I See Red, And That's All!

Pathfinder Adventure Path: Curse of the Crimson Throne (PFRPG)

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New Pathfinder Adventure Path compilation hardcover releases!

Return to the city of old Korvosa in Curse of the Crimson Throne this October!

The Curse of the Crimson Throne hardcover is a compilation of the original 6 Adventure Path volumes into one comprehensive tome, updating them to the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game ruleset, giving you everything you need to run an entire full-length campaign.

Along with updates to the original Adventure Path volumes, the Curse of the Crimson Throne hardcover includes:

  • All six chapters of the original Adventure Path, expanded and updated for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
  • An in-depth gazetteer of the city of Korvosa as it exists under the rule of its new queen.
  • An array of new rules options for characters, ranging from campaign traits to spells to magic items.
  • An expansive appendix with statistics, descriptions, backgrounds, and rules support for the 12 most important NPCs in the campaign.
  • A bestiary featuring nine monsters from the original Adventure Path making their debut under the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game rules.
  • Dozens of new illustrations, never-before-seen characters, location maps, extensive new encounter locations, and more!

To celebrate the release of the compilation of this classic Adventure Path, we've just revealed the Curse of the Crimson Throne Limited Edition Hardcover! This version is wrapped in a deep red faux leather cover debossed with gold featuring the iconic Crown of Fangs. The Limited Edition Hardcover is exclusively available through paizo.com and in limited quantities. To ensure you get a copy, don't delay, place your preorder now!

Start your next campaign with one of our Pathfinder Adventure Paths right here on paizo.com!

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Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Nah, I see some Gray too.

Verdant Wheel

Council of Thieves is staged in a single location and with a little doctoring makes for a cool Urban Intrigue Mystery Thriller campaign.

This module looks interesting. Can somebody who's run it compare and contrast it? I am considering it.


"Deep red faux leather cover debossed with gold ...."
Frills not desired.
Will this item be released with standard binding?
Or has it already, and I've missed it?


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
ZenithTN wrote:

"Deep red faux leather cover debossed with gold ...."

Frills not desired.
Will this item be released with standard binding?
Or has it already, and I've missed it?

The frills you mention are on the limited special edition.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
rainzax wrote:

Council of Thieves is staged in a single location and with a little doctoring makes for a cool Urban Intrigue Mystery Thriller campaign.

This module looks interesting. Can somebody who's run it compare and contrast it? I am considering it.

I found Curse leaps and bounds better than Council. The stakes are both clearer and feel higher to me, and the insurrection aspects last a bit longer...

Shadow Lodge

Cole Deschain wrote:
I found Curse leaps and bounds better than Council. The stakes are both clearer and feel higher to me, and the insurrection aspects last a bit longer...

In neither AP does the insurrection aspect last very long at all.

In Curse . . . :
. . . you're working as a literal agent of the state for the entirety of Edge of Anarchy, an unwitting patsy for much of Seven Days to the Grave, and a witting but grudging patsy for about half of Escape from Old Korvosa. Most of what you're actually doing is putting down upswellings of popular anger or fear (the AP calls them "riots," but then, you're an agent of the state), sometimes preemptively, sometimes not. Then you leave for two books, and now that you're not around to put a stop to it, people get around to some insurrection. By the time you get back for Crown of Fangs, most of the work is done and you get to watch the glory of storming Castle Korvosa fall into your lap. That lasts maybe half the book before you go tromping off into a swamp.

In Council, on the other hand . . . :
. . . you're at least doing your own thing independent of the state for the most part. That own thing doesn't amount to much insurrection either, though. Rather, you're fighting a shadow war between your secret society and another, longer-established one, in order to determine whose faction the state ultimately co-opts or crushes (and of course, it's all rendered moot by Hell's Vengeance, where the Children of Westcrown don't appear at all and were thus presumably purged by either the Glorious Reclamation or by the Chelish government).

Point is, if you want insurrection, play Hell's Rebels. Curse's selling points lie elsewhere. Being used for so long and then betrayed by the BBEG means the players will love to hate her. Plus, her tyrannies are actual maneuvers to increase her control over the city, as opposed to Barzillai's, which outside his initial purge are mostly fits of pique motivated by deep-seated emotional problems. The NPCs are creations of beauty, as is Scarwall. The connections to the history of the setting are deeper.

