I just finished running this adventure for a party, and while it has several interesting elements and some nice presentation, it is also deeply, deeply flawed. I haven't written many reviews, so I'll simply use dot points.
-This module was ported from 4e, and it SHOWS. Skill challenges, rituals and general skill checks have been ported with little concern for the skill bonuses your average Pathfinder character can reach. Several skills have also been sloppily converted, poorly equating 4e and Pathfinder skills in several areas. Sections are also not designed for a Pathfinder PC's bag of tricks, near-constant flight for example, even at the end of the adventure. Other 4e-isms remain. A few sections refer to 'daily powers' and other such 4e concepts directly. A large final section of the game goes to a great deal of effort to prevent 'rest' and incurs hitpoint costs for certain options; clearly sloppy conversion, given the proliferation of wands of CLW.
-The only maps I could find for this adventure were covered with 'PCs start here' and 'place monster here' tokens. Since these maps also include 'traps here' indicators, you can easily see why this is bothersome and a bit lazy.
-Some of the monster math can be dodgy. Improperly calculated hitpoints are fairly common.
-The beginning of this adventure is subtly flawed in that it was clearly designed for a very specific type of party- namely, a murderhobo party. I'd say about 25 to 35% of the content in the first chapter deals with situations where the party insistently ignores or refuses to progress within the adventure, without any particular reason. While you could call this important for helping the GM if problems come up, sometimes the degree to which the adventure anticipates the PCs will simply ignore the adventure borders on nonsensical, and provides less material for other parties who begin with a degree of investment in the adventure.
-Monster design is frequently not amazing. While it's appreciated that it offers combinations for multiple CRs for each encounter, there's a strong tendency to design monsters to have high to-hit bonuses, but very low damage bonuses, and for them to lack alternate movement modes and ranged options. Some 4e-centric design also shows in some of the encounters. A battle against some giants very clearly attempts to emulate the 4e version of the fight, where I assume 'push' maneuvers are a lot easier and more dangerous.
-One of my biggest frustrations with this adventure is ambiguous wording within certain encounters. For example, one encounter includes the line "If the party fights to the bitter end, they will
be swarmed and overrun by ___. Any non-good PC “killed” by ___ is transformed into an NPC in his service. Unaligned PCs become evil, and evil PCs become chaotic evil" under 'development'. This strongly suggests that the fight is meant to be unwinnable, despite the fight not otherwise being described that way, and it later describes treasure discover-able within the encounter chamber. A decent few encounters, particularly social ones, have similar ambiguities, and require details to be pulled from very different sections to generate a picture of what should happen.
-A more basic error is the proliferation of spelling errors. In several sections, including on maps and handouts, formatting errors and repeated words can easily be found. "City of City of Corremel" for example. There are also a few clear errors in the book; lines and markers that were put in as part of drafting but weren't caught by editors.
-My final and largest complaint deals with the ending to the adventure. To my mind, confusion in outlining the plot and outcomes, in describing the scene and characters involved, becomes so challenging as to render the final section unplayable as written without significant work by the GM. In spoilers below, I will get into specifics. For this point, suffice it to say that in this section, it is incredibly difficult to determine if certain key plot revelations are true or false. Some sections suggest they are true, others false. Also, some exceptionally basic information is contradictory, or missing entirely.
Plot Spoilers:
The final section of the adventure concerns encountering the Moonlight King, and convincing him to grant the PCs what they want, or taking it from him. There are three problems with this section; basic description errors, a problem with the design of the encounters, and unexplained plot elements.
-King is NG, and is a devil with the 'lawful' and 'evil' subtypes. This in and of itself isn't problematic. Issues arise when there are no explanations for why the king is a devil or any information about his history, and when the book specifically states that he is a 'glass demon'. Furthermore, the encounter description spends some time describing how he is attended by a 'hulking derro servant'. No such servant is statted up anywhere or involved in the encounter anywhere.
-As best as I can understand, the encounter with the king has two phases. First, a social encounter, and if that fails or is dispensed with, a combat encounter. In the social encounter, the book seeks to have the PCs inflame the King's anger, and cause him to summon warriors and storm off to the courts, an arguably undesirable outcome and one which isn't included on the official outcome description list. The problem is that a later section says that the king storming off can be averted if the PCs convince him so during the social encounter; but again, the social encounter specifically seeks to inflame his anger.
-The social encounter leads to the most confusing section of this book. As best as I can figure out, the PCs are meant to inflame the king's anger by lying to him, and blaming his woes on several key figures from earlier parts of the adventure. Through checks they tell the king that a demon lord drove him mad, that the queen sent him away, that the queen bound his mind with 'chains'. In support of these facts being lies is that they are mentioned NOWHERE else in the adventure. But, these facts are not reached through bluff checks, instead through K: Arcana and various other checks. Indeed, it is specifically stated that Bluff only works once, as the king is paranoid and wary. This contradiction is worsened by the fact that each individual one of these facts could be a side-quest in and of itself to discover in the previous parts of the adventure. That the PCs are just meant to pluck them from the air is utterly baffling.
Overall, I had to work very hard to run this adventure. Scrolling between very different pages, working my way around sloppy 4e conversion work and re-thinking several key plot details. This adventure reaches high and falls very short of what it promises. But, if as a GM you are willing to devote a great deal of effort, you'll find a crude and somewhat creaky framework for building an adventure with fairly strong social elements, and interesting characters with interesting interactions.
