Consider this:
The PCs find their way into the drow city, and must now decide on a course of action. They have in hand an offer to become bottom-level agents of a drow house, but it's the wrong house.
I can't predict if they'll bite or not. I rather suspect they won't, because the chance that they'll be detected goes up *so* much if they are in daily close contact with the drow.
Even if they do bite, though, they have no way to know that persevering in the service of their House will get them what they want. It's the wrong House, after all, and drow Houses are very secretive, so why should anyone there know what they need to know?
It seems inevitable to me that a proactive PC party will raid Azrinae, looking for the information they actually need. Which will be unfortunate, as that will have to be made up from scratch. Azrinae is supposed to be mostly abandoned but heavily defended. Frankly, I don't feel up to designing it from scratch. And by this level, it is not feasible to give the PCs a quick warn-off; their resources are very extensive.
I like the PCs-as-drow-house-members idea; it's what attracted me to SD initially. I fear, however, that the PCs won't do it. I may have to resort to telling the player, "This is what the module expects, please stick with it" because the alternative of statting up Azrinae is beyond my resources, and I can't imagine that they wouldn't go there. (Or, if Azrinae itself is a dead end, go after the Azrinae drow, which is an even worse outcome.)
My other difficulty is that if the PCs do obtain the information, they will tend to go after Allevrah immediately. We had this at the end of RotRL #4 too. The PCs knew who their foe was, and other than levels, there was no reason not to strike. But RotRL #5 and SD #5 both require the PCs to diverge from this plan and for reasons that are not obvious to me. (The premise of RotRL #5 is that the PCs will obtain essential tools by digressing. Unfortunately the AP structure, meant to allow the modules to be run independently, almost guarantees that there will *not* be essential tools in one module needed for the next. That's the case here as well.)
Mary
Creative Director
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As for the urge to jump ahead to the end of the campaign... the only thing that should stop you from doing that is not actually having the adventures in hand. And even then... if you've got the energy and time, you can certainly make them up. Of course, if PCs learn about Allevrah halfway through Endless Night and then immediately set out for the last adventure, they'll have to figure out how to deactivate the glyphs they find there on their own AND will be facing encounters FAR too tough for them. So if the PCs do this, you should make sure they hit a few "along the way" adventures to level up.
No pre-made adventure can accurately predict all PCs. If you know your players well and know their tactics and know they'll skip an encounter or several or an entire adventure, you'll just need to work a bit more to adapt the adventure to follow.
Mary,
the easiest solution I can think of is to simply disregard the assumption that House Azrinae is largely empty - the players are unlikely to know about that before arriving in the Drow city. Simply replace Vonnarc with Azrinae and make a few minor adjustments, and you should be set to go. Instead of exploring a minor house, have them infiltrate the big baddies directly. You will probably have to alter a few of the encounters, but that's less than writing up another drow house from scratch.
Mary,
the easiest solution I can think of is to simply disregard the assumption that House Azrinae is largely empty - the players are unlikely to know about that before arriving in the Drow city. Simply replace Vonnarc with Azrinae and make a few minor adjustments, and you should be set to go. Instead of exploring a minor house, have them infiltrate the big baddies directly. You will probably have to alter a few of the encounters, but that's less than writing up another drow house from scratch.
In this case, the "calling down a meteor" would be a secret project that all of the high-ranking Azrinae know about, but wouldn't be divulged to mere servants. The informant might still be the Vonnarc mage, though--she's looking to recruit "inside men" to avenge Allevrah's rise to prominence over her position as Azrinae puppet-master.
I'm with Mary on this one. I love the idea of Endless Night but the execution doesn't work.
1) There's no reason for the PCs to go to Vonnarc. Even if they do go, they're expected to just hang out there cleaning stables until summoned by the wizard who then tells them where to go. PCs are sure to explore and they're sure to explore Azrinae.
2) Once they get the information on Allevrah, there is no reason to go to Kyonin. I think this is easily changed, have the drow wizard say tell the PCs that if if they want to learn about Allevrah, they should seek out the Winter Council. That at least brings the adventures in line. They can learn about the Blood-thingy at the Winter Council compound (they've been trying to figure out what happened to Allevrah themselves).
#1 looks a bit harder to deal with. Turning Vonnarc into House Azrinae would be one idea. Perhaps Allevrah was a wizard as well rather than head of the house.
Yes, maybe Vonnarc->Azrinae is the way to go. It will take substantial work to put the information in all the places where it should be, but that sounds a lot easier than motivating the PCs to (a) join Vonnarc (hard to sell) and (b) not raid Azrinae (flatly impossible to sell, knowing my player).
I don't think that shortcutting around #5 will be a problem for my game, because my PCs will be agents of the Winter Council. But for a normal game I'd see it as a severe problem. Running #4->#6 without #5 is going to be very tough in terms of levels.
James, can you explain why the module is structured the way it is? It seems to me that you ask the PCs to investigate Azrinae, but stat up Vonnarc--which is hard for me to understand. Even if the PCs hook up with Vonnarc, they have to know that Azrinae is their target, and any decently proactive party will therefore try to do something about Azrinae--walking right off the prepared material into the blue (well, black, in this case).
This is structurally like the problems with RotRL #4-6 (the PCs want to skip #5) but seems more difficult to deal with than it was in RotRL.
Mary
I don't think that shortcutting around #5 will be a problem for my game, because my PCs will be agents of the Winter Council.
It's nice to see you posting, Mary. :)
Were the PCs created as council agents from the start of the campaign? That's how I'm thinking of running this, but the revelation in A Memory of Darkness that the council is a tiny remnant of its former strength is putting a crimp in those plans.
How did you handle this?
I don't think that shortcutting around #5 will be a problem for my game, because my PCs will be agents of the Winter Council.It's nice to see you posting, Mary. :)
Were the PCs created as council agents from the start of the campaign? That's how I'm thinking of running this, but the revelation in A Memory of Darkness that the council is a tiny remnant of its former strength is putting a crimp in those plans.
How did you handle this?
Lets try this again.... (Daggone post monster) I think having the pcs be agents of the winter council will make the revalation that they are weak even greater. Let me explain what I see as happening. Essentially I see the winter council as having splinter cell groups who operate wiothout knowledge of each other, leaving only the council members knowing of their existence (to make it harder for them to be removed from power) and each cell believes that things are awesome at all times. The council may have gone quiet but in elven terms it hasn't been long enough to panic and each group just keeps on trucking. In essence only the actual cell leaders even know there is a council, etc. I have a pc who is joining the organization through Kwava's sponsorship and it will be fuin when he finds out what's really going on. :P
Lets try this again.... (Daggone post monster) I think having the pcs be agents of the winter council will make the revalation that they are weak even greater. Let me explain what I see as happening. Essentially I see the winter council as having splinter cell groups who operate wiothout knowledge of each other, leaving only the council members knowing of their existence (to make it harder for them to be removed from power) and each cell believes that things are awesome at all times. The council may have gone quiet but in elven terms it hasn't been long enough to panic and each group just keeps on trucking. In essence only the actual cell leaders even know there is a council, etc.
