I am a bit iffy on this one. Most of the time after I read a regional guide for Golarion, I feel I have a pretty good grasp on the region as a whole. Not so with this one. As many have said, a lot of it reads like a textbook, and the lack of sufficient maps really hurts this one. Normally even several months after reading a PF regional guide I can look at the map(s) and think, "Oh yeah, thats where this or that is."
Most of the bestiary section seems to me to be little more then space fillers, with not much interesting or worthwhile adding to the book or area. Most of those pages would have been much better suited to maps that could have focused more on the areas discussed.
There are a few areas that stick out enough for me to want to give this 3 stars, but the poor planning on the maps draws me more toward 2 stars.
I really did not think I would like this one when i started reading it. Some of it at first seemed a bit too "done before" or "been there, done that" kind of thing. There is a bit of that for sure, but some of the other aspects of the module were so awesome that i can overlook them. Really dont want to elaborate much more, since this could easily be ruined by spoilers, so will just say, Good Job!
Title pretty much says it all. I have managed to get 3 of these, and all three have the same paint defect. Underneath the green head is smeared green paint underneath onto the body. Other then that its a good figure.
I absolutely love these minis. Got a case and was a bit worried i would not get at least one of everything, but i guess i should not have worried. I have a lot of favorites, but only one real dislike, i got 2 of the half orc barbarians and both of them had crappy paint jobs, and the paint on one was not the same as the paint on the other, and both paint jobs were sloppy.
Other than that, i do agree that the dragon is a lot smaller than i had expected, but still a really awesome dragon mini. I also somehow wound up with more multiples on the "rares" than i did on some of the commons and uncommons. I only got 1 giant spider for instance, but 3 medusas, 3 trolls and 2 vampires. Seems that the distribution was a bit off as others have said.
As a starter box, this one does do what it needs to do to teach but not overwhelm newcomers to Pathfinder. Even has a short solo adventure that someone can play through on their own to see if it interests them.
But, there is some small bonus even for those that are old hands at RPG's. I for one love the cardboard pawns that are included. Really sturdy cardboard with bases for use on tabletops. I hope that Paizo puts out more of them, as I would be more inclined to use them than standard metal or plastic minis.
My only real problem with this product is that the glue was already coming undone on the game master's guide book. As soon as i cracked it open I could see that most of the pages would fall out after even casual use. For the price of this thing, I would think better glue could be used.
Other than that small complaint I would call this product a success.
So far this is the only Pathfinder Tales book i have really cared much for. It is written really great and i read through it really fast, since i could not put it down until i reached the end. Really nice depictions of all the planes that are visited in the course of the story, and it really brought the planes of Pathfinder into focus for me. I really did not want it to end, and i hope to someday see more stories of Salim.
I really enjoyed this book. It really brought the Lands of the Linnorm Kings into sharper clarity for me. Previously i did not have much interest in this country, but now I am very interested in it.
There are only two negatives i can say about this one. One is the same problem I had with Rule of Fear, the book about Ustalav. As in that book this one also has chapters for the individual areas, but then certain sites within the area are detailed in another chapter. This was annoying in Rule of Fear and still annoying in this book. It just makes for more flipping back and forth then should really be necessary. It would be so much better in both books just to have that information in the same chapter section.
The only other negative i would say associated with this book, is that there was not a whole AP devoted to this area. Just a really brief stopover during the current(and to me, boring) AP.
All in all, this book is well worth the price, and i hope that Paizo eventually sets an entire AP in this area.
At first with this AP, I was not liking it, but I thought maybe I was just bitter about the disappointment that was Carrion Crown(see my review of the final adventure of CC to see why i was disappointed, if interested). So, i was trying to give this new AP a chance to grow on me, but this adventure totally shot all that down.
I really wanted to stop reading this one and give up on this AP, and that is sad for me to say, because i used to enjoy pretty much everything Paizo released. The caravan rules for this are just annoying and unnecessary. It is already annoying enough that the rules for the caravan are not in the AP itself. It is very annoying to have to get a PDF just to see what is being referred to. But this adventure way overdoes it. I really dont see how any group would have fun with their characters abilities being superseded or even ignored in favor of caravan rolls. Reading this one I started to cringe every time Security rolls or Resolve checks were mentioned.
Even the article on the Crown of the World was poorly presented. A lot of the rivers and lakes mentioned and other places mentioned were not even labeled on the map, so was a bit confusing some places as to where the place was that was being referred to.
When I first heard of this AP i was very excited, and could not wait for it to come out. The first 3 adventures were amazing, but everything after that was a vast disappointment.
To me this AP did not live up to what i felt it had the promise for. It could have been a great AP on par with Kingmaker, and it did start out that way, but did not finish as such.
