Gatewalkers: Stripping it for parts

I adore Paizo’s Adventure paths. They’re a huge timesaver for busy GMs, and not just those who want to run a long pre-written campaign! You can easily pull out interesting scenarios from the APs. After that, you can rub off a few serial numbers. Slot them into your custom campaign with no one the wiser. I’ve written about this for other APs, and now it’s time for me to give Gatewalkers the same treatment.

Book One

Seven Arches

The book in medias res, with the crew approaching a town with a bit of a mystery. A curse that had killed any elf who entered the town’s perimeter, before a few weeks ago, would die instantly. The crew is there to do some clandestine tests to see what might have changed. This involves running around, dodging guards, and digging for more information. It could lead to the next scenario. Alternatively, it could lead to one custom for your campaign.

Potential hooks:

You’ve been hired by the Pathfinders to check out what might have changed at Seven Arches. They’d go themselves, but they’re a bit banned…
The group stumbles into the town on their own while travelling. They realize something is off after they’re intensely interrogated to see if their crew includes an elf.
The group has some reason to check out the arches in town, and find out they’re fake!
Honestly, it’s a nice town for the group to run through, restock, and chat with locals. Paizo added some good details!

Greenleaf Forest House

A dungeon IN THE TREES! This is a super fun and challenging ‘dungeon’ for low-level characters. A group of rogue druids have taken over a formerly friendly enclave and are causing problems. PCs will have to find a way to free their captives and drive out the interlopers while surviving nature’s wrath.

Potential hooks:

This can be a standard job posting during a regular campaign. It might be offered by one of the enclave members who managed to escape.
More amusingly, the players could be en route to meet the friendly druids. They don’t realize their contacts are all tied up in a closet.
They might stumble upon the druids while travelling. Initially, they might think the druids are nice. Then, they discover the druids’ plans to level the nearby town “for the good of nature.”

Kaneepo Invesgitation

The players find themselves trying to investigate a mystery in a town that, quite frankly, doesn’t want them around. This is a fun investigation that involves a bit of digging, a bit of charm, and a bit of fisticuffs, culminating in a portal to another plane. Because Kaneepo doesn’t show up in this investigation, you can easily swap him out with the BBEG of your choice. You could also import him into your game, since his connection to the overall Gatewalkers plot is fairly loose, and it’s easy to play him as a fey that just loves shit-stirring.

Potential hooks:

The group has tracked their current quarry to a small farming town.
The group stumbles into this odd town, and while most of the farmers ask them to move along, a sympathetic NPC begs them for help. Their friend, Hatria Pebblesworth, was recently killed, but no one wants to look into it.
Heck, go ahead an import Kaneepo into your campaign, since taking him down makes for a decent arc.

The Thinlands

While technically in the First World, this is a part of the plane that is bathed in black and white. Therefore, this could easily be plopped in the Netherworld (Legacy: The Shadow Plane) or in a particularly grim part of Golarion. As for the actual content of this section, it features a compact yet challenging ‘dungeon’ with a varied set of challenges. Some, players can charm their way through, some require some brainpower, and some require some form of violence. Also, due to the nature of how it’s written, it really needs to be done in one go, so players have the additional challenge of minding their resources. Annoyed that your players insist on resting every time they take a break? Throw this a them!

Potential hooks:

A local has been kidnapped, and his family is desperate to get him back (The final room has a hostage in it, so swap them for whoever is interesting)
Again, you can just add Kaneepo to your game! This plus the “Kaneepo Investigation” sections could easily fill a few sessions.
The players stumble onto the hideout and realize it may be corrupting the land around it, leeching color from an otherwise normal area.

Castrovel

Yes! The planet! The book features a gazetteer for running adventures on Castrovel, which could be used to kickstart a whole adventure on its own. If you want to keep it to something more guided, however, Book One has an interesting way of introducing the characters to life on the Elf homeworld. They start off in the wild, with no idea where they are (they think they’re still on Golarion), and they have to fight their way through a dense and dangerous jungle to get to the one sign of civilization they can see. I will say, as a GM, I loved watching the players argue about which part of the Mwangi they’d been teleported to until they finally realized what was going on.

If you’re worried as a GM that you might be stranding the players somewhere, don’t worry: This part of the adventure has a way for them to get back to Golarion.

