My main issue is not the length of the AP, but the lack of cohesion between volumes and the padding that I assume results from a tight, monthly turnaround for new content. I just finished reading The Crooked Moon for 5e and that thing is a labour of love, and a compelling read from cover to cover. The most recent Pathfinder AP (Shades of Blood #1) squanders a half dozen pages on skill checks to move some crates, and after wading through that I lost interest and still have yet to finish the book. IMO Pathfinder writers have become too reliant on boring and inconsequential padding to meet a fixed word count within a strict timeframe.
Multiple aspects of this book were very samey. Book 2 ended with PCs quashing a huge ancestor storm. Book 3 opens with PCs quashing a huge ancestor storm. Then you infiltrate and liberate a town, only to immediately infiltrate and liberate another town.
One of the things I was most looking forward to about this AP was "borrow[ing] boats able to cross a quicksand sea", but the adventure glosses over this almost entirely. If I were to run this AP, I would remove the first town and replace it with some encounters while crossing the Drowning Sands.
Book 1: PCs are in prison, for crimes they may or may not have committed. One common/shared enemy to tie group together. Maybe a corrupt politician/businessman. Book 1 involves PCs navigating prison politics, planning and executing a breakout.
Book 2: PCs are on the lam. They are being hunted by the authorities and must evade recapture while travelling across country to seek revenge against their shared enemy.
Book 3: PCs reach city where their enemy is located. They must isolate the enemy from their allies in order to strike at them and clear their names (assuming they were innocent).
Just finished reading the adventure. I am impressed. This actual feels like the start to an epic quest, and I am excited to see how the rest of the AP pans out. Minimal padding and pointless crap. A manageable number of well-defined NPC companions.
Congratz to authors Brian Duckwitz and John Compton on writing what looks to be a pretty great adventure.
One question::
Ardax leaves the party at the end of chapter one, but in the closing paragraphs of chapter three he is back again with no explanation. Was this an editing oversight, or did I miss something stating he rejoined the caravan?
The primary reason I would visit the Paizo forums is to read the Story Hour/Campaign logs of other groups playing through the Pathfinder Adventure Paths. With the rise of podcasting and Youtube-ing, this kind of post has taken a nosedive.
I used to post a lot of my own session logs too, but as I grow older and have less time, I have not been doing this as much. Also, I found myself gravitating to 5e and other systems, for a variety of reasons.
It frustrated and confused me that Paizo did not do more to cross-promote Pathfinder for Savage Worlds. One or two blog posts and that was it. No sub-forum, no nothing. Since you went to the effort of collaborating with Pinnacle on that line, I would have hoped for more.
Pinnacle killed their own forums a while back, so there is nowhere else to post about PF4SW, at least for those of us who don't use Reddit/Discord.
I loved how Shattered Star and Return of the Runelords followed on from, and built on the events of Rise of the Runelords.
I did not love whatever Curtain Call was trying to do with the whole, janky-ass Nemesis system. IMO, the AP would have been stronger if you had picked one defeated villain (the artwork semed to suggest you favored Belcorra Haruvex, although I would have preferred Barzillai Thrune) and really leant into that, shifting CC from Indirect Sequel to Direct Sequel.
I appreciate why you did it the way you did it, I just don't think it was very good.
...but in the end we also have to make each one stand alone, because there are some folks who only run one or two books or use them for other purposes ... Making each volume capable of being self-contained for those reasons results in some sacrifices....
The notion that each entry in an Adventure Path is treated as a stand-alone, self-contained module is very strange to me, and perhaps explains why I have been gradually falling out of love with the AP line. Has this always been the modus operandi, or is it a recent development in line with changes to the business model?
Sacrificing campaign cohesion to appease some lunatic who only buys 1 book in a 3/6 part AP is straight-up bizarre. :s
Thankyou for posting your review and sharing your thoughts on this AP. I sincerely hope the Paizo writing team take on board these observations and adjust their output accordingly.
I have spent the better part of an hour poring through all three volumes trying to work out who sabotaged the gala, before thinking to check here. How the GM is supposed to resolve this without making massive changes to the campaign as written is beyond me. Either Ruzadoya is the mastermind and does not get turned into a graveknight since she knows what's coming, or Zibik is much more hostile and pro-active than presented in the adventure. Either option would require massive re-writes to make sense.
I'm flabbergasted this was overlooked.