I feel that Paizo missed out on the chance to release some small tidbit about Aroden that we did not previously know. As the AP deals heavily with the Whispering Tyrant, it would have been a nice time to reveal at least what happened with the battle between Tar-Baphon and Aroden. It could have been a major milestone for Pathfinder, but sadly it fell far short.
I am not saying that they should have revealed all the secrets of Aroden, but something small would have been nice.
Really impressed with this one. As some have gone far in depth on the review, I will just say that i am pleased with the originality of this one and i highly recommend this adventure to any GM's.
I really like the idea of making adventures that have maps fully fleshed out for the whole adventure, and this one not only gives us that, but a remarkable adventure on its own as well.
Now, as much as i liked this one, i do have some small problems with it that caused me to drop from 5 to 4 stars ...
To start with some of the room descriptions did not seem to match up with what i was seeing on the maps. Not sure if this was typos in the text or not, but was a bit confusing.
My other problem was that among all the player handouts, and there were a lot, there was no map to hand out to players. Would make sense within the story line that many people of Rogthandor would have at some point made maps of the known areas. Would be nice to have such a map to hand out to players, with all secret areas not marked on said map.
When i first heard of this, i was excited, and waited quite a while to get a copy, and sadly it turned out to be not worth the wait.
I really like the Adventures Map from Gaming Paper, and i really love the idea of them putting out full maps to go along with adventures, so i really really wanted to like this one ... but the adventures are just plain bad.
The first one i think from my point of view has to do with the main boss. To avoid spoilers i wont name the main boss, but i just dont find that type of creature interesting. Now i know I could easily replace it with any other creature with very little change in the adventure, but the adventure itself was a bit boring.
The second and third adventures both had one annoying problem ... the rooms on the map are not numbered, they just correspond with the map location numbers and not the actual adventure room numbers, so that makes for a lot of annoying page flipping when they refer to one room number, then you have to find that room number to see what map location it is and then flip back to the map page to see which it was.
That said, the second adventure would be unplayable in most groups as is. Most groups i have played or GM'd would not be obedient arena fighters and the adventure just does not account for that.
The third adventure would be ok, if not for the descriptions... quoted directly from source, and no spoilers "southernmost ten-foot-stretch of the east wall of the easternmost north-side" ... Too much talk like that, which could easily be solved by having it placed as an icon on the map. Also this adventure has a main boss that is way overpowered for the adventure and it never explains why. If the PC's are the level they are supposed to be, they stand no chance against a creature of that CR. More than double the PC's level is a bit much to tackle.
The last adventure was just not interesting to me. It eludes to a new campaign setting, and not knowing what they are referring to a lot of the time is a bit annoying.
Overall not a very well put together book. Some good ideas buried in there, but the layout of the book makes it somewhat annoying to look for such.
Namely, my main problem with the book is the first person story introduction to each site that takes up valuable page space that could be better used for actual descriptions of the maps provided. And the maps themselves are somewhat lacking in and of themselves as well.
Most of the sites were not of much interest to me, but the clockwork tower was really interesting and pretty much the only one that was descriptive enough to get a clear picture of the site. The only other site i liked was Kavit M Tor's Emporium, which had enough good ideas to warrant spending time to flesh it out more, and unlike others i have noticed, i had no liking or disliking of the pun used in the title of the store. I think it was subtle enough to be acceptable.
Some of the other sites have some small parts here and there that are worth plucking out and using for other sites, but overall they were either not descriptive enough or just plain uninteresting.
Just finished reading this issue, and wow, i am amazed. Never really looked at Dungeon much before, but recently have started to collect them, just for ideas.
I would suggest anyone into fantasy RPG's grab this issue. I dont ever pay attention to the Polyhedron side, so this review is only for the Dungeon side.
This issue is full of little ideas to throw at players. The first adventure, The Elfwhisper, i actually did not care for, but all the other parts are pure gold imo.
The short adventure Totentanz is really easy to include into any ongoing campaign and takes a rather odd look at undead.
After that, the even shorter adventure, Prey for Tyrinth, is only a few short pages long, but can easily fit into any adventure as well.
The super adventure, Tears for Twilight Hollow is a long adventure, that in all i would not use altogether personally, but there are so many parts to it that each individual part can easily be put into other adventures. Two constructs in this adventure are a must read too ... The digging machine and the construct beholder! Pure genius IMO.
When i first got this book i thought " All right! lets see what combat oriented prestige classes they put in!" Searching, Searching, Um, ok no prestige classes ... and a whole lot of spells ... Ultimate Combat?