Yes, that's what I was going for: the organization still exists and is fairly functional even though the center of it is rotting away. I plan to have the PCs know of one of the actual Council members by name and vague rumor (their patron, as it were) and nothing more; they mainly know people two levels removed from the center.
I've redone _Shadow on the Sky_ so that the PCs are there to investigate why the Council agent in Riddleport has suddenly gone silent. Same material but different plotline. I hope it works.
Mary
Hmm.
This module could go wrong at the start in a lot of ways.
--What if the PCs don't speak the relevant languages? Clearly they can't pass themselves off as drow if they can't communicate, and Common just won't do; it wasn't invented yet when the drow went underground.
Unless I am mistaken, neither Comprehend Languages nor Tongues provides the impression that you can actually speak the language.
--What if the PCs object, reasonably, that they will have the identity of specific recognizable drow, but don't know anything about those individuals? That's a great way to get caught immediately. Speak with Dead might help a little bit here.
A solution to both of these would be to have some memories come along with the stolen drow form. The way Speak with Dead works, it is clear that flesh retains memory even with the soul departed, so this would make sense. I couldn't resist, of course, having some behavioral tendencies come along with the memories....
Mary
--What if the PCs don't speak the relevant languages? Clearly they can't pass themselves off as drow if they can't communicate, and Common just won't do; it wasn't invented yet when the drow went underground.
I planned to give Undercommon to agents of the Winter Council as a bonus language. I just don't think that the council would tolerate agents who couldn't understand their prey.
--What if the PCs object, reasonably, that they will have the identity of specific recognizable drow, but don't know anything about those individuals? That's a great way to get caught immediately. Speak with Dead might help a little bit here.
Indeed. I think that the path brushes over this and just says that it won't happen, but I think that this avoids conflict (aka plot), and that's not necessarily a good thing.
I plan on making this danger clear to the PCs and then sitting back to watch how they deal with it. They're a ridiculously clever bunch, and when they get brainstorming together they come up with answers to problems I'd thought unsolvable. As you point out, speak with dead is a logical starting point.
A solution to both of these would be to have some memories come along with the stolen drow form. The way Speak with Dead works, it is clear that flesh retains memory even with the soul departed, so this would make sense. I couldn't resist, of course, having some behavioral tendencies come along with the memories....
Doesn't that take the resolution of the conflict away from the players though? This is a chance to do problem solving in a manner other than combat, and I always try to seek those out. Everybody's group is different, of course.
I can't predict if they'll bite or not. I rather suspect they won't, because the chance that they'll be detected goes up *so* much if they are in daily close contact with the drow.
Even if they do bite, though, they have no way to know that persevering in the service of their House will get them what they want. It's the wrong House, after all, and drow Houses are very secretive, so why should anyone there know what they need to know?
If the PCs don't want to go with Gadak and join House Vonnarc, let them go. House Vonnarc's role is not meant to be the place the PCs go to learn about the Azrinae plot. Rather, and although it might not look like it at first, House Vonnarc is meant to be a shelter in the storm.
If the PCs want to bumble about a vast alien city with no guide, let them. They should quickly learn that the residents of Zirnakaynin are far more suspicious of strangers and far more hostile to no-bodies than they are to those that are the property (and thus protected) by their city’s noble houses. From poor drow looking for their big break, to slavers willing to pick strong specimens off the street, to nobles hostile against those who don't offer them immediate obeisance, seemingly everyone in Zirnakaynin is hostile - the PCs are strangers in a very strange and deadly land. If they need to find this out first hand, fine - great! - it likely gives you more of a chance to drive home the sinister, deadly nature of the drow and lets you get a little more use out of the Zirnakaynin article. Give the PCs a few days to have some close calls, maybe even have someone grow real suspicious of them, maybe even get attacked a few times. Then have Gadak come back. See then if this schemer's offer of comfortable service - and a bed - does seem more appealing.
The idea that the PCs' chances of being detected increases in the drow house is certainly a way of thinking, but I don't buy it. As servants to a drow house, the PCs have a story, they're somebodies (they're servants to a drow house). Gadak also pulls a few strings to get them in fast - he's a keen one and thinks he might be able to use the PCs. Out in the crowd, though, the characters are nobodies. In the city, the con-artists and criminals don't know them, they're well armed and capable but come from no where, they're probably never seen apart, they have no house allegiance, they're probably asking about things they have no right to ask about (and that every non-noble drow knows to keep their noses far away from), and their stories are likely full of holes - there's something fishy going on with them. It shouldn't take long for the PCs to catch some cunning drow merchant or informant's curiosity. In Zirnakaynin, where there are secrets there's profit to be made and power to be had by finding out those secrets. Remember, Zirnakaynin might look like a city, but it's a wilderness, and the PCs have two options: fit in or die at the hands of a powerful and utterly paranoid magical society. If they're going to survive in the city they need a cover and Gadak offers them a damn good one. If they don't want it, the Zirnakaynin article offers a variety of locations and NPCs the PCs might be able to fall in with, but none that gives them more flexibility and clout than that which they'd find with House Vonnarc.
Remember, part of this adventure is about culture shock. If the PCs parade right into Zirnakaynin like they're walking down the streets of Riddleport, they're going to stick out just as surely as you or I would walking down the avenue of Elizabethan London - we might be able to blend at first glance, even know the language, but the culture and nuances of that society are completely foreign and learning the ropes take time. And in Zirnakaynin, any sign of weakness draws the wolves.
As for the PCs joining House Vonnarc as a way to learn about House Azrinae, I don't expect any group will be doing this. When the PCs get their first offer to join up with the Vonnarcs, they simply don't know enough about the city and the noble houses to know who might benefit them, and even as they do learn more it's obvious the Vonnarcs and the Azrinaes are different families (though, learning that the houses were once close allies might coerce them). Regardless, again, the role of the Vonnarcs is to serve as cover for the party and a way to put the PCs in the places they need to be learn about the Azrinaes. Every errand to the market, every trip to Rygirnan, every escort through the city becomes an opportunity for the PCs to ask questions. The PCs' investigation into the Azrinaes is not scripted in the adventure as there's no way to tell what route it might take. That's what the city article is for, though ultimately they'll probably find out little more about House Azrinae than what's in that same article and snippets from the adventure background. Later, it's mere happenstance that Alicavnis takes note of the PCs and tempts them with the information they seek. But for a party who's been trying to run their own investigation, all while fulfilling the duties that are keeping them alive in a hostile evil city (in which they have limited time), it should feel like a god send. In fact, though, it's just another manipulation, but a mutually beneficial one should they survive it.
It seems inevitable to me that a proactive PC party will raid Azrinae, looking for the information they actually need.