EDIT: Ok, how about this. Ruzadoya is responsible (possibly working with a third party), but her sister Vandalya is not aware of her intent. When the seedbag erupts, Vandalya is killed. Ruzadoya is overcome with rage and guilt, and proceeds with her plan to take over the Wildwood Lodge as written, blaming everyone but herself for her sister's fate.
EDIT 2: Maybe Vandalya is the one to come back as a graveknight, working with Ruzadoya without realizing who is responsible for her death. If the PCs can proove her sister's guilt, she fights along the PCs to defeat Ruzadoya.
Suggestion for the Paizo team: get in touch with Scott McClintock and co over at Quill & Cauldron to see if they are open to doing a ' Doomed Golarion' in the style of the Doomed Forgotten Realms line they have released on the Dungeon Masters Guild.
Rise of Vecna
https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/385544
Fall of Vecna
https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/421754
Reign of Rot
https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/450868
Wrath of Zuggtmoy
https://www.dmsguild.com/m/product/468752
This team puts out some epic content, and I would love to see their take on a Doomed Golarion where every major AP was failed, resulting in an increasingly hopeless setting.
Plus, they will probably let us fight The Whispering Tyrant (properly, not counting the much maligned heroic sacrifice in Tyrants Grasp), which would be awesome.
Maybe we can all stop discussing Way of the Wicked and let money-thieving, Kickstarter-defrauding, safari-loving Gary McBride fade into the obscure ignominy that his actions have warranted.
If you wipe it off the servers to save space, then Paizo is changing it's practice/policy and customers will not be able to download previous purchased PDFs.
So they issue codes to download the same PDFs from Drivethru, as many Kickstarters do with digital content. Problem solved.
How about a three part heist themed AP, akin to Keys for the Golden Vault, but with an over-arcing storyline? Outlaws of Alkenstar skirted the edges of this territory, but never fully committed. You probably wouldn't be able to write it as a conventional AP, requiring more of an urban sandbox to really shine.
I dropped the catacombs of wrath entirely, as their only real purpose to is to level up the PCs before Thistletop, and foreshadow the larger dungeon crawl at the start of book 5, which I also cut. The campaign did not suffer as a result.
The Sandpoint article mentions an abandoned house on Chopper's Isle, previously occupied by the bird-carving serial killer whose name I forget. The party visited the house, found his secret murder workshop and fought the killer's ghost. They also picked up some Pazuzu themed cursed treasure.
I really like many of the changes that you made to this campaign, but I only see your notes going up into chapter 2 (with mention of chapter 3 and 4). Did you ever finish this campaign?
Since their last update was 2017, I'm guessing not. :D
If memory serves, you find evidence of necromantic activity under Hellknight Hill, then follow a secret tunnel to the basement of an inn in Breachill. The tavern owner can then tell you that Voz has been using the tunnel, and I guess the hope is that players will assume she is the bad person they are after.
EDIT: last poster beat me to it, by 24 hours, lol.
Maybe so, but the book doesn't direct readers/customers to the Archive of Nethys. Whether or not you can get your hands on the particular ruleset for (cue jingle) Paizo's BS Subsystem of the Week isn't my main gripe, it's that being bombarded with multiple subsystems per module is exhausting and subjectively bad.
Subsystems: Paizo loves their subsystems. Only that many of them don't work (Caravan system from Jade Regent) or are terribly unbalanced (original kingdom rules from Kingmaker 1E). Encountering one which actually is not terrible (like the rebellion rules in Hell's Rebels, which are just a bit boring, but functional) is always a big plus.
I will - and recently have - marked AP volumes down in review because of what I perceive as an unnecessary and egregious use of subsystems. I'll grudgingly concede that managing a caravan or organizing a rebellion justify the use of a subsystem to keep track of everything across the course of the entire campaign, but recently we have seen subsystems to handle the most trivial bs imaginable.
An NPC has information that could help your investigation? Better start gathering Influence points!
You're being chased by an angry bloke with a big stick? Let's hope you can accumulate enough Evasion points to escape!
Do you want to buy that cool magic item from the skeezy merchant? He's not gonna' sell unless you've collected enough Negotiation points to satisfy his weird and inconvenient compulsion to haggle.
... and so on. Usually followed by a blatant advertisement to buy whatever splat book that particularly subsystem appears within.
Sure, I can - and will - cut this stuff out of any AP I actually run, but having to read this [content] on an initial assessment of any module is dull as F.
It wouldn't be a Pathfinder AP without their signature Convoluted & Unnecessary Subsystems! But yeah, this chapter (and the start of book 2 for that matter) have a weird lackadaisical energy.
