Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

The Lesser Evil wrote:I think I got the feeling from a lot of folks on the Paizo boards that the trust point system was poorly executed and went down automatically too quickly without nearly enough opportunities to build trust.
Hmm.. Might need some tweaking on the details, then, but I think the core concept is cool.
Actually, I can think of a pretty good reason why they wouldn't just execute them: fear of them coming back as the undead.
That... actually makes a lot of sense. I wish that had been said outright in the module. Well done!

Although, it contradicts the very next module in the series, which I'm almost done with and will review soon. In that one, there's a trial where the procedure dictates a rapid and public execution if found guilty. Granted, it's in a different duchy, but still within Ustalav. Similarly, The Hangman's Noose isn't originally set in Ustalav, but also features executions, (and executed people doing exactly as you proposed and coming back as undead) so if you use that module as well, it would stand out even more clearly. Maybe we could say that word came back from Absolom of what happened in that story and it made some people in Ustalav wary of executions. :)
It might work in some podunk community away from the main cities in Borca or Richemulot. The criminals might have had money, connections, or information to reduce their sentences to life instead of executions. (Perhaps dispensed over a period of time so as to make sure they don't get executed.)
Ooh... interesting idea. That would fit right in with the Borcan culture in the Gaz!
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

Trial of the Beast
Part 2 of 6 of Carrion Crown. Once again, you get an adventure, along with some other goodies. This time, the extras start with a detailed write-up of The Esoteric Order of the Palatine Eye (a secret society that's a mashup of the Illuminati, the Freemasons, and Scientologists) and another on Pharasma (the Golarion deity of Birth, Death, and Fate). This is followed by a fiction piece continuing the story from part 1, this time including Alison Kindler, who I gather is sort of the Van Richten of Ustalav, perhaps retired. Then there's another Bestiary, with four new monster entries (The Boruta, which is essentially Swamp Thing, the Skin Stealer (see below), Pharasma's herald, and one entry that contains several variant skeletons), and a preview of the next part to finish things off. Like the first part, there are also four blurbs inside the cover on random adventure hooks. (The best of these is an Ustalavic tradition of keeping a cabinet of oddities in the house.)

The adventure follows on the heels of Harrowstone, with the PCs tasked to return some items borrowed by their dead friend to their rightful owners in the city of Lepidstadt. (On the way, they meet and assist The Crooked Kin, yet ANOTHER wandering freak show/carnival. This bit is nice, but seems tacked on and unnecessary.) Once there, they find that the whole town is consumed with the trial of the century - the flesh golem known as the Beast of Lepidstadt has be captured and is going to get railroaded into a death sentence unless the PCs can find evidence to clear him, and present it at the trial. To do this, they will have to investigate the scenes of the three crimes that the Beast is charged with: murders and body-snatching in a swamp village (really the work of a pair of evil alchemists), the murder of some children in a now-abandoned town (really the work of a unique wraith/bogeyman), and arson and murder at an asylum (actually done by one of the alchemists). The beast was caught during the theft of an idol from the local university. The last crime is the only one the Beast actually performed, but it was under the magical control of The Whispering Way (the cult that stole the warden's ghost in Part 1) at the time. After the trial, the Beast will either be released, or escape, and flee to the home of his creator, the former Count of the area. The PCs will head there and find that the Whispering Way trapped the Count in his own home and turned it into a death-trap. They will battle through the Count's released creations and exotic pets as well as traps left by the cult, and some random Trolls that have moved in. Eventually they'll have to use the same machine the cultists used to control the Beast and pit him against another of the Count's creations.

I quite like this adventure, and I think it puts a neat new spin on the Angry Mob vs. Flesh Golem trope. This mob is civilized enough to take the golem to court! The trial part itself is very different than any other module I can remember. Yes, if you want to go full-crunch, it ends up being just a bunch of skill checks, but I could see some good role-play opportunities there, and a good DM should be able to make the skill checks integrate well with the role-play. The setup to involve the PCs is a little shaky (a stuttering defense attorney, who can't present any evidence? really?) but if you find a way to suspend disbelief to get things rolling, that can be forgiven. (Maybe I'd have the attorney attacked by the mob or something and too injured to do his job...) The four individual investigations are neat, though I might try to find a way to skip one of them, lest it drag too long. There's a showdown at the shop of the alchemists, one of which is actually a "Skin Stealer" which is PF's version of our "Skin Thief", except it's a fey that resembles a flayed human rather than a clawed humanoid bear-thing, which... seems like a better idea, I'll admit. (Though I do love the oddness of finding fur under stolen skin...) Finding the "Shambling Man" mongrelman skin of the Skin Stealer is one of the major pieces of evidence that will acquit the golem, but I'm not really sure that there's enough distinguishing features to pin the crimes on one shambling giant vs. another. (I guess it raises "reasonable doubt", but the module treats it as a clear proof that the Beast is innocent.)

Once the focus shifts to the Count's castle, it feels like a whole different adventure. It's an old-school dungeon crawl, with the barest hint of "mad scientist" trappings, and that's a bit of a shame. Especially since the layout of the castle is awesome! It's a series of towers perched on the sides of a canyon, over a waterfall, linked by precarious bridges. I really wish there was an illustration of the place other than the overhead map, because I think that would be really helpful to show the PCs to give them a sense of the place. (Also, it would look extremely cool!) But this neat locale is populated by such a random assortment of challenges, it's kind of silly. And then the final battle is with a creature that had never been mentioned before, which makes it seem even more tacked on. The whole point of this sequence seems to be to find out that the Whispering Way was involved and that they manipulated the Beast to steal the idol from the University (another ingredient in their plan, along with the Warden's spirit). It seems that it could have been done differently, and more in keeping with the rest of the adventure. It doesn't help that the Count doesn't get much backstory, and what's there contradicts Rule of Fear. (Here, he's definitely Mordenheim-like, as we find his preserved dead wife (and unborn child) at the end, and the Beast is said to be created as an attempt at a son. But in Rule of Fear, it was said to be an instrument of revenge over losing his power to the new democracy.)