Which will be unfortunate, as that will have to be made up from scratch. Azrinae is supposed to be mostly abandoned but heavily defended. Frankly, I don't feel up to designing it from scratch. And by this level, it is not feasible to give the PCs a quick warn-off; their resources are very extensive.
House Azrinae is undoubtedly the Mount Doom of this adventure. The PCs cannot infiltrate it. The description of House Azrinae on pages 49 and 55 are meant to convey that a legion of drow, demons, and magical whatever-you-wants guard the house. The PCs can certainly try to attack or infiltrate the place, but they should fail - that is, of course, unless you want to design House Azrinae yourself, in which case, go for it. You can bet that Zirnakaynin's house of antiquarians have faced more formidable assaults and more skilled infiltrators that the PCs, and have done so for literally centuries. On top of this, Kardinnyr Azrinae is obsessed and paranoid, even for a drow, meaning that the house's defenses are even greater than usual. If you as a GM don't want the PCs getting in, they're not getting in.
How is this not heavy handed? Easy. The drow are smarter than the PCs. The drow are also smarter than us as GMs. This gets into the realm of GMing characters with smarts no human - and certainly not you or I - will ever attain. The whole drow race aside, the members of House Azrinae are the scions of a several millennia-old family of paranoid magical geniuses. They've been engaged in a subtle war with who can say how many other millennia-old families of paranoid magical geniuses for centuries, and they've not just survived, they’ve flourished. On top of this, they're scholars and secret mongers, and not just the best in Zirnakaynin, but out of all the drow in all the Darklands. And on top of that, they have essentially unlimited resources. And on top of that they have a vault of magical antiquities unparalleled by any other family in an entire society of insane, evil, demon-worshiping, geniuses. So yeah, they’re pretty badass.
Thus, if the PCs want to sneak in, they're detected. How? They'll probably never know. If they want to attack, they're bested. Why? Because the drow and the armies of the Abyss are infinitely better prepared. If they want to magic their way in, their spells fail, misfire, or have unanticipated effects. Why? Because paranoid Azrinae matrons sought to guard their homes against exactly the spell the PCs are trying to cast centuries before the PCs' grandparents were born... not to mention that now any number of insane drow artifacts and ageless demon sorcerers are now charged with buttressing the Azrinae defenses.
Sounds pretty frustrating to be a PC trying to do this, right? Yeah, probably would and will be. As a GM, there's an important line to walk here. You've got to deny the PCs what might seem like a very likely goal while keeping them from thinking that their task is hopeless or - in a more metagame sense - that you as the GM are against them. Most players who have a long term and trusted rapport with their GMs will likely immediately know that their GM isn’t just trying to screw them to be a jerk, and start looking for other routes. If this isn’t the case, the GM has to be hardcore, with kid gloves. Deny the party, but don’t over do it. Show them that the Azrinae forces are beyond their power, but don’t kill them outright just to make a point (that’s no fun for anyone). The PCs might see either a flight of winged demons or drow who are attempting their own test of the fortress’s defenses, get utterly obliterated. Maybe as the party nears the noble house an empowered DC 35 ray of enfeeblement targets all of them, nailing them each as they get close. When an attempt at teleporting into the house fails, perhaps a powerful succubus sorcerer appears to gloat and tell them how foolish they are for even trying. The point of all this should be to let the PCs know that they’re not getting into House Azrinae without help. That way, when eventually Gadak comes back and offers them a place near the leaders of House Vonnarc it shouldn’t take a great stretch of imagination to think of why they might want an in with such influential sorts.
Remember, part of the craft of being a GM is making the PCs do exactly what YOU want while believing that they’re doing exactly what THEY want.
My other difficulty is that if the PCs do obtain the information, they will tend to go after Allevrah immediately. We had this at the end of RotRL #4 too. The PCs knew who their foe was, and other than levels, there was no reason not to strike. But RotRL #5 and SD #5 both require the PCs to diverge from this plan and for reasons that are not obvious to me. (The premise of RotRL #5 is that the PCs will obtain essential tools by digressing. Unfortunately the AP structure, meant to allow the modules to be run...
There’s a simple reason for why the PC’s cannot go straight after Allevrah. They don’t know where she is. Well, they have a name, but where is that? And how the heck do they get there? That’s the big purpose of “A Memory of Darkness,” get the back story on what’s going on with Allevrah and find out how to get to her. “Endless Night” tells you that she’s in a cave in the Darklands – great, that narrows it down a lot. “A Memory of Darkness” happens before you find out the street that house is on. Its page 8 of “Descent into Midnight” that allows the PCs to learn even the general location of the Land of Black Blood, and page 9 gets the PCs a map straight to the place. Remember, the Darklands are not a friendly country or a well-explored park. Nobody knows much of anything about this scary place. Those that go down there don’t come back, or return all gnawed and insane. And those that come from there probably want to kill you. Thus, when Queen Telanida hands the PCs a road map, remember that she is doing this not a Joe Travel-Agent, but as the Queen of All-the-Bloody-Elves-in-the-World, and even she only knows by happenstance.
So, the way the adventures are laid out, as soon as the PCs obtain the information on where Allevrah is, they do go after her immediately.
--What if the PCs don't speak the relevant languages? Clearly they can't pass themselves off as drow if they can't communicate, and Common just won't do; it wasn't invented yet when the drow went underground.Unless I am mistaken, neither Comprehend Languages nor Tongues provides the impression that you can actually speak the language.
Bloodlink grants you the ability to speak and understand Undercommon (p 11).
--What if the PCs object, reasonably, that they will have the identity of specific recognizable drow, but don't know anything about those individuals? That's a great way to get caught immediately. Speak with Dead might help a little bit here.
A definite concern, but one the PCs don't know they don't have to worry about. The drow they impersonate are nobodies within the armies of House Azrinae and the drow don't miss fallen soldiers. Let the PCs do whatever they want to satisfy themselves that they are appropriately in character, perhaps even using the ideas for extra drow on page 19 if they magical dig up extra info- that's part of what those characters are there for after all. Heck, even give throw them a few extra XP if they get really into their roles.
If not knowing who they're supposed to be becomes a deal breaker, check out the notes on Eviana's more emotional plea at the top of page 9. Personally, I'd never have here try to throw the PCs out of the forest. Have Eviana promise the PCs whatever you want. Anything. It doesn't matter, they're not coming back this way again. Also, the chaos Kaerishiel and his men mean to create should give the PCs a bit more confidence in their abilities to slip through without too much scrutiny. Or, if being recognized as specific drow becomes a major concerns, it would not be outside of Giseil's power to mix up their faces a bit during his spell, making them look like drow, but not any drow in particular.
