In Praise of the 3 Faces of Evil


Age of Worms Adventure Path


I just finished reading through this adventure... and I can't wait to run it!

This adventure is a rip-roaring triple decker of dungeony goodness!

It has everything.

Each section has its own unique flavor, and each flavor is really good! There is a dungeon that has a well-conceived, organized defense, with opportunities for swashbuckling, cinematic action. There is a cave and grotto complex full of creepy blind humanoids that try to shoot you off of walls and shake you from rope ladders. There is a maze full of kenku popping out of secret doors, followed up by a mystical temple of evil headed by a featureless albino villain. Then to top it all off, there is an ungodly new King Kong of a raging monster that will hunt down the PCs, wreaking havoc where-ever they go!

There are opportunities aplenty for roleplaying before and after each dungeon. Depending on how the PCs react to what they learn in the dungeons, big changes are sure to come to Diamond Lake!

Are there editing issues? Sure, but none of them are really hard to deal with. Do I wish this was split up into three locations, to be followed linearly? Yes, so in my campaign it will be! Is some of the background inconsistent with the first adventure and the backdrop? Sure, but that's not Mearls's fault, and it's really easy for me to fix.

The most important thing is that the adventure is fun and that it advances the overall campaign. This adventure succeeds like gangbusters on both fronts! It is a rootin-tootin good time, and we meet the Ebon Triad and hear of Kyuss for the first time.

Keep 'em coming, team!


It's good to see a post like this because I thought I was being quite a push over after reading all the criticism on the "Disappointed" thread. I was almost convinced I should be more proactive about holding the publishers accountable for the quality of the product I'm purchasing from them.

However, this post got me thinking about why I’m predisposed to being so accepting of the published material; even when there are faults & errors.

I'm a mature gamer (busy 9-5, kids, house, played D&D off and on for 25 years or so, etc...) and I pretty much depend on Dungeon for my gaming material now-a-days. I usually take 3, 4 or more published adventures and string them into a mini campaign of my own. In fact, I'm doing it right now with the AoW adventure path by changing the setting to Blackmoor instead of the Greyhawk region.

Under normal circumstances I simply have to assume that most of Dungeon’s readership does something similar; probably inserting a liberal amount of their “homebrew” stuff too. The fact that Dungeon is now attempting to do some of the work for me by linking up the individual scenarios is great. That they all share the same setting and will eventually reveal a grand design (layers of the onion) is fantastic. That’s difficult enough when I do it on my own but they also have to deal with multiple authors (and multiple visions for the AoW) and span a story over not just a few adventures but 20!

I've gotten used to using the game, the magazine, the stories, maps, etcetera as tools to enhance my own creative process. I noticed all the typos regarding room numbers and picked up on some of the story inconsistencies too but I glossed over them because I was too busy forming my own narrative for the content offered me (which is, by the way, juicy content indeed).

So, faults and errors considered, I’m not finding the 3FoE (or the AoW) any more challenging to use than the usual fare. Are the critical comments on other threads valid? I think yes. The publisher should always raise the bar and maybe I’m not diligent enough as a consumer to demand that. However, overall I’m a very happy, satisfied customer who finds the material published to be very enjoyable. Thanks to Vigwyn for reminding me of that.

Cheers,
C.


The editing in Dungeon is strictly hit-or-miss.

I've been reading for over a year now, and that's the only thing that remains consistent- The inconsistency.

That sounds really insulting, but I don't mean it that way. When you get right down to it, most adventures won't run properly out of the box. Most of them need some kind of fixing, if only to shoehorn them into your campaign.

Putting it another way, the editing can be bad, but I've never seen it be so bad that it would make an adventure impossible to run.

And they have A LOT to do in a month. Mistakes are going to happen. It's best to not dwell on them. Most of the time, it isn't even WORTH dwelling on them. Dungeon kicks ass. That's what I'm trying to say.

All that said... Three Faces is brilliant. It's a target-rich environment, yes. It has some problems, yes. It's probably REALLY deadly, yes.

But it's only the second adventure. Give the damn thing time.

And it has TWO of the freakiest villains I've ever seen. Yes, the man with NO FACE!!!, and more, my personal favorite, Grallak Kur. Most mad cultists sew their eyes shut. But him? He sew his eyes OPEN. That's style. Theldrick isn't visually impressive, but he's got his own charm too.

And then, when you kill them all, you get introduced to a new face, one that will probably show up a lot during the story: The Ebon Aspect of the Overgod. This bastard is NASTY, and will probably drive home that SOMETHING isn't right in the world.

Honestly? I'm not like the others: I thought Whispering Cairn was weak. But this? This got me excited in AoW again.

Can't wait for more. Bad editing or not. ;p

Sovereign Court

I just finished running the hextor temple section of 3FoE and it was pretty difficult. 4 of 5 players went to negatives. they most likley won't survive the next section, but, they all enjoyed it, and thats all that matters.

Scarab Sages

Justin Fritts wrote:
Most mad cultists sew their eyes shut. But him? He sew his eyes OPEN. That's style.

I thought he was born without eyes?

Are they not someone else's eyes....?

(Not that that makes it any less creepy...oh, no. I had (an improved) Melinde be a prisoner in the Hextor Temple, used for 'combat practice', but blinded, once it was known she was a caster. Oh, dear Lord, wait till they get to Grallak, and someone asks 'Who the Hell do these eyes belong to...? <evil DM chuckle>).

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