Despite the unsatisfying ending, I'd use this in Ravenloft in a heartbeat. There are some clunky bits, but I think they could be smoothed out. The University setting calls out for Port-a-Lucine or pre-Requiem Il Aluk, though there are others in both canon and netbook-canon. The names and golem connection call Lamordia to mind, of course, and the University of Ludendorf is mentioned in the Book of Souls, so you could run it there. If you wanted to go all canon-crazy, with some twisting of things, you could even replace the Beast and his creator with Adam and Mordenheim themselves. Of course, having a darklord restrained by a mortal mob and put on trial might stretch credulity a bit, but I could imagine Adam being in too much of a self-hating funk to resist, until he emerges from his reverie and makes his escape. (Or maybe you use Mordenheim and a new golem, with Adam being the big bad at the end that this lesser golem must fight?) You can run this with or without the rest of the AP. All it needs to stand alone is a new source for the MacGuffins to retun to start things off, and some alternate closure with the Whispering Way, instead of leading into the next part. All in all, not a perfect adventure, but with some really good stuff to mine. A better final act could have made this a classic. 4.5/5 blood drops.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by The Lesser Evil »

Gonzoron of the FoS wrote:
Although, it contradicts the very next module in the series, which I'm almost done with and will review soon. In that one, there's a trial where the procedure dictates a rapid and public execution if found guilty. Granted, it's in a different duchy, but still within Ustalav. Similarly, The Hangman's Noose isn't originally set in Ustalav, but also features executions, (and executed people doing exactly as you proposed and coming back as undead) so if you use that module as well, it would stand out even more clearly. Maybe we could say that word came back from Absolom of what happened in that story and it made some people in Ustalav wary of executions. :)
You could attribute those in to differences in local superstitions. The Gazetteers seem to street how each culture seems to have a particular set of monsters that are feared in the collective conscious of the area. There's no reason it couldn't vary on a local level- ghosts aren't generally feared in overall Lamordian legend despite the existence of the Thundering Carriage, for example.
The adventure follows on the heels of Harrowstone, with the PCs tasked to return some items borrowed by their dead friend to their rightful owners in the city of Lepidstadt. (On the way, they meet and assist The Crooked Kin, yet ANOTHER wandering freak show/carnival. This bit is nice, but seems tacked on and unnecessary.)
This is quite true that it doesn't really have anything to do with the overall storyline, although it needn't necessarily be a bad thing. There's a few carnivals traveling about Ravenloft and Golarion, but not necessarily in this Adventure Path. It's also a nice break from the norm to have a mundane traveling sideshow that's not filled with monsters in disguise or magical carnies. And it's possibly a good place to get replacement PCs from and/or a motivation to keep the PCs moving from one place to another in a somewhat disjointed adventure path.
(Maybe I'd have the attorney attacked by the mob or something and too injured to do his job...) The four individual investigations are neat, though I might try to find a way to skip one of them, lest it drag too long. There's a showdown at the shop of the alchemists, one of which is actually a "Skin Stealer" which is PF's version of our "Skin Thief", except it's a fey that resembles a flayed human rather than a clawed humanoid bear-thing, which... seems like a better idea, I'll admit. (Though I do love the oddness of finding fur under stolen skin...)
I would probably play up the fact that the entire system seems to be against the beast, not to mention the witnesses, the crowd, and even the defense lawyer himself has no doubts the guy's guilty, though he does his best to defend him anyway. You could also play up how in days past they didn't have the professional investigators we have today.

Trimming and/or linking this potpourri of unconnected vignettes back to the main plot seem like good ideas.
but I think they could be smoothed out. The University setting calls out for Port-a-Lucine or pre-Requiem Il Aluk, though there are others in both canon and netbook-canon. The names and golem connection call Lamordia to mind, of course, and the University of Ludendorf is mentioned in the Book of Souls, so you could run it there.
Lamordia's a pretty good choice. The local courts might think of themselves as so enlightened they might even try abominations of nature, with the common crowd despising the abominations of Mordenheim enough to associate all similar creatures with him. Another place that might work is the Boglands of Darkon and the Brautislava Institute. The boggy terrain seems a nice match, and the increased tolerance of Darkonians (up to a point) could be reason for the creature to be brought to court.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

Broken Moon
Part 3 of 6 of Carrion Crown. Included with the titular adventure this time are: A writeup of the Whispering Way (the secret society behind the whole AP metaplot), an ecology of Lycanthropes, and as per usual, the continuing tale of Laurel Cylphra in the fiction slot, and a Bestiary with a few new monsters. The Whispering Way article is very well done, and I wish it had been moved up to Part 1. To wait this long to get a real sense of the bad guys at the center of the plot seems like a misstep, but I'm glad to read it now, as it gives them a much more grounded feel. Before I found them kind of silly and off-the-shelf unrealistic evil death worshipers. But here we get some very evocative motivation, including one of the best depictions I've seen of someone's thoughts into choosing undeath. The Lycanthrope article is hard to judge because I'm steeped in Van Richten's lore. If you've never read VRG to Werebeasts, maybe this feels fresh and new, but to me, it's not much that I haven't known for years. The fiction piece is a step up from the prior ones, with some great creepy descriptions of an undead scholar in his lair. The bestiary includes: the Vilkacis (a werewolf spirit that can possess people and temporarily make them wolf out), the weaverworm (a nicely repulsive aberration that's half-woman/half-silkworm), a PF version of the werebat, some zombies (wolf zombie, apocolypse zombie, giant zombie) and a zombie lord template (different than the Ravenloft version). As usual a preview of the next part is included as are four blurbs inside the cover on random adventure hooks. (Mostly good ones this time including a mysterious "extra" card that isn't usually in the Harrow deck..)

