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I agree that the Adventure Path probably needed a couple of more months to develop. I stated this before you can take the first three APs and have a complete adventure. All you have to do is not have the riders leave Feldgrau and Auren Vrood being the BBEG ends the trilogy. Having no clear villain (besides the faceless WW) at the end of Broken Moon does take a lot away from the AP. Then you immediately jump into side trek that is Wake of the Watcher.
At then end of BM all you have is a couple of nameless black rider npcs that you are following into a side trek.
Strangely enough, I found that the campaign arcs move smoothly. It only feels broken up if you focus on the enemy types, rather than on the arc of the campaign and the presence of the way.
The presence of the way is suggested at the beginning of HoH and at the end of TotB. BM gives them a chance to give chase and catch up to them, and take out an important servant. But Broken Moon also shows the PCs that something far bigger is going on, and moves them into the second campaign arc.
WotW seems like a side trek, but it is directly connected to what the Way is after and what they want. The enemies are different, but that's an absolute necessity at this point.
The Way isn't extremely varied, and after the zombie apocalypse in Broken Moon, we're heading into undead, undead, and more undead for the last two books. If book 4 focused on the Way completely, the players are going to be bored out of their skulls by undead by the middle of book 5.
Further, Adivion isn't really necessary in the long run. A brief encounter to put a face on him is fine, but far from necessary. He may be the one that came up with the plan, but the fact is that the Way itself is the threat. Without it, his plans would likely come to naught. And if he is killed early, the Way would just continue on without him.
That's the fun part about the Way. They're older than anyone knows. They've spawned the most powerful lich the world has ever seen. No matter what has been done to them they have never been wiped out.
Since Adivion's death wouldn't stop the Way from continuing the plan to recreate the Whispering Tyrant, the players should not be focused on stopping him. They need to be focused on stopping the Way.
It really comes down to how you focus things. WotW isn't a side trek so long as the PCs remember that they need to find the rider to find the way and it serves as a break from undead before the last two chapters begin. However, if you focus on the theme monsters over the overarching plot things will seem disjointed.
Horror is difficult to run. It requires careful presentation, but also a careful eye on the overarching plot. It's easy to lose the forest for the trees if you don't take the time to digest the whys and wherefores of the AP.
am with Capt Marsh and Lastgrasp here
have just completed it.... have run lots of horror in my time as a ref.....and played....
my gang thought that this AP was rather like an AP designed by a Committee - it did not fit well together....the big bad was not well developed - until the last book..... and yes - you have it Last Grasp - the arc could have ended at the end of Book 3....
we bypassed book 5 almost completely it was so, so pointless... and yes -book 4 (lovecraftian) whilst interesting - again - was irrelevant.....and the cult went ahead with the Carrion Crown/ lichdom process even though the pcs had stuff like the Raven's Head mace.... that was not clearly explained either.... it was a mess.... even Book 2 - great atmos, great fun, Frank - as well called The Beast - got the pcs hooked in - but it was a massive side-trek - as most of the books were.
So - we have played Kingmaker - a game which started off as a sandbox and then became a railroad. Now a narrative that was a mish mash of side treks without any clear path between them. Oh well.
What have a I learned?
Read an AP several times, liaise with folks on boards about such things if they happen....maybe not run the APs but steal things for a sandbox/ mini-adventures..... Certainly work out how to create better encounters - a lot of the staff at Paizo create under-powered fights which my lot would walk over in 2 rounds.....
Am about to take my turn as a player in The Enemy Within and then in Eternal Lies (for CoC) so I have plenty of downtime to chew all this over!
As I see it this AP was designed for fans of the elements. They gave you a loose thread to tie it all together, but it wasn't the focus of the fun. I'm glad they made it as open-ended as they did. The story was so loosely tied together, you could do pretty much what you wanted with it. Made the whole AP seem more like a horror sandbox than a linear adventure.
It was basically "Here's The Whispering Way" thread to get you started. These Dark Riders work for them. You need to follow them to figure out what's going on. No real hurry, but keep following them. They go to a lot of strange places where you find other horrifying things going on you need to deal with. Go have fun with it.
Then it's up to the DM to do what they want with it. That's exactly what I did. I enjoyed the atmosphere and horror elements. I'm glad they weren't all working together. Each module practically stood on its own with only a loose connection to The Whispering Way except number one and number five. That's how I ran it.