A sidebar that got cut for space addresses my major concern about this adventure: Part One is the definition of a railroad. If you want the adventure to happen, the PCs NEED to go through the gate. Thus, as a GM, now is the time for you to lie, cheat, and steal. Do whatever it takes, change what needs to be changed, pander, bribe, guilt trip, make false promises, just get them to go. After they're through it's back to business as usual. Make sure the party knows that by saying no to Eviana's plan they are saying yes to the cataclysm they got a taste of in "The Armageddon Echo." Most parties won't be a problem and will be happy to try out the sneaky plan to heroically save the world. If you anticipate your group's going to be pills about it, though, get out your doe eyes and reach deep into Eviana's pockets to coerce them. Those gp aren't coming out of your pocket after all (and, again, the PC's aren't destined to return to collect).
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Wes's comments bring up a good point, although I'm not sure he ever out and out says it:
An adventure path is not an open game; it's a railroad in the sense that the adventure has a storyline with a start and an end. The advantage of this is that we can build an adventure similarly to how one would build a novel or movie; you can create cool NPCs and situations and encounters in a VERY space-efficient manner. We generally know where the adventure's going, so we don't have to spend time detailing things too far off the track.
Altertnatively, if we were to detail everything, to present a situation and then leave the resolution of the situation entirely up to the GM and players... that wouldn't be an adventure path. That'd be something closer to a campaign setting or sourcebook. And to detail that to the same level of detail we give an adventure path would be impossible.
If your players don't like the way a story in an adventure path unfolds, you as the GM have a situation on your hands. You shouldn't force them to go on the story by railroading them if they don't want to go—and if they want to follow the story, they won't NEED to be forced, really.
If they hate the story, the best choice is to drop the campaign and start something new, honestly; the GM, in theory, knows the players and knows what types of stories they want to play, and should then build campaigns to match that. Part of the hope of doing 2 Adventure Paths a year is that we'll relatively quickly build up a wide variety of stories for GMs to choose from.
The most difficult situation is when you have middle of the road players—players who like the story's fundamental roots, but have their own ideas on how that story should play out and don't follow the route the authors of the story expected the players would follow. In this case, the GM basically has to take what information we give and extrapolate. We do try to release supplementary books (like "Into the Darklands") and print support articles in Pathfinder to aid GMs in this situation, but again, since this is edging into campaign setting territory and out of adventure path territory, the amount of information we can provide grows increasingly limited in scope.
Which all brings me to how cool and handy these messageboards are! Posting a concern and getting advice from a huge network of GMs is, really, the best solution!
Wes's comments bring up a good point, although I'm not sure he ever out and out says it:
An adventure path is not an open game; it's a railroad in the sense that the adventure has a storyline with a start and an end. The advantage of this is that we can build an adventure similarly to how one would build a novel or movie; you can create cool NPCs and situations and encounters in a VERY space-efficient manner. We generally know where the adventure's going, so we don't have to spend time detailing things too far off the track.
I've written a half-dozen angry responses to this, and I can't express myself the way I really want to, so I will only say:
A railroad which consists of giving the PCs a burning need to investigate Azrinae, and then not permitting them to do so, is not a well functioning railroad. In fact, the more diligent and cooperative the players are, the more likely they are to go wrong here, because it will simply not occur to them that they have been sent on an investigative scenario where it is TOTALLY USELESS TO INVESTIGATE.
I understand that these things have to be railroads, and that if we diverge, we're on our own. But I really really want two things:
(1) A clear reason that the PCs are doing the railroad scenario,
(2) Something for them to gain through their efforts.
It's just not a fun railroad without those. The players can't help the GM, because they will never realize that they are supposed to be passive and wait for the GM to deliver the answer on a plate. So they will flounder, trying to figure out what the GM wants them to *do*, and making an awful mess of the given prep in the process.
This is my prediction, anyway. I won't be running it as written so my group will provide no evidence. But I am betting this module will fall apart in play for a lot of groups, because the link between what the PCs are trying to accomplish and what they are supposed to do is too weak.
Mary
Wes, can I ask why you chose not to write "PCs investigate Azrinae"? Presumably, if the infiltration of Vonnarc is not impossible, the infiltration of Azrinae could also have been set up to be possible. And it would have been easier to get the PCs to do it, because it relates so much more clearly to their goal.
Mary
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Creative Director
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Mary, please don't take my attitude as a condemnation of your play style or an attempt on my behalf to insult you or anger you. I'll try to explain why we made the choices we did below, but I'm starting to wonder if Paizo Adventure Paths simply aren't for you.
We wanted to maintain the mystery of the Azrinaes and their new leader for as long as possible; the reveal of who Allevrah really is works best, in my opinion, as the climax to the 5th adventure, and if we sent the PCs to the Azrinae house in the fourth adventure, that would have been a hard secret to keep. Instead, we chose to have the bulk of the Azrinaes be in the Land of the Black Blood in the 6th adventure. This also lets us hide the fact that the PCs are on to the Azrinaes for a little bit longer. If the PCs make a full invasion of their house in part four, they change from "annoying lower level mooks meddling in our largely no-longer-needed surface efforts" to "actual menaces." The adventures to follow would have been radically different as a result.
In the end, it is the way it is because this is the story we wanted to set up. I'm sorry if the path we've chosen for the adventure doesn't mesh with your expectations of where we were going to go with the storyline. And while I appreciate your enthusiasm for our adventures, the majority of your posts about the APs come off as complaints and disappointments in what we're providing to you. It's certainly discouraging to us to read about folk who want to play Paizo adventures only to run into problems over and over and over, and at a certain point it just reaches a point where I'm honestly tempted to give up and focus on feedback from folks who seem to be less inclined to hate everything we print. It's important to take criticism and learn from it, but it's not productive to get caught up trying to fix everything for someone who has a track record of having problems with the adventures.
Put another way, your dissatisfaction with our adventure paths is as frustrating to me as it is to you. We try to produce fun adventures, and the bulk of the feedback (both on these boards and in sales figures) on them has been overall quite positive. We HAVE been listening to your complaints and observations, and HAVE made changes to the way we produce APs based on your observations, but I sense no progress toward a brighter horizon, honestly. Which makes me wonder if the problem is simply that play style is just not compatible with ours. That doesn't make your play style wrong—from what I've read, your campaigns sound quite fun and detailed. But if you're having to do so much work to run a Paizo adventure path, I have to wonder if you and your group would just be happier if you looked to other sources for campaigns. Obviously, what we've been doing over the past year and a half isn't doing it for you.
If the PCs want to bumble about a vast alien city with no guide, let them. They should quickly learn that the residents of Zirnakaynin are far more suspicious of strangers and far more hostile to no-bodies than they are to those that are the property (and thus protected) by their city’s noble houses.
I would not expect my particular group to bumble. I would expect them to secure a base (not in the city, probably), grab some no-account people and mindrape them for information, figure out what they need to raid and plan lightning raids into the relevant locations. High level PCs are very well suited for this: improved invisibility, astral projection, dimension door/teleport, etc. This will fail with the setup you outline. But any proactive PC plan will fail with the setup you outline. The PCs are expected to succeed via deus ex machina; there is nothing much for them to do here otherwise.