Liberty's Edge

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zimmerwald1915 wrote:
In neither AP does the insurrection aspect last very long at all.

I can't speak to Council, but that's a gross mischaracterization of what happens in CotCT.

Spoiler:
In the first section, you do put down riots, it's true. Actual riots that are killing people. In the second, you can do the same, or provide a diplomatic solution...but you also actively thwart a major plot by the state. And in both, you're working for the Korvosan Guard, aka the police, rather than the actual military branch that assumes martial law over the course of things.

You also have the opportunity to hide dissidents, aid in the rescue of people from the Crown's 'justice' and in Chapter 3 actively work to bring about said Crown's downfall. Which is also the entire goal of Chapters 4 and 5, just in a 'must acquire this item/information to do it' kinda way.

Chapter 6 has a bit of actual revolutionary group stuff, as noted, but really, is a couple of linked dungeon crawls as much as anything. Most of the 'secret rebels' stuff gets done in the first three chapters.

Now, I don't disagree that Hell's Rebels is better for playing out the actual organization of a revolution (that being the entire point of that AP). CotCT is much more about finding out the monarch is a usurper and executing them (which is a different thing thematically), but it's not quite as portrayed in that spoiler either.

Shadow Lodge

Deadmanwalking wrote:
I can't speak to Council, but that's a gross mischaracterization of what happens in CotCT.

It really isn't:
What is the Korvosan Guard if not an arm of the state? I mean, you say it yourself; they're the police. That they're shoved aside by a different paramilitary as part of the Queen's assumption of power doesn't change that.

Throughout the AP, including in Book 6, your aim is the restoration of "legitimate" authority. Your first priority is always the protection of the existing order of things, which is why your first targets are always the same class of people Ileosa's targeting as threats to her new order. You put down rioters in book 1, then smash every center of resistance in Old Korovsa in book 3. Granted, Swastel and the Arkonas aren't the most savory bunch, but that begs two questions. First, what kind of alternative are you offering (trick question, you're offering more of the same), and second, where do you get off coming into a shattered, fragile community and breaking any semblance of self-organization it had? I bet if the iron workers came out on strike (they're organized, per the Guide to Korvosa) the plot would have you go and break it up too like the good little thugs these PCs are, but they don't, because heaven forbid we get class struggle in our insurrection. Hell's Rebels has the same problem, incidentally.

Your actual insurrection, again, is about restoring the existing order of things. You're not storming the Bastille, no, you're William and effing Mary. One of the only two people you've actually managed to "save from the Queen's justice," you see, is the key to the legal transfer of power, and you care about the legality of bursting into Castle Korvosa to lop Ileosa's head off with a sword because that's Just How Things Are Done.

It's not insurrection. It's coup and countercoup, and while that makes a perfectly fine story, let's not try and pretend it's something that it's not.

Quote:
CotCT is much more about finding out the monarch is a usurper and executing them (which is a different thing thematically), but it's not quite as portrayed in that spoiler either.

I believe I said as much.

Verdant Wheel

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thanks gang. Bought it. Red Leather and all...


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Hm, don't know that I would have bought the Limited Edition sight unseen...

I mean, I bought the LE, but that's because until Hell's Rebels came along, Curse was my hands-down, no competition favorite AP... but your money, your call!

Grand Lodge

Cole Deschain wrote:
I mean, I bought the LE, but that's because until Hell's Rebels came along, Curse was my hands-down, no competition favorite AP... but your money, your call!

You think Hell's Rebels is a better AP in general? Why? (pro/con's)


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I think Hell's Rebels is as good and situationally better depending on the story you want to tell (Pedantic tone aside, Zimmerwald is correct in stating that Rebels is the genuine "insurrection" AP). It also has a slightly more cohesive narrative than Curse, due in no small part to Paizo having a few more years to refine things (see: Shoanti Field Trip and a threatened war that doesn't really seem to be in the cards-something this collected edition tunes up a bit)

Thus, it's the first AP to give Curse a run for its money. I love them both, and their shared traits are a big part of why:

1. Villain you know as a character from day one and whose defeat pays off baggage from the very first adventure.

2. NPCs and a setting you invest in. Korvosa and Kintargo both feel worth fighting for.

3. Scope for both head-cracking and nonviolent conflict resolution.

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