Well, aparently the second adventure of the 2 complete APs is better than the first! looking foward for the second adventure of SD!

The adventure starts out on a firm "detective-like" setting, which by the way I found very nicely aid.

The second big part of the adventure takes a very interesting turn into a horror-style adventure (more "haunted" maybe) and introduces a great set of rules for this kind of adventure. This alone is very well worth a star!.

The second part of RotRL is basically two adventures in one: first you get to brave the horrors of a haunted mansion, and second you get to track a sinister cult in a sprawling metropolis.

The first part is easily 5 stars - the Haunts are a great concept, the fights are memorable (Ghoul Bat, ouch !) and as usual the thing I love about Paizo's adventures - the amazing amount of detail and GM-helpful little things that help to flesh out the environs and NPCs, making them so much memorable than the "you see a room and it's a ...erm... room".

The second part keeps up the story standard, but I found it somewhat hard to picture (and describe to my players) some locales, I guess the mapwork was a bit iffy. And despite the excellent chapter on Magnimar, I still had to do a lot of GM homework to cater for players who kicked off with the usual "a big city, let's do ten thousand silly things" routine. WTB Guide to Magnimar, akin to the Korvosa one !

And of course, the TPK final boss, which required me to wrestle with re-statting to make it somewhat more manageable. Grrr... Playtest the boss fights I say !

As a hint for fellow GMs - I used "The Menagerie" from Dungeon 126 as a side-trek in Magnimar, worked like a charm !

The Desna article was really nice and the new monsters were, as usual, a nice addition.

This is arguably the best undead-based adventure I've seen, and many appear to agree with me -- it sold out first, and it got up to 150 pounds on Ebay. If you haven't read this, pick it up when it reprints next month.

I hate to be a party-pooper but the Skinsaw Murders still doesn't make it to the all-time greats that everyone is ranting about.

Firstly, I'm not a PF hater (look into my nick and you'll see I'm a die-hard subscriber of many), instead I'm a game lover. I've read extensively and as such, Skinsaw Murders will only be ranked as above average. Why?

(1) Game hook is too weak - a good game needs a really good hook to involve the players. Of course the DM can think of something (which I did) but the writer should have done this. It's part of the game. Why will player go to foxglove manor? Why go to Magnimar? Why even kill ZZZZ? Is it that important to do so? What if the players miss the lead in the manor? How will the players know that XXXX is the cause of all the problems? Was it mention in the manor climax?

(2) Passive villains - again and like many other rpg games, the villains are way too passive. No doubt XXXX, YYYY and ZZZZ had done evil things according to the writer's synopsis but will the players know? Are they actively seeking out the players or like YYYY and ZZZZ waiting at the final point for the players to turn up and fight it out? Good villains should be involved along the plot, dropping hints of their (mis)doings or frustrating the players at certain points. In Skinsaw murders? Nope. I had to improvise here again.

(3) Too much is too little - The Foxglove manor is definitely creepy and innovative in its handling (although it was done before by other writer, can't remember which game) but throughout, it is just like this. This haunting and that haunting...room after room. Possibly the players found its a relief to meet XXXX and have a good fight with him.

Well, I'm off to read the Hook Mountain Massacre. I hope that it doesn't disappoint.

Great story, great villains, great original monsters. Watch out, though, one of the final bosses is a TPK waiting to happen.

Issue number two is great. In particular the role-playing and the haunted manor. This one really helps to shape characters and relationships for the future even more so than issue one. Easy to play and fun.

I loved Foxglove Manor. Classic haunted manor. I have never seen anything like the haunts before.

Excellent. This pathfinder is far from perfect but it is none the less an excellent product. The problems with it have already been mentioned. I will add that I thought the worst of these was the Magnimar article. It was so well written that I still like it I just wanted more detail. Having said this Magnimar is roughly the same size as Korvosa and that is getting an entire 64 page book dedicated to it so maybe there was just no way to go into the level of detail I wanted in such a small article.

Still the adventure was top notch. The haunt mechanic is solid and really made the whole adventure. Normally I find haunted houses don’t seem to work in adventures as they end up just being undead infested houses instead. The haunt mechanic really gave the adventure a true haunted house feel. It works because the haunt take combat out of the equation, you can do things to stop the haunts but you can’t physically kill them.

Anyway a great module that I highly recommend.

if you only see the face of the pc chosen by alderen that what rpg are thank paizo nice job

I'm giving this adventure five stars even though I shouldn't, because it fits so seamlessly into the rest of the adventure path and everyone really seems to love it.

The problems with the adventure are as follows:

Realistically, if your PC's come from sandpoint and are still low level superstitious farmers, they wouldn't Go here. At all. This is like the local bogeyman come to life. Goblins are one thing, but this is ridiculous.

Two: The killer himself is an undead. That actually ruins the entire point of the adventure. Twisted human motives are fine, but burying them under the onus of an undead you can easily slay instead of having a human murderer who the PC's might have some moral qualms about killing, especially if he IS the local bogeyman, is a cop-out. I wanted a real murder mystery, and I didn't get it, I was really hoping for a different type of adventure than this.

The city locations were fine, but I would have liked WAY more detail on Magnimar than the adventure provides. I understand that I can fill it in on my own, but all that gooey little fluff stuff warms the cockles of my old-school gamer heart.