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What do the PCs want to accomplish in Reign of Winter? A truly horrific action for any good character: to free one of the evils of the multiverse, one that has inflicted countless horrors on innocent and non-innocent alike over centuries. The Black Rider's mantle is a evil geas inflicted on the PCs with a spoonful of sugar, driving them onwards with no choice except to comply, regardless of the moral quandary.
But, you counter: it's for a good reason! You are driven to free Baba Yaga it to prevent an ever greater evil - that of eternal winter spreading across Golarion. With that in mind, let's take the best outcome in the authored AP: the PCs free Baba Yaga, stop the ritual, and afterwards ask Baba Yaga politely to leave Irrisen alone. Yay! Golarian is saved!
But... Baba Yaga is free. She is loose.
Does saving one planet from an icy fate really excuse the number of lives that she will destroy on other planets? The countless off-planet Irrisens she will almost certainly go on to create?
If you question the amount of lives lost, the AP establishes that Irrisen is, by design, a frozen hell bent on torturing countless innocent souls via The Shackled Hut (aka, "The Child Endangerment AP"). The Witch Queen's Revenge explains what happens to the granddaughters of each of the deposed queens. We could go on; Baba Yaga is no Demon Lord, but most of her experiments seem to involve a gleeful amount of collateral damage. Let's not think that she is innocent or does not deserve to be brought to justice.
So, if freeing her is an evil act, should a paladin fall after releasing Baba Yaga? Of course the answer is no! No GM should force a fall from a choice that is not really a choice.
And that's my issue with the railroad: why isn't it a choice? Why did the author(s) choose only ONE single way to save the world? Should freeing Baba Yaga have been the only way to conclude this Adventure Path?
If you ask me, tabletop gaming is at its best when it promotes creativity. The AP metaplot had plenty of options to support creative solutions beyond just freeing Baba Yaga:
- stealing her power by following Rasputin's path to ascension, becoming mythic, and stopping the ritual.
- finishing Rasputin's path and claiming the Thrice-tenth kingdom for the fact that it may weaken Baba Yaga, allowing her to be ultimately killed or reimprisoned
- destroying the Dancing Hut. Doesn't it house the demi-plane where Elvanna is hiding?
- after killing Elvanna, there is really NO WAY! to stop the ritual short of Baba Yaga? Really?! No allies, no deific intervention, not the decemvirate, no avatars of creation that can sort out how to stop a ritual that has been put in place by (only) a 20th level, non-mythic, non-deific power?
- Best option! Make it a choice. Free Baba Yaga to stop the ritual, thus acquiring great wealth, power, and immortality as boons upon her freedom; or sacrifice your lives to shut down the ritual and keep Baba Yaga imprisoned for another age.
Sure, any GM can add this, but I am wondering why the conclusion to this AP are so narrowly structured, with one path to success or failure, given how much of a moral quandry the plot presents to thinking good PCs.
How would YOU have changed the ending?
PS. And don't get me started on Elvanna. She manages to survive her mother just to guarantee her death by threatening all of Golarion before her power is cemented. Brilliant plan. /slowclap
i wouldnt and wont change a thing about the end except adding a couple of plot threads tied to the PCs. And yes they are all goodly aligned:)