Trial of the Beast left the PCs chasing the Whispering Way to Ascanor Lodge, a hunting lodge deep in werewolf-filled woods. Now we find that the Way has killed the Alpha wolf that was holding five werewolf tribes together in order to get her heart, another ingredient in the potion that is their ultimate plan. They've moved on, but left the feuding packs in disarray behind them. Enter the PCs who must first deal with a murder mystery at the lodge, involving the Vilkacis. From there, they follow the Way to the werewolves' sacred meeting place at an abandoned temple of Desna. Once there, they are embroiled in the werewolf war of succession, and find that the Way has (of course) moved on again to a nearby ghost town called Feldgrau. They must then race to Feldgrau to stop the most evil (fiendish) werewolves from getting the heart, which would let their leader reign over the packs. They are assisted by the less evil werewolves (Chaotic Neutral, actually). At Feldgrau, they find that a contingent of Whispering Way cultists have taken over the town and are raising an undead army for future use. Once the cultists here are defeated, they will discover that the Heart is gone, having been sent by rider to another town, along with the 3 other ingredients collected so far (the Warden's soul from part 1, the idol from part 2, and a skull made of bone fragments from the dead of Feldgrau).

So, I gather that this adventure isn't as well-liked as some of the others in the AP, and I have to agree, it's the weakest of the three I've read so far by a long way. (It's the only one of the six still readily available in print form at paizo.com, which may or may not mean something about its popularity.) It is a bit of a railroad from point A to B to C. The murder mystery has some great set up, with a good, meaty list of characters to provide suspects, and a great map and description of the lodge, but it seems very easily resolved, with a few big clues that point right at the culprit. There's a nice misdirect in that the murderer is actually possessed by this Vilkacis werewolf spirit, and the real guilty party is the one who commands the spirit, but aside from that, all the setup seems a bit wasted, especially since the victim wasn't intentional anyway. (The PCs were the real target, but the Vilkacis can't be controlled easily.) So all the backstories and relationships between the guests at the lodge are just one big Red Herring, which is kind of sad. Then there's the werewolf civil war aspect which falls a bit flat for me. They tried to present the 5 werewolf tribes with distinct flavor, but they still seem to mush together for me. It's hard to see why the PCs would care who's in charge, as they are all werewolves who would continue eating people, regardless. And finally, there's a left turn from werewolves to the walking dead and cultists as you confront the Whispering Way. I suppose it's nice to finally "catch up" to them, since the shtick of "The Whispering Way was here, they set off some havoc, then left. You just missed them, sorry..." was getting a bit old. But in the end, it's kind of more of the same, as you can wipe out this cell, and set back their plans a bit, but the pursuit continues as the 4 MacGuffins have already left ("You just missed them, sorry...").

I will say that a lot of the NPCs get decent backstories, making people like the WW cell's leader Auren Vrood more than just an end boss. (Though I would have preferred to know some of this sooner. It would be nice to work in stuff about him from part 1 onward, so the PCs know who they are facing here.) I feel like the bones of a good adventure are here. It just could use a lot of sprucing up, in the hands of a good DM. If I were to use it in Ravenloft, Ascanor lodge and the werewolf parts seem tailor made for Verbrek. You'd have to have the slain packlord be just a regional leader, unless you want to kill Alfred himself instead! Or I suppose you could roll back the timeline a bit and have this be how Alfred came to power in the first place. The added mantle of darklordhood might make the whole packlord thing have some additional weight. Then you'd probably put the ghost town of Feldgrau across the border in Sithicus, or maybe Borca (remnant of the Terg war?) or Invidia. But frankly, if I were running it in Ravenloft, I might simply run Feast of Goblyns instead. It's got a similar structure: Wolfweres (instead of werewolves) up front, town full of undead at the back end; travel from place to place in pursuit of an object of power. (Here the Crown of Souls takes the place of the packlord's heart.) You could even swap out the Old Kartakan Inn for Ascanor lodge and run the Vilkacis mystery with a bit of tinkering, if you want.

So in the end, an OK adventure. Needs work, but not terrible. I wouldn't bother running it alone, but if I ran the AP in Golarion, I probably wouldn't skip it, just spruce it up a bit. 3/5 blood drops.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

Wake of the Watcher
Part 4 of 6 of Carrion Crown. In addition to the adventure, there are only three additional articles this time, albeit longer than usual. As this is the "Lovecraftian Horror" episode of the series, you get a a writeup of Cults of the Dark Tapestry and a much larger Bestiary full of Eldritch horrors, along with the continuation of the Laurel Cylphra story. If you're looking to cross your Pathfinder game with Call of Cthulhu, the cults article (which includes info on several of the Great Old Ones and Elder Gods that the cults worship) and the Bestiary will certainly help, with several critters straight from the pages of Lovecraft's work (The Colour Out of Space, Mi-gos, Dark Young of Shub-Niggurath, Elder Things, etc.). I found it particularly interesting that they aren't just transplanting the stories to Golarion, but referencing them in such a way to include Earth. Cthulhu, for example still slumbers in R'lyeh on a "distant planet," not Golarion, but his "Star-Spawn" have reached here, and even one of them is CR20, so that's really all you need. Again, a preview of the next part is included as are four blurbs inside the cover on random adventure hooks. (I like these, but I'm starting to wish they were single-spaced and twice as long.)