This arc has three parts: Struggling through the wilds, some dungeon diving, and getting back. Because they’re fairly separate, you don’t have to run all three, and can handwave any connecting tissue fairly easily. While I loved all three sections, I’d say getting back was my favorite encounter, since it hops the players all over the solar system before dumping them where they need to be.

Potential hooks:

Running all three: A strange portal needs investigation! Stepping through, unfortunately, strands them in a strange land as the portal collapses as soon as they exit it.
Running all three: A trap sends them ‘away’ and they have to find their way back
Just the city and dungeon: The elves of the city need information about a ritual to protect their new settlement. Being academics, they really need some muscle to help them out.
Just getting back: The portal could be anywhere! Use it to give the party a shortcut from one place to another, but at a cost.

Book 2

While much of Book 2 revolves around an NPC trying to fulfill her destiny, I’ve found you can pretty much remove or downplay her role without changing the entire story. That makes Book 2 easy to mine from!

Skywatch

Skywatch is a town that has been mysteriously abandoned, and is now beset by those who would plunder what was left behind. It has a number of fun encounters, both social and fisticuffs (including fighting a piece of furniture that had me cackling as a GM). It could be an interesting place for a group of PCs to run into, or be hired to check out.

Potential hooks:

The party has been braving the wilderness for a while now, and could use a chance to restock. Pity that the town they’ve stumbled onto is in such disarray.
Word is that the formerly cloistered city of Skywatch is no longer sealed off from the rest of Golarion! The crew has been tasked with seeing what they were up to.
A group of researchers need to get up to the observatory in the center of town. Unfortunately, not only is the observatory surrounded by looters, but several members of their party have disappeared while attempting to scout.

Mermaid’s Tear

At one point, the Gatewalkers party needs to get across a lake, and ends up on a slightly-haunted ship that’s otherwise sea-worthy. Captain Adney was a favorite NPC for my group, and it made an otherwise colorless journey memorable. Acquiring the ship involves a few steps which can be handwaved, but I found the dungeon to be a nice one-session size. Also, you can’t have a haunted ship without some weird events while you travel, which are included in this arc.

Also, the ship being haunted and only functional while haunted makes it easy to remove from play, if you don’t want your players to have unlimited mobility.

Potential hooks:

Your players need to get across a body of water, but all the regular captains are either booked or unwilling to carry them. They hear a rumor about an ‘abandoned’ boat nearby that could be used if it proves seaworthy, though…
The Temple of the Water Lord can be run independently, and could be a great challenge for a group that wants to learn a particular ritual from the fey waiting at the end.
If you just want to run the seafaring parts, the crew has been hired to hunt down the Red Duchess, a Chelaxian vessel that’s gone rogue for unknown reasons. Previous parties have been sent to look into it, but haven’t returned, which is making the locals nervous.

Egede

A town that’s been taken over by religious zealots, with the potential for spawning a cult! In the AP, it’s easy for the PCs to blow past the plot, but it’s a fairly interesting encounter that can fall out multiple ways. Do they get the zealots to back down and realize the error of their ways? Do they play along? Or do they decide conversations are for commoners and solve their problem with violence? Depending on what they do, they might inspire some already unstable locals to form a following. While in the AP, this is meant to push them to move on, it could be the start of a bigger adventure.

Potential hooks:

Your players stumble into town to restock and rest and end up caught up in the local politics.
They’ve been hired by someone whose brother is being held for a ‘trial.’ Once the party is in town, they realize how deadly said trials are.
Post-hook: If they accidentally create a following, the PCs have to deal with a cult forming around their ‘miraculous’ accomplishments. Seriously, make it awkward.

Crossing the Scar

If you need your players to cross the wilds of Mendev or the Scar, this is a good chapter to grab. It includes not only random encounter tables, but also some unique encounters that feed into how damaged this region is, and a bug dungeon that had so many bugs. It does include an escort quest, but this can easily be removed or downplayed.

This is a great place for those who invested in Survival to shine, especially if they don’t have a chance to buy magical yurts beforehand.

Potential hooks:

A group of pilgrims have asked the group to guide them to a sacred site across the scar.
Reclaimers want to hire the party to find out what happened to some other members of their organization.
You can use Valmer’s Burrow on its own. Valmer has a habit of taking people back to his hidey hole, so if the party has a beloved NPC he could grab…
This section also includes some ruins that can be used on their own, allowing PCs who love investigation a chance to flex.

