I would like to throw in some comments as well; even though my written English might not be so good.
I have been a loyal buyer of Dungeon Magazine many years and always enjoyed the extra inspiration it gave. I never actually played any of the adventures; I only used bits and pieces for my own campaign that’s until now.
The Cauldron adventure path changed that. Well written and full of new and interesting stuff. I did “ctrl_alt_delete” on my existing campaign and made a new one, placed Cauldron in it (in a cold mountain region that is, -never really liked jungles, hate bugs, and the Japanese snow monkeys worked well as the werebaboons) and called all the heroes forth.
I must say that Life’s Bazaar (issue #97 By Christopher Perkins) and Test of the Smoking Eye (issue #107 By David Noonan) is some of the best “short” adventures I have ever read.
Even now my players are running around like blindfolde in Sigil and the Outlands trying to get their “prime buts” back to Cauldron.
I have a few comments related to the new adventure path “Age of Worms”.
- I love the introduction of new feats, spells and templates. It really spices things up a great deal. As the DM I can remove or add them as I see fit so in my opinion there can’t be enough of these nice “fortune cookies”.
- Personally I love wilderness campaigns and the Cauldron adventure path was more a “lava tube gone alien kinda paranoia theme”, but it was no problem adding a few extra hundred miles to other areas of interest (Red Gorge or the Demonskar) and thereby creating wilderness encounters. So don’t be afraid about to much dungeon crawl it’s so easy to balance it with urban or wilderness encounters.
- I to felt a little uncomfortable with all those big reptilians flying around, and as others, just replaced them with big nasty critters waiting to raise hell. It would be cool to see more strange beasts from all the new source books. Personally I feel much love for the Crawling head, HEEEAAAAD, it could be the perfect villain fleshed out with a cool, but sad, story (and those awesome spell-casting powers).
- Speaking of hell, the fallen angel plot is really nice. Can’t remember when I last saw this type of villain. I took a bit of rewriting but he turned out quite well, just add a little of “Torments” (PC game based on the Planescape setting) melancholy and you have a tragic and not so good ending (love it). So if the new adventure path includes dark gods, unspeakable madness and lost loves I will be your biggest fan.
- The only negative thing I can come up with is concerning the last two adventures in the series. High level NPC’s are easy and fun to make, many DM’s (I think) love to create new villains and even more when they are able to sling out killer spells more rapidly than t…. from a rabbits a…. So don’t spend ten pages on super villains and then forget about the story and the encounters.
I really look forward to The Age of Worms, keep up the good work.
Jakob NN (Denmark)
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I've really enjoyed the Shackled City adventures, and look forward to the next Adventure Path so here is my two cents for things I'd love to see added/continued to the next series.
Obviously, you'll see I'm a huge fan of props and "immersion" aids so that is a big focus for me and I like the integration of existing/new products because it maximizes the usefulness of the product. If I don't own a particular book or product, it certainly encourages me to consider the purchase if I see it being used effectively in an actual adventure.
Here is my list:
1. A poster-sized map is being planned, but I'd love to see several skirmish style maps usable with miniatures for the various individual adventures.
2. How about creating a few fold-up cardstock models usable with the skirmish maps mentioned above or incorporating those available with Map Folio 3D into the skirmish maps?
3. Referencing the miniatures & stat cards in existing or upcoming D&D Miniatures releases would be cool. (The stat cards help with combat and the miniatures help with visualizing the creatures appearance & location). Or, taking it a step further, incorporating popular characters or unique monsters from the Adventure Path into the future releases of D&D miniatures expansions would be fun as well.
4. I love player handouts, so it would be awesome to see more in-game related maps, NPC & monster portraits, illegible NPC notes, arcane riddles, and the like.
5. Working in a new prestige class(es) relevent to the path could help to make the adventure more personal to the player and gives the DM a hook to motivate & direct the PCs. Say like a unique Dragonslayer class or a wizard/sorcerer class available to the characters as taught by one of the major NPCs or NPC organizations. You could put the prestige class in Dragon magazine and make reference to it in Dungeon
6. Of course it has been mentioned before, but new feats, spells, and magic items are always encouraged.
7. As far as authors go, I like Christopher Perkins, Bruce Cordell, and Skip Williams.
I'm sure all of you at Dungeon will blow me away with what you have planned for the next path and I'm anxiously awaiting to see the results! Thanks for taking the time to read the suggestions presented in this message board!
Hank
5. Working in a new prestige class(es) relevent to the path could help to make the adventure more personal to the player and gives the DM a hook to motivate & direct the PCs. Say like a unique Dragonslayer class or a wizard/sorcerer class available to the characters as taught by one of the major NPCs or NPC organizations. You could put the prestige class in Dragon magazine and make reference to it in Dungeon
I'm going to add my partial vote to Hank's suggestion here. Tying prestige classes into the campaign is really what prestige classes are supposed to be for. However, I'm not as interested in new p-classes as I am in campaign-related paths to the existing ones. The ones presented in the DMG are enough, but perhaps the campaign modification sidebars could address p-classes from those books. I don't think any player lept at the opportunity to join the Chisel's prestige class (nor were they even invited or knew that it was possible...) However, a character who's approached by another elf who explains that, for his assistance, he can initiate the character into the path of the mystic archer would be very inviting.