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so i acquired book one last week, love it!
i'm just wondering if the rest so far matches it before my continued investment.
so for those that have the books that are out (the first three i think) how good are they?
how does it compare to other APs 1) in terms of strength of the story, 2) do they connect well, 3) how is the art? 4) how good are the bestiaries?
answer any or all, up to you:)
and thanks!
also if you want to say what you do or don't like about it thats up to you, tho it's always enlightening to hear other peoples opinions and i love to hear it:)
Happy Halloween!
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IMO one of the best APs so far - story as well as the quality of writing/.. .
All 3 books are great with the 3rd being the "weakest". All of them had enough fluff/story/NPC characterization to give me many ideas on how to expand the story and add some sidequests.
I had to modify the encounters a little bit due to houserules, playstyle and number of characters. Despite that I think that the encounters so far are "logical" and everything has a "reason" to be where it is.
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i guess i shouldn't have asked on the day The Occult Mysteries Playtest came out:D
i'm a bit surprised, i thought there would be more of an opinion on Iron Gods:)
Hmm.Let's see.
Among me,this is tied for second place with Rise of the Runelords,first being Wrath of Righteous.
Story is good and well-connected,but requires,IMO,substantial amount of GM's work to make it truly spectacular.
But then,no amount of work can do this in,say,Skulls and Shackles.
Art is usual Paizo.
Bestiaries are,as usual for me,nearly unusable,but some pretty fun mechs here.
That's a plus.
Yay!
i get to derail my own thread:D
i'm curious Vlad why is Wrath so high on your list?
i have it and i'm not overly impressed, its not bad, but I would definetly put it in my bottom 3 APs, just curious is all:)
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Yay!
i get to derail my own thread:D
By Jove, you're living the high life now, aren't you old chum?
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1) I think this is where Iron Gods shines so far: strong story, fast pacing and great atmosphere.
2) Very cohesive so far and it looks like it will stay this way. So let's hope that they don't pull a Kingmaker book 6.
3) Nothing that stands out here in my opinion. Solid work.
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Well considering I bought Kingmaker because of book 6, we'll have to disagree there, still very well said:)
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By Jove, you're living the high life now, aren't you old chum?Yay!
i get to derail my own thread:D
Egads Charles, you've aged..... well.
i say! what you need is a good ole fashioned hunt!what say you we go out and turn the tables on that Dastardly villain Foxglove!
just as long as we're back for evening tea that is, no need to be uncivilized after all wot wot!
I don't say it's a bad book, but the question was: Does it connect well and I don't think you can answer that with a yes in case of book 6 of Kingmaker. To much out of left field and tonally to different from the rest of the books, in my opinion.
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yay! derailment everywhere, i'm. so. happy! best broke day before pay day yet!
i thought they did a pretty good job connecting it all, i think what trips everyone is the complete style difference between books 1-5 and book 6, by that i mean all the other books have a set formula and rarely deviate from it whereas book 6 has a completely different formula (no hexploration, the enemy comes to them, instead of reacting to what the PCs do)
however i love it and it really doesn't take that much to tie it all together:)
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I don't say it's a bad book, but the question was: Does it connect well and I don't think you can answer that with a yes in case of book 6 of Kingmaker. To much out of left field and tonally to different from the rest of the books, in my opinion.
Maybe, maybe not. For me, like CY, it was pretty irrelevant. Book 6 sold Kingmaker for me, and I homebrewed the daylights out of everything else in the series, 1 and 6 are probably the only ones I'm going to run straight as-written. (Well, 1 is already done. 2-4 have been homebrewed the heck out of, and I'm all but completely replacing 5 with Red Hand of Doom.)
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By Jove, you're living the high life now, aren't you old chum?Yay!
i get to derail my own thread:DEgads Charles, you've aged..... well.
i say! what you need is a good ole fashioned hunt!
what say you we go out and turn the tables on that Dastardly villain Foxglove!
just as long as we're back for evening tea that is, no need to be uncivilized after all wot wot!
Oh I just had one of my episodes is all, but the doctor assures me everything's just fine, and that the occasional spasms and bizarre spontaneous loss of language control will pass in time.
A hunt sounds lovely! I've been meaning to take a certain thing for that Foxglove fellow, I think you'll like ak ngya llu ghnatha br'ntgna wagnths rukh tyakna fngljh iu phnagl bth'nagqa khn szvaltna phomik tsmuirna ghkahk. It'll be wonderful, I imagine.
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i say!
did someone say tea!