At the end of Broken Moon, the PCs were chasing the Whispering Way to the town of Thrushmoor. In a brief one-encounter stay there, they find that the riders have gone on to Illmarsh, which is nearly exactly Lovecraft's Innsmouth. (The writers acknowledge this in the preface, so I decided to fill that hole in my Lovecraft knowledge and read the original before proceeding. Doing so was an interesting experience, as I could spot all the homages instantly.) In Illmarsh, they find that one rider went off to Caliphas with most of the Carrion Crown components, while one stayed here to trade the idol from Part 2 for a magic mace, which is the real component they want. The mace is held by a group of skum (fish/frog-people) who take the role of the Deep Ones here. (I have no idea if skum were originally meant to be D&D's Deep Ones or not, but I will just say that I prefer their term for themselves presented here (ulat-kini) and the Illmarsh natives' name for them (the Neighbors down bay) to the rather silly sounding "skum".) Anyway, the Illmarshers have an agreement with the Neighbors that they will give them their 2nd and 3rd baby daughters for "fostering" (i.e. breeding stock) in return for protection and good fish harvests. Like in the original story, the skum worship the demon lord Dagon and have passed on this practice to the humans in Illmarsh. The module, however, ups the stakes from the story's status quo by having some of the skum fall under the sway of a group of Mi-Go (alien fungus bugs with advanced tech), who wipe out most of the skum. Remnants of the skum fight back by calling on a "moit of Shub-Niggurath", which is a slug that infests humanoid brains, protecting them from Mi-Go mind probes for a while, but then explodes out of them, creating a tentacle-headed "spawning canker", which births more slugs. This was the fate of the local Whispering Way contact, but the Mi-Go go one further with the WW rider who came here, infecting him with a slug and then manipulating it to grow into a full "dark young of Shub-Niggurath", which will get the attention of Shub-Nigguath itself to manifest here. Got all that?

So, enter the PCs, who get to Illmarsh, find that people have been abducted by the Mi-Go, and follow clues to the local temple of Dagon where they fight the priests there. More clues lead to a mansion built by the founder of the town, where the High Priest is hiding, where they learn the truth about the Neighbors and enter the skum tunnels beneath the mansion in search of the Whispering Way rider. He's not there, but a Colour out of Space summoned by the Mi-Go is. After dealing with that, they have to head underwater (possibly with the help of a local inventor and his submarine) to the deeper skum tunnels and Mi-Go laboratory. There they face the dark young, and destroy it, which causes everything to mostly go back to "normal" in Illmarsh.

I did not love this adventure. I'm not sure I even liked it. I found it to be overstuffed, with the skum, the Mi-Go, the slugspawn, the color out of space, the dark young.... I get that they wanted this to be the big Lovecraft homage, but the Lovecraft stories I've read usually focus on just one, maybe two, of his weird creatures, not five or six of them. After a while, it was exhausting, and hard to keep track of motivations (which are already murky because they are all alien and eldritch and whatnot..). And of course, this being a pathfinder module, the way to stop all these horrible creatures is pretty much to hack and slash your way through them. The "investigative" parts of the adventure are pretty railroaded: "Smash your way through these bad guys, find one clue. Follow that clue to more bad guys, repeat." Aside from the crackpot inventor, there aren't even any great NPCs to speak of. On top of that, the actual horror aspect of the story is REALLY horrifying, and not in a good way. The daughters sent for "fostering" are raised in underground tunnels until they are old enough to breed with the skum (OK, let's call it what it is: to be raped by the skum). Then they give birth to either skum, or humans that are sacrificed to Dagon, or sent back to Illmarsh, and then serve as wet-nurses to the next batch of baby girls that come in. I know some groups don't shy away from the truly depraved stuff like that, but I don't think I could run it in good conscience. It's too disturbing, and coming from a horror aficionado like me, that's saying something.

But the true sin here is how incredibly skip-able it is. There's nothing that connects to the Whispering Way plot here except a botched trade of MacGuffin for MacGuffin. There's a blurb on how, if you want even more Lovecraft, you can stick in Carrion Hill on the way here. But honestly, I think I'd rather run it instead. I'd just put the mace in the hands of the cultists there instead of Illmarsh's skum. But if you wanted to skip even that, you could probably just have the idol be the item needed, instead of the mace. (I haven't read the last 2 parts yet. Maybe there's some reason that wouldn't work.)

If I were to use it in Ravenloft... well, I probably wouldn't. But of course we have our own Innsmouth homage with the Shay-lot in Tidemore (and Meerdorf in our Nocturnal Sea Gazeteer, as well). I just don't know that I'd want to introduce all the other Lovecraftian horrors too.

Overall, maybe I've been too hard on this. If you want to have a big Lovecraft-fest, here it is. But I would have cut a lot of the various horrors out and simplified it, playing up the investigation and playing down the fighting, giving some other way to stop the random apocalypse that the PCs stumble into. (And integrate that more with the plot in the first place.) I know it's Pathfinder/D&D and not Call of Cthulhu. That doesn't always have to mean hack and slash dungeon crawls. 2/5 blood drops.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by The Lesser Evil »

Your complaints are mirrored by some people at the Paizo boards, whom felt the module didn't fit in with the overall feel of the rest of the Carrion Crown AP. If one were to rework it to Ravenloft, one could replace the Dark Mote of Shub-Gorrath with some scheme by Virundus to become reborn/reincarnated out of his current body. The mi-go could be replaced with mind flayers or be servants of the mind flayers working on behalf of the Godbrain, whom might wish to commandeer the operation and the rebirth himself.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