I loved the idea of infiltrating a drow city from the first I heard of it; this was the module that convinced me to try this AP. But I also wondered, from the first I heard of it, how you could possibly design a scenario (especially for this level range) where infiltration was a good plan.
I hope I can come up with an answer before I get there. As it stands it doesn't look like infiltration *is* a good plan.
Darn!
Mary
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Creative Director
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As a final attempt to reconcile things:
Can simply changing the name "Vonnarc" to "Azrinae" solve the problem? You can seed the information the PCs are supposed to learn in the house itself in the form of documents, or keep it as is and set up the current source of the information as a power-hungry drow eager to manipulate the PCs into defeating her superior so she can step in to take over the house.
I would expect them to secure a base (not in the city, probably), grab some no-account people and mindrape them for information, figure out what they need to raid and plan lightning raids into the relevant locations. High level PCs are very well suited for this: improved invisibility, astral projection, dimension door/teleport, etc. This will fail with the setup you outline. But any proactive PC plan will fail with the setup you outline. The PCs are expected to succeed via deus ex machina; there is nothing much for them to do here otherwise.
Yes. The assumptions Pathfinder makes about the skill and intelligence of drow in Golarion, the essentially infinite resources of House Azrine (and even greater, those of all of Zirnakaynin should the drow be openly provoked), and the way the adventure is written all take the stance that any attack on House Azrinae will fail (see true seeing, forbiddance, the nalfeshnee stat block, and above for suggestions and ways to handle this).
The term "deus ex machina" gets bandied about a lot, but I don't see anything particularly ironic about the conclusion of this adventure or how the PCs have any less control than usual over the results. The adventure presents a solution for the PCs to participate in to solve their problem inline with the conflicts presented by - and at times going on behind the scenes of - the adventure. (I don't find this any more deus ex machina than going on a quest to slay a dragon and finding a dragon in its lair.) "Endless Night" is written assuming the PCs take a subtle path, seeking to blend in and in so doing avoid being hunted down and slain in an unfamiliar environment by a city filled with beings every bit as powerful and competent (in many cases even more so) as they. What's different about this adventure than most is that it assumes a dynamic environment, a setting where every creature the PC's face isn't tailored to be of a similar or lesser encounter level. There are encounters for parties from level 5 to 30 in Zirnakaynin, which I'd say puts PCs who follow the AP to this location at the low end of the preparedness level. In the same way I'd suggest most first level parties not wander up and poke the first dragon their DC 15 Gather Information check tells them about, I'd suggest that PCs playing this adventure make a DC 15 (or 10, or 5) Gather Information check to learn that House Azrinae is not a dragon to be poked.
Above, James and I present several ways and reasons to deter the PCs from taking an approach alternate to the one presented in the adventure, all of which I hope might help guide battle determined groups toward the provided path. If the party is resolute in taking a direct approach, though, and the GM wants to let them besiege House Azrinae, the adventure provides the tools to run a variety of drow characters, a map of a drow house, and a complete drow city. Just white-out Vonnarc and write in Azrinae and you've got a decent start. Given, the adventure is not written to be a dungeon crawl and if that's what the GM wants, some revisions need to be made - but that's the case anytime the GM wants to take a different route from that presented in a published adventure.
As with any pre-made module, every Pathfinder adventure is written assuming a specific path and a degree of character cooperation. This doesn't mean GMs have no control over their adventures, but many GMs (especially Call of Cthulhu GMs) will tell you there's an art to coercing players to stay on a set path rather than wandering off upon an undefined and potentially deadly route. Should the GM wish to develop that undefined route, like James said, that's where things like Pathfinder's supplementary articles and books like Into the Darklands come in.
As to the point that the PCs can't learn anything from investigating, that's not true. Page 25 presents a section on Gathering Information while in the Vonnarcs employ. Certainly this section could be expanded to several pages to allow for the complete feel of a detective adventure, but space limits such a path. It doesn't seem far fetched though to expand upon this as your PCs desire, though. If they get into subtlety inquiring after the Azrinaes or any other aspect of the city the volume provides you with all of the tools you require. Simply assign Gather Information DCs to any nuance of the adventure background or Zirnakaynin article that you feel is logical to give away and there you go.
Overall, I'm sorry if "Endless Night" isn't the adventure you anticipated, but I'm sure the other GMs on these boards would enjoy hearing all about how you detail out House Azrinae for your PCs' assault.
Also, I think Charles Evan's suggestions are perfectly logical and totally spot on. I'd love to hear how taking the adventure in that direction develops!
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This is my prediction, anyway. I won't be running it as written so my group will provide no evidence. But I am betting this module will fall apart in play for a lot of groups, because the link between what the PCs are trying to accomplish and what they are supposed to do is too weak.
Mary
Well just recently ran this through with my group and it went by without a problem and my group I would believe fit into the diligent and cooperative category.
I think Charles Evans 25's ideas are solid alternatives as well.
As a variation on his idea #2, the PCs could find out that Vonnarc has become more of a pawn of House Azrinae than an ally, and the word on the street would be that they are none too pleased with that situation. If they could get in the good graces of an influential Vonnarc (like Alicavniss), maybe they could arrange for a temporary alliance to help both parties out...
I just had another idea. This one might require some retooling in a slightly different direction, but what if the House Vonnarc enclave was changed to be an 'outpost' of House Azrinae? (This would change the backstory that most of the House had relocated to the Land of Black Blood, but not enough to damage the storyline methinks.)
Maybe House Vonnarc was quietly subsumed by House Azrinae when they got word of their displeasure at being 'cast aside' by Allevreh, and acts as an extra set of eyes and ears to protect the main Azrinae compound in Zirnakaynin. The PCs manage to dig up some information to this effect, which also alludes to the fact that it would be much easier to infiltrate this place than the main Azrinae compound. Since Azrinae is trying to keep their 'ownership' of the Vonnarc compound quiet, they wouldn't muster the kind of lethal response that the main compound would bring to bear against the PCs.
I hope these extra ideas help a little (or at least spark some other ones that can fit the bill).
Your Friendly Neighborhood Dalesman
"Bringing Big D**n Justice to the Bad Guys Since 1369 DR"
A second possibility would be to have House Azrinae empty - they all left. Let the PCs assault the place, maybe running into the booby traps left behind. Once they realize the place is empty, they'll need to find out what happened. Investigating in the city will reveal the Vonnarcs' to be their main rival and thus perhaps the people who know what happened.
There are encounters for parties from level 5 to 30 in Zirnakaynin, which I'd say puts PCs who follow the AP to this location at the low end of the preparedness level.
This statement about encounters from level 5-30 worries me a bit. When you have epic level creatures (especially wizards or clerics) in the region the PCs are adventuring in, it brings up questions like: "Why don't these super-beings fix any problems in the blink of an eye, making the PCs obsolete? Or if their agenda is opposed to the PCs, then why don't they just wipe the PCs off the face of the earth?" Usually the answer is a bunch of hand-waving about "the balance of power" or psychological blind spots or having more important things to do (which may or may not be satisfying, depending on your view of how the world works).