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yay! derailment everywhere, i'm. so. happy! best broke day before pay day yet!
i thought they did a pretty good job connecting it all, i think what trips everyone is the complete style difference between books 1-5 and book 6, by that i mean all the other books have a set formula and rarely deviate from it whereas book 6 has a completely different formula (no hexploration, the enemy comes to them, instead of reacting to what the PCs do)
however i love it and it really doesn't take that much to tie it all together:)
Maybe you can elaborate a bit how you feel that it connects anything, because I like to hear how we got to opposite conclusions. Well, let's not go overboard with it, because it is nothing new that this particular book is quite polarizing.
One additional thing I want to mention about Iron Gods is, describing things that we take for granted on a daily basis, but might look lunatic or spectacular to the PCs, like when they discover toilets and showers.
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Maybe you can elaborate a bit how you feel that it connects anything, because I like to hear how we got to opposite conclusions. Well, let's not go overboard with it, because it is nothing new that this particular book is quite polarizing.yay! derailment everywhere, i'm. so. happy! best broke day before pay day yet!
i thought they did a pretty good job connecting it all, i think what trips everyone is the complete style difference between books 1-5 and book 6, by that i mean all the other books have a set formula and rarely deviate from it whereas book 6 has a completely different formula (no hexploration, the enemy comes to them, instead of reacting to what the PCs do)
however i love it and it really doesn't take that much to tie it all together:)
oh i'm not getting into all that (despite my sheer love of derailing things) i haven't paged thru the books in a good long while, i personally thought they did a decent job foreshadowing.
the thing is they get knocked around for not foreshadowing enough throughout the books, however its a sandbox campaign, every single campaign will be different, so if they get heavy handed with including all this stuff about you-know-who then people are going to complain that they put a railroad in their sandbox! and suddenly no one cares two wits about the kingdom and are chasing around all these little clues and such. so i'm quite happy how they did it, they tell you, the GM about you know who in the beginning and let each GM and campaign figure out how they want to seed her tracks, they give some hints in the adventures but they aren't sure how each campaign will turn out so theres only so much they, the writers can do.
wow thats longer then i thought it would be:)
yay for Derailment Wednesday!
edit: it should also be noted this is the first sandbox campaign i've ever seen of its kind, and i've been gaming off and on since the mid 80s so i've seen my fair share, theres bound to be a glitch here or there, nothing that can't be fixed tho, which in my book makes it a rousing success!
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edit: it should also be noted this is the first sandbox campaign i've ever seen of its kind, and i've been gaming off and on since the mid 80s so i've seen my fair share, theres bound to be a glitch...
Well I think we agree on Kingmaker being awesome and I think that we can agree to disagree on Book 6.
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I never agreed to that!
;)
edit: it should also be noted this is the first sandbox campaign i've ever seen of its kind, and i've been gaming off and on since the mid 80s so i've seen my fair share, theres bound to be a glitch...Well I think we agree on Kingmaker being awesome and I think that we can agree to disagree on Book 6.
i will say this, Kingmaker was always about the PCs and their kingdom and never so much about you-know-who:)
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i will say this, Kingmaker was always about the PCs and their kingdom and never so much about you-know-who:)edit: it should also be noted this is the first sandbox campaign i've ever seen of its kind, and i've been gaming off and on since the mid 80s so i've seen my fair share, theres bound to be a glitch...Well I think we agree on Kingmaker being awesome and I think that we can agree to disagree on Book 6.
We are both talking about Lord Voldemort, right?
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Worst adventure path ever, there are no lightsabers and having Sci FI tech in my pure medieval fantasy world breaks my immersion. 0/10
*sees cover for Divinity Drive*
Is that a space dragon fighting a party in a room with holographic planets and the party has a chain sword and a rocket launcher?
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*sees cover for Divinity Drive*
Is that a space dragon fighting a party in a room with holographic planets and the party has a chain sword and a rocket launcher?
... I did not know they'd updated the final cover. WOOOOOOOOOW.