Book 3

Lepidstadt

Lepidstadt is the largest settlement in Ustalav, and makes for an interesting place for a party to set up camp for a while. I will say that if you want more details, you may want to check out books from the PF1 days. Rule of Fear and The Carrion Crown would be good places to start. Still, if you just need something to vibe off of, what’s in Book Three should suffice.

Potential hooks:

The party has to do some research at the local university, but quickly find out that the professors want rather gruesome favors before they’ll help.
The party has been hired to find a missing loved one, who was last seen heading into Ustalav with their wares. There’s also troubling rumors of cults and secret societies who are always looking for new members… or victims.
The council has hired the party to track down the Beast of Lepidstadt, a legendary monster of the region who is blamed in the recent murder of a rich merchant. Not everything is as it seems, though. Is the monster actually guilty? And why hire outsiders for this job?

Ritalson Manor

Ritalson Manor starts off as a nice break for a tired party, and slowly descends into a the realization that not only is their host an occultist murderer, but that they were lined up to be his next victims. My players loved it, since it offered a mix of research, social interactions, and mayhem. Though it ties in with the overall Gatewalkers plot, it wouldn’t be too difficult to scrub that off of the set-up. The other party could be from any faction friendly with the party, and the discoveries in the basement could tie into any larger plot.

Potential hooks:

Ritalson is a fellow Pathfinder who has invited the party to his manor for a small gathering of the minds. He’s been held up elsewhere, so they’re told to enjoy his manor until he arrives.
The party has been hired to look into the disappearance of a party of traveling academics. Rumors place them at Ritalson Manor, but the local law enforcement has been reluctant to act against such a pillar of society with no evidence.
The party stumbles upon the house deep in the wilds, and are surprised when they’re offered a chance to sleep in soft beds for free. A dark storm gathering to the west makes this a tempting proposal…

Abandoned temple

If you’re bouncing around somewhere cold and want a relatively small dungeon to explore, the Abandoned Temple could easily be slotted into your game. Once serving Findeladra, it’s infested with Blackfrost and creatures that fell to its taint long (or maybe not so long) ago. It also features a nice treasure at the end of it: An Explorer’s Yurt, which is indispensable when exploring hostile regions, or travelling with a bard who whines a bit much.

Potential hooks:

Scouts from a local town have gone missing, and the sister of one of them has begged the explorers to find them, or at the very least, what befell them.
A terrible blizzard has slammed into the party, forcing them to take shelter in the temple until it’s passed.
Do your players need to find some notes to push the campaign forward? Turns out, their quarry holed up in the temple for a while and may have left something behind…

Across the High Ice

This section was rather controversial for many GMs and players, but personally, I liked it. Yes, it’s grueling, but that’s what travelling across a frozen desert should be. It also has a number of interesting encounters, both for combat and setting the mood, that keeps it from becoming totally monotonous. A GM might will need to find a different shortcut if they want to completely scrub the Gatewalkers plot, but this can be done by halving the distance on the map.

Potential hooks:

The party is at point A. Their target is at point B. They need to hoof it.
The party triggers a teleportation trap and ends up at the Crown of the World. Thankfully, they stumble into a cache of gear right away, but they still need to figure out how to get home… (So, reverse the map)
The party has been asked by the Pathfinder Society to do some scouting for them. They’re sure to get a big payday, but they need to gather enough data to earn it…

The First and Last Temple

This temple in the Nameless Spires is the capstone of the AP, finally allowing the players to deal a metaphysical black eye to the stupid fish that caused all of their problems. It’s also a nice size dungeon that could keep a group of players busy for a session or two. It’s filled with fights, traps, and a few weird, otherworldly nerds who will happily talk and/or steal the party’s brains. There’s also a few places where a GM could drop clues for their own campaign, if they need a place to do a lore dump.

Potential hooks:

The BBEG the group has been following stayed here for several months, researching… something? Replace what’s on the murals with your own details.
Strange occurrences have been popping up around the Crown of the World, and the party is being paid to look into it.
A cosmos oracle has been besieged by visions of disaster, and is convinced the temple holds the key. Even better if you happen to have an oracle in your group…

Final thoughts

I thoroughly enjoyed running Gatewalkers as is, but I also understand that some GMs prefer to run their own thing, or aren’t interested in the overall plot. Even so, it offers a ton of things you can grab and reuse without ever stealing your players’ memories or making them amnesiac criminals.

