First off, let’s clear up the difference between adventures and campaigns. These are terms with very specific, very specialized meanings in Ultimate Edition. Adventure means standalone adventure. It may have metaplot implications, but once you’re done with it you’re done and you are free to go on your merry way. A campaign on the other hand is a series of adventures that aren’t standalone. They are linked, and not loosely linked either (like e.g. the adventures in an anthology, which can be played by different parties). They are very closely linked, and follow each other fairly quickly. So if you play the first in the series you are OBLIGATED to keep playing the rest because if you quit it is extremely awkward to try and get another party to engage with the remainder. And this if there IS a party in the vicinity to pick up the thread quickly, and wants to. Otherwise it may be in-game months and years before a party is available to continue the campaign, by which point the situations and motivations of the NPCs that set events in motion will probably have changed so much as to make the rest of the campaign unplayable, at least in its original, published form. And that’s a terrible thing to do to the best campaigns, like Paizo’s Adventure Paths today or TSR’s trilogies of old.
Now if a campaign is failed and some calamity is unleashed onto the world, things change, and then it’s generally easy for any parties in the vicinity, or even further afield, to learn of the events (via my upcoming Ultimate Rumors system) and head on over to give a hand in countering the threat. But such calamities only happen towards the end of campaigns. In the early stages, things are more low-key as the campaign builds up, so if a party bails early on there won’t be a big red flashing marker on the overworld (I will literally put big red flashing markers when things get really bad and assistance is needed) to attract people’s attention. There might just be a few despairing NPCs and scheming villains whose story will remain obscure and untold. And that’s not what we want happening in the greatest fictional world ever.
In short, only start a campaign if you’re prepared to see it through. It’s not the GM forcing you to keep playing a campaign, because unlike in regular roleplaying, it wasn’t the GM who chose your campaign for you in Ultimate Edition. You chose it out of dozens of options, so you’ll be expected to have enough interest in it to complete it. If you think you aren’t up to this commitment, don’t start a roleplaying campaign in Battlegrounds. Buy a hero instead and play scenarios or standalone adventures in the adventure-strategy layer.
Which brings me smoothly to my next point.
Standalone adventures will no longer be selectable by characters in the roleplaying layer. I am moving them instead to the adventure-strategy layer. This is a huge change that turbocharges Ultimate Edition and Battlegrounds and makes them so much more dynamic.
The problem that I sought to solve with this change—and which in a sleight-of-hand of genius game design I transformed into an opportunity—is that under the rules we have been playing so far there would practically never be a reason to play the standalone adventures. At first I was planning on slotting those in breaks during campaigns, but that was before I learned how tightly-written and balanced Paizo’s campaigns are. There’s simply no space in them to slot entire unrelated adventures; you’ll end up overleveling the characters and ruining the balance even if there is enough free in-game time to do them. And often there isn’t even time.
So then I thought I would use the standalone adventures if one or more party members died and their replacements needed to level. But that was before I added the adventure-strategy layer that will be able to provide appropriate-level replacements, often immediately, and what’s more replacements played by a different player thus rendering the campaign so much more dynamic and avoiding the “spawn-closet” effect that single-crew roleplaying groups find impossible to avoid. Pure genius of game design here too, and utterly unmatched in any other game ever in the history of gaming. But the price to pay for it is that it renders the often excellent standalone adventures superfluous, unless a newly-formed roleplaying party eschews official campaigns and chooses to assemble its own “DIY campaign” by picking a series of standalone adventures to tackle. To be sure this option has its upsides because it can include a lot of travel and frequent theme changes, but it locks the party out of the truly epic world-changing events in the world. Not to mention epic power. And anyway, these frequent travel and theme-change opportunities is why the adventure-strategy layer was added to the game. And now it was plain that this mode needed one more addition to make it really complete, and fully earn the “adventure” in its name.
In short, I am moving the standalone adventures from the roleplaying layer—where due to many design changes they no longer have meaning—to the adventure-strategy layer where they synergize with many elements to solve existing issues and turbocharge the design.
What existing issues does this solve? Well the current adventure-strategy design siloes off the heroes from the roleplaying layer, which feels artificial, and therefore anti-immersive. Sure, your heroes do get to roleplay in the Pathfinder Society Scenarios, but a single player controls the entire party, so roleplaying is necessarily limited. And if that wasn’t enough, these scenarios move at breakneck pace, leaving little room for elaborate roleplaying as your Venture-captain sends you off to urgent mission after urgent mission that must be typically completed in around 4 irl hours. There’s simply no time for characters to breathe and freely develop under these conditions, which is why I term these scenarios an “SRPG”. To be sure, they’re terrific fun as they yank you to the farthest reaches of the planet in unexplored territories to face wildly diverse people and threats, all the while experimenting with many classes, powers and tactics, which is why Paizo’s Organized Play program is so successful. But it’s not real roleplaying, so if you grow especially fond of one of your heroes and want to play them more and further develop them, you’re out of luck in the existing design. Your only hope is that a roleplaying crew will falter, and someone will die, and your hero will be near enough to step in first and fill the void. But that’s like a trader who makes a living out of shorting, hoping that companies will fail, and spending his time looking for failure. These are your friends roleplaying these characters in these multi-year campaigns. Hoping they fail so you can step in is not a healthy way to think.
