[PF] Pre-Written Campaigns

[Man With Dog]

Hiya Guys,

This is a purely Pathfinder question:

In order to alleviate a bit of DMing duty from the usual in my group I had a thought that maybe I should grab a pre-written campaign and give our usual DM's a bit of free game play.
Now... bearing in mind that the DM's know more about the game in its entirity than I do - Which is the easiest campaign to run in the playgrounds opinion?
Is there one that is simple to pick up and play or do they all require a fair bit of forethought and planning?

I know I dont need to be a pathfinder genius to run a pre-written but looking for guidance on ease of running and hopefully not masses and masses of planning ahead.

Thanks for any of your time

[Wagadodo]

Most of the campaigns that I have run with Pathfinder you don't need to do much planning unless you are going to be running with more or less players requested.

I think the first three pathfinder adventurer sets made for 3.5, and might need some conversion. I personally enjoyed running the Kingmaker line. It takes a bit of back end work making the kingdom but the players are more envolved in building that, and makes them more invested in the game.

[Pink]

Well, it depends a bit on what your expectations are for your campaign. Simply put, I find you can get some good return on investment with a little tweaking to make it fit your group and adapt a bit, and can help stich different portions of an AP together.

That being said, IMO, the pathfinder APs that are the simplest and most straitforward to run are Rise of the Runelords (Now available in a PF converted Anniversary edition) and Shattered Star. Rise of the Runelords is very much a meat and potatoes style of adventure (Goblins, ogres, giant, Archmage). Shattered star is a dungeon heavy path. Both of these lend themselves to less prep and contingencies needed for GMs to keep the game on track.

If low prep is your goal I recomend staying away from anything with a significant subsystem (Kingmaker, Jade Regent, Skull & Shackles), and if your goal is to play in the PF system, you might want to stay away from the other adventures written in 3.5 (Old Rise of the Runelords, Curse of the Crimson Throne, Second Darkness, Legacy of Fire). Also, I highly reccomend checking out the subforums at the Paizo message board on the AP that you do decide on, because they've filled with experiences and suggestions that can help make an AP better and dance around any flaws.