Ultimate Ranking of PFRPG Adventure Paths: Reign of Winter

[Crellan]

The goal of this thread is to establish a consensus rating of the Paizo PFRPG Adventure Paths that may be ultimately compiled into a chart for reference by GM’s trying to figure out what adventure path to play.

Did you GM or play Reign of Winter? If so, please post your ratings here so they may be tallied for in a final posting that will show the results for all the adventure paths.

Please rank Reign of Winter on a scale of 1-10 for each of the following categories (half points allowed):

1) GM Ease of Play: This category relates to how ready to play “out of the box” an adventure path is. Are there enough maps? Are the encounters properly detailed? Is a great deal of work required to play the modules? Readily scale-able? (1-10)

2) Synthesis of the Story: Does the story-line flow through all the modules in a way that leads the players along the path while not being so obvious as to knock them over the head rail-road style? (1-10)

3) Role-play Friendly: Are there enough opportunities for role-players to delve into the soft side of the game? Are there opportunities for well executed role-play to have a positive impact on the story line? (1-10)

4) Combat Design: Is the adventure appropriately powered for four well designed 15 point buy characters? Are there TPK-prone encounters that will probably disrupt the campaign? Will the players cruise through to the point of boredom? (1-10)

5) Fun factor: Did you have fun GMing the campaign? Did your party have fun playing the campaign? (1-10)

Links to other rankings:

Council of Thieves

Kingmaker

Serpent's Skull

Carrion Crown

Jade Regent

Skull & Shackles

Shattered Star

[Alexander Riggs]

My group is just about wrapped up with part 5, but I've read all the way through the end of the adventure path. I'll go ahead and preface my response by saying that while I stayed very close to the adventure's story, mechanically it was modified heavily, as we decided we wanted to play with mythic rules, and by book 3 I was adjusting just about every encounter as a result. I'll also preface it by saying that I make a lot of monsters from scratch in my free time, so my definition of "easy to modify" or "easily scalable" may not be the same as yours.

1) GM Ease of Play: 7

For the most part this was good, though nearly every adventure had one or two aspects of the main plot that I felt a need to tweak, and the final adventure was particularly bad in this regard. There were also a few individual encounters that either lacked info or didn't make sense as written, and needed to be redone, although no examples immediately spring to mind.

2) Synthesis of the Story: 5

For all the complaints about the early geas effect, my party didn't even notice it, and they about as vehement witch-haters as you can get. That said, I feel like the lack of ties to Elvanna in books 3 and 4 (and no attempts to interfere with the party in books 5 and 6) really hurts. Book 4 was particularly unrelated to the plot, and I made some major plot alterations to try to bring it more in line.

3) Roleplay: 7

My group tends to be very goal-oriented, so there wasn't a whole lot of chatting up NPCs for the sake of chatting up NPCs, or that sort of thing, but I felt that there were plenty of colorful NPCs and opportunities to roleplay. That said, maybe I just wasn't looking that closely.

4) Combat Design: 8

I can't really comment on this with any degree of accuracy past the first book, for the reasons I outlined above, but overall I don't have much in the way of complaints. Book 2 seems to be a bit easy, as written, book 3 perhaps a bit tough. My party has had extreme difficulty with some slightly advanced versions of the rifle troops in book 5, and I suspect that the normal rifle troops would prove incredibly lethal for non-mythic characters of the listed level, but that's the only thing that really stands out.

5) Fun Factor: 9

I've had a blast running it (especially book 5, which is why I decided to run the AP in the first place), and my group certainly seem to enjoy playing it. Anything that we can stick with for almost two years must be doing something right.