No I cannot afford it, I had surprise financial emergency this month.
But seriously, either make the whole thing free or paid, don’t get my hopes up only to dash them like that.
Can probably just pirate it.
BYOA - Bring your own Adventure
The rules are free. The stories are paid. I think that is more than fair.
Also, if it’s anything like Pathfinder there is a vast resource of free monsters and rules that allow anyone to quickly assemble campaign materials themselves. Alternately there are third party adventures as well, though many are also behind paywalls on Patreon and other funding sites to, you know, compensate creators for doing the work.
I don’t think I’ve ever played an official story from any system? Why would I want to do that when I can make my own? I’m not going to look down on those that choose to run official stories, but I absolutely am going to look down on those who think the games are unplayable without them.
For someone who hasn’t DMd before, a premade adventure makes it a hell of a lot easier to learn how to structure it. For someone who has DMd before, a premade adventure makes running the game a lot easier
I compare it to using MechJeb in KSP. If you can’t do without it, use it. If you can do without it but you want to save the time and energy, use it.
I do like to have an adventure that shows me how basic beats of the game are supposed to sync up and how its suppsoed to be balanced, instead of having to guess based on the theory. Do you also look down on people who say your kid’s first bike should have training wheels?
No. But I would look down on people that say that any bike that doesn’t have training wheels is unrideable.
Paizo ain’t wizards, they give you lots of information about how to run a game, even down to the general amount of money they should have or the amount of events they should fight in a day.
The experience can be useful for a type of campaign you haven’t run before i suppose, I’m doing sevenfold conspiracy and it has lots advice on running an investigatory whodunit. Although i wouldn’t look to the paths for hard balancing advice, the wrath game I’m in is exceptionally easy (until it suddenly isn’t) and the game I’m running is pretty easy too (but it’s not based around combat).
I know some of the union leaders at UPW, including one of the Paizo writers that may have worked on the starter adventure (I don’t know for certain). They’re incredibly passionate about their work, and honestly would understand your frustrations about capitalism. They likely pushed to make as much as possible free, so folks in your position would still be able to share the joy of their work even if they can’t afford the starter adventure.
I know none of this will make your frustration go away, but I hope you know that they didn’t do it out of malice.
Happy to gift you the society moduls, DM me
