Pathfinder Adventure Path #39: City of Seven Spears (Serpent's Skull 3 of 6) (PFRPG)

Serpent's Skull is shaping up to be an AP that has a strong sense of what it wants to be, but doesn't have any sense of how to deliver on that idea. The idea of the PCs stumbling on a legendary city, lost to history and the jungle, is a really cool one. Who knows what secrets and dangers lie within? It's a high adventure concept and fits the idea of heroic fantasy really well. It's exciting! I'd want to play that adventure.

Unfortunately, the content presented in the book isn't exciting at all. There's some elements that you can work with as a GM. The underlying concept is that the "lost" city is actually pretty well populated by a number of peoples. Each people has taken over one of the seven districts of the city, and each of the districts has a magic quasi-macguffin that you have to activate to advance the plot. So you'll have to treat with each faction in order to accomplish this.

Except, by "treat", I actually mean "fight". Most of the factions are not amenable to any kind of diplomacy, and thus represent nothing more than scattered encounters for the PCs to fight. No diplomacy, no inter-faction rivalries, no real interaction with any of the factions as NPCs. Just go there, figure out what you need to do in order to conquer the area, and do it. Oh, and if your GM hates you, you can fight wandering patrols of low-level enemies all day.

This could have worked as a seven-sector dungeon crawl, like you'd see in Rise of the Runelords. But that's hard here, because there are no maps for any of the encounters (save one) published here. So the GM would have to design an entire series of dungeons with little help.

On the other hand, the tableau of the city suggests that diplomacy should be an option for the tribes. And I definitely think that could be a very, very cool campaign. But there's no guidance on how to do that in this book. The various factions are seemingly uninterested in diplomacy and are characterized very thinly. If a GM wants to go this route, it can be made into a great game, but that GM will have to homebrew almost everything.

This book could have been cool, but in the event it didn't provide a GM with any of what they would need in order to bring the concept to life. There needed to either be more maps for a dungeon-crawl style adventure, or a lot more depth given to the factions for an RP sandbox. Either way would have been better than what was published.

It's a shame, because you can see what the intent was and it was cool. However, this is two poor books in a row from the SS AP. At this point, I would have to think a lot of groups will be thinking about dropping the AP, unless the GM puts in a ton of work in order to do justice to the concept.

My players and I just finished City of Seven Spears (CoSS) last night. We actually genuinely enjoyed it for the most part, but as the GM I made some radical overhauls for my group. This review will contain SPOILERS, so be warned.

As an AP, CoSS isn't great. It's not even really good - compared to most other APs I've seen, it's shockingly bare. It seems to be missing a bunch of substance and is just festooned with combat encounters (none of which have any maps for them) with a little narrative fluff placed between them to give them some precedence. There's no puzzles, no traps, the rivalry of the factions (which was already something a GM would've had to put into effect in the last installment since that AP hardly goes to any lengths to establishing any sort of rivalry besides one meagre assassination attempt) doesn't even come into play unless the GM explicitly tries to tie them in (you should). However, what this AP does provide is a decent framework for a personalized sandbox adventure. The downside is that it requires a bunch more work than most APs should, so I can understand why people buying it would be suddenly put off by the lack of, well, plot or information or anything. I actually liked this approach for the city since it allowed me to customize it based on my players actions and desires.

Here are some things I did and would recommend:
I changed it so that the existing tribes and factions within the city were constantly warring with one another and vying for territorial control - admittedly I kind of tossed the idea that the spires were magically keeping them sated and happy staying in their own districts in favor of something way more interactive and dynamic. I also established the various faction's methods of exploring and where they'd start first upon entering the city. In this sense, I had to keep track of the days and nights on when the other factions were arriving, what they'd do, where they'd explore, and even made the PCs' decisions as to what districts they conquered have weight (since rival factions might conquer another district given the right amount of time). Along with that, I used the Kingmaker mass combat rules when the PC's faction went up against Olujimi in the Military District (which they actually lost, and in turn they had to strike a deal with the malicious Akarundo to offer serpent folk troops in exchange for various "favors"). Even when meeting the Radiant Muse, instead of rolling a performance check that none of them could hope to succeed on, I allowed them to actually make an impromptu play to earn her favor. All in all, there's a lot to work with here, given what little they provide. Use it as a framework and it'll work well, but played as is this installment is terribly boring and monotonous.