Abomination Vaults: Stripping it for Parts

I’m a huge lover of Paizo’s Adventure paths. They’re a huge timesaver for busy GMs, and not just those who want to run a long pre-written campaign! You can easily pull out interesting scenarios from the APs, rub off a few serial numbers, and slot them into your custom campaign with no one the wiser. I’ve written about this for other APs, and now it’s time for me to give Abomination Vaults the same treatment.

Overall notes

Abomination Vaults is a unique campaign in that each chapter is a floor. Because of how the vaults are set up, there’s many floors you could pull out on their own and plop into a campaign. Creatures tend to stick to their designated areas, so there’s no worry about the floors bleeding together. They also tend to all have their own theme, based on who’s moved in.

You also don’t have to use the whole floor, since many have encounters that are self-contained enough to pull out and plop in the basement of some BBEG’s lair or in your own dungeon.

Book one

Otari

One major thing you can pull from this book is the town of Otari. It’s a small port town that’s perfect for adventurers just starting out. It’s filled with interesting characters who have their own potential plots going on, and it’s not too far off from Absolom. It could be a fun place for PCs to start their adventure, stock up, or save at some point.

Floor 1: Ruins of Gauntlight

The first floor is completely above ground, so it would fit in any swamp-like setting. It’s filled with the sorts of creatures you could see cramming into a deteriorating structure, including natural creatures, the fey, and even an undead or two. There’s even non-combat encounters, including a brownie that my group adopted (Tangletop!) and a tribe of mitflits (who my players immediately slaughtered).

Possible hooks:

The PCs need to clear this old fort / lighthouse / whatever out for cold hard cash.
The party stumbles upon the structure and decides to make it a new hideout.
They’re there to ‘rescue’ the soulbound doll Mister Beak (the previous owner doesn’t know the doll left of his own accord and has fallen in with a bad crowd).
The locals think the old outpost is haunted, but it turns out that this is just Tangletop trying to keep the other creatures nearby away.

Floor 2: The Forgotten Dungeon

This is the first floor that’s completely underground. It has an interesting mix of creatures, with a dose of undead, aberrations, and even some infernal! The overall vibe I get from this floor is that of an abandoned villain’s lair. The old experiments have broken loose, the old staff has been turned, and the devils are stuck until their contract is completed. This also features a fight with a river drake that thoroughly handed my players their butts the first time they encountered it.

Possible hooks:

That drake has taken up residence in an abandoned structure outside of town, and it’s bothering the residents. The party has been hired to get rid of it… but no one knew that the abandoned mansion wasn’t so abandoned.
If you have a BBEG in your campaign, this could be an old lair of his before he upgraded. Crawling through it could give your party more information about their potential rival.
If you want to make allies of the morlocks, they want their old digs back, but aren’t quite up to the task of clearing them out. They do have their old boss’s funds, so they’re willing to throw money at the problem! Just don’t ask what happened to him…

Floor 3: Cult of the Canker

An undead library! This floor is a library populated by intelligent undead, so could fit in many places: Geb, a necromancer’s lair, the site of a former cult that went in a bit too hard… And, being a library, it’s a great place to drop lore or information that would be difficult to deliver via NPC. It also features an NPC who became a fast favorite of my group: Augrael! He’s a friendly ghoul who really just wants to sit in his cubby hole and read his books (I made him a fan of bodice rippers, but you do you). He’s not a fan of his ‘coworkers’, so he can offer a place for the party to rest and heal.

Possibly hooks:

This library used to belong to the group’s patron, but it was taken over by a cult of undead morlocks.
This library belongs to the BBEG of the campaign, and could offer clues about their motivations and abilities.
It could be a non-combat location if your party is in Geb or an otherwise undead-friendly location.
The group has been tasked with delivering books to Augreal… they just have to find him first amidst all the hostile undead.

Floor 4: An abandoned retreat

The theme for the fourth floor is a luxurious retreat for a villain that has been long abandoned. Of course, other creatures have moved in, and some unfortunate individuals were never able to leave. There’s a mix of undead, aberrations, and demonic, so a little bit of something for everyone. The main goal of this floor is to find the ghost of a long-dead adventurer so he can give you a lore dump, but he can easily be swapped out for anything that would suit your campaign better.

Possible hooks:

Something has been harassing the local town… turns out it’s a werewolf, holed up in some local caves. Time to problem solve!
If you have a BBEG, this would be a great place for the players to learn about them without being face to face.
Or, heck, clean up the descriptions slightly and pop your BBEG in there! They could take the place of the voidglutton (who can be rough on a level 4 party)
An adventuring party lost one of its members when they separated in the dungeon. They’ve come down with a case of being lily-livered, so have hired you to find their friend.