Not sure why soo much was put in the spells section, especially after just releasing Ultimate Magic and Inner Sea Magic, i thought more effort in the Combat area would be called for ... enough with the spells already!
This one is almost as much of a let down as Ultimate Magic was. For books that have the word Ultimate in the title they both fall far flat.
The only reason i gave this 2 stars instead of 1 is the section on called shots. I am a fan of called shots in general and i think they did a good job on that score.
Not sure why anyone would think that changing first person perspective would be a good idea for a novel, but this author does it again. And this time its not just two characters that change first person but three, for triple the annoyance. Its really a poor choice for a novel, and it does not help that the characters are flat and uninteresting.
Love Every thing about this product. Lots of fun and multiple uses. Just convinced the company i work for to carry these, since for some strange reason we never carried them before, and we tend to carry most Paizo products. Very worth the price imo.
Not much at all in this book that multiple other books have already stated. The migration map is pretty cool, but that's about it. Some new spells and traits do not in the least make up for the lack of originality in this book. I really think most of this was cut and pasted from other sources. Overall a very lazy book, not worth the price.
While i really loved this book, and i think it stands up to the other Revisited books admirably, i did feel that some entries felt a bit forced or rushed. Namely the spectral dead section, which i think that the entries there could have had their own sections in their own right to flesh them out more. The section on the wight as well felt a bit lacking in new insights that i have come to expect from the revisited line, as did the shadow section.
Really enjoyable adventure. I would say that this is definitely one of my favorite single shot adventures to date. Nothing bad to say about the adventure itself, but i do have one problem ...
While i think it is great that they put out a map pack for this adventure, the map pack only covers pretty much half of the adventure. The rest of the adventure uses a map that is not covered in the map pack. I personally think that Paizo should utilize more of the map packs inside the adventure and AP's, but to do so i think that the map packs should cover the whole adventure, not just part.
So far this AP has been really great, the previous three in the AP have had some really original and engaging bits.
Almost all the AP's have had that one part that i did not much care for. Kingmaker was the first and so far only AP that did not have a bad egg in it. I thought Carrion Crown was shaping up to do the same.... until this one.
Now as a stand alone adventure this one would have been better, but it just does not seem to fit with the rest of the AP. Sure it fits the horror aspect, but not the general feel of the rest of them that came before it.
I think though that one of my problems with this one is the Lovecraft aspect. I personally think that Lovecraft is getting way overused lately, and not just by Paizo. I work for a company that sells games, and so i have to be familiar with them before they come out, and it seems like every forth game or so that comes out has something to do with Lovecraft. So i am a bit burned out with Lovecraft and think that is coloring my view of this one.
Now there are some really neat parts to this adventure though, namely the inventor and his invention and the insanity rules, but i just think it could have been better suited to a stand alone adventure.
Not sure why people are posting here, when this is for reviews, but i just read through this one to prepare to run it at Free RPG day at the company i work for and while there is not much to it, it looks to be fun and easy to add stuff to to make it last longer. Good intro point to introduce new players as well.
Really don't like these character folios. Too much space devoted to companions, familiars and such for one thing. Who has that many to keep track of? And the spell section seems to be geared towards spontaneous casters only.
Overall just a lot of wasted space on these and while they don't cost that much, i really don't think they are worth the price.
For players this might be a useful book with many options, but for GM's it really does not offer much worth using. In addition a lot of the stuff that players might wish to use could cause rules issues for the GM to determine how to rule on certain rules problems.
Overall a rather lackluster book, and i really hope that Ultimate Combat does not follow the same pattern.
Really awesome start to this one, and a solid third in what is seeming to be one of, if not THE, best AP to date. The only downside to me is that the good stuff was at the start and the rest felt a little like filler material. Still this AP has been great enough that i can forgive a little fluff.
This book is an absolute must in my opinion. Lots of awesome NPC's and well fleshed out into adventuring parties, with neat gadgets and items and such all their own. All in All an absolute perfect book to me, and i am hard to please! Great job to all involved.
I love pathfinder, the rules and rulebooks are awesome and amazing, but so far the fiction has fallen a little flat to me. This first in the line of books was to me a poor choice to start the fiction line, as it took the most boring characters from the pathfinder's journals from the Adventure paths to base a novel on.
But to me the absolute worst part was the flipflopping first person perspective. It is really annoying to have to reorient to a different first person at the beginning of every chapter.
Really good information in this book, and a must have for those interested in all things Pathfinder, but overall the format is not up to the standards that Pathfinder has previously been known for. Lots of typos and inconsistencies, and the separate chapter for the cities apart from the counties chapter makes for a lot of flipping back and forth that would have been better suited to an entry for each county that included the city that pertained to it.
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