But with the standalone adventures now open to the heroes, suddenly you’re free to develop your favorite one(s) as much as you like, like watching Game of Thrones when a cool new character is introduced and being able to zoom into him and become him just by swiping your debit card before all the other viewers. That’s the effect the adventures will have in the game from now: once unlocked on the overworld they’ll surely become highly sought for the extended experience they offer over the briefer scenarios. And note that these will require full multiplayer parties, exactly like the campaigns. You won’t be able to tackle them alone no matter how many heroes you own. You’ll have to coordinate with other players and send only one of your heroes to form a new party and tackle the adventure.
Now you might say, won’t that bring both layers to a grinding halt, as campaigns and 4X turns pause until the adventure is concluded?
To an extent, yes. But... these are still fairly brief adventures. A good half of them are a mere 32 pages, which is just twice the PFS Scenarios’ length, so can be conceivably concluded in about 8-12 hours—a couple of sessions, by our standards. Then some of these adventures are 64 pages, which is maybe 4-6 weeks of relaxed playing. And finally a tiny number are 128 pages, which is just slightly longer than an Adventure Path’s single volume of 100 pages. And yes, these will take us 2-3 months, during which scheduling conflicts with the campaigns will doubtless arise, and things will slow down. BUT since there are so few of these large standalones, this might happen once a year? And it will be terrifically exciting since these tend to be very cool adventures in which the metaplot often significantly advances. Everyone in the Battlegrounds will be excited to see how they go, even if they aren’t participating. Not to mention players will be fiercely competing for them in the adventure-strategy layer, as they will be competing for all standalones as they... stand alone in an ocean of bite-sized scenarios that can’t possibly match them in complexity and immersion. So these adventures will have already energized the overworld before the players have even engaged them, and their ramifications will enrich the depth of the heroes, the overworld complexity, and sometimes even moved the metaplot forward to boot. Which btw is an issue that would eventually have brought the overworld to a standstill, if I hadn’t dealt with it. At some point the metaplot would not have been able to continue without us playing a standalone adventure that significantly affects it, and then what would we have done? We’d have had to form a roleplaying crew specifically for the purpose of playing this one adventure, and it would have felt terribly artificial. Now that’s no longer an issue.
Here is an example standalone adventure that has already been unlocked:
Battlegrounds wrote:Founded by a famous dragonslayer, the small town of Belhaim has become a sleepy rural community just off the beaten path, a settlement where everyone knows everyone and strangers are the talk of the town.
1st-level, 64 pages, unlocked by the Oppara Crew, takes place in a large famous forest north of the current location of the War for the Crown campaign (and btw it’s currently being adapted to a CRPG, I’ve been meaning to make a thread on it). So these guys unlocked it but they can’t play it because they’re higher level, plus even if they were the correct level they can’t fit it in, both for mechanical reasons (the XP and loot would unbalance their entire campaign), and narrative ones (there’s simply no time during the war they’re being embroiled in). So the adventure has just been stupidly sitting there on the overworld for no apparent reason since no one could play it. But now with the new rules, any 4 players in the adventure-strategy layer can coordinate to send one hero each there to tackle it. How exciting is that?! Doesn’t it suddenly massively multiply the possibilities on the overworld? Not to mention that, if a party is formed while the War for the Crown rages, the possibilities for the two narratives interacting and complicating each other shoot through the roof. And that is why we’re here! That’s why you’re playing Alex Kierkegaard’s Ultimate Edition and Battlegrounds instead of an average GM’s single-party no-overworld game as if it’s 1989 and there’s no internet and VTTs to organize bigger groups and worlds.
Now does the above mean someone can buy 10 heroes and play in 10 adventures simultaneously?
No. Though yes. But mostly no. There will be limits, but these will be player-set based on subscription tier and I will elaborate them in the chapter “Ultimate Subscription”. But briefly, for the purposes of this chapter, a Tier 0 sub will give 1 roleplaying character, Tier 1 will give 2 (so for example one roleplaying campaign and one standalone adventure at a time), Tier 2 will give 3, and Tier 3 will give 4. Additional tiers can exist if someone wants them, so in theory someone COULD play 10 adventures at the same time, but it would get expensive, corresponding to the amount of extra effort it would require of me to accommodate that player.
In sum, pay close attention to the pop-up module designations on the overworld from now on, as they are all highly meaningful terms in Ultimate Edition.
ULTIMATE MODULES
- Bounties are singleplayer, 1-hour, 1/12th XP to level
- Quests are singleplayer, 2-hour, 1/6th XP to level
- Scenarios are singleplayer, 4-hour, 1/3rd XP to level
- Adventures are multiplayer, variable duration, full XP rules, 1 character slot
- Campaigns are multiplayer, variable duration, full XP rules, 1 character slot
Note the overworld hasn’t been updated with these terms yet. It will be in the next few days, so until I bump this thread with confirmation, don’t pay any attention to the terms currently used, they’re inaccurate.
Is all this getting very complicated? Sure. But that is why you come here. When you want to play Tetris you have Steam, you don’t need me. You come here for the ultimate, no? And I am telling you, this is the ultimate, bro.
