Varisian fortune-tellers from across Golarion use the mystic harrow deck to read fate and predict the future, but few have ever mastered the mysterious harrow to such a degree as Sonnorae, a long-dead bard from the Age of Darkness. Fearing her collection of stories would be lost when she died, she created a demiplane within her own harrow deck to contain them. Over time, these stories took on lives of their own, and melded with the images on the cards themselves. But not all stories have happy endings, and the storykin who inhabit the Harrowed Realm have their own motivations and plots for power or even escape into the real world. When the PCs find themselves drawn into the Harrowed Realm in search of a disappeared scholar, they must use all their wits and steel to navigate the landscape and politics of this strange wonderland and make it home again.
The Harrowing is an adventure for 9th-level characters, written for the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and compatible with the 3.5 edition of the world’s oldest RPG. It features an entire plane of fanciful locations and characters inspired by the popular harrow deck of the Pathfinder campaign setting. In addition, you’ll find a brand-new monster and an optional rules subsystem allowing players to bend reality to their wills by using all 54 cards in the optional Pathfinder Campaign Setting Harrow Deck to manipulate the strange demiplane in which they adventure.
Written by Crystal Frasier
Pathfinder Modules are 32-page, high-quality, full-color, adventures using the Open Game License to work with both the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game and the standard 3.5 fantasy RPG rules set.
I really loved this module. The content and art meshed perfectly, which you don't always get in a module. The background story and creative elements are stellar. As the DM, I greatly appreciated the fact that just about every encounter did not need to be resolved through combat if the PCs came at it from a different angle. You would be shooting yourself in the foot if you play this without a Harrow card deck, so be sure you have that before you get started. The players really enjoyed having those cards in front of them and trying to figure out when and how to use them during the adventure, which is a keen "game within a game" explained in the adventure. I recommend explaining that to the players, even if that takes things a little out of character at first, otherwise they "miss" how the game works for the first bit and can waste some of their opportunities to play the right cards. The theater flip-map would be handy too for one of the encounters. (I substituted the cathedral flip-map which worked well too.) Some of the NPCs are super cool: the personality and stats for the rabbit prince combine to make him a terribly fun character. The strangeness of the realm prompted the players to get really engaged and come up with some innovative and wacky solutions to the encounters. Plus, this module was just a delight to read. I read the module on a flight, and kept annoying the other nearby passengers with little giggles and hoots. If you do play this adventure, afterward listen to the Pathfinder podcast where they interview the author, which I found really insightful. Eventually, Paizo should re-publish this fine adventure with expanded content.
Very original and well-written module. It has ample opportunities for role-playing and puzzle-solving. The Harrowing has fewer combats than other modules, but all the ones that are in there are fun and memorable.
You can feel rather than see the inspiration from Alice in Wonderland and The Labyrinth in between the pages. It has some scary bits and is definitely written for adults. GMs may have to omit or tone down some of the scary bits for younger players. While more lighthearted than others, some parts are genuinely creepy.
The only complaint is that it wasn't long enough! In order to fit into 32 pages, the author had to cut some planned content. In some cases, you can see where some of these started. Some characters seem to have subplots mentioned that are just dropped. The players will easily chalk it up to the chaotic nature of the Harrowing denizens and it does nothing to hurt the adventure.
Out of all the non-Adventure Path Pathfinder modules, this one deserves a sequel more than any other. The Harrowed Realm could even be expanded as a permanent location of a Golarion\Inner Sea campaign (or any other campaign).
In conclusion, this is well-worth the money and I very much recommend it.
This module was a pleasure to run and my players had a great time.
I mixed this module with the Advanced Race Guide beta playtest, allowing my players to build and play 31 point races. That theme fits with the "Alice in Wonderland" feel of the module perfectly.
I just finished playing through this module, and we really enjoyed it. It's fairly open-ended and sandboxy, but still gives the players a good idea of what they need to do to accomplish their roles. It also makes good use of incorporating the Harrow Deck, and players who like props in their games will have fun searching the deck for the appropriate cards.
There's also a lot of room for roleplaying, considerably more than most pre-made modules I've been through. Almost every encounter has a fair amount of roleplaying that goes along with it, and many of them can be talked through with no fighting at all. Characters who focus on social skills will get a lot of use out of them. On the other hand, there's always a way to progress by picking fights, so groups that just want to hack things up will still have fun. There's a lot of variety in the encounters, and practically any type of character will have an opportunity to shine.
The way the combat encounters are set up is my largest complaint, though; the players typically have two or three days between each encounter, and most of them are against a single powerful enemy; or at least, if there are multiple enemies, there will be a boss and several smaller enemies that don't really matter. If the party has a character that is capable of going nova or if the boss just gets unlucky on a saving throw, the party may tear apart several of the "big" encounters in a single round. There are no smaller encounters to deplete the party's resources leading up to the big fights until you get to the very last part of the module.
A smaller complaint is that the plot hook is really completely irrelevant to the overall story. A random NPC gets sucked into this world and the players go in after him; he doesn't have anything to do with the story inside the realm, the players don't interact with him at all until the very end, and he really is almost literally just a hook to get the players involved. By the time our group was about halfway through the module, we had forgotten we were even looking for him.
Still, it's easy to recommend this module to pretty much anybody. It was a lot of fun.
I was working this up for a VTT and I pulled the maps and noticed all the secret doors are still marked on The Manmolds map. Is there any chance this could be remedied or is it something already flattened to the image?
