graeme mcdougall's page

This 'mini campaign' is the 1st adventure my group has played after graduating from the beginner's box to the full rules.
Party consists of :Half-Elf Druid, Aasimar Paladin, Grippli Inquisitor.
I started them at Lvl2, as they are 1 PC down (Questionable, given the Druid, but that's by-the-rules adjustment).

What a brilliant module ! This has a unique vibe & theme; primitive, swampy, malaria-riddled colonial outpost.
It's got a perfect blend of Role-playing social encounters, Dungeon-Crawling & Hexploration. So many of the NPCs & even nominal 'monsters' are interesting & offer multiple ways to engage/ negotiate/ overcome/ destroy.
There are loads of plot & personality hooks that you can run with & the organisation is generally very good.
My players really engaged with the settings, plot & NPCs & are now entering the final map of the adventure at level 5, pushing level 6.
I'd honestly be hard-pushed to recommend a better 2nd adventure for players who have perhaps a short introductory adventure under their belt.

I should add that this is a home game, not organised play & it's taken us ages to get through, but this is not a bad thing & more a reflection of the fact that this is quite a casual group, rather than anything to do with the module per-se. In some ways, it's a complement, because the adventure has so many hooks & interesting characters that the players naturally engage with them & that ends up taking a bit longer.

I Ran this in a home game because I needed a level 2 short adventure in a pinch & had a bit of a hole in my modules (lots of level 1 & level 3 adventures).
I ran it for Beginners Box PCs who graduated from Blackfang's dungeon through to other modules & are now level 2.
I ran mostly Beginner's Box rules but with the monster stat blocks & rules from the scenario/ bestiary.
It's a good module with fun locations, plenty of Role-Play, some dungeon exploration, & interesting characters to interact with.
One of the PCs is a priestess of Sarenrae & it was cool to visit the spectacular temple in Thuvia. The players were intrigued by Pharasma as a non-evil godess of death opposed to undead.
Because of having one (11 year - old) child player, I had to tone down/ gloss over some of the nastier murder/ torture aspects of the villain - not an uncommon thing to have to do with Pathfinder adventures.
Overall, a really strong scenario with plenty of role-play, exploration & just the right amount of combat.

Page 5 'What this book isn't' tells you what you need to know about this book. To paraphrase, there are 2 main points:

1) This is not an optimisation guide for advanced (or even intermediate) players.

2) This book doesn't replace the core rules : it's a player's guide to them.

Fundamentally, the book brings the Pathfinder Beginner Box style of presentation & organisation to the full (core rulebook only) Pathfinder RPG.

The Pathfinder Beginner Box showed how much more concise and readable the same basic game could be made & showed up how wordy & non-visual the Core Rulebook is.

Unfortunately, Paizo haven't quite had the courage of their conviction to use this as the basis of a new Core Rules but instead have hedged their bets and made it basically a Player's Guide to the Core Rules - That's right a Player's Guide to the actual Player's guide !

Nevertheless - it's a really well presented guide to the 'Core 11' classes for a beginner. It's also very useful for experienced players stepping into a new type of class or a DM making NPCs for a class they don't normally play.