The map is amazing! I currently am using for playtesting purposes. If you are a subscriber, or considering getting one, get it! The PDF is just as awesome as the main map!
This adventure, has been what I have been waiting for in Society Play for a very long time. Now granted, there are going to be some who are going to moan and groan at all the RP, but that's too bad.
I will say, that if you have RP challenged people, either socially as a player or stats wise cause they are taking penalties, try and utilize things that they are good at. I had a group when I was ran it, that had no CHA cause they dump stat, but they did have INT, so I was able to tell them a little more about the people they were talking to. I also used Sense Motive to have them hear "rumors", which players then used to help NPC's.
There is more than one way to make it work, but it is important that they DO SOMETHING. Sitting there and passing cause they have bad "people" skills, is not an excuse!
What I specifically liked, was that the BBEG's were scary, but if the players, ran away, they weren't going to be punished for it so long as they RPed and weren't there for just the wine and "attendants" as I call them.
Great job Master Thurston, I would like some more adventures like this if you please.
Now, I had the luck to play this adventure before running it, so I got both sides of the coin here. While there is room for RP and the adventure surely gives loads of visual opportunities for RP, if you have a combat heavy team, you usually end up skipping some of it. My team got a great balance of both and a good chunk of that came from the faction missions which gave players the opportunity to RP while looking around. Being the heavy RP player I am though, it wasn't enough, but it was still enough to not be boring.
Location: B
Location::
Being that I never played Rise of The Runelords, I was a little bit at a loss when it came to the background location, but my players-all of whom have played Rise of the Runelords were able to help me out where needed.
The only reason this adventure doesn't get an A in location is that Society Play still needs to stop with these epic maps. It makes pre-drawing almost a futile pursuit, and even worse when your players get to the end-boss in three rooms, and then say to the hell with the rest of the basement. Feeling the drawings of the Rune symbol in the place. Pretty awesome.
Combat: A++++++ --- But warn your players if you are the GM!
Combat::
I would like to state for the record, this is a potential TPK adventure combat wise. And while many players and GM's will cry about it, I would like to remind them, that this is what you all get for complaining about PC's easily walking through adventures in past seasons.
So make sure, before you sit down, that you warn your players that death is highly likely and that if they aren't bold enough to take on the challenge, they should leave your table. If they accept the challenge and die, they can't get hurt about it.
It's nice to see undead, be scary undead. The ones that just don't go down with a quick channel. It's nice to see demons be the type of demons that can scare players, and at the same time kill them. And don't be rolling high like I was, because then it means that you may kill them in two or three turns. I obliterated the paladin with three critical hits back to back. Although this will never happen again, I have a reputation for being a nice GM that never kills anyone, and this adventure reminded our players that I can kill you too..
Lastly, being a regular cleric player, it's nice to see a cleric that is just as awesome as I am. In past seasons, all the clerics were light and not scary. I hit them with something insane and the GM hates me. Now the GM and I are on the same footing. He can quick channel, and I can too. He has Chaos Hammer and Unholy Blight, and I have Wall of Fire, Holy Smite and Cure Light-Mass. So it's nice to have a real combat challenge and not have clerics just be some boring bit of NPC...
Overall, while I am not a big combat person, these combats were the type where the whole time I'm going "Holy Saranrae!" the entire time and I had to work for my experience and my gold payout. This is what I want in combats, the constant fear of death and some good reasons to kick some butt!!
Just Overall and Personally: B-
This is just a simple, no fuss/no must dungeon crawl in Varisia. Again, this is also one of those adventures that the story could easily get lost, but the faction missions kind of keep the RP in place. The combats are ridiculously awesome, but be sure to advise your players that this adventure may remind you how truly precious your character's life is. Once again Mike Shel, is making players nervous to bring their characters to the table. Good job!
So I've checked out the Folio, and it's not that bad. There are a few similar character folios on the market currently and Paizo's design of their own definitely is one to be reckoned with. It also, carries all the short rules for combat, AOO's and conditions which would help new players when they are trying to understand the system.
If you are a digital person or one that likes to have your paper characters organized, I do recommend the PDF version, although it doesn't have auto-complete, if you have Adobe, you can do that manually or you can just print out the pages you need at any time and not have to waste money or time on pages you don't need. It also has a level tracker, adventure logs and notes, and a XP table which is great for players who are the "bookeepers" of your gaming groups. Also if you have characters with excessive spell lists, you can print out as many spell pages as you need to keep track.
The thing I have with folios is that there are many times a lot of useless pages because I may have not have an animal companion, or may not be a spellcaster. so a lot of these pages may go unused, which wastes money. So if you play characters that like to multiclass it's definitely a great investment.
Overall, this isn't a bad folio, it's definitely great for the ones that are new to the system, or ones that like to be very, very itemized for every little thing. But in the age of characters sheets that do the same thing for free, this folio is a little late to the game.
So for the most part this deck is awesome. I just wish we could have doubles of a few bit it is still great for helping new players and bets better understand their buffs.
