Pathfinder #7—Curse of the Crimson Throne Chapter 1: "Edge of Anarchy" (OGL) (based on
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Paizo Publishing, LLC
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Chapter 1: "Edge of Anarchy"
by Nicolas Logue
The King has died, and the city of Korvosa is in chaos! Riots, banditry, monsters, and mayhem are turning the normally safe streets of the city into a war zone. Desperate to regain control of her city, Queen Ileosa seeks heroes to aid her in reclaiming control before the largest city in all Varisia consumes itself from within, as Pathfinder’s second Adventure Path, Curse of the Crimson Throne, begins with a bang!
This volume of Pathfinder includes a GM’s gazetteer of the city of Korvosa, designed to supplement the player-oriented Pathfinder Chronicles Guide to Korvosa, along with a presentation on the mystical culture of the land’s indigenous Varisians and several new monsters designed for use in urban environs. Your new campaign starts right here!
For characters of 1st to 4th level.
Pathfinder is Paizo Publishing's 96-page, perfect-bound, full-color softcover Adventure Path book printed on high-quality paper that releases in a monthly volume. Each volume is brought to you by the same staff which brought you Dragon and Dungeon magazines for over five years. It contains an in-depth Adventure Path scenario, stats for about a half-dozen new monsters, and several support articles meant to give Game Masters additional material to expand their campaign. Because Pathfinder uses the Open Game License, it is 100% compatible with the world's most popular fantasy roleplaying game.
After GMing this (pathfinderizing it first -using the Fast Track progress and upgrading all the encounters so the CR is right), I found it to be one of the more entertaining modules I've run.
The best part of it is the start; using the player's guide gives the characters lots of motivation for starting the whole thing - so it's a lot of caring in the first section. After that, the main story ends up being pretty much a typical "I do it for the gold" thing. What makes it good is all the barely mentioned NPCs, the interesting tidbits that ends up happening outside the main story and so on.
The fiction bit I forgot 5 minutes after reading it, the Harrowing section is kinda wasted space if you have the Harrow Deck, and the Varisian article is decent, but feels more like an appetizer than anything else.
Curse of the Crimson Throne é minha campanha favorita até agora e Edge of Anarchy é um excelente começo de uma campanha que se mantém boa até o fim. Como primeira aventura não é tão boa quanto Burnt Offerings por causa de algumas falhas de lógica na trama, mas é quase tão boa quanto. Novamente a Paizo dá uma aula em como se escrever aventuras (desta vez aventuras urbanas) e a ideia do Harrow e a mecânica de perseguição são grandes adições ao sistema. Mestres que não gostem de uma aventura mais voltada a uma grande história sendo contada podem não gostar, mas fiquem tranquilos que os personagens aventureiros nunca são relegados a segundo plano (embora existam cenas onde eles não são obrigados a se envolverem). Por outro lado, mestres novatos podem ter problemas em narrar uma aventura tão complexa e que exija tanta preparação prévia e capacidade de improvisação.
This is my first AP that I'm DMing and though I have some milk problems with it, they can be easily remedied with some good ol' DM glue.
I chose this one to start with because of the set up. You have been wronged by someone and you wish to make those ammends and then you recieve a card with writing, telling you that this person knows who has angered you and gives you a chance at revenge and a few others.
Having read further into the AP I do like the unique creatures this AP brought, though most are now in bestiary 2 (carrion golem, soulbound doll) and as the group kills that man they wish revenge upon the whole city goes to s%$&.
Things only get worse in Korvosa and the PCs will have to try and remedy the situation.
I almost finish this, looking forward how the PC will behave on the final encounter... It is a great adventure, and a great AP start; my PCs never played an AP before and were absolutely in awe to this: great NPC, great plot, and a lot of staging for things to came, definitively a must have
I've read every adventure path so far, and this one was excellent. Brilliant NPCs, varied settings (while still remaining almost all urban), and an excellent plot. My only complaint would be that it wasn't initially advertised that it wouldn't be all urban. While it is almost entirely urban, don't oversell it as such. Edge of Anarchy opens the campaign brilliantly.
I've played through every Paizo Adventure Path so far, and this was mediocre.
That's not saying much.
Savage Tide was great, if you don't mind all the poorly written plot and badly balanced encounters.
Rise of the Runelords was fun because I accidentally played a character who was identical in both temperament and career path to the final boss, which resulted in Pure Plot Magic; it's maybe not supposed to be that good.
This wasn't quite as good as those because there wasn't really any character motivation other than "there's this awful city you're stuck in that's filled with horrible people and something bad is happening to them and it's up to you to stop it instead of just leaving like a reasonable, thinking person would." Also; a plethora of unkillable monsters you have to kill (yay for immersion killing metagame cheese!), repeated nonmagical fires that you can't put out even a tiny bit of for a few seconds with the equivalent of a firehose, and a chapter about disease and suffering that was ripped off from the video game Pathologic right down to the creepy dudes with beak masks.
It's between Savage Tide and Shackled City in purity of stupid because it had a castle in a volcano this time, which is size wise between Savage Tide's volcano homed prison and Shackled City's volcano homed entire campaign. Someone, apparently, has a thing.
At least it's a million times better than the festering squalor that was Age of Worms, the module that failed entirely because it didn't come with a "DON'T PLAY A ROGUE YOU POOR FOOL" sticker on the front.
This adventure is effectively five sub-adventures connected by a slender thread of campaign arc. The hostile NPCs are well drawn and fun to GM, the helpful NPCs are generally weak by comparison, and the impression becomes one of a mostly unpleasant city not worth saving.
Of the five subadventures, Old Fishery is good, although set up for day and most parties will raid at night. All the World's Meat is fairly average, with a plot thread that is not adequately followed. Eel's End is a good setting but potentially much of the cool stuff will be missed. The Shingle Chase is a fun parcour chase sequence. The Dead Warrens are a fairly standard dungeon crawl, albeit with a sick twist to the "rescue".
Each one is competently presented, but with a big city setting, more of a 'sand-box' feel would have been nice, particularly as a reasonable amount of time is needed between each sub-adventure.The rumbles of discontent seem a little forced as well.
The Harrowing mechanism is a great addition, though, giving a nice bit of flavour, with possible bonuses to the PCs.
This was my first exposure to a pathfinder adventure and upon reading it, I immediately subscribed! It is a fantastic story and a great adventure. I can't say enough good things about it...
I hope my players are in for a treat with this adventure path. Twists and turns, but all very straightforward to understand, makes for an interesting storyline.
Omissions in my opinion are some of the basics - shops, inns etc. would make it a little easier to run - even the names would be good enough. I know these are covered in the Guide to Korvosa, but some hints if you can't stretch to buying this supplement would have been useful.
A previous reviewer suggested that it was a little linear, which is true, but if players are going to be part of a storyline, then they will have to play ball a bit! Still a bit of room for alternate paths would have been a positive.
I prefer this path to the ROTR 1st module and I love some of the accompanying lore, so full marks for this aspect.