Highs:
- Part 6 was quite a challenge for my group and had boatloads of atmosphere. I thought part 6 of this AP was one of the better volumes of the path. Typically I have found the part 6's to be the worst of the path. Except for Savage Tide, this part 6 was the best end-cap adventure I have GMd.
- Good variety of opponents. Even though this AP was heavily focused on undead it still managed a very good variety of opponents for the PCs to face across the level bands. I never felt anything got repetitive or grinded.
- Appropriately stingy treasure hoards. The first volume started out a little too heavy on the treasure for me but then the rest were just about perfect. I run a very low magic item game and I never felt like I had to cut back on the treasure allotments. In fact, in part 6 I had to add some treasure of my own; which was a first for me in GMing ANY AP.
- The Whispering Way certainly lived up to its reputation. Usually I have to spice up the bad guys a bit for my players to make them seem more menacing but that was not necessary with the Whispering Way. Their plots were certainly byzantine and convoluted (see below for more) but my players really did fear them with no or little embellishment from me. In part 6, Virlych (with its supernatural weather and awesome wandering monster tables) and Renchurch (with its creepy rooms and crazy inhabitants above and below the surface) and Gallowspire (with it deadly undead and desolate surroundings) really made my players, even at high level, just want to get out. They never questioned why a place like Virlych was allowed to exist in the world despite it being the known headquarters of an evil organization. Once they set foot in the area they understood and agreed that "cautions watching" was the best approach to dealing with these murderous fanatics rather than outright assault.
- Good sprinkling of knowledge and history throughout each part of the AP. Every volume had something interesting and (more importantly) useful for the players to learn with knowledge checks or research. Unfortunately almost all this information was buried in walls of text, but still, it was there and when my players found it they felt rewarded. The background information served to help the players in a variety of ways and move the plot along. That's what the background story is supposed to to in these APs and this one did it.
- The encounter sites were appropriately fleshed out and physically limited. Each encounter area had all the details I needed to run it (lighting, make up of walls, ceiling height, etc) and was limited enough in size that my players never got bored or lost. There were no sprawling 30 room dungeons and level on top of level worth of catacombs.
Lows:
- The plot lacked cohesion. The ties between the individual volumes were at times paper thin. I like my AP based campaigns to seem like one long adventure not a series of loosely linked ones. I had to do quite a bit of extra work to keep the seems from showing too much between the AP volumes. This was unfortunate because plot cohesion is one of the major reasons I use published campaigns.
- The plot has some major holes. As written, it is assumed the players successfully obtain an artifact and rescue a prisoner. If just one of these things is accomplished (let alone BOTH) the Whispering Ways plan is essentially foiled completely. By the end of part 4 the players have the artifact and at the beginning of part 6 they have rescued the prisoner. At both of these points the players can and will (correctly!) assume they have "won" and will see no reason to continue with the campaign. As GM if you don't see this coming and prepare for it ahead of time the entire campaign has the potential to grind to a halt at two separate places. I was able to work around this in advance but it could take many GMs by surprise. These seem like obvious enough plot holes to me that they should never have occurred in the finished product.
- This is probably a complaint unique to me but the rules creep for this AP seemed contrived and tacked on. I am not a fan of rules beyond the core rulebook and this AP seemed randomly sprinkled with confusing, undefined (unless you had the books in question I guess) rules and treasure that I constantly had to swap out or replace on the fly. Then it goes on to fully define and add new rules with the "Agent of the Grave" prestige class but only uses it in one part of the AP, a double whammy for busy GMs. Yuck. I did break down and buy the Bestiary 2, frankly it is a requirement for running this AP at all.
- Part 4 was misplaced. The Mythos stuff in part 4 should have been saved for the end or not used at all in this AP. It seemed out of place and did a disservice to what I know Paizo can do with Mythos. Putting it in part 4 of the AP I'm sure helped boost sales for the volume but it sacrificed the horror and gravitas of the stuff as a result. I hope someday we get the full Mythos treatment from Paizo. In addition, part 4 was aged way too forward for my tastes. Top hats and iron submarines are not part of my fanatsy game, seeing them pop up here in this volume was jarring and nonsensical.
- Part 2s court room trial was fun and interesting (again a bit too aged up for me but I overlooked it) but it clove too closely to the Frankenstein inspiration. It should have deviated more from the obvious source. I did this on my own but I'm surprised it was written the way it was in final print.
- Part 5 was boring. Not much happens in it plot-wise and aristocratic vampires living under a metropolis is cliche. Not to mention some (maybe most) of these particular vampires seemed powerful enough to stop the Whispering Way if they wanted so why would they need or want the PCs help at all? To catch a vampire serial killer who's main weapon is a wand of halt undead? Oh boy. These vampires have personally met with and betrayed Tar-Baphon himself why would they even care about a serial killer in their midst? I know this volume was to be something of a "hard choices" moment for the players but I just don't think it pulled it off.
- I won't rehash all the Adivion complaints here suffice to say I agree with them. What should have been played up more was the fact that each volume had some kind of hideous monster as it own BBEG but part 6, the climax, essentially had a pretty normal human as the ultimate BBEG illustrating the "greatest monster of them all is MAN!" type of trope. I added a dash of this on my own and my players got a kick out of it but ultimately Advion should not have been part of the WW plans at all. There are too many reasons to list here why this guy would even be allowed into the WW at all let alone lead the charge is resurrecting their greatest champion ever.
- Too many precious words wasted on the "Harrow Deck" side bars. I didn't bother with the cheesy device and I hope Paizo has gotten this thing out of their system now. After this and Crimson Throne I've seen way too much Harrow stuff. Ok, you got the Harrow Deck stuff into 2 APs now whoever you are that is such a fan of this thing, great job, lets please move on.
- Overuse of haunts, especially in part 6. They are a great low level trap with a nice story telling mechanic but when you get to mid and high levels they have too many undefined rules holes to be effective. They just bog things down and sometimes award an obscene amount of XPs for very little threat or have completely overwhelming effects. Basically they are all over the place at high level.
- This final one has nothing to do with this AP but the PF rules in general. In PF it takes about 20 CR appropriate encounters to level. This is great at low level but at high level (say 12+) encounters take so long and are so mentally draining (in a good way!) that 20 is just too many. Once you get to high level the XP curve should flatten out and allow PCs to level every 10 CR appropriate encounters. It would take the same amount of real time since the encounters can be very time consuming at high levels, but would allow the group to do more and more quickly in the game itself if they only needed 10 encounters to level.
