Paul Rizzo's page

That issue that had the Freeport adventure in it was Dungeon issue 107/Poly 166.

I'm starting a pirate based/seafaring campaign after i finish the adventure path and I've been doing a bunch of research on this too.

Both the Kingdom of Kalamar's Salt and Sea Dogs and The Seafarers' Handbook are among the best.

I also would recommend looking at Green Ronin's "Freeport" books. There's several of them including handbooks, adventures, and a book of NPC's. It started as an adventure and then led them to provide several handbooks. There's a lot of information (NPC, story, city, maps) that I'm using from there.

If fact, one of the recent Polyhedrons had a "Freeport" Adventure in it. I'll look it up after I post and see if I can find it for you.

If it comes down to a cost thing, I'd say start with the Seafarer's Handbook.

I too am running the adventure path in everlund. The volcano is throwing me for a loop, but I'm just going to say it was underground and put in some more earthquake type things.

Agree on the striders/harpers. I sorta combined the chisel/striders together and made some other changes to suit my campaign based on an NPC from a previous campaign.

I actually used Waukeen instead of Wee Jas. It's not perfect, Kelemvor would have been better, i just missed that.

I used boars in lieu of baboons.

Ebon Triad became Cyric, Velsharoon, and Talona.

I put the Demonskar in the evermoors.

Red Gorge was just put in as is and no one was the wiser.

And I'm using a blue dragon instead of red for hookface.

I waited to start my group on the Adventure Path until about the 5th one came out so I had some more info to work with. My group loves it without a doubt. The PC that received the Smoking Eye template is just playing fantastic. He's like a whole new person and is really taking to heart that his character has this new responsibility (or potential responsibility). One of my other players had his character die in Zenith Trajectory and liked the story line so much he made his next character a Splintershield dwarf that was looking for Zenith and what happened to him, he joined the rest of my PC's when they realized something was wrong. Good stuff.

I personally like the creatures from Fiend Folio and MM2 since none of the PC's own those books they had no clue what the creatures could do. It completely keeps them on their toes instead of knowing exactly what spell like abilities something has (or one of them looking it up while I'm busy). Made me DM better cause I had to give them detailed descriptions of the creatures.

All in all the adventure path has a great storyline, with some things I had to fill in the blank about but it allowed me to make the path more to my style. I also made a hand out about the city to give to my PC's before they started but I was able to put that together cause i had several adventures already. Maybe a brief overview for the PC's in the issue before the next adventure path starts would be a good idea.

Did you guys miss putting some information into the adventures and were there some contradicting pieces? Sure there was, but if you read the adventure ahead (like it usually says) i caught stuff and made adjustments. If i was just picking up the magazine and then playing it a couple hours later that might cause some problems.

I felt that the adventure path had alot of the following -
Dragons, Half-dragons, pit traps, and plot related items/situations that required (to some extent) divinations.

My PC's are waiting to find out where the half-orc cloning facility is for all the guards. It didn't dawn on me to figure out an explaination for that but it is a fantasy role-playing game.

Things I liked - all the sidebars about plot, NPC's, etc.
Appendix's would be an awesome idea. Definately knowing what NPC's to keep around. I liked the vagueness about certain things (Last Laugh, Celeste, Ebon Triad) that I was able to make up my own things about them and make filler adventures. My PC's were really into tracking down the Last Laugh early in the Path so I had to make up an adventure for them. I thought the NPC's were very nice. They still talk with Gretchen the halfling orphan headmistress as well as guard they saved in the riots.

By far the best, and I mean the best thing is the descriptions of rooms and what sort of auras there are. I have a paladin and 3 other casters with detect magic in my group. They use them all the time. Saved me a ton and made me look like a genius in that I know that stuff or had it written down.

No doubt I will continue with the next adventure path when it comes out. Keep up the great work. No matter what format Dungeon has been in, it's been an asset to me as a DM.