Book 2

Book two includes quite a few side quests for the party, and they’re fairly easy to pop into most campaigns.

The Stolen Blade

A famous sword, passed down over generations, has been stolen. The owner knows who it was, but doesn’t know where the culprit is, and doesn’t reveal to the party why the thief may actually have a claim to it. This quest has the players bouncing around town a bit to find clues, then cornering the thief in a cave before he can run off with his prize.

Dorianna’s Dreams

The party has been approached about a young woman in town who’s been suffering from increasingly strong nightmares, none of which she remembers upon waking. Her father is desperate to find the cause and do whatever it takes to heal her. This has the party doing some investigation based on their own wits (or what wits they can hire), and leads them eventually to a confrontation with a creature from Leng.

Floors 5 and 6: The Arena and Labs

These floors go together, if you’re plugging whole floors into your campaign. The first is the largely abandoned lair of a BBEG (starting to see a theme?), while the second level is occupied by various groups that have moved in. The most striking feature is one that spans both floors: An enormous colosseum that currently houses a shanrigol behemoth, but this could be swapped out for most gargantuan creatures. Outside of the arena, there are signs of terrible experiments being done in the past, some of which are still being carried out.

The arena isn’t the only feature of the floors. Floor six has a tavern, with its very own punk band!. Honestly, if you steal anything from this book, let it be these guys. They deserve to make it big in more campaigns.

Possible hooks:

Once again, this is a good addition to any campaign where the players are chasing a somewhat unhinged BBEG. There’s lots of places to sprinkle clues about what their nemesis can do, and hooks to where they should go next.
A talent scout has contracted the party, with rumors of a band with a hot new sound… they just have to make their way to them. Easy money!
The party hears a rumor of an undefeated champion somewhere near their home. It’s not really their problem… but someone keeps luring young idiots to challenge it, and no one has come back…

Floor 7: Soul Keepers

This floor is more devil-y than some of the others, and includes a puzzle that has the players collecting various keys around the dungeon in order to open a magically sealed door. It also has a collection of stasis chambers that can have players either saying “Let’s poke every button” or “Absolutely not” and turning their heel. The ‘big bad’ of the floor is a contract devil eager to make a deal in order to get a soul owed to him, so meeting him could lead to a fun new plot or a blow-out of a fight.

Possible hooks:

Set this in Chelliax, and it’s just another admin building! If the players aren’t on the offensive, they have a handful of interesting NPCs to talk to. If they’re there to throw down, it’s already thematic!
Odd requests have been popping up on the request board in town: Find certain creatures, but do not kill them. Capture them, then leave them in a clearing outside town. The mayor wants to know what’s behind this.
If the party is morally grey, they receive a letter requesting help tracking down a certain ne’er-do-well and bringing him to a newly rented office in town. It reads like the guy owes someone money, but something feels off…
A tiefling bounty hunter has gone missing, and his partner is desperate to find him. Everyone thinks he just skipped town, but she knows him better than that…

Book 3

Normally, by the last book in an AP, I don’t have much to suggest when it comes to plundering. AV, however, still has lots to borrow and shove into your own games! Book three has a few clusters of NPCs, some interesting dungeons, and a big set-piece for whatever BBEG you might have in your campaign.

Floor 8: Decaying Gardens

The major NPCs of this floor are a group of Calgni cultists… but nice ones! They probably won’t turn the party into soup since they’re so intent on finding their oracle who hears whispers from a magical MacGuffin. They’re more than happy to work with the party, given that they’re polite and don’t poke them too hard about their strange beliefs. On the less cult-y side of things are a small party of Drow / cave elves who are hunting these wild caves for food and sport. The caves also feature wee bog mummies (their original bodies came from deep gnomes) and a delightful mix of deadly flora and fauna.

Potential hooks:

The friendly cult is in freakout mode, since their oracle wandered off. They need you to find him and bring him back, unharmed… though one might bribe the party to lead him somewhere even more secret, and tell only her the location.
The drow have been tasked with getting this floor under control, but they’ll begrudgingly admit they bit off more than they could chew. Since the party is hanging around and looking dangerous anyway, maybe they could help out?
Not far out of town, the roof of a cavern has fallen in, revealing dangerous previously unknown in the peaceful village. The mayor is asking for someone to come and ‘neutralize’ the cave, either through negotiations or violence.

