I highly suggest reading all the adventures and finding ways to weave the plot and unify any AP. This AP in particular really needs some extra GM work along the way. If you want a very player driven sandbox campaign this AP is great. The nature of it also requires a lot of work from the GM but can be incredibly rewarding. So far it's been a great ride and the only reason that I am giving this a four star review is because the mass combat rules are terribly abstract and usually result in multiple opposed rolls of attrition.
This book, cover to cover, is incredibly useful. Changing the description, alignment, race, gender, spells or weaponry is a fast and easy way to have this book enhance any gaming table for years.
It is exactly what it claims to be.
This book is as useful as the NPCs in the GMG (x20)
This adventure was tragically under CRed. Even adding additional monsters to random encounters didn't make it much more challenging. The three times my group had a real challenge were once when I rolled a 100 on the random encounter in the Slough (and a 4 for the quantity), once when the group was so overconfident with their abilities they stormed the keep (I had incorporated a mercenary NPC archer to discourage such brazen actions. Without doing this I am sure that the mage-less group could have easily strong-armed the entire keep.) and finally when the barbarian tribes were united under Armag and marched on the PCs kingdom. I don't like to encourage the 'kick in the door' tactic for every encounter. It's fun to really mop up some baddies sometimes, but 2 or 3 levels of it just gets boring.
Overall I highly recommend this adventure as a stand alone for 9th level characters OR enhancing some of the encounters as part of the Kingmaker AP. Although thematically this adventure was SUPERB and worthy of 5 stars, it just needed a bit of work to make it truly fun for the group. The amount of work needed to make this adventure cohesive, plot advancing, and challenging (not to mention the useless sword) knocks the book down a couple notches.
The content, artwork and layout of this book are amazing.
The fact that the binding is weak and the book is twice as large as it should be in order to be structurally sound is a huge flaw.
I would pay an extra $10 just to be sure that my book wouldn't fall apart. If there is one thing WoTC has on Paizo it is the durability of their books. I remember dropping some of those things and not thinking twice about them breaking. Now I have to be careful turning pages.
I understand the marketing strategy used when determining the price point of this book. To be fair any 'player recommended' books are going to be where the money is. I just wish that the binding, cover, and pages matched the quality of the content
As is this adventure is good. I wouldn't say that it railroads the PCs so much as it has a definite destination the PCs will end up going to. That isn't a bad thing. Not all adventures are open ended, especially mystery adventures.
So I will say this. I added a bunch of interaction between the group of creatures and the PCs. I created a 'Kankerata Run' chase scene as well as an awards ceremony/festival of the moon. I realized pretty early on that many of the quests the PCs would need to accomplish couldn't be given to them while they were out in the wilderness. So I had the group of creatures give most of the quest to them. This basically extended the amount of time that the adventure took and provided a lot of decision making scenarios for the PCs and hid the 'railroad effect.' One side effect that the extension of the time frame provided was that it also allowed several more scenarios for the 'what lurks in darkness' to make appearances which built a lot of dread and tension.
All in all this adventure was my favorite kingmaker adventure to run so far! (Granted I put A LOT of work into it, but that is the nature of these sandbox paths though.
The second installment of Kingmaker fell a bit short. This adventure proved to be almost as good as the first. The one missing piece in this adventure is a clearly defined BBEG. I created several more "big baddies" in my campaign and some encounters that gave the PCs the idea that there is something out in the wilderness that is is encroaching on their civilization.
The kingdom building rules are very interesting and fun but they have too many holes in them and because of that they don't effect the outcome of this review either way. There is a really good kingdom building add on to this adventure by Jon Brazer Enterprises. If you can afford it I highly recommend it. If you can't afford it, I would recommend adjusting some of the rules.
As a whole this adventure was good and provided several months of out of game play for my group.
Like I said, a great start to a seemingly epic campaign. However, the nature of any sand box game requires the GM to put a bit more work into running it than a typical AP. That being said, if you are willing to put in that extra effort into your prep, then this could be an amazing and memorable AP to run.
I do wish there was a bit more detail on weather unique to Brevoy and the Stolen Lands. Nonetheless... a great start.