Yeah its pretty f%@~ing sweet!
i'm gonna assume you were sarcastic with that 0/10 thing there neongelion:) although I cant watch clips on my phone so your reaction link tells me nothing:)
good stuff tho people:)
i will most likely pick up Lords of Rust friday
edit: okay, i watched it, not sure the appeal of the clip (or why so many gush about the guy in the comments, weird!) but i get what you're saying:)
anyway keep it coming:)
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I'm quite liking it. So far though, nothing really stands out as particularly amazing. Without that big spectacle (a super cool goblin raid, a city in anarchy, a Black Rider, etc.) it feels kind of 'safe' so far. I've yet to find the big moment where players will find themselves hooked and wanting to dig in for the campaign. Mind you, everything is paced very well, the encounters seem enjoyable and memorable, and the story is looking to shape up to be great. Every portion of the adventures so far feel like a 6, 7, or 8/10, which is great, but I'm still waiting for the 'WOW!' moment. These are the impressions I got solely from reading the adventures. It seems this campaign has a 'slow burn' in regards to its spectacle. Come book 4, I bet things will kick into overdrive and just go nuts, which I look forward to.
However, reading the adventures and playing them are two completely different things. I've run three sessions so far and my group of 5 is just one encounter away from clearing Part 3. They seem to be enjoying themselves quite a bit and the fact that all the hooks and clues are seeded very well is wonderful. I let them know that this time around, they are in complete control and they are eating it up. Players are arguing about pushing further ahead or going to town and generally, they are completely self motivated. Player agency seems to be the most difficult thing to establish in the groups that I run and this time, my group has it in spades. While it has yet to have it's big 10/10 moment, the fact that it fires on the 'good to great' cylinders at all times makes me feel that this will be one of my top 5 APs, if not top 3 once it's all said an done.
i'm curious Vlad why is Wrath so high on your list?
Because it requires minimal adjustment to turn into a truly epic story.
Characters are good,stakes are high,and new system(mythic)is pretty well integrated,and,what's more important,it fits very nicely into my personal timeline to provide epic conclusion for the second generation of player characters.For the record,before Wrath and Iron Gods my favorite was Second Darkness.
Yes,really.
Im just curious what people think of it so far as stated in my first post, normally yes its best to wait, however if you saw the look on their faces when they flipped thru first book and I said yes.... Priceless!
I am running Iron Gods (party currently in science deck) and i have read most (but not all) of the 2nd book, the art seems better than ever to me, the 1st book is very good (although the science deck seems kinda weak) but the 2nd book seems very boring to me, i sincerely hope it isn't boring to play as well.
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I am running Iron Gods (party currently in science deck) and i have read most (but not all) of the 2nd book, the art seems better than ever to me, the 1st book is very good (although the science deck seems kinda weak) but the 2nd book seems very boring to me, i sincerely hope it isn't boring to play as well.
It looks like it will play well.
Your players' choices will make a big difference, they have a huge opportunity to (even unwittingly) approach the situations in many different ways.
It also has plenty of perverse and engaging details which are Logue's signature.
What, particularly, seems boring to you?
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What, particularly, seems boring to you?
Most battles seem very easy and most of the scrapwall seems very flavorless to me, the exception is the haunted wreck which i find wonderful.
As i said i will see how it plays out since everything i have said so far comes from reading only.| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Scrapwall does come across as a dungeon, more than a town. There's not a lot of attention given to what else you can do there, other than fight the various gangs. It would have been nice to have had a gazetteer or something. We got loads of info on places like Torch and (in the previous AP) Wati, which are arguably far less interesting locales than Scrapwall could have been, given more attention. But if you've played a Fallout game or watched a Mad Max movie, it shouldn't be too hard to fudge the details on the fly.
Once you get to the Lords of Rust's lair, things improve. The dungeon concept is pretty cool/original. It would have been nice to get some suggestions on what happens if Hellion does somehow manage to get the *thing* operational, but I guess that would have a cataclysmic impact on the rest of the AP as written, so meh. :p
I've looked through the first three books and, honestly, nothing has stood out as very interesting. But maybe I'm wrong, Shattered Star did not seem to be a very exciting AP, either, when I first skimmed the books, but after a thorough reading of the modules it has turned into one of the AP's I most look forward to GM'ing one day.
I think the most important thing for this AP is for everybody to be on board for the concept of sci-fi technology in fantasy.
I am enjoying it thus far, but it is a bit gun heavy for my tastes. Will be running this after kingmaker and I will have to make significant modifications. I wanted it more chainswordy, less boltgunny.
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I've looked through the first three books and, honestly, nothing has stood out as very interesting. But maybe I'm wrong, Shattered Star did not seem to be a very exciting AP, either, when I first skimmed the books, but after a thorough reading of the modules it has turned into one of the AP's I most look forward to GM'ing one day.
I think the most important thing for this AP is for everybody to be on board for the concept of sci-fi technology in fantasy.
Really? I found SS to be very "rinse - repeat". Too many enormous, never ending dungeons.
