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.
This adventure is light-hearted and contains a good mix of encounter styles. The setting is interesting and well-detailed and provides a great opportunity for players and Game Masters to get use out of the Harrow Deck published by Paizo (although owning a Harrow Deck is not required to run the adventure; a regular deck of cards can easily substitute for it).
The adventure has a wide variety of creatures and characters that the PCs encounter as they explore the Harrowed Realm, a world within a magical harrow deck called the Deck of Harrowed Tales. Many of them are unique fey creatures or variants of existing monsters from the Pathfinder RPG Bestiary. I particularly like that very few of the encounters assume combat as the default option when PCs deal with them. The PCs can generally make deals with most of the “Conspirators” (the most powerful beings of this world, who long ago conspired against the fortune-teller who created them), although many of these deals may require that the PCs agree to provide aid against, or outright challenge, other Conspirators. The adventure makes no assumptions as to whose side the PCs might join, thus allowing for all sorts of potential play experiences. Indeed, while there is a central storyline and plot to the adventure, it’s loose enough to allow events to unfold in virtually any order or manner (except the initial event that sends the PCs to this world). In this respect, it’s much more of a “sandbox” adventure. It sets the scene and environment, and then lets the PCs do what they will with it.
Harrow decks have been part of the Golarion setting since very early on. However, only a very few adventures have focused on them. In this adventure, each card from the Deck of Harrowed Tales has a specific effect on one person, place, thing, or event in the adventure. These effects vary from bonuses to skill checks or attack rolls to providing minor spell effects or inflicting penalties on the PCs’ opponents. Each effect is thematically linked to the card and each card is thematically linked to the person, place, thing, or event it affects. I am actually very impressed that Crystal Frasier was able to link all 54 cards of the harrow deck in this manner, given that there is very limited space in a 32-page adventure. Of course, this means that some encounters have more than one card that can affect them. This is a good thing for the PCs since they do not know ahead of time which cards will work (they have to figure it out for themselves based on what fits thematically) and they can only use each card once. If they use a card that doesn’t fit with a given encounter, then they are out of luck with that card. They cannot used it again. Having multiple cards affect a given encounter allows for the PCs to make a mistake or two and still have a chance to gain a benefit.
Overall, The Harrowing is an excellent adventure, which will provide groups with many fun and light-hearted sessions.
I haven't run The Harrowing yet (though I hope to work it into my current campaign), but it made a fantastic and inspiring read. This is part and parcel of D&D's ambition to be more than a combat game, more than a tabletop skirmish game, more than a wargame with individual figures as player avatars. And that's while coming reasonably close to traipsing through faerie rings...
PCs find themselves in a magical world, trying to escape while preventing certain antagonists from escaping. Encounters and locations are inspired by the Harrow deck (as well as Lewis Carroll - and, dare I add, modules like Dungeonland). Players can take a hard combat line... or choose not to and still get quite far. I found that quite refreshing and well worth the money I spent on it.
This is definitely the most interesting and colorful module yet, varied enough to keep even easily-distracted players fascinated for the duration. The NPC personalities are great, the stat-blocks are really well-done, and the mechanics of using the Harrow deck to help the PCs during encounters are easy to use.
The module is adaptable. With very little tweaking, it would be appropriate for kids, or it's easily to play as a horror module.
If there's any problem with the module, it's that the organization of the encounter areas is a bit confusing; DMs should read a couple times and possibly mark up the map to make sure they know where their players start and where they're going.
Overall, fantastic! This is my favorite module yet.
Down the rabbit hole...I mean, into the card deck!
It's very hard for me to write an objective review of this. After all, it's an adventure written by The Goddess herself, and as I write this I sit at my altar of Crystal... ahem. But I'll try.
Harrowing is a standalone adventure for level 9 characters, set in Pathfinder campaign setting. The adventure revolves around the mystery of Harrowing - a card deck which fills the role of tarot in Golarion. In this particular adventure, the PCs are drawn into a bizarre demiplane based around the imagery and lore of Harrow's cards... and things get weird rapidly.
The Harrow deck itself isn't required to run the adventure, but it's highly recommended. Seeing as the deck is a superb product, you might just want to grab it together with the adventure if you don't own it yet.
"Down the rabbit's hole" and "Mysterious demiplane" are two classic tropes, and one could wonder about how is it possible to make them appealing after all those years of RPG adventures. Crystal Frasier manages to skilfully avoid the many pitfalls of the archetype, and gives us a really *weird*, and yet compelling, tale of strange world and it's unusual inhabitants. The adventure is very sandboxy and open-ended, leaving much to ideas and initiative of players themselves. The encounters are memorable and varied, as each of the 54 Harrow cards has its place in this module.
Yet despite all the otherworldness of Harrowing, there's a classic fantasy plot to follow, and a familiar while yet surprising final showdown with the BBEG. It's short, sweet and great fun to read and run. If you want to give your players a taste of wonder without having to jaunt your campaign into planar voyages, that's the way to do it.
Awesome adventure incorporating all the characters from the Harrow Deck. If this adventure was not already planned when the cards where designed the writer of the adventure did a great job adding everyone to the adventure.
I expected a more random adventure style, like creating the flow of the adventure by drawing cards- but that idea could be used for "Return to the Harrowing". Even without that randomness the best Module I read so far.
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.
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16