If I had to run this module, I would have the PCs investigate the shop and learn the bad guys are already searching the marketplace for Merchant with Next Card/s, then have the battle occur in the middle of the market. PCs get more cards, portal to Harrow Court opens, and you're into chapter 2.
I have attempted to streamline the plot of Mantle of Gold for conversion to Savage Worlds;
:
PCs in dwarven city of Highhelm.
PCs meet furtive/hooded dwarf Elbert Glassgrinder (WC), who wants to mount expedition to recover Skysunder (long lost clan dagger of First King Taargick) from the Darklands.
(Elbert is really Krohan Veldollow, who was previously exiled for stealing - and losing - the dagger. He hopes returning the relic will end his long banishment).
Elbert believes the lost dagger is located in the abandoned gnome enclave of Guldrege, which was abandoned after being destroyed by a giant crimson worm.
A dwarven patrol recently went missing near the ruins of Guldrege, the gate guards ask the PCs to keep an eye out.
Krohan provides a giant beetle to serve as a pack animal.
The way to Guldrege is blocked by a fungal forest, the party can press on (A), or seek another path (B);
A: fungi release poisonous/mind-altering spores. Most of the missing patrol have been turned into fungal zombies (2x per PC, plus 2). Fungal zombies explode when they die.
B: Survival rolls to navigate winding tunnels and remain on course (Dramatic Task). Success results in an uneventful journey to Guldrege. Failure results in the party getting lost, consuming their rations and arriving in Guldrege Fatigued.
The ruins of Guldrege surround a gaping hole in the floor.
A tribe of troglodytes (4x per PC, spread out among the ruins) have claimed the ruins as an outpost, who sacrifice prisoners by tossing them into the pit. The dagger is in the possession of troglodyte priest Hhrulkaz (WC), and has become tainted by its use in sacrificial rites.
Captain of the missing patrol Elga Longbraids is chained to a rock, pending sacrifice.
A basilisk nests nearby and occasionally prowls the outskirts of Guldrege for an easy meal.
Before anything else, the cursed relic must be cleansed. Elbert knows a young priest called Heldin who can perform the necessary rites. During the ceremony, vengeful spirits (1x per PC + 1) emerge from the blade and try to disrupt the ritual. Elbert is possessed, as are any PCs who fail to resist.
After cleansing the relic, the party should present themselves before High King Borogrim the Hale. Elbert reveals his true identity and asks for his long exile to be ended. The PCs (and Elga Longbraids) may speak up to sway the King's decision.
High King Borogrim leads party into highly secure vault full of dwarven artifacts. They present the dagger to statue of First King Taargick, which animates and instructs them to find his lost tomb.
The party need a guide to help them find Zogototaru the Avernal Worm, who will lead them to King Taargick's lost tomb. The only guide mad enough to brave the crimson worm's tunnels is a deep gnome called Jirelga. Unfortunately, she is currently in the clutches of the Black Noon Thieves Guild after she attempted to rip them off. The guild is lead by tattooed brute Tuom Molgrade (WC), and consists of many Black Noon Thieves (3x per PC, spread across the area). The guild have set up shop in an abandoned foundry.
I am curious how Jirelga is supposed to know the whereabouts of the Avernal Worm though. Is it a case of "Hey, this thing ate you once, where is it now??" I'm guessing it'll be some kinda 'the trauma of being eaten alive formed a strong mental bond with the beast' nonsense, but I suppose we'll find out next week when the PDF drops.
I've not particularly enjoyed the first two thirds of this AP, although it is not without intermittent and isolated merits. Having read Worst of All Possible Worlds this morning, I started thinking about how I would restructure the AP for play at my table.
:
PCs receive Harrow cards and are drawn to Absalom.
PCs gather enough cards to open gateway to tbe Harrow Court.
PCs gather some more cards via portals across Golarion.
Harrow Court attacked by Raven Nicoletta and the Prince of Wolves.
PCs are defeated and forced to retreat. Raven Nico!etta caims their cards and the Prince of Wolves claims the Harrow Court.
PCs summoned to the Tree of Answers for audience with the Norns. PCs are given the power to confront Raven Nicoletta and the Prince of Wolves, and the opportunity to sway the Norns from their course.
Return to the Harrowed Court (now a desolate wasteground) to confront the Prince of Wolves and rescue the epitomized harrowkin.
PCs transported from Harrow Court to the Nexus of Fate (demiplane) for final confrontation with Raven Nicoletta.