The Lesser Evil wrote:If one were to rework it to Ravenloft, one could replace the Dark Mote of Shub-Gorrath with some scheme by Virundus to become reborn/reincarnated out of his current body. The mi-go could be replaced with mind flayers or be servants of the mind flayers working on behalf of the Godbrain, whom might wish to commandeer the operation and the rebirth himself.
True. Honestly, I didn't give too much thought on Ravenloft alterations because I just didn't find it worthwhile. I guess another option along the same lines would be Gwydion trying to get free. The Shadow Rift and the fey don't have much connection to the sea, but I could see dumping the sea and the skum entirely for the Rift and the fey. (a town that "fosters" children to the fey?) It would be a bigger rework, though.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

Ashes at Dawn
Part 5 of 6 of Carrion Crown. In addition to the adventure, we get the standard Laurel Cylphra fiction, Bestiary, preview of the next part, and cover blurb adventure hooks, plus a mini-Gazetteer of the city of Caliphas, and a nice write-up on the Death goddess Urgathoa. I like Urgathoa as a neat spin on undeath, viewing it as the ultimate expression of hedonism, rather than a soulless monotony. In the Bestiary, you get the Living Topiary (oddly a plant and not a construct, although there are rules for creating them), Mother's Maw (a unique herald of Urgathoa), Phantom Armor (another take on what we call a Doom Guard), Wax Golems, and two oddly interesting Psychopomps. The Cylphra story has a nice twist to it, but is mainly notable for finally getting me to notice that it's AILson Kindler, not ALIson Kindler. Oops. I guess I need to edit out my praise of her normal name in my review of Rule of Fear.

So, the adventure... The PCs arrive in Caliphas on the trail of the Whispering Way. They find out that someone's been murdering vampires in the city, which doesn't seem like a bad thing, except that it could provoke the vampires to come out of hiding and declare war on the humans. As it turns out the killer isn't a human at all, but a vampire who was able to break free of his master's control with the help of a potion made by a coven of witches... at the behest of Adivion Adrissant, leader of the Whispering Way. So it all connects back eventually. The cult wants the vampires dead because they won't get on board with the idea of a totally undead world (which would leave them no one to eat), and thus they oppose them. The witches have their own little storyline, with one of them dead but inhabiting swarms of spiders while the others piece her skeleton back together so she can re-form (though one of them secretly is fine with her staying out of the way, and isn't looking too hard for the bones). They are also contracted to make a youth potion for the local Countess, (who is a bit of an Ivana Boritsi-type, and gets a great portrait that I might actually use for Ivana if needed) and are conveniently using the dead vampires as an ingredient.

I have a hard time reviewing this adventure, as I had a hard time reading it. I don't know if it's my own fault for letting other books distract me, or more likely, that the story just didn't grab me enough to keep me reading. As such, it took a long time to finish, and I don't remember a whole lot of it. The premise is kind of neat, as I do love vampires, and always like the trope of heroes having to help the villains for whatever reason. But nothing really stood out as exciting. There are a bunch of vampires presented, with typically Ustalavic-ly hard to parse and remember names, and attempts are made to distinguish them, but they still seem to run together. And some of the artwork for them is really ridiculous, like the vampire druid lady covered in thorn-vine armor, or the guy with the magical bladed scarf. On the whole, the vampires are all very monstrous looking, and I prefer mine to be more subtle and human-seeming, so as much as I loved the Countess picture, the rest of the art is disappointing to me. The confrontation with the witches is slightly better than the vampire mystery, but their abbey-dungeon seems kind of "wander-wander-wander-Boss Fight #1-wander-wander-Boss Fight #2". At the end, we find out the Way has kidnapped a local noble and gone on to Virlych to finish their schemes, so I'm hopeful for a big finish, but the last two parts haven't really seemed to matter that much to impact the cultists' plans, which is a shame.

As the story doesn't really have to connect to the Whispering Way, you could run this in Ravenloft as a stand-alone. Maybe in Borca, to replace the Countess with Ivana, or otherwise in Darkon, possibly connecting the vampire underground with the Kargat. It just needs a decent sized city to stand in for Caliphas. The Witches' motives can work just fine without the Whispering Way being the impetus.

In the end, it's kind of "meh" for me. Not as bad as the previous one, but not nearly as good as the first three parts, which is sad. I was hoping for more. 2.5/5 blood drops.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Xararion »

This is very interesting set of reviews of me to read since I did try to run Carrion Crown for my own group, but stopped about a year ago. My group got to the mansion part of the Trial of the Beast. The first module we had hard time since the party was pretty eclectic and didn't really have the best tools available to deal with the haunts (only one cleric, no paladins, lot of precision damage). But we soldiered through empowered by theme and feel of good old mists. The most fun I believe everyone simply had with playing their characters and the story, as well as the slight modifications I made to the setup to make it less deadly for them and impart more ghostly fun.
Trial of the Beast my group really enjoyed, there were many socialite characters in the group, including a Dhampir, who had taken "profession barrister" ranks as pretty much chuckle at the start, to explain his incredibly rich dhampir as being kinda bored and doing it as a hobby. The investigation session we enjoyed greatly but most fun was being had with the roleplaying out of the actual trial hearings, which everyone enjoyed. However due to non-game related reasons and bit of overall fatigue (our group had more than 1 game per week) we were all getting bit gloomy at the end. In addition I felt that the ending of Trial of the Beast (the final fight) was incredibly disingenuous with the earlier half of saving the beast from the mob. I confided with my group and told them that since we were all experiencing varying levels of fatigue, that it might be best if I do not run this part, as dungeon craw with that ending wouldn't have helped us get out of our slump.

I had planned to eventually get back to it and run Broken moon, but upon rereading it, I came to conclusion that if I were to run Carrion Crown again, I'd probably be nicking the theme and rough outline of the books I wanted to still run (Broken moon and ashes at dawn), and reuse the theme, maps and some of the NPCs, but rewrite the plot.