I didn't mind that part at all personally. When I ran each part I made the horror element the star whether playing up the savage spirit of the werewolves or the alien nature of the Cthulu creatures. I think particular AP was made for someone like me who loves the horror elements and doesn't care about them all being tied together in a neat package. If you don't like those parts and they don't inspire you, this would be a hard AP to run.
Speaking as a player (and we did Carrion Hill right after Broken Moon), I can definitely second (or third or fourth or what-have-you) the (perhaps appropriately) Frankensteinian nature of this AP.
In Rise of the Runelords, you slowly move up the food chain. By the end of Book 1 you've heard of the Runelords, by the end of Book 3 you know something major is afoot, and by the end of Book 4 you know the name of the BBEG. What at first seems like a series of unrelated events starts to tie together in an overall tapestry.
Crimson Throne is even easier: You're pretty sure you know who the BBEG is by the end of Book 1, and you spend Books 2 and 3 defending yourself, then Books 4, 5, and 6 going on the offensive.
Carrion Crown really felt like, "Which horror movie is next?"
Book 1 = Haunted House
Book 2 = Frankenstein
Book 3 = The Werewolf
Book 4 = A random collection of Call of Cthulu references
Book 5 = Dracula
Book 6 = Oops. Ran out of classic horror movie ideas. We'll introduce a BBEG you've never heard of (with an apology to the GM for that in the introduction to the module, no less), and have you go through a really disjointed dungeon crawl with no underlying theme, rhyme, or reason.
They tried to tie the books together as a giant chase of the Whispering Way, but they seem utterly superficial. "Next let's do werewolves. How do we have it so the Whispering Way is involved with werewolves? OK, now I want to do vampires, so the Whispering Way happens to run through a town run by vampires."
I have the utmost respect for my GM, but as run, it was six totally separate modules with six totally separate stories, and the Whispering Way didn't do much to tie anything together other than tell the PCs where to go next.
I like the Elements of this AP. I have some issues though that I see I'm not alone with. The AP doesn't seem to flow well. Seems to want to visit all the classic monsters. Lacks a bad guy till the end. My players would get bored and stray off course by book 3 as they don't have clear goal or reason to follow this AP.
So my solution is to flip the adventure on it's head and have the plays start as members of the Whispering Way trying to find the seal to break the Whispering Tyrant out with. The game starts at Renchurch and the players are the bad guys running though this adventure trying to free the Whispering Tyrant. Running the AP this way seems to flow a lot better. I can use the Faction Guide and play some politics with in the faction. Should be interesting. It's going to take some work but I've got the first part all figured out.
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I just finished Broken Moon with my group. Its been so far but yes the AP does need some Gm work to massage things. I've tried a few low-workload changes and embellishments to tie things together.
-First off the format of the AP is yes here is the werewolf advneture, the vampire adventure, Frankenstein, wallking dead etc. Tell the players that so they know to expect some monster of the week stuff. It may not be the most unified but I think most players will appreciate the chance to deal with all of these different foes.
-Make Petros and his past an important part over the entire AP which pretty well means you have to connect
-I had the party meet and work with Petros' old adventuring party. The old party all hated and distrusted each other for some past deed that took the first 3 books for the players to unravel -
-Play up the Palantine Eye. Make them full members in Book 2 and use the Eye as the good guys. I played up the threat of a traitor in their ranks
-Play up Auren Vrood make him the BBEG for the first 3 books.
-Don't keep
So going into Wake of the Watcher:
-My feeling is to take out the Raven's Head as something the WW desires. It'll simply be an artifact the party can find. I'm leaning towards some bargain with the deep ones/mi-go to craft a mutant plague for the WW to use as a weapon. Only problem is the plague they create gets loose and is tied to Shub-Niggurath (hence slugspawn infeestations, mutations etc.). The party essentially walks into a failed WW plan and has to contain the danger and maybe stop a shipment of the plague from reaching Caliphas. The Mi-Go will be simply be a higher form of intelligent deep ones.
-Ashes at Dawn is the most problematic. I get the whole Ann Rice approach but I kind of just want to do Castle Ravenloft but Gallowspire is pretty big on the dungeon stuff. Also there really isn't a compelling reason for the party to help the vampires and let alone clear Ramoska from any wrongdoing. I will probably just work to play up the bloodbrew elixir and the rift b/w vampire elders who want to keep the status quo and the young upstarts. Which pretty well makes it like the Blade movie but I can live with that. In fact maybe I'll just have most of the court killed off by the young rebel vamps. Not sure about the tailor with the deadly scarf though... I'd consider chucking this adventure but I know the group is anticipating the vampire adventure so have to make it work.
-SoG looks just fine.