If the PCs did not sway the Norns from their course, they appear to reclaim the Deck of Destiny as Raven Nicoletta falls, and the PCs must defeat tbem too.
I would also dramatically reduce the number of cards in the Deck of Destiny, and by extension, the amount of time the PCs spend on their long ass scavenger hunt, IMO the weakest facet of this AP.
Also, the next game I run will defo have a sausage vendor called Wurst of All Possible Worlds.
Additional information about the ruins of Kho are presented [in the Destiny War], but if you're looking to expand on what's provided, Pathfinder Lost Omens The Mwangi Expanse contains an overview of the Ruins of Kho on pages 168 - 173.
Are there detailed maps, NPCS, specific monsters, described places, artifacts, magic items on Kho ?
"Additional information about the ruins of Kho are presented [in the Destiny War], but if you're looking to expand on what's provided, Pathfinder Lost Omens The Mwangi Expanse contains an overview of the Ruins of Kho on pages 168 - 173."
An alternate interpretation is "usually female and almost always the main character, a Mary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion, and may serve as a form of wish-fulfillment".
It just dawned on me how much this AP is ripping off - sorry, paying homage - to Final Fantasy 10. Evil whale monster? Check. Escorting Mary-Sue VIP on spiritual journey? Check. Travel between different worlds? Check. If we have to win the Blitzball cup in book 3, then so help me....
Yeah, I did consider adding "IMO" afrer the fact, but the person below had already quoted me and I didn't want to alter my post again.
I completely agree with what you just said, re: subjectivity. My review is written from my personal headspace, with the added caveat that I am reading it as a non-Pathfinder player who is looking for material/storylines to convert to another game system. I completely gloss over the stat blocks and specific rules for traps/hazardous environments, as I will be rebuilding those myself.
For these reasons, I found The Seventh Arch to be lacking, but other people will have their own reasons to like or dislike the module, whereas NVM seems to have taken umbrage with my apparent powers of time travel more than anything else.
The big difference between them being I actually read it before submitting my review.
I restarted my subscription following the ORC announcement; received, read and reviewed the PDF copy of this book, then cancelled my subscription because I found it to follow in the recent trend of being, well, bad.
But in response to NVM's not-really-a-review, I have adjusted my own review score to 1 star, just to "balance things out".
Can someone who have the pdf answer some questions. How combat/dungeon heavy is this adventure? Also how linear is it? Some AP can be very linear while others are decently open. My group loves the premise but tend to be a group that values RP.
There are 3 small dungeons and a half-dozen set piece combat encounters.
It is pretty linear, to the point that it almost feels like the first draft of a Pathfinder fanfic with a few RPG elements thrown in.
There are several opportunities for RP, but it mostly feels like you're talking to the train conductor on route to the next story beat.
While I have dabbled in many different AP, I have only run Rise of the Runelords to completion, so it is only the changes from that adventure that I would consider 'canon' for my ongoing home-interpretation of Golarion;
The Heroes of Sandpoint befriended and 'civilized' the goblins of Thistletop. Sandpoint now has a small micro-community of good goblins (called either Hope, or Stinkpoint depending on who you ask). Goblins are now unlocked as a playable race in future campaigns.
Ameiko Kaijitsu married dwarf PC Rast Sternhammer and they have a baby called Gara.
The Heroes of Sandpoint involved themself in the elections for the new Mayor of Magnimar and saw Haldeem Grobaras thrown out on his fat arse. Leis Nivlandis is voted in to replace him. There is even a goblin on the city council now (and goblin lawyers!).
The Broken Arrows are restored under human PC Ben Kotek.
The Paradise riverboat is now a floating casino/fortress owned by half-orc PC Grogg.
The lost city of Xin Shalast is found and (following the exodus of Xarzoug's giant allies) reclaimed by the yeti. The yeti are unlocked as a playable race in future campaigns.
My interpretation was that the OGL is now a ticking bomb. Maybe it goes off on the 13th of Jan, as indicated in the leaked documents, maybe it gets delayed to some undetermined point in the future, but sooner or later it is going to explode. If nothing else, this is a wake-up call that Hasbro is out to get you, and severing yourself from the OGL is both urgent and necessary.
Here is a quote from the Basic Fantasy RPG site outlining what Chris Gonnerman is planning to do about the OGL in relation to his (awesome) product line;
Quote:
It doesn't matter whether Hasbro releases their new license or not. It doesn't matter whether it stands up in court or not. Their attempt to invalidate the license we've always depended on and then to effectively steal what we've created demonstrates that they are an existential threat to our game.