I loved the fact that there was a horror-ravenlofty adventure path in PF, since I've had hard time convincing my group to let me adapt one of the older adventures. However the adventure path itself isn't my favourite. Not only do I not enjoy lovecraft (heresy, I know, but I'm fan of gothic horror over eldritch horror), but the writing on the latter books was just shaky. Book 4 was however going to be pretty much excluded from my run of the adventure path, I'd just replace it with a subplot I had introduced to them of my own making.

Thanks for the in depth reviews, looking forward to seeing your review of the finale.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

Shadows of Gallowspire
Part 6 of 6 of Carrion Crown. In addition to the adventure, we get the usual Bestiary, preview of the next issue, and cover blurb adventure hooks, plus the conclusion of the Laurel Cylphra fiction. There's also a welcome section on continuing the campaign after the end of the AP, and some lich NPC writeups. In the Bestiary, you get the Forsaken Lich (cool idea: a lich gone wrong, with its spirit outside its body), assorted Gargoyles, a PF take on the Grim Reapers, and 2 more Psychopomps. Some of the lich ideas are cool, particularly in reminding me that liches don't have to start human: there's a hag lich and an aranea lich. There's also a lich witch, which is fun to say.

And now the final adventure... The head of the Whispering Way, Adivion Adrissant, plans to use the Carrion Crown formula to transform the abducted Count Galdana into a vessel for the Count's ancestor, Tar-Baphon, the Whispering Tyrant, to be reborn. The PCs arrive at Renchurch, a ruined monastery, on the cult's trail as per usual. There, they probably rescue the count, but Adrissant retreats to the Tyrant's prison of Gallowspire and in desperation drinks the formula himself, becoming a forsaken lich. They have to give chase and destroy him before he can find a way to use his new powers to release the Tyrant himself.

I wouldn't call this adventure a return to form, after the last few disappointing ones, but it's solid enough. It's essentially back-to-back dungeon crawls with some wilderness bits in between, but the dungeons are suitably thematic and have some clever parts to them. They do sometimes fall back on the old "bones and blood... SCARY," Halloween cheesiness, but never to the level of say, Radaga's parts of Feast of Goblyns. Some of the enemies have some nice backstory (though I would have loved to see them peppered throughout the AP, rather than saved for the end). Some are just big nasty things to throw at high-level characters to soften them up, but I guess that's necessary to an extent. Gallowspire itself doesn't get much fleshing out, as you stay outside it for the final leg of the adventure. There is a reference that Dungeons of Golarion has the interior details, if you want to take the battle inside. I would probably pick that up and look through it if I ran this, maybe finding a reason to go in.

Running this in Ravenloft kind of requires some setup, if not the whole AP, at least some cult wanting to bring back a long-dead tyrant. I suppose if you wanted to replace Death Undaunted with it, you could have the Kargat trying to bring Azalin back. Otherwise, you can introduce the WW, or use the secret society of your choice and tweak to match. If the PCs succeed, it doesn't matter much who takes the role of "Tar-Baphon". Just make sure they know it's a big bad dude that should not be let loose. (Gwydion maybe?).

The story is kind of light here at the end, but if you've made it this far, I imagine it's a suitably epic conclusion. You don't really need another side-story here, as the focus is where it should be: stopping the WW once and for all. As mentioned, I'd rather at least have some character continuity through the AP, and the author agrees in his intro, recommending that you seed Adrissant at least a bit earlier, and give him a connection to the PCs. I'd go a step further and do the same for some of the "miniboss" bad guys too. Nothing really blew my mind here, but no real complaints, and it does the job of wrap up pretty well. 3/5 blood drops.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

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The Whispering Way seems to map naturally to the Unholy Order of the Grave, and the vampires of Ashes of Dawn could be replaced by Tavelia and her brood in Martira Bay if you wanted to do this stuff as Death Undaunted. Another thing to do might be to play the Whispering Way as the Cult of Vecna trying to free/rebirth their leader if you did something different with the Burning Peaks.

In fanon, there's the little detailed Duskreach cluster (mentioned in the Nocturnal Sea Gazetteer for those unfamiliar) that might be pretty good for running this adventure path, as it's very underdetailed. Daglan Daegon could be the Whispering Tyrant.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

In Search of Sanity
And we're back in Ustalav with the "new" adventure path, Strange Aeons. (It's about 3 years old as I write this, but I remain perpetually late to the party.) We start with #1/6 in this deep dive into Lovecraftian Horror. (I'm hoping it proves better than Wake of the Watcher.) Along with the adventure, you get the usual AP bonus goodies: An NPC gallery (a nice improvement from Carrion Crown, where key NPCs weren't fleshed out until late in the AP), and a run down of the Elder Mythos as it applies to Golarion (incorporating creations of Lovecraft himself as well as colleagues, and one of Paizo's own addition). The requisite short fiction is nice and creepy. (Gotta love a mythos-corrupted dollmaker!) The bestiary includes a wendigo-creating Great Old One for arctic regions, a creepy psionic gremlin race, swarms of unnatural insects, and my favorite: the oneirogen, an unfortunate individual who has become a crack in reality between the prime material world and another plane (usually the plane of dreams). Finally, there's an outline of the campaign to come. I was sad to see that the little adventure hook blurbs inside the cover have been replaced with some sort of scrawled madman's diary belonging to a Pathfinder, which, while atmospheric, doesn't really add much content.

