Of the three volumes of Reign of Winter so far, this one is unfortunately the weakest. That’s not to say it’s bad—I actually rather like it—but it’s not as good as the first two. Its major weakness is that it suffers from the static randomness that so many dungeon crawls suffer from. Despite a great backstory, its dungeon (or rather, dungeons) still feels like a place where the denizens just sort of sit there waiting for the PCs to arrive and kill them, and that spoils what is overall a great framework for an adventure.
The border between Molthune and Nirmathas is a volatile area of Golarion. The two countries have been in a state of hostility, if not all-out war, for a long time, ever since Nirmathas broke off from its parent country, Molthune. It’s an area that is ripe for adventure and the setting of Fangwood Keep by Alex Greenshields. In the adventure, the PCs must retake a border fort (the titular Fangwood Keep) from a rogue Molthuni force that has taken it without orders to do so. It’s a very straight-forward and open-ended adventure. There’s a bit of a mystery to be solved (why did the Molthuni force go rogue and what are they after?), but overall, there’s not a lot of complexity here. However, the adventure’s basic simplicity is ultimately its strength. It sets a scene with fully detailed characters and motivations and then lets the PCs take care of the details. It makes very little in the way of assumptions about the PCs—not even which side they’re working for—allowing the adventure to progress in whatever way it happens to, in the end making for a fun and exciting adventure.
Overall, Champions of Purity is a very good examination of good alignments. Although it doesn’t always go as in-depth as I’d like (particularly in the “Good Characters in Bad Situations” chapter), it does provide useful guidelines to players of good characters, particularly players new to the game who might still be confused by this odd thing called alignment. It also contains lots of new character options that are flavourful and generally useful. I’d go so far as to say that Champions of Purity is one of the best alignment-focused resources I’ve seen for the game, certainly much better than its 3rd Edition counterparts.
In The Shackled Hut by Jim Groves, the second part of the Reign of Winter adventure path, the PCs set out to find Baba Yaga’s Dancing Hut as the next step in their quest to rescue Baba Yaga herself. Much like The Snows of Summer, the first part of the AP, The Shackled Hut is a very linear adventure, but one that nonetheless feels natural in its progression and thus PCs won’t likely feel overly railroaded by it. The adventure contains a wonderful mix of dark fairytale elements and interesting characters. Although many of those characters are there and gone in only a short amount of time, they all have fully detailed backgrounds and motivations, making them feel a part of a living and exciting world. This is not a perfect adventure (indeed, I have a few issues with its resolution in particular), but it is still a very good adventure and a great continuation of the adventure path.
Unfortunately, Broken Chains just didn’t grab my attention very well. It has one or two things I like in it, but overall it’s a mediocre generic adventure that just doesn’t use its setting to any good effect. Indeed, it’s an adventure that could happen just about anywhere with virtually no changes. True, it’s very useful to have adventures that can be placed anywhere gamemasters need them to be, but in that case, why make the default setting a place as colourful and identifiable as Katapesh? A place like Katapesh needs an adventure that really makes use of its unique characteristics. On top of that, Broken Chains is really just a little dull.
