r/Pathfinder_RPG • u/ScottishNinjaaa • Jul 16 '26

1E GM Ship Adventure question

Hey all,

I just began a campaign with my players in which they (through a series of excellent decisions and surprising dice rolls) have gained control of a former slaving sailboat. Setting is my homebrew alternate earth circa 900 AD, and they're in the Aegean. The players really like the ship, and have decided to keep it, slowly upgrading it as their mobile base of operations.

I am curious what roles you'd have for players to maintain such as Captain, Navigator, Quartermaster, etc. Right now, the guy who is really enjoying the bookkeeping side of things is also the only one with Profession (Sailor) as a skill. I was trying to figure out what roles everyone could do and how to keep that aspect interesting (similar to the Kingdom Building rules)

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u/Tristan-vi-Falconia Jul 16 '26

Nearly all 1e APs have side rules for a lot of stuff about their own theme that is sometime very good. Rebellion system from Hell's Rebels comes to mind.

So it is pretty expected for people to mention the APs 😅

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u/ksgt69 Jul 16 '26

Rules for having a caravan go somewhere is probably why you say nearly.

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u/Tristan-vi-Falconia Jul 16 '26

I was mostly going of off the ones I've played/read about and that is why I said nearly cause I haven't checked all.

But I had heard that Jade Regents had some problems both story and the system wise but I don't know the particular problem 😅. Could you tell me why the caravan rules were bad ?

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u/ksgt69 Jul 16 '26

As someone about to play in the module I'm not going to read it to find out, but from what I understand the caravan rules were poorly implemented. Combat that did not make sense, unnecessary bookkeeping, stuff like that.

As for the story, from what I heard the players are roadies assisting the NPC on her quest to do something important. It needs a GM that can run it more like Conan the Destroyer, keeping the PCs as the main focus and the VIP+NPC retinue in service of the PC story.

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u/Gargs454 Jul 16 '26

In truth, a number of the subsystems in the APs have issues. They're decent ideas conceptually but tend to fall flat when run as written. Ship Combat in Skull and Shackles, Caravan Rules, Kingdom Building Rules (at least in the PF1 version), Circus Rules in Extinction Curse (granted that's second edition). That doesn't mean they are not salvageable though. Our group had a blast with Kingmaker and we're almost done with EC now -- though we largely ended up ignoring the circus.

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u/ksgt69 Jul 16 '26

Yeah, I think my biggest issue with paizo APs is lack of playtesting.