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There are encounters for parties from level 5 to 30 in Zirnakaynin, which I'd say puts PCs who follow the AP to this location at the low end of the preparedness level.This statement about encounters from level 5-30 worries me a bit. When you have epic level creatures (especially wizards or clerics) in the region the PCs are adventuring in, it brings up questions like: "Why don't these super-beings fix any problems in the blink of an eye, making the PCs obsolete? Or if their agenda is opposed to the PCs, then why don't they just wipe the PCs off the face of the earth?" Usually the answer is a bunch of hand-waving about "the balance of power" or psychological blind spots or having more important things to do (which may or may not be satisfying, depending on your view of how the world works).
You cant be opposed to someone you don't know is there. Hence the drow disguises.
You cant be opposed to someone you don't know is there. Hence the drow disguises.
It's pretty difficult to keep a secret from epic-level clerics or wizards, though. Especially if they're members of a "powerful and utterly paranoid magical society". So either they have some kind of convenient blind spot, or they're not really that paranoid after all. :)
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You cant be opposed to someone you don't know is there. Hence the drow disguises.It's pretty difficult to keep a secret from epic-level clerics or wizards, though. Especially if they're members of a "powerful and utterly paranoid magical society". So either they have some kind of convenient blind spot, or they're not really that paranoid after all. :)
"powerful and utterly paranoid" society means that noone trusts anyone.
that pretty accurately describes the Drow situation in Zirnaknayin...none of the great houses trust the others, none of the lesser houses trust the greaters or each other, and the average drow is constantly on the lookout for ways to advance their situation.
besides, being paranoid and powerfully magical means you likely spend a good portion of power on defense, rather than obliterating all the plebes around you with extraneous displays of strength.
and finally, the way most good covert ops work....no one knows a covert operation is in effect. for the drow, this is business as usual, with the added benefit of "planning to destroy the surface with meteors" being in the works for Allevreh.
-t
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Creative Director
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There are encounters for parties from level 5 to 30 in Zirnakaynin, which I'd say puts PCs who follow the AP to this location at the low end of the preparedness level.This statement about encounters from level 5-30 worries me a bit. When you have epic level creatures (especially wizards or clerics) in the region the PCs are adventuring in, it brings up questions like: "Why don't these super-beings fix any problems in the blink of an eye, making the PCs obsolete? Or if their agenda is opposed to the PCs, then why don't they just wipe the PCs off the face of the earth?" Usually the answer is a bunch of hand-waving about "the balance of power" or psychological blind spots or having more important things to do (which may or may not be satisfying, depending on your view of how the world works).
What Wes is inferring there, I suspect, is that once you get beyond 20th level, you have a dozen different demon lords and demon lord minions with CRs of 21 to 30 that you can pull into an encounter—having a drow matron using a gate spell to call in Jubilex or Nocticula is a pretty unusual event, but not outlandish. But those powerful demons aren't in the city on a daily basis; they're more of a lurking menace and possibility—since every drow house is, in theory, capable of calling in their demon lord, it's a tenuous balance of power. But for an epic-level adventure, having the demon lords popping in is a cool and plausible adventure.
"powerful and utterly paranoid" society means that noone trusts anyone.that pretty accurately describes the Drow situation in Zirnaknayin...none of the great houses trust the others, none of the lesser houses trust the greaters or each other, and the average drow is constantly on the lookout for ways to advance their situation.
besides, being paranoid and powerfully magical means you likely spend a good portion of power on defense, rather than obliterating all the plebes around you with extraneous displays of strength.
Exactly. For the same reason Elminster doesn't travel around the Realms blasting every threat or the Empyreal Lords don't just kill every bad guy in Golarion, the high-level drow of Zirnakaynin have better things to do than magically pick apart the identities of every passerby that wanders through the city gates. They've got their own high-level concerns to deal with and their own high-level opponents to worry about. (Think of Zirnakaynin as a massive social chess game, but the board's filled with just pawns and queens.)
Lets take House Vonnarc for example. Matron Pravora doesn't even appear in the adventure and she's the leader and most powerful member of the house. She doesn't appear, because she's off managing her own plots (in the city, in the Darklands, likely even dealing with servants and allies on other planes). Even the infiltration of her house is beneath her notice - that's something for her daughters to deal with. If things get out of hand she'll know about it, be pissed, and come back like all hellfire, but until her powerful children have mismanaged her holdings in a way that requires her lethal attentions, she has other business to attend to. As part of this I'd point back to the discussion above about dealing with GMing creatures and characters smarter than the GM. While I would expect lesser drow to seek to openly murder the PCs should their disguises be revealed, any drow cunning enough to pick up on the fact that's something weird with the PCs is likely going to be foresighted enough to try and make their own use of such clever and unusual spies - pretty much exactly like Alicavniss does.
So yeah. Zirnakaynin. Filled with deadly creatures. Fortunately, one of the PCs' greatest defenses is that they're (supposedly) being subtle enough not to appear as a blip to lesser drown and being weak enough not to appear as threats to greater drow who might take notice of fundamentally more powerful beings new to the city (pit fiends, angels, balors, liches, etc).
I'm afraid I have to agree with Mary here; this adventure is extremely problematic. Most of the assumptions about how a party should proceed do not mesh well with what I think most parties would choose to do.
An adventure path is not an open game; it's a railroad in railroad in the sense that the adventure has a storyline with a start and an end....
It's worse than that. Compare it to all of the other adventure paths you guys have written. Sure there is a basic flow to the campaign, but it proceeds logically. Players can always throw DMs a curve ball and force him/her to improvise, but the previous APs seem to be built around pretty logical assumptions about how players would proceed.
Now when players agree to play an AP or other form of published campaign, they do need to be ready to go with the flow compared to a more-free form style GM-designed campaign. But it's a matter of degrees. In my opinion, in some extent with this AP, and moreso with Endless Night, it's less a matter of going with the flow and more a matter of having your hand held. To try to use the adventure as written, you really have to browbeat the PCs at every turn. Part One you guys admit is a railroad to get the PCs through the gate, ok fine. Next, either they trust some random drow they've just met or they're essentially on their own, abandoning the adventure for just the loose framework of the city as set out in the support article. Then they have to be willng to take jobs as servants (sounds like I have a virus attack going on, will have to finish this post later).
Part One you guys admit is a railroad to get the PCs through the gate, ok fine. Next, either they trust some random drow they've just met or they're essentially on their own, abandoning the adventure for just the loose framework of the city as set out in the support article. Then they have to be willing to take jobs as servants....