I also didn't like the "oh we haven't included enough wealth so have a crystal ball to make up for it".Our group couldn't wait for it to end!
But hey, if we all liked the same thing the world would be boring!
On topic - I was very meh about it when I first looked at it but now I've read through all three books twice I'm actually very happy with the way it's all shaping up. Book 2 is awesome (Logue - you're a bloody star, thank god you're back!).
I've looked through the first three books and, honestly, nothing has stood out as very interesting. But maybe I'm wrong, Shattered Star did not seem to be a very exciting AP, either, when I first skimmed the books, but after a thorough reading of the modules it has turned into one of the AP's I most look forward to GM'ing one day.
I think the most important thing for this AP is for everybody to be on board for the concept of sci-fi technology in fantasy.
Really? I found SS to be very "rinse - repeat". Too many enormous, never ending dungeons.
I also didn't like the "oh we haven't included enough wealth so have a crystal ball to make up for it".
Our group couldn't wait for it to end!But hey, if we all liked the same thing the world would be boring!
As from my reading, the AP has lots of interesting options involving diplomacy and the heavy Thassilonian theme is very interesting to someone who already has played RotRL.
In the three years since the release of Fires Of Creation, has people's perspective on this Adventure Path changed?
Has the release of Starfinder changed people's perspective on this AP?
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I ran through Book One during Hurricane Irma, largely by head magnifier light, and it was received incredibly well by the players, less so the scared dogs and cats. I'm planning on running Fires sanctioned content tomorrow night for my PFS group and they're really pumped.
With Starfinder now in my repertoire, all of the tie-ins just make me enjoy the AP more and more as I delve through it. I certainly plan on making use of the skeletons from the Alien Archive pawns and other elements, and since some of my PFS players are also SFS players, I imagine they're going to really enjoy all the interrelated stuff.
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In the three years since the release of Fires Of Creation, has people's perspective on this Adventure Path changed?
Has the release of Starfinder changed people's perspective on this AP?
I had not looked at Iron Gods before December 2015, so in 2014 I did not have a perspective to be changed. I agree with most of the opinions from 2014.
mikeawmids said, "Scrapwall does come across as a dungeon, more than a town. There's not a lot of attention given to what else you can do there, other than fight the various gangs. It would have been nice to have had a gazetteer or something." I created a lot of new material to flesh out Scrapwall as a place where people lived.
magnuskn said, "I've looked through the first three books and, honestly, nothing has stood out as very interesting." I disagree, but I can see elements that would lead to that opinion. The adventure path has a low-key flavor to it, because the PCs have to avoid the attention of the Technic League. Their adventures are in isolated towns. They are not battling a strong villain who creates dramatic tension, because Meyanda and Hellion are out of sight until the end of their modules. Furkas Xoud is distinctive, but a ghost stuck in a tower does not come across as a villain. He is more a monster.
The weakest point in the adventure path is between books 2 and 3, yet the commenters in 2014 missed it. The quest for Casandalee is a weak plot hook. This forum warns GMs that they should stop the PCs from heading directly to Starfall after book 2. I guess heading to Starfall was not an option before Palace of Fallen Stars was published, so it was not yet a potential derailment.
I received the Starfall rulebook for Christmas, only about 2 weeks ago. I was amused that Casandalee had a mention as one of the creators of the Drift. I am planning to offer my players the chance to expand the Godmind in book 6 into the start of the Drift. My wife's character Boffin is essentially a Starfinder class, a mechanic built as a gunslinger/rogue with some homebrew feats. For example, she recruited a repair drone as a Leadership cohort and upgraded it as she leveled up, much like a Mechanic's drone. If I had the Starfinder rules in 2015, I would have tried to adapt the Mechanic to Pathfinder.
The quest for Cassandalee is definitely the weakest part of the AP. It has a woefully insufficient plot hook, and the chapters themselves come across as filler that doesn't do anything to advance the main plot until you reach the very end. With that said, I do think it's possible to adapt the AP into a four-part adventure that cuts out these middle bits. In terms of the narrative it's actually trivial. The only event of any direct consequence to the main plot is acquiring Cassandalee's neurocam. This could be easily shoe-horned into book 5 as one of the technological artifacts the Technic League has acquired. The real difficulty is handling the daunting gap of a 7th level party heading into an adventure designed for 13th level characters.