The adventure : The 1st level PCs find themselves with amnesia, trapped in a madhouse gone more mad than usual. This asylum has been hit by a earthquake, and cut off from its surroundings by a sickly yellow mist, both the results of the doctor in charge attempting to cure a mad artist by using rites from an Evil Book. The result was fracturing the boundaries to the plane of dreams, and allowing some eldritch horrors through. As it turns out, the doctor was manipulated to do this by the occult-obsessed Count Haserton Lowls, fan of the mad artist, and former patron of the PCs, who seems to be responsible for their amnesia and disposing of them at the Asylum. Lowls himself has an illustration I find either delightfully goofy, or over the top, I'm not sure which. His round sunglasses and furry pimp-coat make me feel like he should be voiced by a slightly growly Scatman Crothers or Oogie Boogie. ("My friends call me Hazy.... can you dig?") The PCs have to break out of the cellar of the Asylum and deal with various factions who've holed up on the main floor, in a sort of post-apocalyptic Lord of the Flies/Walking Dead scenario. There are ghouls, doppelgangers, and dream cultists, some rat-people, and a badass cleric of Pharasma who has rallied the innocent patients and is trying to comfort and protect them from the horrors of the place. They eventually have to find their way to the mad artist and his cult and defeat the Tatterman, a nightmare in the flesh and servant of Hastur, who's been foreshadowed at this point in the PCs dreams.

I like the ideas behind all this better than the execution. The asylum is a big, sprawling place, but I find it hard to believe these factions could remain stable, walled off from each other by quake debris, for very long. It's not clear (unless I missed it) how long it's been since everything went down, but in some parts of the adventure it feels like it just happened, and in others, it feels like it's been this way for months or years. The correct answer is probably somewhere in between, but the believability is stretched a bit in this way. Some of the horror stuff comes off very creepy, and some very silly, but that's always the danger with horror, especially the bizarre kind. It's kind of strange to go up 3 levels without leaving one building. (By the end, they are 4th level.) Also, while the map is quite nice, I'd kind of rather there be multiple stories, perhaps with the different factions on each level, rather than different areas on the same level, but that's a minor nitpick.

It's fairly easy to drop this into Ravenloft, whether or not you file off the Golarion references. (The cleric, Winter, could easily be an Anchorite instead of a cleric of Pharasma, for example.) You can leave the asylum and the nearby town of Thrushmoor (where module 2 takes place) and put them down somewhere in the core, or you could replace them with an existing city and nearby asylum. Illhousen's would seem perfect, considering the dream-world connection, though it would take him and his story in a different direction than canon. The amnesia bit makes it very hard to use in an existing campaign, though you could use Darkon's memory drain and set it in Martira Bay if you wished, still it's a lot to ask for the players to "forget" their characters' pasts for 3 whole levels. Here it's used as a campaign opener, and I suppose that works, but you'd need some good buy-in from your players, that whatever character background they've come up with, it won't be relevant until at least level 4, if not level 10. (I'm guessing, based on the summary of the future adventures in the AP).

It's a good, but not great, adventure. I think it could be punched up to a very good one with some judicious editing. The Asylum is kind of over-stuffed, and a lot could be cut, but too much is always better than too little. It feels that this one actually suffers from the AP format, as it would be a good single-level module, but it needs to get the PCs up to level 4 before they can move on to the next one, so it goes over-long. 4/5 blood drops.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

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Thanks for all this reviews, I don't know well pathfinder and i find this topic very helpful in focusing my research on specific adventures :)
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

The Thrushmoor Terror
Part 2 of 6 of Strange Aeons. The usual AP bonuses here are: Another nice NPC gallery (although I'm thinking I might start reading these before reading the adventure in the future. Even though it appears after the adventure in the book, it would help to have context when seeing the NPCs appear in the adventure), a mini-gazetteer of the town of Thrushmoor, and a deep dive on Hastur and his followers (who figure in the adventure). The short fiction doesn't seem to connect to the prior one this time, unlike in Carrion Crown. It's a decently creepy story of a bailiff investigating cultists who are mutilating livestock in a pseduo-wild west motif. The bestiary includes the lovecraftian winged horror known as the byakhee, the giant-sort-of-doppelgangerish faceless hulk, the Great Old One known as Mordiggian the Charnel God, Keepers of the Yellow Sign (Hastur's disturbing minions), and the star vampires from Robert Bloch's "The Shambler from the Stars." None really useful outside of a Lovecraftian adventure, but I suppose useful enough when that's on the menu.

The adventure: Having escaped from the Asylum in part 1, the PCs follow the leads they found there to the nearby town of Thrushmoor. Unfortunately, Count Haserton Lowls has left town, leaving his estate in the care of his steward, who happens to be as obsessed with the occult as her boss is, if not moreso, being a leader of a cult of Hastur. The cult has discovered the "Star Stelae", eldritch obelisks buried around the town, and is trying to use them open a portal to Carcosa and bring Hastur to Golarion. As such, people are disappearing from Thrushmoor, becoming sacrifices to power the stelae. Blame first falls on the local witch (who is evil, but not to blame specifically), and a visiting artist (who is just falsely accused). The Magistrate is among the missing, so the PCs have to investigate the local fort, now overrun with undead, skum, and a mirror-themed shapeshifting outsider. Eventually clues lead them to Lowls' manor, Iris Hill, where they face the cultists and their leader. Along the way, they find a few bits and pieces about their pasts and may become allies with a company of investigators called the Sleepless Agency. After rooting out the cult, thus saving the village (for now), they discover that Lowls is on his way to Cassomir to research the Necronomicon and find the lost city of Neruzavin, setting up the next adventure as the hunt for Lowls.

This strikes me as a perfectly adequate adventure. Nothing terrible, but nothing great. It's got some nice sandbox elements early on, and the maps and art are all very well done. But maybe I've seen one too many "something weird is going on in town" adventures. It doesn't do much to stand out. The one real complaint I have is the rules for the star stelae themselves. Each creature sacrificed on them charges the stone with a charge per HD of the creature. I don't recall if any mention is made of how many charges they need to open the portal, but for the uses actually seen in the adventure, it's 1 charge to basically cast message between the stones, 2 charges to communicate telepathically between them for a minute, and 2 charges to dimension door between walls near the stones. As the rank-and-file cultists are level 2, one can assume the vast majority of the sacrificed people weren't much higher level, probably only 1-2HD. So you're telling me they go through the effort of capturing people alive, dragging them to the stelae, and sacrificing them to the elder gods... just to get around town faster? or to chat for a minute? "Sorry, farmer Bob, you have to die so that I can whisper a short report to my superior on the other side of the city." (I'm old enough to remember the days of long distance calling charges, but they were never this bad!) It hardly seems worth it to be a cultist these days. I would change this to add more impressive powers, and at least make the ratios a bit more reasonable.