Yes. You're spot on here, but where some might phrase this as "abandoning the adventure for just the loose framework of the city" it might be more helpful to take this as an opportunity to use the tools presented in the volume that were specifically written for and intrinsically tied to the adventure. The adventure presents the most direct path for the PCs to get involved with the group with the most potential to serve (unwittingly) as their most powerful allies – some might call this the easiest path, even. Does that mean you have to follow it directly? No. Your PCs don't have to do a thing they don't want to. Especially not when you've got an entire city at your disposal. Let the PCs have all the adventures you want in Zirnakaynin, that's awesome - you've got 10 pages and 3 huge maps to play with after all. But what that experience should not be is easy (see above for all the reasons why). Let the PCs get a feel for the city, learn first hand about the oppression and cruelty of drow society, have several close calls, face some betrayals, and maybe have to choke down their honor and good natures in the face of slavery and demon worship. Trying to make it in Zirnakaynin isn't easy for most drow, and they've had centuries of experience. PCs who take this route should be in for a rough time, but I still think that experience alone could be really fun.
Once you think the PCs' are done with that or you've run all the drow side encounters you want (page 78 gives you a ton of them) with even more suggested in the city article and even more suggested in Into the Darklands, bring back Gadak. Even if the PCs decided not to join him right when they came through, his suspicions don't just go away and a clever guy as tuned into the ways of the city likely has little trouble tracking the PCs down. Let Gadak make his offer after the PCs have had to sleep in gutters or woken to thieves a few nights in a row. If they don't want to work without pay, that's fine too, and you can add a contract element to the PCs' service. You've got the best idea of what your PCs want to make Gadak's offers feel appealing - some groups are just naturally more demanding or paranoid than others - so go with what works for them.
Zirnakaynin is not presented in this volume to be ignored. It's a labyrinth of possibilities - far far far too many to detail (it's more than double the population of Korvosa after all and we ran a WHOLE Adventure Path there). The article presents you with a framework to run the adventures you want there, but there's no way to address the infinite reactions of countless parties to the massive city. If you and your PCs don't want to make Zirnakaynin your temporary campaign setting and just get on with the plot of Second Darkness the adventure is constructed to serve you with a direct route through. If you want to offer a more comprehensive experience with the city, that requires more work, but you've got everything you need in the way of characters, drow stats, locations, civil organization, etc. And that's just in this book alone, the previous volumes of Pathfinder and Into the Darklands present a wealth of information on drow and their society.
Certainly we could have moved the 10 pages of the Zirnkaynin article to page 14, which alone I think would solve many folks' disconnects between the adventure and this potentially intrinsic article. But it's there and gives you a vast amount of possibilities to play with. I know such a sweeping scope in such and large and alien place can be daunting, and half the reason to even run published adventures is to have the rails set so most of the work is done for you, but if you want to play in that sandbox more or think your party is going to react differently than the adventure suggests, you've got the tools to make Zirnakaynin everything you want and need it to be. Yeah, the adventure chooses a path - all adventures do. It starts at the beginning at point A and follows the road to the end at point Z. But we didn't just give you the road, we gave you the road and a pretty massive forest as well (with several products that expand that wilderness even more). If your PCs want to run down the road, awesome. But if they want to weave back and forth, on and off the road and through the forest, it's all there for ya.
I probably should have used spoiler tags in my above post, but unfortunately my computer was down for the past few hours and now it is too late to edit. Anyhow...
All in all, it's a lot of tagging along while things happen, and the few things that do happen to the PCs directly aren't even really the detailed part of the adventure.
In general motivating the party is an extremely difficult proposition in this AP. More spoilers
Contrast this to Rise of the Runelords or Curse of the Crimson Throne. Both have a somewhat structured story, but the flow makes sense enough that I can count on the party to be reasonably willing to go along with it. The paths assume that the PCs are heroes, and they have good motivation to proceed...to save their hometowns. I've just started to run Runelords myself, and am very pleased to be doing so, and am definitely interested in running Curse down the line. However, I can't really see myself ever trying to run Second Darkness. I play APs for the great adventures and to save myself time and effort, and I am sorry to say that in my opinion, so far* SD is just not really delivering up to the standards you guys have set on either score.
*I've not yet read anything past Endless Night.
Sorry, Wes, with the long time delay due to my PC issues, your post got caught right in the middle of the two halves of mine. You might be right about the article about the city having filled the gap if it was placed differently, but I'm not so sure. It's an interesting city, but the limits of the space available of course meant that it is just a general outline. Usually, that would be more than enough for an urban adventure. However with a setting that is so intrinsically hostile, it's a little trickier. In my opinion, more focus on action inside the city itself and less about what happens in the side cavern where the nobles lived might tied things together more effectively.
At any rate, I hope I don't sound like I'm picking on you, James, or any of the crew. Really, I'm generally wowed by the stuff you guys put out, but in this case it's just seeming to come up short for me, and I thought it would be worth stating why I feel that way.
I'm looking forward to checking out the Legacy of Fire and the APs beyond.
Not at all. The adventure itself is actually pretty short: getting to House Vonnarc, three encounters there, the tower (which you go through in reverse), Venom Kiss, and then the escape. Really, these are pretty much the bare minimum as far as encounters go - mainly because we have such a HUGE city with this super interesting society, and only one volume to handle it all in. It would have been a simple task to stretch this adventure out to take up several volumes - which, by the by, probably would have been an adventure in the city proper, an adventure within a noble house and dealing with drow intrigues (which is what we got), and probably an adventure on escaping back to the surface. But really, that proposition stretches the "PCs as Drow" novelty way, way, waaaaay too far.
It's also my feeling that the most interesting part of drow society is the interplay between the noble houses. While encounters with drow commoners and back-stabbers seemed pretty evident, especially with the "Drow of Golarion" article in PF #15 and the example city encounters on page 79, I have never seen an adventure where you get to actually be non-drow characters who participate in the intrigues of drow society's upper echelons. With this being our one chance to tackle that, I thought it made sense to go for the most novel aspect. Again, the demon of size constraints and the needs of the greater AP of course mean that this adventure is NOT the end-all be-all drow adventure some folks might have gotten their hopes up for, but instead the hard parts - presenting a drow noble house in detail, getting the PCs into that house, setting up the PCs' roles there, presenting a system for gaining rank, and ultimately coming to the attention of a super powerful noble - are focused on and done for you.
Something also worth noting: I am not trying to tell folks they're wrong for not liking my adventure. It's TOTALLY a weird one, no doubt. I knew that going in and that's absolutely why I wanted it. It's not a dungeon crawl, it's not an urban adventure, it's not a mystery, or a find the MacGuffin, or even really a big social adventure. It picks the PCs up, changes their characters, throws them into practically a whole new campaign setting, and then takes them out, and it does all that in about 40 pages. If I'd have to call the adventure anything, it's a sandbox, and the entire volume goes toward giving you the tools you need to build something cool in that sandbox. Pretty unusual, and honestly I can't think of another adventure we've done - even back in the Dungeon days - that's similar. Then throw on top of that some harsh moral conflicts and double trouble! But I'm willing to betcha that it's something your PCs haven't seen before, and probably aren't expecting even if they know they're playing the "All Drow All The Time" Adventure Path. So yeah, I'm not expecting everybody to dig it, it's a lot more high maintainence than most, but personally I'm looking forward to hearing how people define Zirnakaynin and run their own drow city mini campaigns within Second Darkness as a whole.
