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(I have played this as with a level 3 character in Tier 4-5)

[PLAYER SAFE COMMENTS]

The scenario starts off with a premise that may be hard to swallow for Lawful characters, be warned. It then quite nicely sets a gothic horror scene but fails to deliver buy just turning into a string of combat encounters that vary greatly in difficulty.

If this is the only scenario offered, go ahead, there is some fun to be had if you keep your expectations low. If you have other options, take them, you won't miss out on anything here.

[SPOILER WARNING - GM EYES ONLY]

First of all: I really, really like the concept of the Blackros Museum and definitely wanted to like this scenario. The Shadow Plane convergence is an awesome idea and I love the idea of the twisted mirror image of the museum. However, 3 out of 5 combats are against fetchlings. That is enough to make it feel repetitive, even though all enemies have different class levels.
The battle with the main villain also was a joke for our group of 6 vs 1. Make sure you play the alchemist well, though, that battle was the most fun of the whole scenario.

All in all, I did have some fun with the battles and mechanically it seems fine, so it wasn't a total train wreck. But it is definitely below par for the Society, at least in my experience, and I would not recommend this to anyone.

I ran a group of 4 players through this adventure on roll20 and we had a blast. The excellent maps by bigrin42 over on DeviantArt in combination with roll20 dynamic lighting made this dungeon romp an awesome experience. Without the tedious slowdown of the GM having to sketch down the room you have just entered. The overall flow was excellent and we really got to delve into the scraps of story and lore scattered across the interesting dungeon described in the adventure.

Unfortunately, that's just what they are: scraps of story. There is not much of story going on, but our group had fun regardless. There are a few critters in this book that people probably haven't seen in a long time and the general look-and-feel of the module is very old school.

So if you want a fun time-travel to the good old days of gaming or just itch for a well-made dungeon that is easy on the GM, snatch this one up.

As an introduction to the Shattered Star adventure path, I think it does a good enough job. The major allies are established and the quest becomes clear. It does not go beyond that, but that is all we really needed.

I own both the print version of the folio and recently got the PDF version in the Humble Bundle.

The printed version is fantastic, but be sure that you have the right expectations! This is not your super-efficient condensed sheet to have ready in a fast-paced action-packed game.

This booklet, in time, will become the chronicle of your PC. It will record their successes and failures and accompany them throughout their entire adventuring career until it is time to retire. Years later, you will pull the Folio from your gaming shelf, browse through the pages and smile at the memories of an amazing campaign its contents conjure.

So yes, some of the mechanical information is a bit all over the place. But the Folio more than makes up for it with all the little details that are usually cut for space.

If you like details, keeping statistics, and being thorough, this Folio is the best you can get for your character in print. Five stars!

The PDF version, however, is a different beast. Maybe I am using the wrong (Acrobat) reader or it's some sort of security thing but for whatever reason you cannot fill out any boxes of the PDF. So all the PDF is really good for is printing copies of it. If you do that, however, you miss out on the production values of the print edition and if you take those away, I think there are better options out there. This brings the rating of the PDF down to three stars.

So because we have to give both versions a single rating, I give it the average of both: 4 stars.

I just finished taking a group of 4 PCs through the module. While we had a lot of fun, I still had some gripes with a few things.

The trek through the Border Wood is a string of seemingly disconnected encounters. Yes, I get that most of them are there to illustrate the transformation of the woods but it felt like a theme park ride from one "Here is a strange monster, kill it!" to the next.

I definitely recommend to significantly condense this part down to the major encounters.

I also did not like the way the Black Rider just forces the PCs to take up his mantle. Sure, good-aligned characters might have some issues with trying to help a supposedly evil witch, but this solution seems too imposing.

Lastly, as written, the book fails to adequately introduce its final villain. The entire time the PCs think they are going to face a certain character but then end up fighting their out-of-office replacement who has not even come up in any way in the adventure. There is a line late in the book about how he scries on the party and how that should introduce him to the players but I don't really see how that would work.

But it is absolutely not all bad.

Plot-wise, this is the most epic exposition to an Adventure Path I have run so far. The PCs are sent off by the herald of an almost divine being to find out what happened to his mistress when they have just barely hit 2nd level!

Also, Neil Spicer added some really nice touches to the encounters. Even the ice elementals have first names! Everything has a reason and a motivation for being where it is, they are just not very likely for the PCs to find out about, so in the end it just seems random to them (see above).

I also liked the general atmosphere: The sense of dark fairy-tale and haunted forest comes across very well, right down to the wintery village oppressed by an evil overlord (or overlady, as it were).

All in all, I rate this 3 stars because the plot and atmosphere are nice, but the trek through the forest was just too much of a drag to rate this any higher in my opinion.

However, if you are willing to invest some time as a GM, I am sure you can easily add at 1 star.

All the ingredients for a great adventure are there, you just need to throw them into a cauldron, stir, and cackle.

I said it before and I'll say it again: The Paper Minis line is amazing! I really love having exactly the right miniature to represent all the friends and foes of an adventure without having to spend tons of money on them. This set is of the same fine quality than all other sets I have bought so far and I can only encourage everyone who runs this module to get these minis to go along with it!

Just two minor gripes, one specific to this set and one to the line:

The Molthuni raiders faces came out very dark and it is impossible to recognize any facial features. Might be my printer, but a bit more contrast on these would have been nice.

The second thing I noticed is that some elements stretch to the very border of the page, which some printers cannot print and might cause people to scale the document, messing up the dimensions of the minis. Also, it would be nice to have a DIN-A4 (21 cm x 29,7 cm) sized option of the PDF! But that is really just icing on the cake.

Get these, people! Get them now!!

So I just finished running this for a group of 3 total novices and one veteran player. Here's how I feel about it:

+ As a GM you have very little prep time. An experienced GM can pick it up and run it right then and there and it is a perfect introduction for fledgling GMs who might feel intimidated by more complex adventures.

+ This is a great introduction to the different mechanics of Pathfinder without feeling like a "training arena". It very organically introduces concepts like damage reduction, combat maneuvers, swarms, afflictions etc.

+ The story is okay and has some opportunity for role-playing. Especially the fact that every PC can choose to have a mentor in the starting town will help with tying the characters to the locale.

- The entire module is very straight-forward with little crossroads for the players to choose a path from (which I would consider a plus for new GMs and players).

- There is little variety among the opponents and especially skeletons are used a lot. But this can also be seen as a good thing because players get to apply their newly learned knowledge about DR several times.

Summary:
This is a great introductory adventure and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to run their first module or who wants to get new players into the game. Veteran players might feel a little underwhelmed by the complexity of this module but as an entry-level adventure it serves its purpose exceptionally well.

A nice touch is that you can easily expand it to a mini-campaign by following up with Masks of the Living God and City of Golden Death, which my group intends to do.

I already bought and used the Paper Minis for Racing to Ruin but these even top the quality. The module itself gives you very little visual material in terms of maps and so on for your players to behold but the Paper Minis perfectly make up for it. The huge and even gargantuan creatures are impressively fierce and make an addition to your gaming table I can only recommend to anyone running City of the Seven Spears!

By the way, to save money (which I'll inevetibly spend on the next Paper Minis) I printed the minis on simple office paper and they are still very durable.

This set is the ultimate supplement if you're running the adventure. My group is almost through with it but still I couldn't resist and bought and printed these. The quality of the art is excellent and the miniatures turn out great (if you are using cardstock of course).

So looking forward to the release of City of Seven Spears Paper Minis!