It's also worth noting that our group (and I assume most other groups as well), did not technically "complete" CoSS since they hit level 10 before exploring the last 2 districts (boggards and troglodytes, specifically, and even Egizmora, who I altered to be an enigmatic fungal beast that's infected a treant and seeks to cover the whole city in spores, was hardly touched and is still at large. I fully plan on incorporating them into the next installment as events that happen between the exploration of the crypts so they don't just suddenly not matter anymore.

If you go into this installment with the right mindset and the willingness to put some work into it (maybe a lot of work), it can be very rewarding. If not, prepare for a series of barely linked combat sequences and the thinnest drippings of a plot.

As a player I do like a sandbox adventure, and this was a nice big sandbox for me to play in, but sadly much of the adventure was monster killing rather then exploring or discovering.

So let me start with the complaints (many of which have already been expressed by other reviewers):

1) the players were not the first group to discover the City of Seven Spears. What?! Turns out there's a ghost of a pathfinder that was part of a group that discovered it from over land, and we run into another pathfinder that was part of a group that discovered it though the darklands. Way to take away the heroic accomplishments of PCs completely.

2) The Spires don't seem to serve any point whatsoever. This adventure starts with the PCs hacking through the brush to discover the amazing sight of Saventh-Yhi. Seeing those spires made our PCs imidately want to explore them. Sadly, apart from some basic bonuses, the spires really didn't do much of anything. My character has slowly been piecing together the underlying plot of the campaign, she even reasoned that the city was there to guard against something, and she had a hypothesis that the spires must be activated all at once or in a set order to open up some secret ancient gate that leads to . . . nope, turns out there's a hole in the ground where some feebleminded elf escaped from that leads to the next chapter in the story.

3) Diplomacy = role for initiative. Our group was really never going to talk our way though this adventure, we really don't have face, but it seems like everyone and everything in this adventure was out to kill us from the start. Only the humans seemed willing to parlay and even they seemed ready to attack us at points. It would have been a nice mix to have more then one area in the city were we weren't automatically attacked the moment we were spotted.

4) Mystery/action/adventure = role for initiative. As others have pointed out there weren't any traps or abandoned temples or anything else that you might associate with discovering an ancient hidden city. If you were expecting Indiana Jones you'd be very much disappointed, this is more Duke Nukem, and while I appreciate there are time and word constraints you could have at least thrown us a bone here. I've been waiting for Indiana Jones style action adventure for sometime now but if that's coming in this adventure path we haven't seen it yet.

There are however some good points, and although I'm not so sure how well they translate from the adventure as written, I am giving this review three stars because of them.

1) Interesting characters and NPCs like them or hate them there are a lot of fun personalities in Saventh-Yhi. Not only do we have all our old friends from the Shiv, but we get to meet faction leaders, and the interesting denizens of city itself. Granted many of these folks are trying to kill us but there were lots of interesting interactions before the inevitable combat.

2) Good boss fights I'm not a huge fan of combat, to me it's usually something that we need to suffer though to advance the plot, but there were some tough fights in this adventure. Often encounters are written with creatures with abilities that counter the abilities of the players, as my character is a witch I notice many monsters that have immunities to mind affecting, but I don't remember too much of that happening here. There were big bad monsters for sure, some with various types of DR, but there weren't too many that seemed to exist solely to dick around the PCs. It's fun sometimes to fight a monster who's biggest defense is a vast amount of HP.

3) There was a promise of mystery and discovery Now granted much of this proved to be a disappointment, but just thinking that we were going to stumble across something vast and wondrous did keep me going. I wish the adventure had delivered but seeing that vast map and listening to the descriptions kept me exploring and anticipating.

4) There is lots of room to expand The adventure as written doesn't seem that impressive but my GM took the time to add some of his own content and these small changes made the adventure the second most memorable in the path thus far. The great thing about a sand box is that it gives you lots of room to expand, if you're a GM that likes building then this adventure has lots of space to build, however if you're the type of GM that prefers the work done for them and tends to run everything as written then this adventure might seem a bit dry.

Overall I think this adventure is probably middle of the road for me. It had great potential but I feel it squandered much of that, and while what we're left with isn't bad, what was missed makes this adventure feel like a bit of a disappointment. We raced through a jungle for this? I can only speak as a player however, I thought our GM did an excellent job, but many of the disappointments were from what he kept from the adventure and the real fun I had was from what he'd added. I'd give the adventure 2.5 stars if I could, I don't feel uncomfortable bumping that up to a generous 3, but I do agree with the overall disappointment of my fellow reviewers. Perhaps one star is a little harsh, I think there's enough good stuff here to warrant at least a two, but I can't disagree with their well argued complaints.

