A brief history so you know where I'm coming from, in convenient bullet point form! :P
1)Played D&D b/c of 2 older brothers from about 1984-1994, stopping about 10th grade (I'm 29).
2)Hiatus from 1994-2005, moved to Chicago, where I knew noone other than my wife, figured it might be a way to meet like-minded gamer geeks
3)Found a group via craigslist, been playing every 4-5 weeks since summer 2006.
4)Lost one member to a move, gained two more, for a total of 6 now, myself included
5)Pretty diverse group-ages 18-36, professional, college educated
6)I took over DMing duties two months ago, and was unsure of what to do. Low and behold, pathfinder was just starting, and it looked like what I needed-e.g. 'dming, but without the legwork needed, that i used to have in middle school, but not now'--I'm a doctor, so time is at a premium, but we manage to meet every 4-6 weeks, for a 10-12 hour gaming blowout...
My impressions
1)Artwork/production-great, i am amazed at the production quality I am getting overall for just $13.99/month. Everything from the glossy thick pages, color maps, BEAUTIFUL cityscapes, it is very conducive for flavorful DMing...for example, when describing their first run in with a sinspawn, i can just hold up the excellent picture of it, and poof, no more imagining by the players/confusion. ("wait, does he have 2 arms or 4? Where are the extra talons sticking out from? How tall is he again?")
2)Writing-AMAZING-at my age, the one thing I can't stand is RPGs that are geared toward 13 year olds, a la' final fantasy, etc. No "young boy wakes up with amnesia, learns he's destined to save the world. And he has big spiky hair and a huge sword." The writing is mature, realistic, and fleshed out, without glaringly obvious fantasy cliches.
3)Ability to use out of the box-A minus-Any deficiencies here are more than made up for by the awesome message board community, who have done helpful things such as writing up stats for the sandpoint festival games, the dedication speeches, and hex maps. These make dming painless, with the only legwork being a)remembering combat tactics for the creatures, and b)customizing the adventure in various ways to reflect PC backstories/motivations. The only minus here is my reliance on others for printed out hexmaps-i'm not photoshop-savvy AT ALL, but how hard would it be to be able to print out dungeon maps from the PDFs, and then blow them up to 5' scale? Sure beats drawing on a hexmap, but we have been using dungeon tiles to good effect...
I plan on getting the big campaign book in august, the map folio, and the crit fumble deck in the near future, not to mention keeping my subscription at least through '08. Your involvement on the boards and great customer service really indicate how dedicated you all are to this product and community.
A loyal customer
Kent/Ebolav
Sort of a tangent to your post but, about to finish? I've only received the first 2 issues in hardcopy, and the first 3 issues in PDF. We've still got half of the the Runelords AP goodness to come still. Lets not get too far ahead of ourselves! :-)
Having said that, I still haven't started my Shackled City campaign. At the rate I'm going, we'll be well into 5E before I get the chance to run the Runelords AP! :-)
Olaf the Stout
We just finished #1 (in the form of a totally unexpected, to me as GM at least, segue into #2). I'm really pleased overall.
My biggest wish would be writeups for major town NPCs. The module goes so far as to suggest that certain NPCs can help the PCs, but gives no stats for them. I would find that more useful than stats for the iconics, which we are not using at all. My wishlist for #1 would be Shalelu, Hemlock, Zantus, Kendra, Aldrin, and Mvashti, in approximately that order.
I kept having to flip through the Sand Point writeup looking for answers to questions like "Can anyone in the entire town cast Dispel Magic?" (I believe the answer is No, if anyone else was wondering.) Having a PC who was, and is, charmed by the barghest makes this rather a pressing question!
My player came up with an *elaborate* explanation of everything that has happened so far, tying it in to Chopper, the massacre at the founding of Sand Point, and fundamental Varisian/Chelish tensions (the PCs are all very Varisian). He's really engaged--it's wonderful to see.
Our one bad moment was the shadow encounter in Thistletop. That was really not appropriate for our party (despite their being much higher level than expected) and I wish I'd seen that coming and taken it out.
#2 scares me spitless--I'm quite excited to see how it works in play. The PCs (and player) were certainly disturbed by the Sanatorium. They are now lugging the poor wretch down the road to Magnimar, but I don't think he's going to make it. I am drooling over the thought of running a late-night scene where the character on watch finds himself conversing with an apparently sane and recovering (but really dead) patient.
Mary
I have to agree with this, my group has done an 'emergency reconvene' on a Saturday afternoon (we usually play every second Thursday night, which drives me crazy.... tooo.... long.... between....gaaaming.....), and they seem to be having a ball, we're about to enter the dungeons of Thistletop at the moment.
The boards have been FANTASTIC- handouts, extra plot hooks, side quests, artwork (special thanks to Lilith for her work). I wish boards on... ahem, 'another' gaming company website could be this supportive and familiar. I now get in trouble from my (gamer) wife (who's playing RotRL) because when she gets up, I've been checking the Paizo boards for half an hour... when she goes to bed, I'm usually checking the Paizo boards for another half hour...
Gaming so good it's wrecking my marriage. I'm not sure whether I should cheer or cry.