In this, the very first of Paizo's Pathfinder adventure series, the Introduction sweeps you up from the outset, explaining how - due to the death of a god about a century ago - a land once comfortable in the certainty of oracles and prophecies which charted their future has been thrown into chaos, and that it is now time for heroes to stand forth and stamp their own order on the land. Those heroes are, you've guessed it, your characters; and as well as an adventure this book contains background material to make the whole setting come to life. Oh, and there's a cute list of '10 Fun Facts about Goblins'... who feature large in this particular adventure.

The main body of the book is taken up with Burnt Offerings, the first adventure in this campaign. Set in the town of Sandpoint, which is assumed to be your characters' hometown (or at least, where they live at the moment), the resurgence of powerful ancient magic is causing turbulence to the once sleepy town... beginning with a plague of violent nightmares that caused sleepers to awaken in a fit of blind rage. While for most the rage faded with the light of day and reason, some found a resonance and committed terrible acts. These are known as the Late Unpleasantness and are, to the relief of the good folk of Sandpoint, now behind them... this is where the adventure begins, with a rich background that foreshadows what you will place before your players as the adventure proceeds.

Overall, this is an excellent beginning to what promises to be a memorable campaign. The cartography is beautiful, as are many of the 'scene-setting' paintings, although the NPC/monster illustrations are rather too cartoon-like for my taste. Presentation both visual and in terms of organisation of text is well done... looking forwards to the next one!

Read the full review at http://www.rpg-resource.org.uk/

I don't give ratings unless the product deserves it. This is a great read, and I LIKED THE ART. the goblins, obviously a highlight, but the so-called Cartoonish style is excellent (like Ameiko, madame mvashti, brusthamus, but especially the main villain was well accomplished). I hope they keep this style of art and hire the artists again (as seen in, I believe, d20 apocalypse). It's high-quality cartoonishness, frankly, and I hope to see more.

James Jacobs did a heck of a job, and I am now a fan.

the setting likewise is fun, so I'm continuing the subscription.

After being the DM for this adventure, I need to modify my rating. It is definitely a 5 star adventure. I still don't like some of the artwork and the print is a bit small. However the quality of the adventure makes me forget all about these dislikes.

Orginal review:

The content of Burnt Offerings is awesome. It's great to have so much extra background info (fluff) included in the same book as the adventure.

However, the artwork is lacking. It is very cartoonish. Also, as others have mentioned, the print is very small. These two issues are great enough that I couldn't give this product more stars. Without these issues, this product is a 4 or 5 star product. The content really is great.

I am still reading and absorbing Pathfinder 1, but I can say now with certainty that this book offers intriguing reading and spectacular production quality.

The craftmanship and detail put into this project is producing results greater than I imagined, and I imagined an elaborate work. (Combined with my GameMastery Module subscription, I'm happier now than when I was just reading Dungeon and Dragon every month.)

Thank you, James, for all of your creative ideas, and thank you Paizo for making this happen.

My only complaint with the product was the long-eared elf pic, how the frick does she sleep?

Other than that it was a fun read and should be even more fun to play. I liked the font size since it showed that this was the opposite of padding, it was an attempt to get the most into limited space.

As a GM with very little time, just trying to get the group together to play on a regular basis is a challenge. I was looking for something like this, after having enjoyed the "Adventure Paths" in Dungeon magazine. The Pathfinder series is everything I was hoping for. I'm very pleased with this first installment. The plot is great, the setting is unique, yet familiar at the same time, and the details included are worth the price. You get an entire campaign, monster stats, plenty of background and more. The only complaint, and it is minor, is as some have stated, the print could have been a little bigger, but other than that, I love the look and feel and I actually enjoyed the different styles of artwork in the book. And though the information is "campaign specific" as some reviews have sited, it seems to be very easy to adapt to any other world. Thank you Paizo for restoring my faith in the gaming community and great job on what I hope will be a stellar run for the Pathfinder series.

Pathfinder #1 = Awesome. The quality was great, writing was great, everything was great except some of the art. For example: Bruzthazmus, ameiko, rippnugget, madam mvashti. They all look kind of cartoonish. The cartoon style worked well on, say, erylium, but the above arts weren't so lucky. History of Thassilon was fantastic, especially the runelords and their polearms. Journal=amazing. I loved the mentions of cheliax, taldor, andoran, and galt(my favorite non detailed area so far). All in all, excellent product.

Well I finally found a copy of "Burnt Offering" and let me say WOW! I was worried after all the hype it wouldn't meet expectations. I am happy to say it exceeded them. My group started the campaign last night and are chomping at the bit for the next session. Chapter 1 is stuffed with content. Sandpoint feels alive and intriguing. Pazio has a setting poised to stand toe to toe with the industry giants. If you are looking for a new campaign for your group welcome home.

Most of this is what we've come to expect from Paizo: 5-star game content, cartography, production value, etc. Much of the artwork is superb, even for non-Wayne Reynolds fans. But I had to remove 1 star for the font size--I don't think I'll be able to run the adventure--that's how small it is. 5-point, maybe, at a guess? My other gripe is with some of the minor illustrations, which look so cartoonish that they jar with the rest of the product--we're talking the worst of Saturday morning cartoons, or "Garbage Pail Kids"--that kind of look. Again, this isn't the norm, but enough examples of it pop up for me to subtract another star. Enlarging the font and deleting the Warner Brothers art would result in something that has every right to be considered the proper successor to both Dungeon and Dragon.

Beautiful production values, even at the cover price of $20 has a lot more to offer than WOTC adventures, both in terms of page count and content quality. The adventure itself features memorable villains, neat locations, and a cool twist on an old monster. Sandpoint is a gem of a "home base" town.

A few minor problems: One page was designed with a nigh-unreadable font, but luckily it seems to be an isolated incident. There are also a few stat block errors, but they are for the most part obvious, and certainly not excessive.

If you are a 3.5 DM (sorry: GM ;-)), you are crazy not to subscribe to this. Watermarked PDFs for subscribers are the icing on the cake. Bravo!