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This inquiry is for players and GMs alike who have played through/GMed the Second Darkness AP.
GMs: please use spoiler tags when necessary.
There are 2 intentions of this post.
1. For others to be able to make an informed decision of whether this AP will be a good fit for your players as well as to see if the AP style works with the GM's storytelling style.
2. For Paizo staff to be able to keep track of what their customers/fans think of the APs and use the information to improve the APs in the future.
This inquiry is for players and GMs alike who have played through/GMed the Second Darkness AP.
GMs: please use spoiler tags when necessary.
There are 2 intentions of this post.
1. For others to be able to make an informed decision of whether this AP will be a good fit for your players as well as to see if the AP style works with the GM's storytelling style.
2. For Paizo staff to be able to keep track of what their customers/fans think of the APs and use the information to improve the APs in the future.
I'm GMing Second Darkness right now... almost literally since I'm just waiting for my players to get back from grabbing food to continue book 4. Anyway, my favorite parts are:
1) The epic fights, and fight locations. These include the battle across the Cyphergate (book 1), the tumbling tower (book 2), and the observatory fight (book 3).
2) The dramatic scale of the whole thing. World shaking, and destroying, ramifications!
3) The interesting story ideas. Mass elven battles, alien attacks, and deep cover infiltration.
I honestly can't wait to get to books 5 and 6. It's been an awesome ride, and most of my players think it's the best AP so far. More so than RotRL and CotCT. Anyway, hope this helps, and Happy Gaming!
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This inquiry is for players and GMs alike who have played through/GMed the Second Darkness AP.
GMs: please use spoiler tags when necessary.
There are 2 intentions of this post.
1. For others to be able to make an informed decision of whether this AP will be a good fit for your players as well as to see if the AP style works with the GM's storytelling style.
2. For Paizo staff to be able to keep track of what their customers/fans think of the APs and use the information to improve the APs in the future.
I'm on book three and before we start I might run to my local game store to get the fourth one so I can start reading it in hopes of starting it in two weeks or so. One part I'm finding troublesome (and i did it to myself really) was when the players were making their characters I wanted to try "epic" stats instead of 2d6+6 I had them roll 2d6+8. This I've come to realize is basically putting them 1/2 a level a head in terms of power. So now that they are established as a party I'm scaling things to be more powerful then them which is not getting as many complaints as I thought. I did discuss it with them before hand. Anyway on to my, hopefully encoded right, spoilers.
The tower falling in the second book was also a source of great fun for the group. The rouge being true to his class bolted at the first sign trouble and watched from the side as the tower rolled down the cliff face. The Barbarian followed suit since he was on the first floor. The ranger and alchemist were on the top floor and top of the tower respectively then it started to fall. We had the NPC Elf Wizard with the party and they instructed her to grab the ranger's wolf and cast levitate while the ranger jumped and the now mutigened up alchemist caught him. After the cyphergate battle the alchemist took the slippers of spiderclimb and ring of featherfall so the whole party was able to avoid the dangers of the tower. They just watched it roll down the cliff as they floated safely to the ground.
The final boss fight of Children of the Void was also alot of fun.. The torn through the baddies pretty easy but having the Orca "Free Willy" the barbarian a couple times was hugely entertaining. As I was writing the initiative order one of the players noticed I wrote Orca near the bottom of the list. He asked if it said what he thought which I told him it did. He responded simply with "huh" which was slightly tense. So I had the Orca delay it's turn to protect the drow fighters on the bridge and as the Barbarian neared them it leaped out of the water and bit him. He looked around and asked if a whale just bit him. Pretty comical fight at that point.
My favorite fight overall and the players tend to agree is the random dretch encounter in Armageddon Echo. Knowing that at 6th level they will make short work of CR 2 demons I just kept hitting them with stink clouds and summoning. What went from 6 dretches ended up being 16 when it was all said and done. The ranger kept getting nauseated. The best part of the fight was when the alchemist with his brand new wings discovers decided to try and pick up a dretch and drop it from 40ft up. Somehow the damage it took from falling left it at 1 hp long enough for it to summon another dretch. The fight ended when the aforementioned alchemist grabbed the last dretch and flew up to a height of 180 feet and dropped it. I guess he really wanted to get that kill.
Now one of the areas I find lacking is the transitions. In book one Clegg goes from finding the party a simple irritant to wanted to kill them in a paragraph. While liberating the ancient elf city in book three I am finding a lack of urgency. I was dicussing with one of my players for ideas on how to give it more of a siege-like feel to it and we came up with the idea of adding more random events like stepping into a crossfire at one point or having a fireball spell or similarly large spell go off on the other side of a building and the building colapse on them or maybe them take sonic damage or deafened for so long from the blast. I'm also going to have areas already secured as they go along so they don't feel like the elven army is not helping at all. This will also allow for temporary elf-gates to get back to the base camp quicker for healing. They might also find themselves or come across a group of elves that have been pinned down and need to escape. But all those ideas are probably because I am envisioning it more like a war movie type scene too.
For me the AP the first 3 books are like crack to my group they loved Riddleport and all the Plots that going on in that little city. Being to easily flesh out the place with what they give you in the book is gold but left you the GM something to tweak and build on.
Children of the void was a great horror module. What the hell are those? What do you mean we can't get off the Island. Tower scene....
Armageddon Echo. If you flesh out the city add some creepy perils to taste and voila Myth Drannor with less epic craziness.
The last 3 really let the first 3 down.
Descent into Midnight you should tweak as a DM to avoid the follow your nose syndrome. Free them up as PC's and let them explore as this place is cool.
Number 5 Not going to even give it back its name. Holy plot dump and just unfun to run and play. If you get the chance grab one of Paizo's modules and insert here it would make just as much sense.
Number 6 is epic in scope and may redeem the series if done right. Make sure the crew eat a good breakfast and bring some extra weapons because this can get really action oriented.