Floor 9: Hunting Grounds

This floor has two groups of NPCs that you could easily pluck up and place into a campaign that has any access to the underdark. The first is a sizable enclave of Drow (the ones the hunters on floor 8 belong to, but you can easily just use them) who are stuck where they are due to previous vows, but would really rather go home. The other is a group of Caligni who would also prefer to return to their main settlement deep in the Underdark, but are blocked from going back. There’s also a group of immediately hostile urdefhan and an abandoned temple that could be scooped up and reused.

Potential hooks:

The Drow hunters have lost track of a precious MacGuffin (a crystal lens in the AP, but it can be anything). They can’t return to their people without it, but their attempts to find it have been thwarted by a cave system filled with dangerous flora and fauna.
The Caligni outpost was only supposed to be out here for a few months, mapping this section of the Underdark. While they were working, however, their way back has been blocked by a dragon. Being a selection of slightly sturdy cartographers, they’re stuck where they are until someone takes care of the problem for them.
A mysterious temple has been discovered outside of an abandoned settlement. The party is hired to check it out and document it for a local historian. This could easily lead to floor 10, or a plot of the GM’s choice.
A town has been reporting disappearances, mostly of scouts or individuals who live alone in the outskirts. An investigation points to a cavern that’s supposed to be empty… or at least, it was.

Floor 10: The Temple

The last floor! This entire floor is a gauntlet, with the players being pushed through various challenges meant to wear them down. That isn’t a metaphor, by the way. It was literally built for the followers of the BBEG of AV to prove themselves. For your players, it could be that, or it could be the barriers set in place by their foe to slow them down.

Potential hooks:

Obviously, this could be put in place by their nemesis to keep their inner sanctum from being invaded by the unworthy. If you do this, you may want to remove a room that’s explicitly set aside for their peons to rest in before entering the sanctum.
This could also be presented as a challenge to overcome. A local lodge has set it up as a way to train potential Pathfinders more efficiently than tossing them to someone more experienced and saying “Good luck!”
Or you could do a bit of both. The party has been tasked with infiltrating a local cult, and if they choose the sneaky option, they could pretend to be members in order to get a shot at the big boss.

Final thoughts

AV is hands down one of my favorite APs, mostly because it’s filled with so many fun and varied encounters. I really hope more people give it a go, either as an AP, or inserting chunks of it into their ongoing campaign.

Council of Thieves: Stripping it for Parts

Council of Thieves was the first Paizo Adventure Path to be released fully under PF1 (the ones before were for 3.5), and it holds a special place for me as the first AP I ever ran. I ran it for my home game over nearly two years, and the campaign is one we still talk about today.

While the AP has its faults, it also has some great elements that could work at any table. In fact, I’ve stripped it down for parts several times, and I’ve broken out some scenarios multiple times. Hell, I ran one scenario multiple times for the same people because they wanted a chance to run through it again.

If you strip CoT for parts, what should you grab?

Book One: The Bastards of Erebus

One of the biggest things to steal? The town of Westcrown. It’s a city of decaying glory, run by thieves with noble titles, kowtowing to a demon lord they think they control, filled with citizens who are scared to challenge the status quo. It’s made for a group of adventurers to come in and set things right… somehow.

Also, there’s this fantastic table for randomizing tiefling features! I still break this out when I need to generate a description for a tiefling on the fly. It has random cosmetic features and random abilities that could be ported over to PF2 reasonably easily.

Finally, there’s a dungeon just the right size for some low-level characters. If your players need to break into a hideout, the Bastard’s lair is just big enough to be a challenge but small enough not to run on empty by the end.

Book Two: The Sixfold Trial

THERE’S A PLAY! Y’all, this is the reason I wrote this post in the first place. The freaking play is fantastic. The premise is that a director wants the action on stage to feel ‘real,’ so he hires people to fight against real challenges rather than actors fighting against special effects. There’s even a real play with lines to read out!

Cover for The Sixfold Trial, featuring an opera diva in the foreground and a fight on a stage in the background.

If you run the play, I highly recommend running through the audition because you can end up with some hilarious castings when the fighter whiffs and ends up as the romantic lead or the druid accidentally crits and ends up as the seductress. Also, audition for the succubus part rather than having it played by an NPC since you don’t need that NPC going forward.