I was working this up for a VTT and I pulled the maps and noticed all the secret doors are still marked on The Manmolds map. Is there any chance this could be remedied or is it something already flattened to the image?
Thanks,
Andrew
After reviewing the PDF, those tags are flattened in the image. It looks like this product was created before we started enforcing that those tags be their own text element. It is our standard to make sure those tags do not get flattened now, however. I'll take a look and see if we can get that remedied. An email will be sent automatically when the file is updated.
Just started running this, been sitting on it for a while because I wanted to stream it into my Carrion Crown Campaign in the middle of Broken Moon. Finally sunk my teeth into it last night, and am having a blast, I hope my players are as well. One thing I would love to see is some paper minis or (I know this won't happen but I will ask) pawns for this module. Many of the story kin would make awesome pawns, especially
Spoiler:
the bears on unicycles.
The module or the concepts of the module play so well in an Golorion based Alice in Wonderland kind of adventure, paper minis/pawns may have more broad reuse for GMs.
Anyways, hopeful idea, but mostly just here to say great module!
One thing I would love to see is some paper minis or (I know this won't happen but I will ask) pawns for this module. Many of the story kin would make awesome pawns, especially...
If enough people people make requests for that, you never know what might happen...
One thing I would love to see is some paper minis or (I know this won't happen but I will ask) pawns for this module. Many of the story kin would make awesome pawns, especially...
If enough people people make requests for that, you never know what might happen...
I think I already have requested it, but I would still definitely buy these if they were offered!
I can't seem to make a review of this, so I'll put it here:
Thank you for making this module.
It has to be the most fun I've had at the table, ever. The deck element harkens back to the days of good old graphic adventures on the computer, figuring out what goes where and frequently allowing us to bypass fights entirely (Though I'm sure groups that are fans of many battles will be more strict on just buffing and not bypassing!)
I have trouble imagining how an adventure could be more awesome than this.
I was thinking about picking this up for more group, but the Harrow Cards can't be purchased anymore? Any solutions to this?
This is my exact question, although I may be able to stretch my campaign out to delay the Harrowing for a while. Depending on how fast they move through the earlier modules I've strung together. Or maybe I'll just skip this one.
It be awesome if I could find a pdf version of the deck since I am running this completely online.
I was thinking about picking this up for more group, but the Harrow Cards can't be purchased anymore? Any solutions to this?
This is my exact question, although I may be able to stretch my campaign out to delay the Harrowing for a while. Depending on how fast they move through the earlier modules I've strung together. Or maybe I'll just skip this one.
It be awesome if I could find a pdf version of the deck since I am running this completely online.
Yes, that's what I was referring to about delaying it a bit. I am hoping the have a pdf of it, as well. My group has experienced a deck of many things and a deck of GM is crazy, one of our guys ended up being a one-eyed, werefrog. Of course there were some bonueses, but no one remembers them.
I lost a 10th level paladin to a deck of many things back in the day...lost to the void somewhere.
I'll brush on some in-game information in my question so please see the SPOILER below.
Question:
I get the opportunity to run this on Friday and I am looking for some input from those that have either played or developed this module. I've established how the party will obtain the harrow deck, but I'm not sure how they should discover that the deck has powers in the demiplane.
Should they be told that they can play cards at certain events or should they just figure it out like going "Hey, this card looks like a blue dragon and that is a blue dragon...I wonder what happens if I lay it on the table."?
What I'm currently thinking of doing is when they land on the demi-plane in game I'll throw the harrow deck on the table in a haphazard fashion so they have to pick it up, much as they would on the demiplane, and see the pictures and inscriptions on it, hopefully piecing together the events unfolding and the faces of the cards. Using this method may take them a while to get it but I think would be more rewarding.
I'll go on the record as requesting paper minis for this module as well. If you make them I WILL buy them because I will be running this module as part of my Carrion Crown Campaign.
Also, I think that this was the most fun module I have read! It will be a challenge to run, because it seems as though a lot was left up to the DM due to word count, but that just gives me room to flex my evil creative muscles!!
I fully support minis (I personally would even buy a set of plastic minis from it)for this module and even more so support Crystal writing more! I have been gaming since '83 and count this module as my all time favorite.
Waw, Crystal! This adventure turns out to be every bit as good as I imagined it.
Our Curse of the Crimson Throne party just launched into the Harrowed Realm for an extra long session. We tackled a few locations, like the Midnight Circus and the Prophet's Garden, and are currently stuck in the Demon's Fen. The party also encountered the gnome from the Hidden Truth (I placed him in the forest as a first encounter, to give more insight on this demiplane), the Rabbit Prince and the Owl.
I'm curious if this would fit well thematically immediately following The House on Hook Street. We're about to enter the dream house in the latter, and we may be finished in two or three sessions. Thoughts?
I was working this up for a VTT and I pulled the maps and noticed all the secret doors are still marked on The Manmolds map. Is there any chance this could be remedied or is it something already flattened to the image?
Thanks,
Andrew
After reviewing the PDF, those tags are flattened in the image. It looks like this product was created before we started enforcing that those tags be their own text element. It is our standard to make sure those tags do not get flattened now, however. I'll take a look and see if we can get that remedied. An email will be sent automatically when the file is updated.
This issue still exists eight years after it was brought to your attention
If anyone is interested in running this as a prequel or lead-in to the new Stolen Fate AP, DM me. I have created a full 2E conversion in Foundry VTT with maps, creatures, and loot all set up. Happy to share it.
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