I highly recommend this book as the backbone of any ongoing homebrew campaign. Kaer Maga is a fascinating city, and Mr. Sutter's description is excellent. He is able to give you just enough detail to grab your imagination, but not so much as to become burdensome. I can't wait to start running my players through a Kaer Maga campaign!
I ran this last Thursday for several third level characters who played it at tier 4-5. It was a great deal of fun, and I especially enjoyed the backstory. So much so, in fact, that at the end of the adventure I had to go back and read to the players all of the background that they didn't discover during the course of the adventure. Morlocks are some of my favorite creatures, and their part in this adventure was great. The bad guy at the end was really cool, and I liked the apparatus that he was locked inside. I added a bit of flavor at the end (to create a bit more terror in the characters) of dozens of morlocks on the walls and ceiling of the chamber, watching their "god" fighting the characters. When the party was victorious, they all crawled out through various cracks and holes in the ceilings and walls.
Great job, Crystal!!! I look forward to more adventures written by you and located in Absalom's deep underdungeons!
Part of my ratings always come from my initial read of the adventure. I found this one to be a little dull. One of the encounters in the adventure (which happens to be a fairly difficult one if the PCs are not lucky or don't have many ranged weapons) did not really fit in for me, and the map of it was fairly useless. I have run this scenario twice, and the second time I scrapped the useless map and made one up of my own--this helped the encounter greatly. If the party handles the last encounter correctly, it is not impossible. However, it is somewhat difficult--especially for first level characters. Both groups that I have run through Murder on the Silken Caravan have said that they had fun, but it has not been their favorite society scenario to date.
Three stars--a fundamentally sound scenario, but not outstanding. There are many other scenarios that are much more fun to play, read, and run.
I have run this adventure twice now, and both times the players have had an absolute blast. It is a fairly simple, straightforward mission, but it moves quickly and the final confrontation has several opportunities for any character class to shine. I rank this as five stars--great fun, great playability, and not quite as difficult as many folks have made it out to be.
(Side note: I recommend that the PCs have at least one other scenario under their belts before playing this one--they certainly do need the potions and scrolls!!)
Its hard to tell how things are going to come off during a gaming session. Take Silent Tide, for example. I had a blast reading the thing and prepping for the first game. It has several interesting occurrances for the party to deal with. However, for some reason, it didn't come off right when we played. Some of that was my fault, because this was the first one I ran (way back in August of '08,) and some of it was because of party bickering. It took us over seven hours to get all the way through it and wound up with a tpk at the very end.
So I ran it again recently. The new group got all the way through, and didn't take so long to complete it, but they still said they thought it was a bit boring. Like I said, its hard to tell how things will work out.
Four stars, because I think this has the potential to be a great gaming session--it would have gotten five, but my players didn't like it as much as I did. I wish I could have played it instead of run it.
Have you ever wanted to roleplay a Mortal Kombat game? Me neither. This adventure wasn't what I had expected. I bought it thinking that it would be more of an adult content adventure, but it was a bit disappointing when I read it and found that the idea for it (and its sequel) was taken directly from Mortal Kombat. Not the worst adventure I've ever read, but there are some better ones out there to spend your money on. If you are considering the Wicked Fantasy adventures, however, buy this one--that way, you'll only be out a couple of bucks.
Yeah, I ordered this one without really taking a close look at it. It is still a cool looking map, but I can't use it in my campaign because of the cannons.
This is, quite simply, the best issue of Dragon magazine ever. The background on Demogorgon alone is worth the price of admission, but the reader is also treated to all kinds of bonus material! Thank you, Paizo, for making such awesome magazines for the last five years.
I felt that this book was quite useful, and contains many excellent articles from all eras of Dungeons and Dragons. It was not an updated reprint of every Dragon issue ever published, which seems to be what some folks were expecting. However, every decent DM should be able to find something useful in this magnificently illustrated volume. Some of the other reviewers at this site have not given a good review to this book, to which I say, "SHAME ON YOU! Do you really think that the best way to get the articles you were wanting is to attempt to convince potential buyers that this VERY WORTHWHILE book is bad? If nobody buys this one, there will never be a second volume. That would be a serious tragedy in my eyes.
Buy this book! I found it to be worth every bit of the five star rating that I gave it. It contains MUCH cooler stuff than most of the books that WOTC is putting out these days...
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