There’s also a dinner party, which can be a terrific set piece if you need your players to hobnob and get some plot hooks. There’s a system for impressing various NPCs, and you can easily change out the AP-specific clues for your own.

Finally, the Asmodeon Knot is a bizarre dungeon built in the Ethereal Plane that can be put anywhere since it’s built in the plane between planes. It has lots of unique challenges that are better solved by brain than brawn, but also some things that just need to be punched in the face.

Book Three: What Lies in Dust

Cover for What Lies in Dust. Shows a woman holding some sort of magic dagger. In the background, an adventuring party fights big cats.

This book has another terrific set-piece: The Devildrome. A famous (think WWE) summoner accepts all challengers and has been undefeated… until now. The prize can be whatever suits your plot best, from a MacGuffin to a meeting with someone important yet out of reach.

Also, another favorite that I’ve used several times: DELVEHAVEN! An abandoned Pathfinder lodge filled with haunts, mysteries, and traps just begging for a group of idiots to run in and check it out. I got several sessions out of this, and completing it felt like a real accomplishment. Also, at the end, the players had a fabulous lodge all to themselves!

Book Four: The Infernal Syndrome

As you get further into an AP, there’s less to grab since many scenarios are heavily intertwined with the plot. This book, though, has a vast dungeon that’s a bunch of fun and would be easy enough to put under any questionable individual’s house. There’s a mix of straight-up fights, social encounters, and traps to give everyone in the party something to do.

Book 5: Mother of Flies

Walcourt is a big ol’ abandoned mansion where several vampires have settled in. It’s well worth reading over their motivations because they all have interesting backgrounds and motivations, and it’s possible to do more than just stab your way through the mansion.

Book 6: The Twice Damned Prince

This is a good book, but I couldn’t find anything to grab from it since it’s very much caught up in resolving all plot threads. This is fairly normal when pulling apart APs for content: The further in you go, the less there is to grab.

Final Caveats

The maps… hoo-boy. These were made before VTTs were omnipresent, and people either printed them or drew them on flip maps. The baked-in gridlines don’t always line up, and the quality if you extract them isn’t great. You’ll want to upscale them (my handy guide here) or see if someone else did updates. You’ll also need to edit some of the images to remove references to secret doors, which are baked into the image.

As for conversion, don’t stress out about 1:1. Take a step back, look at the theme and level for each encounter, and grab your Bestiaries for something close enough. Even the “special” creatures only need a half-assed paint job to get by. The most important thing is that the fight is reasonable and fun.

And that they befriend the wee constructs living in Delvehaven. Just LOOK at them! How could you not adopt them into your party?!

A collection of creepy poppets: A dragon, a teddy that looks rough, a creepy doll, a tiki statue, and a scarecrow with a noose around his neck.

Reusing APs: Agents of Edgewatch

I’m a huge fan of Paizo’s Adventure Paths. I’ve run them, I’ve played in them, and I have a list of APs I want to play in that’s inadvisably long. Many players, however, prefer to run homebrew stuff, so they tend to ignore them, thinking there’s nothing for them to use there. What they may not know is that APs are often made of scenarios that you can yank out, file the serial numbers off of, and jam into your campaign.

So, what can you rip out of Agents of Edgewatch?

Important note: If you had any hopes at all of playing in AoE without being spoiled, turn away now. I'll be sharing many of the extremely significant scenarios in the AP.

Book One

Because the first book has the fewest ties to overarching plots, this is the easiest book to grab from. While every book has something to steal, this one has so many great things to snag. In fact, if you had to pick just one book to buy and rip apart, this is the one to grab.

Knight’s Marvelous Menagerie

In this scenario, the players deal with a petting zoo that’s lost its damn mind. The kicker is that the animals are being poisoned, but you could swap this out for so many things: A disease spreading through the area, some druid who’s gone off the rails, ghosts… whatever suits your plot. The end goal is to subdue as many creatures as you can without killing them and find a cure, which can easily take up a 4 hour session.

And, best part? It’s no longer necessary to kill off two adorable NPCs who are murdered off-screen. Knight and his ladylove vet can become regulars if your players are into that sort of thing.

Dragonfly Pagoda

A breakdown in worker compensation leads to a bunch of kobold contractors taking over a spa. This is a super interesting scenario where there’s so many ways players can approach it. Do they sneak past a dozen traps and try to subdue the kobold’s quietly? Do they take the side of the workers and find something more fair for all parties? Do they go in with swords swinging and leave a trail of bodies behind them?