Now if we only had some sort of electronic forum populated by thousands of skilled GMs where folks could share such ideas and expand upon Zirnakaynin in all the ways we couldn't...
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Creative Director
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Wesley:
Sorry to quibble, but Paizo set about two thirds of an Adventure Path in Korvosa, and Korvosa had its own neat little 'Guide to...' book supplying additional material that went way beyond all the drow goodness Paizo were able to cram into the Zirnakaynin article aqnd the PF #15 drow article. (Unless there was a secret microdot in either article which I haven't found yet... :) )
That given, though, your point about 'if only' there was a resource where dozens of GMs & nerds could quibble and bicker over 'what to do if the game goes off the rails' still stands...
Of course, the logistics of creating an additional 64 pages of content and making sure that it meshed with the adventure path itself are really tough... AND I don't think we did a great job at that. (Note how much time is spent talking about the Acadamae in the guidebook, for example, and how little the Acadamae actually matters in the adventure path...).
Something also worth noting: I am not trying to tell folks they're wrong for not liking my adventure. It's TOTALLY a weird one, no doubt. I knew that going in and that's absolutely why I wanted it. It's not a dungeon crawl, it's not an urban...
I hope the criticism has not pushed you guys into "safer" territory. I think the ideas in SD are superb, and very interesting. Issues with what "particular" party motivations may be, at any given time, will always be there.
I appreciate the many extra suggestions you guys have provided, both writers and GMs. We are probably nearing an extra SD supplement by this time. :) Thank goodness for these forums!
Sorry to quibble...
No your nooooot. :P
I hope the criticism has not pushed you guys into "safer" territory. I think the ideas in SD are superb, and very interesting. Issues with what "particular" party motivations may be, at any given time, will always be there.
Totally not. Everything said and done, a big part of each Adventure Path is making sure James and and I don't get bored. That's not saying we're just going to get crazier and crazier, but yeah, we're always going to try new things, probably the same "new" things a few times a few different ways. So yeah, no worries there. pathfinder's NOT going all goblin dungeons all the time while we're still around.
I appreciate the many extra suggestions you guys have provided, both writers and GMs. We are probably nearing an extra SD supplement by this time. :) Thank goodness for these forums!
Dude really. I'm scared to check the word count of my combined posts on here... it's probably topping 2,000 though. :P
Something also worth noting: I am not trying to tell folks they're wrong for not liking my adventure. It's TOTALLY a weird one, no doubt. I knew that going in and that's absolutely why I wanted it. It's not a dungeon crawl, it's not an urban adventure, it's not a mystery, or a find the MacGuffin, or even really a big social adventure. It picks the PCs up, changes their characters, throws them into practically a whole new campaign setting, and then takes them out, and it does all that in about 40 pages.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the idea sounds cool (body/face-switching is a neat idea, like in the movie "Face/Off" or in the story "The Shadow Out of Time"). I'm just not a fan of situations where the PCs' clever (or not-so-clever) ideas are somehow doomed to fail because of their all-powerful enemies, whereas the NPC's clever (or not-so-clever) idea is guaranteed to work (despite having the same all-powerful enemies as the PCs). My apologies if I'm misrepresenting the adventure completely...
I can't speak for anyone else, but the idea sounds cool (body/face-switching is a neat idea, like in the movie "Face/Off" or in the story "The Shadow Out of Time"). I'm just not a fan of situations where the PCs' clever (or not-so-clever) ideas are somehow doomed to fail because of their all-powerful enemies, whereas the NPC's clever (or not-so-clever) idea is guaranteed to work (despite having the same all-powerful enemies as the PCs). My apologies if I'm misrepresenting the adventure completely...
I don't think that is the case in this at all. There are certain realities about the game, and one of those is that a 20th-level character is more powerful/better equipped than a 10th-level character. There are also certain realities about a city we want to feel "alive" in many ways, and that's that there are going to be characters far more powerful than the PCs. So yeah, if the PCs' plan is to roll into a drow city and dominate the several thousand monsters they find there, it's simply not going to happen. Maybe some GMs play faster and looser with what they'll let their PCs accomplish, and in such cases it's their games and they're free to do what they want, but as the drow are presented in Pathfinder, the dark elves are far better prepared than the PCs slipping into their city. The PCs are expected to feel like they are in peril, and like pilgrims in an unholy land.
Fortunately for most, though, these concerns are largely outside the realm of the adventure we present, and a GM or party that doesn't want to deal with them, doesn't have to. And a GM or party that does want to go off the path and deal with such thing has a vast amount of support to do so. (Just scroll up for a ton of free advice.)
I thought Endless Night is a great adventure. Very innovative. While I might prefer an entire campaign setting, I understand that you are limited on page space.
I find "railroads" to be weak (some living world railroads are so weak as to be almost uncompletable). I prefer the type of adventure where the module lists half a dozen possible motivations as opposed to a single railroad. Some heroes find "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope" as a more powerful motivation than "Offer them anything you can imagine." In Star Wars, Luke was motivated by one and Han by the other.
I never run modules exactly the way they are written. Instead adapting the modules as needed, based on my understanding of the overall setting, the players, and forums like this one.
The fact that the fortress of House Azrinae was not described in this adventure is a blind spot for many groups, but it is easily remedied. You could change Vonnarc = Azrinae. You could use the description above in the forums. Or you could use any of many other drow products to describe House Azrinae's defenses (i.e. D3 Vault of the Drow, Menzonberanzan, City of the Spider Queen, Queen of Lies, Sheoloth, or any other module).
I do agree that almost any group will want to investigate Azrinae.
We started this adventure this game session. Of course I ended up making some changes. First I didn't send the elves chasing them through the portal and when they got through they were interrogated by the drow guards and then sent to house Azrinae with Gadak to make a report. On the way he learned they were houseless and mentioned his affiliation with house Vonnarc and offered them a chance to perhaps gain employment with the house. Instead they followed the orders of the captain and bullied him into taking them to house Azrinae even though he didn't want to go near the place. At house Azrinae they were again interrogated and after filing their report on the defeat of the drow with the first son they were brutally flogged for their failures and sent on their way. They got a chance to see the extent of the demonic security and note that the house seemed quiet.
From there they wanted to go to house Vonnarc, but didn't know how to get there, so they went back to the main city. Somewhere along the way they decided that they really wanted to try to buy a hook horror. They spend the rest of the session engaged with that task. They found a slave market selling such and even managed to win an auction to buy one. However, they found themselves ill prepared to deal with caring for the creature and are now in the midst of dealing with their new charge.