So I will amend the AP's description on the overworld to make it clear it's for corrupt cops, and leave it at that.