Throne of Night—Book #2: The Earth's Wound (PFRPG) PDF

I would love to give this product a higher rating but it has been written by a fraudster, Gary McBride, who tricked 315 people into giving him $40,000 through Kickstarter and refused to communicate with them for 4 years now. Despite multiple appeals from backers he has backed over 520 other kickstarters since then, logging in every week though seemingly unable to respond to his backers products. Shame on Paizo for selling the products of a con man and allowing him to continue profiting from rpg fans.

For details of the swindle and Gary McBride’s backing record see https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/730004812/throne-of-night-a-pathfinder -rpg-adventure-path/comments

On their own merits, books 1 and 2 of this AP are actually quite decent and if you're looking for material to plumb for ideas about a home brew campaign, the ideas here may get your creative juices flowing. My group loved their time as drow siblings and establishing their nascent kingdom, and FMG managed to create some memorable encounters and a rich environment.

However, these books do not exist in isolation. They were written as the first two parts of a six part adventure path. More than two years have passed since this book was released and we're still waiting on book 3. More than a year has passed since the author has deigned to give one of his "updates" on the project (which usually just consisted of giving previews of the artwork with no explanation for the delays).

After the grand slam that was Way of the Wicked (which you really should check out if you haven't already), I'm bitterly disappointed to see this wash out so completely. Stay away and give your money to a different company.

For those who missed the incredible first entry in the Throne of Night Saga, I would point you to Book 1: Dark Frontier. However, for those of us eager to continue our deep adventures into the alien world of the Azathyr, finally we have in our hands Book 2: The Earth's Wound.

Those familiar with the work of Gary McBride will not be disappointed, he reprises himself again with an altogether too-human understanding of what kind of writing provokes drama in this world where there are few humans residing. I have only begun to run this module with my gaming group, but already I can tell you that the impact has been a roller coaster of emotions for them: without spoiling anything, the arrival of certain characters left my group absolutely torn as to what decision to make. Gary understands that the key to a great adventure is giving the party a good dilemma to chew on and seeing them squirm as they try to figure out the least painful answer.

By the way, I meant every word of the title of my review. This module, as all others from Gary, live up to the high production values, organization, and quality that we have become used to. There are more than a share of typos, but they do not detract from the experience. Really, the only thing that I wish was that I could see more of Michael Clarke's work: I want more maps, more monsters, more everything from this talented artist. This Adventure Path continues to be more ambitious than ever with (finally) the introduction of the long-awaited Kingdom Building rules. My only complaint is that these should really have been included in Book 1 (wherein our party first settles their own town), but that can only be a minor complaint because really kingdom rules can be found in the Ultimate Campaign book which I ended up using when I ran Book 1.

Few modules dare to dream on the scope that Throne of Night continually reaches seemingly without effort: my campaign regularly included several epic, massive battles between fantasy armies with climactic twists, turns, and conclusions between factions fantastical enough to break the mold of the everyday D&D drudgery of fighting the same old orcs and goblins. Throne of Night has the one thing all other Adventure Paths lack: imagination. I wish I could give you an example I am thinking of about a certain dinosaur with a certain magical item, but I do not want to spoil anything from your experience.

There is, as usual an incredible amount of value packed into this book, taking your party up to level 10. As before, you have the choice of running it with the spry dwarves or the wicked drow, and this time around the organization of writing seems much improved in this regard. As opposed to Book 1, which gave drow the short end of the stick a little bit, in Book 2 both races are given equal due. Really, though, no matter which faction you end up running with you are guaranteed to have outright the best roleplaying experience you have ever had, and if you don't then trust me your DM is running it wrong.

Before I conclude, I have a small request regarding the maps. In Book 1 we received an Overland Map that was character-free and just contained the hex artwork. However, in Book 2 we did not receive the same equivalent (i.e. the hex map is littered with character symbols A, B, C, D, etc. that can't be erased): I would suggest this be easily fixed as a small supplemental download from the FMG website.

