The Fiddler's Lament (PFRPG) PDF

This is a review by a GM who used the module as intended during the first book of the Carrion Crown adventure path. Spoilers for both the module and the first book of the AP are contained below. You are warned!!

I am currently GMin'g a Carrion Crown game and I decided to use this plug in to keep things interesting for my group. I had noticed that they were starting to get a little tired of all the "investigation" as they were trying to win the hearts of the townspeople (trust points) and complete all the research prior to entering the prison. In order to spice things up, I dropped this module on them.

In order to prepare them for it, I have had caravans of wanderers come through town and play fiddle music early in the morning. That way my players were not on high alert as soon as I introduced something "new" in the form of morning fiddle music.

One of the hardest things for me as the GM was waiting for them to WANT to go shopping at the store so that I could open the module as intended. Once things got started though, my group had an absolute BLAST. We took two sessions to play through the module, though I could see more efficient groups getting through it in just a single session.

A testament to how well this module was written is that my group started out completely rested. After the battle with the zombies, the shadow, the hands and the Skeletons at the posting pole, they were running very low on HP. At that point, however, they met the cleric who helped them out in that department. By the end of the module, everyone was nearly out of resources but having a great time!

At the end, they were shocked to learn that this was NOT actually a part of the AP as written, but that it was a 3PP plug in adventure. We had a great time, Greg vaughn NAILED the feeling of the town. 5 stars.

Some Spoilers:

I customized the encounters heavily to fit our particular group and the module's place in the adventure timeline (ran it as the final straw pushing to the town hall meeting and running one level higher at all parts of the module). However, the actual framework, the descriptions, the pacing, and the design of the events themselves was phenomenal.

My players described it as a roller coaster tour of the town of Ravengro. they felt pushed in all the right places to continue even when they had stretched their limited resources to the max. They were given a chance to meet and impress people in town that would have otherwise been difficult to interact with and were able to build up enough trust that it actually makes sense for the town to petition them to fix whatever is causing all the ruckus.

By reading it in advance, I was able to place interactions with some of the key NPC's earlier in their path. For instance, a small relationship with the acolyte Rufio before the Fiddler begins playing really makes a difference in how the PC's respond to both his request that they help the councilor and the peril they later find him in as a result of his going it alone.

The included maps were an excellent addition to the town, and what areas were not mapped were specified well enough to be able to extrapolate from the Ravengro Map. I did re-use the map from the Murmuring Fountain add-on for one encounter because quite simply the maps are too good to only use once.

My complaint with most modules is that there is a great deal of background material that adds to encounters that there is really no way to ever share with the players. Most of the encounters here leave someone to tell the missing parts, allowing the PC's to see the story and the method to the madness. However, the main story about the elf maid and the mysterious stranger is left without a thread for the PC's to pull. There is enough information for the DM to find a way, but the story is so nicely wrapped at the end that the motivations are difficult to reveal.

It is encounter heavy, but placed where we put it in the adventure, it capped off the slow build of events, bringing the interaction with the town itself to a climax that leads easily into the investigation of Harrowstone itself.

My players finished the final encounter feeling exhausted and challenged.

This plug-in fits seamlessly into the Adventure Path and adds a haunting back story to the game. We played this plug-in as a kick off adventure to bring the characters together and make introductions.

This adventure-path plug-in adventure is 20 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page introduction/how-to-use, 1 page author bios, 1 page SRD and 1 page back cover, leaving 13 pages of content, so let's check this out!

This being an adventure review, the following text contains SPOILERS. If you're a player, don't risk your immortal soul and incurring your DM's wrath by reading on!

Still here? Righty right! Early in the Carrion Crown AP, this plug-in can be considered interesting in that it centers on the tragic elf-maid Alhindriosa - fair and out of touch, the dancing maid lived a life with the gypsies until a sinister figure massacred her adopted kin with only her surviving - traumatized, she's been in custody of varying institutions, catatonic and all but a shell of a being. The stranger has returned and he's taken her back to the village and given her one task: Play this violin for your kin. And for the first time in over 80 years, the maid reacts and plays a dirge of the saddest kind- and her dead kin rise.

The mini-module kicks off with a cool establishing encounter in a fully mapped, full-color shop and zombified grand-parents coming to visit their living kin. and from here on, things get worse and the Pc can hire themselves out to money-lenders, save old local dogs, the postboy and even an old councilor from varying undead threats before, finally, the PCs will have to stop Alhindriosa at the cemetery by vanquishing her now resurrected brethren and destroying the dread Rebec Malevolenti, the fiddle she unwittingly plays that resurrects the undead menaces. Once they have destroyed the fiddle, the PC's victory will be bitter-sweet, for the elven maiden falls back into her stupor and the townsfolk asks for blood - hopefully the players can prevent further death. The pdf has a one-page, stunning artwork of the final confrontation as well as another piece of beautiful cartography of the final confrontation and full stats of the devilish fiddle as well as a nice table to track the trust the PCs can get ( and lose!) during the course of this module..

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are top-notch, I didn't notice any glitches. Layout adheres to Legendary Games' two-column landscape format and is delivered on par with Paizo-level quality. Especially the beautiful artworks by Colby Stevenson are legendary indeed and we get two versions of the pdf, the second being more printer-friendly and backgroundless. The cartography is also up to the highest quality. This module is beautiful, the artworks stellar and the production values are awesome and up to the highest demands. And the module can easily be dropped into not only CC, but also into just about any village- that being said, Greg A. Vaughan can write adventures - we all know that. The writing is thus creepy, cool and imaginative. BUT: This module is SHORT. Very short.

And honestly, I would have enjoyed slightly more detail or choices on part of the players. Perhaps a sandboxy format with a timeline and consequences for dillydallying would have much improved my enjoyment - as written, the module feels rather like a string of sequential encounters that borders on the railroady but manages to skirt that dread appellation by virtue of its excellent writing. In the end, the "Fiddler's Lament" is a neat little plug-in module, but one that will, at the maximum, occupy for players from 2 to 4 hours and is about as long as 0onegames' "The Sinking"-installments, of which you could get 2.5 (albeit in b/w) for the same price. Content-wise, e.g. "Politics Unusual" and "Ascension of the Prophet" will serve as my frame of reference for rating this module.

If Legendary Games' quality production values would not be up to these high standards with original artworks and cartography etc., I'd rate this down another star. Taking everything into account, my final verdict for this module will be 4 stars - a good, though not a stellar, short module.

Endzeitgeist out.