Russell Akred's page

Primarily a puzzle adventure in the exotic location of the fey lands in the River Kingdom. The role play opportunities are solid but the combat is fun. I felt like I should have skipped the first floor combat to allow for more time. The characters were right out of the source book but seemed like something that could have been played down by me.
The only criticism I have is I wish they scenario would have had a better explanation about the unstuck side of the town readily available for the GM and the key seemed to be missing a vital part. Otherwise the whole table including myself enjoyed the scenario.

This could be a half hour scenario considering you could wipe out the whole party in the first encounter. After the first two encounters it softens to a training day. The problem is none of the encounters except one seem level appropriate. Either the encounters are written to kill the party or are a cake walk. DO NOT RUN THIS WITH THE FOUR PREGENS! You will be the killer of a table that should never have gone on the mission and that is only fun for a sadistic GM. Also some of the box text is laughable. One is a tossed off sentence that must have been left when designing the module, while others waste game time on the writer’s ramblings about the color of a room.

It felt like it was written for extremely deadly combat and the story was tagged on.

Normally players want to get through the building of suspense as quickly as possible and get on to the combat. The set up in this module was fascinating to my group. A good two hours was spent before any real combat and that combat was a great set up for the rest of the adventure. The inclusion of a couple of early red herrings is also good for keeping the suspense high for the players. GMs will enjoy breaking out so classic monsters as much as the players will enjoy besting them. The scale of the combats also pose a great variety from BBG to mobs of mooks.

The warning I will give is the time to play this. Normally I can get a module ran in around eight hours. This one took nearly ten and it could have gone much longer. Allow at least twelve hours for this baby and your players will thank you.

Not only was the Goblins a lot of fun to play and to run for the adventure is perfect for them. Full of all things that make Goblins the most wonderful recreation Paizo has made.

The creatures in this scenario are fantastic. A thrill to run and the players enjoyed besting them and the trials it took to do so. They were let down by the story though. Since Pathfinder is all about the story I cannot suggest a GM pick this adventure as written.

This is no reflection on Adam’s work over-all which I enjoy.

...wasn't sure what I was running. The story is set in a wide open setting but the play is a rail road. The players struggled with giving up precious things they have been saving since the first game. It was good to stress the secrecy of the faction missions but it would have made a good 1st act to the adventure instead of the way it was done.

First I must apologize, the trap I said would not effect anyone could have in my table's case effected two PCs. The combats were so strung out every player wondered why they weren't all together. They were all in cahoots after all. Would have made one great foray instead of three or four. When it comes up the Buried rules are on page 415 and the wind rules are on page 439 of the core rule book. Getting back quickly was a problem too though I found no penalty for not getting back in weeks rather than days.

It was nice to see some change to the SOP of scenarios and I hope they continue making the PCs feel like they need to rely on their own resources instead of being shunted off to the locations. This needs to be fleshed out more though in future scenarios.

I knew it would be a fun mod to run from the beginning. Only thing that seemed to be missing was an area map that would have been helpful to the players and DM alike. Everywhere you go seems to be this vague over there which makes it loose some of it's race against time element. You don't know how far apart places are so you don't know how long it takes to get to them. Pretty important when you are dealing with time frames in the hours and days. I liked the scene in Falcons Hollow when the players actions are much more free form. The blank looks on their faces when the story doesn't tell them what to do was priceless. Really messes with the meta gamer.

Throughout the adventure you felt surrounded by a ruined landscape. The consistency was nice and a good set up for the final eerie setting. Nice mix of combat and role playing along with the cool setting. Nice job Greg.

My players really hoped for more of a connection between the three adventures. The connection really is the city and it's problems. There are reoccurring NPCs but that is all. It is nice for fleshing out the castle city but be sure to download the adventure after they make a city map without the legend. Too many spoilers in the current map. Puzzles, and a scavenger hunt feel to most of the adventure which my table loved.

This is such a fun break from your dungeon crawl. There is fun role playing, great NPCs, and this really neat map. Now the monster at mid-game makes it all so very worth while. I hope to run this for a group soon for it was a blast to play.

These companions are not impressive at all. The cover is juvenile, interior art is silly, the maps are lack luster, and what's with the half-janni? On the plus side the bestiary has a couple of nice additions to the writer's tool box, new traits, feats, and material which will help players of Pathfinder Society, backgrounds of local beliefs, types of magic schools, a prestige class, a few pages obout Katheer, how races and classes are viewed, the part on genders is confusing from a role playing angle, and their views of cast in society. I wish they would have had more about things like seasons, a bit more statistics on every city, struggles inside Qudira, details like roads between towns on the maps and products for different regions and cities, and how they would feel about other countries in Pathfinder Society.