To summarize, here's what Throne of Night provides for its players: exploration of strange worlds, challenging encounters, unique monsters, interesting factions, kingdom building, and above all great roleplaying dilemmas for you to puzzle over. Do you ally yourself with a race of these creatures or those? Do you explore this direction or that? What was up with that weird creature you ran into in that one cave? Worse, which one of your loyal advisors will betray you first? This city stands in your way, do you attack it or isolate it? Do you plan a siege? How do you plan to conquer it? What will you do with the citizenry once it's yours? Will you rule with religious fervor, with fear, or with justice? The Throne of Night is yours to construct in your image.

Here's to clutching our seat waiting for the next installment.

Hello all. I am a backer for Throne of Night and, like many, I received my PDF copy of Throne Of Night: The Earth's Wound recently. I gave it a good reading over the last few days and thought I would continue my review of this AP. Other than a confusing dedication about opinion, quoted from Voltaire, I really liked this chapter. Seriously, one cannot procrastinate on a Kickstarter Project as long as the author has on this one and honestly not expect someone to voice an opinion. That said, lets get on with the review...

The dual storylines continue through this module as the Dwarven "Explorers" continue their quest for their lost clan home and the Drow "Overlords" continue their conquest in the name of their fiendish patron. Unlike the first module, the second modules dual plots run parallel to each other. The differences in the story are primarily the result of the players choices. Once again, the players are supplied with a large sandbox to explore and claim for their young kingdom. I like the Explorer storyline far better in this chapter than the previous one. The dwarves are given opportunity to make significant strides towards the completion of their quest in this chapter. Also, despite the plotlines running parallel to each other, there should be a huge difference between each parties experiences in each encounter area as a group of Drow PC's and a group of Dwarven PC's are very likely to approach these encounters from extremely dissimilar angles.

The production quality of the PDF is high, with full color pages throughout accompanied by wonderful original artwork. The PDF comes with a printer friendly companion PDF and a Players Guide. My only unfavorable observation of the layout is the dark page backgrounds tend to obscure the (also) dark text making the PDF difficult to read for those with less than perfect vision. Again, to be fair, the printer friendly PDF is easily read (as it lacks the dark background)and is just as lavishly illustrated throughout. On the downside there are many, many more typos in this chapter than the first.

In the back of the PDF the author takes a few pages to expand upon the Patron system introduced in the rear of the first chapter. He also introduces a portion of the modified Kingdom Building rules intended for use with Throne of Night and promises to supply us with more on this subject later.

Throne of Night: The Earth's Wound appears to be entertaining and fairly well written with a good replay value and, unlike the first chapter, each storyline gets an equal share of opportunities to further their goals. Parties playing each storyline are more likely to both feel a sense of accomplishment at the end of chapter 2.

Overall, I have to say that this time Fire Mountain Games is in much better form. There were more typos in this chapter, but I can overlook that in favor of the compelling adventure ideas contained within (for both storylines). Congratulations to both Gary McBride and Michael Clarke on what promises to be an outstanding follow-up to their award winning Way of the Wicked AP.

Just one huge glaring problem big enough to land a Boeing 757 on and store and maintenance it in. This company embraces apathy as a customer service policy. In addition to that they sell print copies of kickstarter stretch goals for months and months on end without ever bothering to supply their backers with those same stretch goals that they already paid for. Not that the backers have received any print copies of Throne of Night either, because they have not, despite the fact that they have been told several time to expect them "soon". First over fourty months ago, then twenty-four months ago and most recently two Decembers ago. At this point we have not heard a single word from Gary McBride in more than fourteen months. We were even promised a revised release schedule more than sixteen months ago and even that has yet to materialize. No matter how good their work is, it is entirely overshadowed by their utter failures to keep their backers informed as well as provide them with the rewards that they were promised. I am awarding 1 star, and only because I cannot award zero stars. I will revise this if this company ever actually delivers on its promises to its backers.