thundercade's page

These are great little things. You get a set of 10 for each order, making it well worth it in my mind. It's always fun to have a unique, game-themed token to represent "hero points" or "re-roll tokens" if you do that kind of thing for your players. I got the gold and silver myself and will most likely come back for the copper.

They are heavy enough to use - but just know they are not "hefty" or anything.

First, I need to comment on the book binding. These are very nice, magazine style paperback books. But, after paging through the first third or so several times prepping for the first session, the pages are falling out. I'm very careful with the book, nothing got pulled on, and I don't flatten the book open nor strain the binding in any way. The glue binding just starts falling apart and now a whole section of pages has fallen out completely. This is incredibly disappointing for what otherwise is a great looking book. It makes me limit how many times I dare crack open the other volumes I've received.

As for the adventure itself:
The other reviews here are right on, the adventure/encounters are good, and if you do some flavor work-up around the theme of tomb-raiding, it can be interesting - but yeah, the whole first couple adventures into the Necropolis just seem to be completely disconnected to the actual story.

I would have liked to see one or two encounters based on exploring outside in the necropolis on the way to something, running into more unexpected troubles (other than the ambush already there, I mean). It does provide some good suggestion-type details on the necropolis to make this on your own. I would suggest cutting the second adventure site in half (both the layout and number of encounters) and having the party deal with two other encounters out in the necropolis based on where they say they go.

It does, however, lend itself well to a group that isn't very experienced in a table-top rpg, and maybe that's what Paizo had in mind here. The distinct chunks of tomb exploration are a great "intro to dungeon delving", if you will. The dungeons, traps, treasure, and random encounters are all there without the risk of being away from town. That can really help a new group. And if you're a GM that makes traps more interesting than default, those fit in pretty well.

For the most part, the investigation part of went well and the party had fun getting to know the creepy small village. But know that this requires some effort on the GM's part - you need to act things out well to get the back woods creepy feel going. That made the early events fun for everyone.

One flaw I would note - actually two flaws wrapped into one - is that there's a point where the party needs to go to a certain location for things to continue and I pretty much had to have an NPC plead with them to go that way (flaw 1), and make sure they said enough to motivate the party to clear out the rest of the module. This then sets the party on several encounters in a row without breaks (flaw 2). They could theoretically take breaks, but it doesn't match up with the timing crunch the module tries to put on them - so most of the combat in the module take place all in one shot, ending with a challenging one.

Encounters were good and challenging for an APL 3. The party will be tested to make sure they have diverse abilities. The end encounter creature was pretty cool, but I would say it should be +1 on the CR. It just has too many abilities/defenses. A high RP, non-power-gaming group may be overwhelmed quickly, so play to your group and don't be too mean with the tactics in the fights prior.

If you have time, I would suggest read through it once, and try to come with a way to break up the timing of some of the encounters and re-distribute them a bit involving more of the town. That would get this one an extra star.