It is a battle royal through this adventure but as with many others it feels like a rope is tied to the players leg pulling them through the adventure. We felt like an army of hammers fighting a village of nails. At the end you were just left scratching your head wondering if you even came close to completing the mission. What was it again? And who are all these things we killed? What do they have to do with the problem we were sent to figure out. Are we the new "A" team?

Don't worry, if your players show up an hour late, don't worry. If it takes forever to draw the map, don't worry. Some ones girlfriend/wife/best friend/mom calls, don't worry. Unless someone has to be rushed to the hospital you'll have plenty of time. It took me longer to prep this adventure and drive to the store than it to run it. Also at low levels a lot has to be forgiven or else it makes no sense. The box text is wonderful (kept it from getting 1 star) as is the creepy setting but even with struggling with the organization it was over in less than two hours. The combats are challenging for four low level players but don't play up.

When I ran this for a table it seemed pretty rough. Too many story elements didn't make sense and one thing on the map still baffles me. If your players actually try and figure out mysteries don't run this one. Most of my prep time was spent repairing holes and filling gaps. It ran well at the table with players challenged by the settings as much as the monsters.
As I say in many post don't play up in PFS scenarios or you may get a TPK. No matter how easy the first few fights go resist the urge.

Not as good as Shipyard Rats, Cossomir's Locker suffers from not exploiting it's environment. Players and DMs will be expecting so much more from this sequel to The Devil We Know—Part 1. The setting begs for more game play opportunities and the combats felt easy and mundane.

The first thing I'd tell you about PFS games is stay in your level. This holds ever so true for Shipyard Rats. The combats are challenging and in dynamic locations. For the players it is also sprinkled with a few interesting role playing opportunities. I would highly recomend this for beginning players.

The characters are half the fun in this adventure. Making it easy to want to play on. The scenes are in complex and dynamic allowing for some fun happenings. Don't worry too much about the underworld consuming you. It will help you appreciate the light more when you reach topside.
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The premise for Perils of the Pirate Pact is a simple rescue. The real villain will be obvious from the first scene. My character enjoyed tormenting the poor villain hoping to get the final battle over early but the DM stuck to his guns allowing me to taunt the entirety of the game. If you like pirates and ship battles then you have already played this one. If you like harassing the antagonist for a few hours you should play this one. It's priceless for the sadistic part of you.
On my running of this I was able to fool the players into not knowing who their real enemy was until the end which worked out well.

My first complaint is the foreshadowing. Holy cow it is beating you over the head by the time you are a quarter of the way through. Second complaint is all encounters start the same way no matter how many precautions are taken. Maybe I'm just sore because we chose not to finish it, but the ending seemed a forgone conclusion. Don't go without a well balance group well inside the level tiers (in fact play DOWN). Some of the faction goals are impossible without very powerful resources.

When I first read this scenario I was disappointed. It seemed to be accidently attached to the Rise of the Runelords adventure path. After the first two which had everything hooked together real well this seemed a massacre. Well I dove in and first change was that the order in the book was pretty much screwy, combined some events and took others and muscled them into others as foreshadowing and task list. After a lot of work I ran it and the changes were even better than I hoped which made me wonder if it was not as bad as I once thought it was. The only thing it needed was something to tie it together with the PCs hometown of Sandpoint and I did that with an item named by one of the players "Skull Crossing" so it worked out pretty well. Just wish it would have came out of the shipping container that way is all.

3.5 has just become the ultimate role playing game out there. Who did it, Wizards? No this company that deeply cares about gaming and gamers to the point of saving our favorite game from the dustbin. Thank you Paizo for the best game of 2008.
Buy the book and save yourself the printing ink used to do it yourself. This full color rule book is like having a players handbook and game masters guide all in one. improvements have been made on the 3.5 material from the beginning of the players part starting with abilities, and all the way through races, classes, feats, skills, equipment, description, the real meat comes in with a hundred and fifty pages devoted to combat, magic, and spells. The DM will love the additional rules that come after running the game that is full of juicy bits of world fleshing out and populate with the NPCs in the next chapter and stoke the treasure with new magic item rules.
Download the free pdf then buy this print edition. You'll be glad you did.

More detail than most players will ask you for and then some. The Nations of the inner sea and the races sections have so much information to set your head spinning. Good background on religion, organizations, and I was blown away when I saw the forty something pages on the world. A must have for anyone gaming in the world of Golarion.

No book is perfect, they all will have their flaws but this raises the bar to a whole new level. It's like they have been listening to every complaint and complement players have made around the gaming tables about 3.5 and put forth a fix. That and make it backward compatible and you have one sure fire must have game system. They pump up the races and classes to hold their own against the ones in complete and race books by WOTC. Give everything a little more flexibility so you can push toward that character sweet spot without leaving thew core books. The only bad thing is Paizo will have to keep up with itself. After all who can compete with them in quality of material? Not WOTC that's for sure.