So as of tonight my party of evil PCs has completed the run through of the first adventure. Spoilers Abound!
The Party: Two sorcerers (A pyromaniac psychopath and a cult-leading evangelist), a rogue (forger extraordinaire), an alchemist (Evil scientific genius a la Fringe's Walter Bishop), and a fighter (slave trading pirate).
Act One: After a rough start with a TPK (indecision and infighting) the first session, the party regrouped OOC and came together in the name of evil on the reset. The players immediately loved grumblejack and the cult-leader adopted him as a useful minion. The party annihilated the majority of the keep, killing soldiers before they got the chance to raise alarm. So confident was the group that they took the time to hunt down the wizard, mercilessly slaughtering him in his bedchamber (the fight ended with the Warden's hand pinned to the wall... 20 feet from the rest of him). Only the fight with the gambling group caused them any real trouble.
Act Two: The party is somewhat shy towards the other Knot, with mainly the cult-leader reaching out to chat. They all love the circlets. When they are sent down through the trials the fun began. Room one they managed just fine. Two as well. Room three caused a bit of trouble as none of my PCs were blessed with darksight. They managed to blindly smash the globe and then interrogated the mist, but got nothing out of it. They then killed it with fire shot down it's floor holes. Timeon was grilled for information before being dragged along. Five was no trouble. They found the spiked ball without activating it. Then they set off the shrieker. The risen provided a solid fight for the group. The knight was handled without too much trouble. They party inadvertently offered up Timeon as the sacrifice at their banquet, ending the act hilariously.
Act Three: The combination of the Rogue's forgery and the disguise circlets avoided a lot of potential combat in this act, but I felt like the group still felt quite accomplished in handling the events. Event one is handled with bluffs, disguises, and papers. Nerianus was a bit of work, but ultimately killed and his cohorts driven away. The PCs intimidated Odenkirk out of going to seal island (the check was incredible to behold). Whale trading went surprisingly peaceful, and they learned of The Laughing storm. Kiliketz went down without too much trouble as well. The bugbear camp was handled with a lot of fast talking and intimidation. The PCs greatly enjoyed Sakkarot's company and traded information with the Chiefdom quite happily. Odenkirk was a pretty decent fight.
Act Four (Aka the Big One): Having quite a few charismatic party members, they quietly finagled all the juiciest gossip out of the town. Their first act was to take out the ranger patrol. After blinding the Captain and taking out his startlingly deadly horse, they pumped him for info about the castle before dispatching him. Returning to town the party then began a campaign to disgrace the dwarves with several thefts disguised as dwarves, out-drinking the lead engineer, and posing as Inspectors from the capital and (bluffing) commenting about the lo quality work. After the theft (set-up) is revealed the dwarves return home to mete out their own justice and avoid the growingly racist town. Meanwhile Mott has been told of and caught his wife with Eddarly, and the duel takes place. Eddarly is killed, and Mott surrenders himself to the king's justice and is executed. The alchemist spends days researching, gathering, and brewing a specially concocted hemlock to slip into Mama Giuseppe's stew. This ended up killing 54 men (yes, we rolled them all their saves). It was all downhill from here, with the party blatantly attacking and killing the rookery, the sleeping guards, and finally the Lord Commander, Priest and Lantern Archons in a culminating battle (extremely challenging and fun fight). Tacitus' attempt to marshal the town in defense was cut short by the calling in of the bugbear horde.
Overall, my party had a ton of fun in this campaign. My complaints are mostly minor. Every Act had only one seriously difficult fight, with the rest of the encounters being relatively pushover. It could maybe be a little better balanced against the super-strong party. My poor alchemist was extremely sad with his class-specific equipment, as both alchemy bonus items he got were immediately worthless due to his inherent alchemy bonuses for his newly gained level. I did create some others for him to make up for it. I'm also having a hard time convincing them to use their money to buy things, instead of just killing and looting. OOC we know its for spending, but it's sometimes hard to justify IC, so we don't and some shops get looted and blamed on dwarves. In the end my party had a raucously good time, and I've already got the second adventure ready to go.
We all thought the Gazetteer was a great addition to the module, and helped get us in the right mindset for the campaign. Choosing the evil trait was filled with strife at narrowing down which one they would take. Everyone wanted three or four of them. The Synopsis was wonderful for my long term perspective, though I wish it weren't right after a player-info page! The art in this book is gorgeous, and I loved having two maps with one actually showing the player route. Seriously: Great artwork.
I can't wait to run Book Two!
