lotrotk's page

I ran this AP for two years with five players. We're using the Pathfinder Second Edition ruleset (along with a resource document from pathfinderinfinite). After that much time, we've journeyed through 5 of the 6 chapters and I'm willing to give it a review!

It has been a blast! The city of Korvosa is very memorable, primarely in the atmosphere it breathes.. its people/npcs, locations, a tiny little bit of political intrigue.. the Chronicles Guide to Korvosa is another book that does a splendid job of painting the setting.

The adventure kicks off very, very strong! The first couple of sessions might be some of the best you've ever had while running an adventure. It is grim, realistic, exciting, it feels real! As if you're not sitting at that table but walking the streets yourself. Be that good or bad, there is no other chapter that quite reaches the heights of the first.

As people mention out, there is indeed a "leaving Korvosa" part in chapters 4 and 5, and they do feel very contrasted to the others. On the other hand, book 4 I found easier as a GM to adjust to my whims more than any chapter before it, and chapter 5 with its mega dungeon was a (for me) surprisingly appreciated intermediate after I had prepared all the resources (drawing the mega-dungeon on several huge 1-inched grid papers, making up the treasure table for 2nd edition) since it required much less effort from my part after that.

Now that we're about to crack the final chapter I can see my players have a lost of investment into returning to Korvosa and seeing all lose knots tied. I'm somewhat disappointed though, that, for the most part, the final chapter ALSO works as a mega-dungeon! I've explained this with my players and we've agreed that we don't need to chapters of that in a row; we'll take on the final one with a more narrative approach to the most interesting locations instead.

I'm certain that the final chapter will be a success and we'll have many, many opportunities yet to see how each relation of the pcs with the many npcs comes to an end. Many of them have become second family to our group!

Though it may require a bit of love in some spots to fit your needs, Curse of The Crimson Throne offers, without a doubt, a very memorable setting and storyline. It is harsh, often grim, with endless opportunities to bend it to a unique experience for your group!

This book succeeds in taking the worst parts out of its predecessor and continuing on that line.

The authors have the GM drive the players into directions that make very little sense. This should be the book where players are urged to make haste, dive into action as soon as possible to prevent the antagonist from succeeding. It does a very poor job of enticing the players to go through any of the content in the first 2 out of 3 chapters in this book. To fix this as a GM, either the dungeon (The Korr Well) needs to be inverted in its design, or players need serious reason to not skip to chapter 3 directly (your level isn't high enough yet is proof of a flawed design).

In our case, my group and I just skipped the first two chapters straight to chapter 3.

Then eventually the encounter with the antagonist, I ran it with four players with slightly buffed stats for the monsters and the players still steamrolled through the encounter. It was a bit anticlimactic.

Then there's the treasure at the end, the whole reason why the party set out on adventure in the first place, and have a lasting choice on dwarven history. I liked this final part, but the flashbacks to dwarven history that are portrayed here come much too late. For that to properly work, they should have been spread much sooner: starting from the previous book all up to chapter 3 of this one.

I can not recommend Heavy Is The Crown.

This book has you delving into the darklands in search for ancient dwarven treasure. Very quickly the group will find themselves in a city that is (as the cover indicates) full of feylike citizens, and I really loved it! Though there is only a bit of artwork, The Candlestone Caverns are a unique setting with both dark and light atmosphere. I can easily see myself re-using the place in another darklands adventure. The players had fun interacting with its citizens and the few quests offered here.

That was all chapter 1 out of 3. Everything changes after chapter 2.
First off, it is only at this point that an adversary is revealed, and though chapter 2 attempts to paint a picture of his intentions and history, I found it falling short. I had to read and compare a lot with other pages later in the chapters (as well as with the third volume), and eventually fix some of it to get it working. As the adventure reads, you will not encounter this adversary in this book either.

Chapter 2 is a long series of strange encounters, and though the players enjoyed most of them, they all did complain that it dragged on for too long. In retrospective, I could have fixed that by either removing one or change the order a bit.

Chapter 3 finally shows us another darkland settlement, but in my opinion, the book does a better job at describing the settlement and offering opportunities for it to be used in another adventure than actively getting the best out of it for this one. There's only a few quests in town and I found all of them lacking in coherence and sustenance. As a GM I was forced here to make most out of this city and have the players do more exciting challenges!
And though I will say that the dungeon at the very end was appreciated by our group (they had a good time going through it over the span of two sessions), they constantly needed reminding WHY they were going in here. Wasn't there more important business to be done elsewhere? Here I have to blame the authors again, the antagonist for this book and how the authors expect the players to counteract him just isn't working.

I would not recommend Cult Of The Caveworm as an adventure. But I would recommend it to be cannibalized for any other darklands adventure you might be running! There are definitely locations that add to Golarion and unique encounters that will surprise players!

This volume does a good job at introducing players to a buzzling dwarven metropolis with all kinds of small quests to do. The players I GM'med for especially loved the first chapter for that. Though not required, the Lost Omens Highhelm book is a fun addition, especially if you want your players to have more access to which clans are represented and who the dwarven gods are, or if you just want a map of the citadel of Highhelm.

The players had fun doing their first dive into the darklands with atypical adversaries and problems to solve. I will say though that the maps included with the book are unfit. The bits of art and color pattern give off a clear vibe, but maps F and G fail to visualize the descriptions in the book.

The adventure has little dungeon infiltration that works quite well, and it offers a whole bunch of social interactions at a party and library.

I spiced up our run of the adventure by skipping most of map F, including a few more difficult monsters in the darklands, brightened up the library with a murder attempt and by taking a free ruling of the award systems.

Because this book describes a lot of scenes using all variants of point systems, which can be helpful to some, but not to all. I skipped through most of that myself, but I will add that more often than not, the descriptions felt very confusing to me. I can imagine someone more reliant on these systems to have a difficult time reading through all of it.

The adventure does a great job of portraying what it expects of players and what players can expect from it and its sequels though. The theme is very clear.

This is a lighthearted adventure. If you're looking for something more grim, grey, politically intrigued .. this is not the adventure for you. If you like a simple story that starts with various small quests, a bit of exploration and a few opportunities to reflect on what is happening in dwarven society, this is it!

This book is still very much focused on dwarves of Golarion, but that will be less the case for the two follow up books in this Adventure Path.
I must point out though that this book was our group's most favorite out of the three. My ratings for the sequels are considerably lower. From that perspective, as a standalone book, Mantle of Gold is quite good, but I can't recommend it as a series. You may want to either rewrite the ending so that it works as a standalone adventure for your group, or homebrew what comes next by yourself!