Also, at the end of all of this, the PCs have a nice bath house! Trust me, they’ll find ways to use it when they feel like relaxing, or kicking off a little romance subplot.

House of the Planes

This is less useful as a scenario, and more useful as a super cool bar. Each room is themed around a plane. The NPCs detailed here are a ton of fun, and it would be a great place to toss players for grabbing hooks, clues, or just seeing what interested them the most.

It also introduces the owner of a local rag, which could be an interesting addition to your campaign. The newspaper plays a minor role in reporting the actions of the PCs throughout AoE, and if you have the creative juice for it, could be a fun way to give your players an spin on how the world at large might see their actions.

The Murder Hotel

As a True Crime fan, this scenario had me cackling. It’s clever, it’s dangerous, it’s creepy, and it’s based off of a real-life murder hotel. Trust me, anyone in your group who follows True Crime will have a moment where they say WAIT, I KNOW THIS ONE.

Because your PCs are the ones to figure out what’s going on once you get in there, it can be something you drop into any campaign where the players are in a reasonably big city with a fair number of people moving through it.

Book 2

Every Paizo AP includes a book that might as well be called “the one with the dungeon.” For Agents of Edgewatch, that’s book two, and it’s a super good dungeon. Expansive, including several levels, a broad variety of creatures, and it’s not so bespoke that it can’t be pretty much anywhere.

This also would be a book where I’d grab the book for the maps and print them, or just skip straight to getting the module on whatever VTT platform you use. Setting up the lighting for this dungeon was no joke.

Book 3

If you have a group with a face or a sneak who is tired of everything being a fight, I highly recommend grabbing the casino encounter from the second chapter of book three. It’s a heist, where the players have to infiltrate an upscale casino in order to get information and find (or rather, not find) a MacGuffin. Need to get some info to your players and they keep refusing to talk to that one bartender who knows the deal? Pass it via one of the many guests there. Need the players to get their hands on something vital? Put it in the footlocker where they’re supposed to find AoE’s MacGuffin.

There’s a huge lead-up to to the heist involving planning, so you can easily get several sessions out of this chapter. Players can choose their approach, getting jobs as staff or entrance via the rumor mill or sucking up to local celebs. It’s absolutely something where you can give them their options and then go catch up on your reading while they debate amongst themselves.

Book 4

Chapter 3 has a creepy carnival. Why do you need a creepy carnival? A better question is why haven’t you included one in your game yet?

Running around the carnival, the players are trying to find a madman who’s leaving behind Harrow cards, which adds another layer of creepy. The only thing I’d change, honestly, is the ending, which is extremely AoE specific. It’s easy to update, however: Swap out a trap for a fight, and you’re golden.

Book 5

The second chapter of book five includes an awesome map that’s made of ships. Like, six of them, each with three levels. There’s places to cross, to jump, and hell, I’m sure someone could break out their Drive lore and make some chaos.

The creatures included aren’t too spicy, so really, could work with most adventures. All you have to do is give them a reason to go mess about on ships, and a way to get there. Just be familiar with how you might split players to different levels if needed (Personally, I’d put all of the maps on one page if you’re using a VTT, but that’s just me).

Book 6

The cover of book six features a gnome who I was very distressed to learn was a major enemy. He looks awesome! He absolutely looks like someone I’d recruit to be in my party! Is he evil? SURE. He’s an angry architect. Who hasn’t been mad while working a desk job? And he’s redeemable. If you rescue anything from this book, make it this guy, who I’m sure the party could have a ton of fun getting to know and turning to the grey side.

Part of the cover of book six. It features a gnome with short purple hair, BIG EYES, thick glasses, and so many scrolls. — LOOK AT HIM. LOOK AT THAT FACE. LOOK AT THOSE FEET. AND WE STAN AN ARGYLE KING.

To be honest, I would use Blume as a quest giver who has a ton of money and might be a tiny bit unhinged. Hell, maybe he lets the PCs set up shop in an unused wing that’s full of ‘creative’ architectural details. Think Winchester House if it were mildly sentient.

What did I miss?

I’m sure I skipped over an encounter that could be fun to run for players (I ran only about 70% of the AP in a West Marches setting), so comment if there’s one that should be included! Next, I’ll be pulling apart an older AP: Council of Thieves!