As mentioned last time, you could drop Thrushmoor itself into Ravenloft fairly easily, along with its asylum, or replace it with one of many cities already in the setting. The skum might be a bit high-fantasy for Ravenloft (or not, depending on your tastes), but otherwise nothing is really out of place. The weirdness is mainly in the eldritch horror aspects, which are appropriately hinted at, more than being front and center. Even moreso than Carrion Hill was, it's sort of a classic Call of Cthulhu type adventure, where you're fighting the cultists that want to unleash horrible things, rather than fighting the horrible things themselves, like in Wake of the Watcher.

Again, I'm not sure what players would be patient enough to go seven levels (to this point) without getting their PCs' backstories (or being allowed to make them up). That may make this AP too clever for its own good. If running the AP, I would run this one pretty much as is, but maybe abbreviate it a bit to mitigate that. I wish I could give this a better review than "eh, it's OK." because that feels somehow worse than ripping it apart. But that's how I see it. 2.5/5 blood drops.
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Re: Reviews of Pathfinder Modules

Post by Gonzoron of the FoS »

Dreams of the Yellow King
Part 3 of 6 of Strange Aeons. As usual the AP bonuses of NPC gallery, fiction piece, and Bestiary are here. But the bulk of the back section is a mini-gazetteer of the Sellen River, including some fun encounter maps. This larger gazetteer section absorbs the page count that had gone to a fifth section in the previous books. The short fiction is stand-alone again, about a haunted grave-robber ending up in an eldritch underground city. Not bad, quite creepy atmosphere. The bestiary includes some more adaptations of Lovecraft/Smith monsters: The Formless Spawn, and the Wamp, as well as a new Great Old One, Tsathoggua. (Fine, but do we need more Great Old Ones?) There are the ghosts of an extinct amphibious species from the Dreamlands, The Ib Shades, and Thrushmoor Angler, in case you want a giant Angler Fish monster.

The adventure: On the move, the PCs are now chasing their former master, Count Haserton Lowls, to Cassomir, 1000 miles away from Thrushmoor. The adventure largely takes place on a ship heading down the Sellen River, but only physically. There are some encounters on the river, but most of the meat of things happens in the Dreamlands, while they are travelling. From Lowls's journals, the PCs find a ritual that will let them travel to the Dreamlands to learn more about the Count, his plans, and their own history. Once there, they find "The Yellow King", a fragment of Lowls's psyche, who guides them toward the Mad Poet, Lowls's patron in the Dreamlands. This is presented as a number of disparate "dream quests". They will have to acquire at least 3 items from each of 7 of these short quests to present to the Poet to trade for the information they seek. When they complete the quests, they find that the Yellow King has been captured by a Night Hag, which creates a side quest to a prison on the "moon" of the Dreamlands to free him. After freeing him, he guides them to the Mad Poet, Abdul Alharazed, author of the Necronomicon. The Poet tells them where Lowls is headed next, and restores their lost memories, including the fact that Lowls sacrificed their memories as part of his schemes and dumped them in the Asylum. They then have one final battle against dream copies of themselves, before waking and heading to Katheer to find the Necronomicon before Lowls does, so he can find the last city of Neruzavin.

A lot of good stuff in this one. It's a nice change of pace, and I always love the Dream adventure tropes. Some nicely bizarre dreams in here too. The river stuff is less interesting, but I guess it needed a backdrop of some sort. I might have liked the gazetteer-type stuff to be about the Dreamlands instead of the river, but maybe that's in one of the Occult ___ books I don't have yet. For various reasons of life getting in the way, this took me a while to read, so I don't remember a lot of details, but flipping through, some highlights I see are the dream gala (I always love a gala) dream quest, the Night Hag's drug den intrigue dream quest, and the trip to the moon in the magical howdah on the back of a dragon-like creature. I like the excuse of Dreams to take the gloves off and let in some of the bizarre stuff and creatures I would normally find too fantastical for a horror campaign. There's also the brief appearance of a boogeyman who appears, to me at least, to be inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer's "Gentlemen", which is always fun to see. He doesn't do much in the adventure, but it's a great piece of art to steal, if nothing else.

You could use the whole dream adventure in Ravenloft if you like, wherever the PCs are in the waking world, with or without involving one or more of the Nightmare Court. The river stuff, if you like it, could be on the Musarde or any other river. Or the dream quests could easily be raided individually for any Ravenloft Nightmare Lands scenarios, and I intend to do so for my campaign. Up to the DM if they want to involve the Lovecraftian elements or not. They are there for those who want them, but not as pervasive as some of the prior adventures (looking at you, Wake of the Watcher).

The PCs finally get their memories back here, and there are some "traits" given that they could be rewarded with for doing so. I'm glad that their backstories aren't really dictated other than that they worked for Lowls and may not have been the nicest of people. There is some direction to allow the players input into their backstories, which I would say would be a must. As I said before, getting to this point earlier somehow would be a change I'd try to make if running the AP. They also mention making the memory fugue optional, which don't recall seeing as an option before. Maybe I missed it. Not sure if that would harm the AP too much. I do like the lost memory idea, I just think it goes on too long. Anyway, the adventure's a good one. 4.5/5 blood drops.
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