If you are able and willing to spend 15 or 20 hours preparing for each gaming session you run, this may be the module for you.

Because its a sandbox adventure, you need good reference access to lots of information. But the module is so poorly organized, you are going to be flipping back and forth trying to find stuff so often that your players are going wonder if you've prepared at all. For example: the spears. I can't count how much time I wasted searching back and forth between the descriptions and the powers, which are each separate. There are at least 15 different locations in the module for information about the spears. A summary table would have been nice. Also, there is a table of "Historical Discoveries" that you can roll on - but all the information you need for the roll results is scattered across various sections and even other modules. There are so many poorly organized facets to this module that I wanted to scream. The result is a huge amount of preparation and play overhead.

Content-wise, there *is* some good stuff here. I especially liked the Tribe of the Sacred Serpent, the Green God, and the Military District. Make sure you study Olujimi closely. His at-will abilities are key to making him a really excellent and challenging encounter - or series of encounters. I also liked Akarundo. Egzimora is right, he is a "filthy deviant". His abilities, location and perversions combine well if you want to harass your players with something very creative.

Other stuff was weak. I hate encounters or story lines that contain long-winded justifications and backgrounds which the PCs have little or no hope of ever understanding. And there is plenty of this. It's even worse if the players spend a lot of time investigating - because of all the clues - and then it turns out to be completely orthogonal to the main story. I'm thinking of you, Aboleth. This is a complicated theme which your players have little hope of ever unraveling, and which you have little hope of keeping track of in a timely manner since the clues and explanations are scattered all over the module. Yet if you and your players, in a great show of teamwork, somehow manage to get to the bottom of it, you'll find that it was just a lame side story, and that you wasted hours of your lives on it.

Lastly, the maps. There is exactly one encounter map for one unimportant encounter. That's it. Paizo, you should have held off publishing this until you had some maps. I don't think you've fulfilled your side of the bargain when you sell us such a complicated module with no maps.

Overall, this module could have been good with a lot more organizing, a bit of cutting, and a good dose of cartography. But as is, it's a rough draft with a lot of TBDs printed on shiny paper. As the linchpin module of the adventure path, it is an epic failure. It should be framed and hung on the wall at Paizo as a reminder of what not to do.

If you are thinking of running this adventure path be aware that this module is the centerpiece. You'll have plenty to do reworking, organizing, mapping and finishing it yourself. I strongly recommend visiting the forums where the community have posted a lot of helpful information and game aids.

I tend only to write bad reviews because I cannot spare the time to write some for all the decent books I read from Paizo. Therefore, as a “Pathfinder Charter Superscriber”, it pains me to say that like the two previous reviewers, I have found this adventure underwhelming at best.

The very first complaint is: "Where are the maps"?
While I do not mind some free in-house advertising by referring to the optional use of Map Packs and Flip Mats in my Pathfinder copies; I resent the lack of maps, and worse I resent being told to use generic maps for all sorts of encounters. Do I have to design and draw my own maps? I thought this was a ready-made adventure; this is what I paid for at least... Hello...?!?

That problem put aside, why oh why redo Runeforge (RotRLs, Sins of the Saviours) as a city? Runeforge was great, seven mini-dungeons with a theme, but one can only be original once. “City of Seven Spears” just does not work and for the reasons already exposed by Erik Freund’s review. The, I must say “lazy”, repetitive design carries on with “Vaults of Madness” as we get another seven mini-dungeons. The following instalment of the “Serpent’s Skull” AP has a bit more taste though with indeed more defined theme per cave... and it has maps, yeah!

I agree that one cannot always win and that people at Paizo can have a miss or two. I am a bit behind my AP reading and I dearly hope that the last two adventures rekindle “Serpent’s Skull” because the first two adventures were pure gold. “Legacy of Fire” had its continuity issues, but Paizo had the excuse of developing the Pathfinder RPG at the time. What is the excuse for those two unimaginative duds in a row (“City of Seven Spears” and “Vaults of Madness”)?

Note that for me “Rise of the Runelords” is still the ultimate AP, things were new and original back then and looking back makes parts 3 and 4 of “Serpent’s Skull” look pretty tired design-wise indeed.

That being said the non-adventure contents of “City of Seven Spears” are very good and it is a shame that the Juju magic article will not come to mind when mentioning the title of this book because of the poor quality of the adventure itself.

Well, as mentioned earlier, I am not going to burn all my Pathfinder books because of that, but I had to react to it nonetheless.