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We finished book 1 last night. I know that our GM (who is excellent) made some tweaks, and I have not read the original. However, this was perhaps the best round of RP sessions I have ever had, and the content of Harrowstone are to be credited. Yes, yes, and yes again.
Heresy of Man Part III is grand, but for the end.
This is a very fun adventure—though a tad on the railroad. The party needs to be savvy and should try not to do anything rash, and that makes it fun. With that—this can be a very deadly mod. The group must roll well (as the group I ran through did—and still almost a TPK), and approach each encounter smartly.
The downside, as with Part II, is the background and metaplot. I feel as if I’d give too much away by talking about it. I will just say that other than the success of beating the Big Bad in what was a true nail-biter, the end proved to be a letdown in many ways.
It was fun for its 4.5 hours of play, and the parts are wonderful. It’s the whole that leaves you ho-huming and even scratching your head and wondering how on Golarion there isn’t a Part IV.
***Note that I do not offer a review of Heresy of Man Part I as I merely played in it and have neither read nor run it. As such I don’t feel qualified to review it. That being said, we had A LOT of fun playing it. ***
Heresy of Man Part II for the player is a rather straight-forward smash and grab dungeon crawl. It does have some great encounters, interesting descriptions, and fun puzzles. As part of the series, it is a fun, and integral episode, but it suffers from the curse of the “bridge” installment.
The major downside is that the Background to the adventure is a tad confusing with all of the names, historic events and the like. Further, if you are searching for more about the background in the Inner Sea Guide, don’t look in the Rahadoum entry (where the adventure is set) look into Thuvia—there you’ll find it, and it will make things a bit more clear.
Thus, the adventure suffers from something that other Society mods suffer from—the lack of player/character knowledge into the Background of the adventure. Without that, the adventure loses some of the intrigue and detail and would make this much less of a dungeon crawl. As a player, I would think this mod was simply a series of random encounters occurring during a rescue mission. The “goal” of the mod is the key to Part III; however, the characters don’t know this, and therefore might leave at the end with a sort of empty feeling.
I would recommend it, but only to the GM with the time and energy to add in some more background for the players to discover and a compelling reason for them to continue beyond room two.
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