So, what do we do?
We excise the OGL.
To do that, though, we need to identify the SRD bits that are spread through the rulebook. When I created the game, I (and everyone else creating retro-clones at the time) believed that it was important to be able to show that we actually used the SRD. There are bits of SRD text scattered around the rulebook, and honestly I'm not entirely sure where they all are (though I do know many spells and monster descriptions are affected).
I need help to find them all. That's where you guys come in.
Here's the plan going forward: First, so long as the new OGL has not been officially released, Basic Fantasy RPG products will remain available for sale on all current platforms as well as available for download from this site. If the new OGL is released, I may be forced to withdraw all of that material, including at least temporarily hiding the Workshop since it's full of "infringing" materials.
Work on current projects is suspended, with the exception of the Mysterious Island contest and the #Dungeon23 #CommunityEdition. There's no SRD involvement with either of those, nor has the OGL been officially applied to them, and I don't want to interfere with either of them. There's no point letting Hasbro ruin our fun. But projects currently being prepared for public release are on hold right now. I know this hits a few of you harder than others, and I'm very sorry about that, but trust me when I say that it's temporary.
Now, about cleaning up the Core Rules. Unlike all other Basic Fantasy Project publications, the Core Rules legally belong to me. All contributors were asked to submit material only with intent to transfer copyright to me, and thus I hold the copyright to all of it that did not come from the listed sources in the OGL text at the back. The Castles & Crusades monster document referenced will need to be excised as well as the SRD, but that should be a relatively small problem. There are also a few monsters that came from the original Field Guide and thus fall under its license which we will have to deal with.
This leads to a point I need to address: Other Basic Fantasy Project publications are covered by the copyright of their original authors, who released them under the OGL. Technically, I should contact each and every creator listed in any of those books and get their approval to relicense the materials under my new open license (see below) but that might be hard as many of them moved on after initially adopting BFRPG. Some created their own games, some switched to newer OSR games, some just drifted into the aether. Some stayed on here, and those at least I can get approval from.
The alternative is to assume that they agreed to release their materials under a license I chose, and that they tacitly gave their approval for me to relicense them. Legally this is pretty iffy, but on a practical basis any damages they might claim for materials given away for free for so long should be pretty low. It's a chance I might take.
To be clear here: If you are a contributor to anything published under the umbrella of the Basic Fantasy Project other than the core rules, I am asking your permission to relicense your materials. I need you to contact me directly via email at solomoriah@basicfantasy.org and identify yourself by the name or names used where your materials were published, and officially grant me this permission.
The license: I'm proposing a change to the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license. I do not have the legal chops to create my own license, and I suffer from a newly-formed lack of trust in people who are creating new licenses now. The CC licenses have been around a while and cover a very broad variety of things already. I do plan to include a specific exemption covering the name, with a license similar to my current Product Identity License (probably called a Branding License). Or, I may seek trademark protection, but I need to study more on that.
Also, one thing we don't have to worry about is art. I've always maintained a separate arrangement with artists, who are asked to grant to me personally a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive license to use their artwork in Basic Fantasy Project works. The only exception is diagrams (including maps or floorplans) which are required to use the game; if I find any I did not create in the Core Rules I may have to relicense them (with permission of the artist, of course) or get them redrawn. I don't expect this to be a problem.
This starts NOW. I'm going to accept comments on this through January 13th (the day the "new OGL" was supposed to go into effect). Anyone wishing to help find the SRD text may go ahead and start; even if the choice of license is changed, we still need to know where the SRD is hiding in there in order to remove it. Please go visit the original Core Rules thread and post whatever you find there; I'll upload a copy of the C&C document (as soon as I find it) to help with this process. If you have comments on the process itself or questions or suggestions about the license, post them here, but practical comments should go in that thread.
I think they underestimate the fan base, especially where the loyalties really lie.
I'm not so sure. Folk posting on this forum were already skewed against WotC, as evidenced in the 'Do you also play D&D?' thread, where everyone shat on 5e.
Most people who started roleplaying since 5e hit its stride, and who - in all likelihood - play nothing but D&D5e, won't care one whit what happens to Paizo or other smaller 3P creators.
I doubt the majority of those players are even aware of what is happening right now with the OGL.
As someone on the EN World forums said, WotC will get maybe a month of moaning online, then it'll be back to business as usual.
Obviously that doesn't account for any other predatory practices that are still in the pipeline for 2023 and beyond.