That power gap is nearly insurmountable if you try to address it all at once at the end of book 2, but if you plan from the very beginning for this skip then it looks possible. First, put the party on the fast XP track. The fast XP track will put your party (on average) one level ahead of where they would otherwise be. This on its own won't make up a 6 level gap, but because the party is a higher level you can now increase the CR of the encounters they will be facing, which in turn will increase the XP reward. As soon as the party reaches 2nd level, just increase the CR of every encounter by 1. This isn't too hard to do, and can be achieved just by duplicating one or two monsters in every fight. Boosting the CR of every encounter by 1 means about 50% more XP, which (when stacked with the fast XP curve) puts the party just barely at 6th level by the end of book 1. Now your party is two levels ahead of the curve, so in book 2 you can boost the CR of every encounter by 2. You can probably see the pattern from here; so long as you keep raising the CR you can use the fast XP curve to completely close the gap. In fact, some back of the napkin math indicates that if you continue to scale the CR of encounters as your party's level advantage grows you could get them to 11th level by the end of the book. However, this would require up to a 4 point CR shift towards the end of book 2 and that's where you'd need to start outright restatting stuff; that's too big a gulf to cover just by adding more mooks.
This might be a bit too fast paced for some groups, and would require good encounter awareness on the part of the GM to make these adjustments, but it does put the party within a playable range to actually attempt book 5 and wouldn't require too onerous of an overhaul. So I think it's doable to play the campaign that way if you want to. It's how I'd run it, because honestly books 3 and 4 feel like filler to me and I'd rather cut them to focus on the meat at the beginning and end of this AP.
The quest for Cassandalee is definitely the weakest part of the AP. It has a woefully insufficient plot hook, and the chapters themselves come across as filler that doesn't do anything to advance the main plot until you reach the very end.
I agree. Fortunately, I had emphasized the role of the Dominion of the Black in the crash of the fleet, to make the rhu-chalik in Lords of Rust more interesting. This paid off unexpectedly well, because to my players Valley of the Brain Collectors was about defending the world from an alien invasion.
I see a pattern in the six modules. The 1st module is about Hellion's minions without Hellion itself. The 2nd module is about Hellion. The 3rd module is about the search for Casandalee without Casandalee herself. The 4th module finds her. The 5th module is at the base of Unity's Silver Mount without Unity itself. The 6th module is about Unity. That assigns two modules each to the three Iron Gods.
The problem is that Casandalee is not truly an Iron God. She had neither the power nor influence of a semidemigod like Hellion or Unity, and she had been inactive for almost 500 years. She had no effect on the two modules devoted to her beyond killing Furkas Xoud. The Iron Gods theme fails in her two books.
More deeply, modules are not about the NPCs in them; rather, they are about the PCs. The 1st module is a good mission for beginners. The 2nd module lets them head out as experienced adventurers in a place they can prove their worth ("scrapworth" was a good name for the reputation system). The 3rd module is a patchworld of encounters: an anti-technology village, another buried spaceship, and the lair of a rogue Technic League scientist. The 4th module let them encounter true aliens. The 5th module finally faced down the notorious Technic League. And the 6th module capped it all off with the flagship of the fleet. This is a good string except for the filler nature of the 3rd module.
The problem is that Casandalee is not truly an Iron God. She had neither the power nor influence of a semidemigod like Hellion or Unity, and she had been inactive for almost 500 years. She had no effect on the two modules devoted to her beyond killing Furkas Xoud. The Iron Gods theme fails in her two books.
More deeply, modules are not about the NPCs in them; rather, they are about the PCs. The 1st module is a good mission for beginners. The 2nd module lets them head out as experienced adventurers in a place they can prove their worth ("scrapworth" was a good name for the reputation system). The 3rd module is a patchworld of encounters: an anti-technology village, another buried spaceship, and the lair of a rogue Technic League scientist. The 4th module let them encounter true aliens. The 5th module finally faced down the notorious Technic League. And the 6th module capped it all off with the flagship of the fleet. This is a good string except for the filler nature of the 3rd module.
How did you fix this? (Did you fix it?)
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How did you fix this? (Did you fix it?)
That's for Things You Have Changed and Things You Should Have (Spoilers). However, I just figured out another possible solution. I will write it up and give it its own thread, Finding Casandalee.
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The problem is that Casandalee is not truly an Iron God. She had neither the power nor influence of a semidemigod like Hellion or Unity, and she had been inactive for almost 500 years. She had no effect on the two modules devoted to her beyond killing Furkas Xoud. The Iron Gods theme fails in her two books.
More deeply, modules are not about the NPCs in them; rather, they are about the PCs. The 1st module is a good mission for beginners. The 2nd module lets them head out as experienced adventurers in a place they can prove their worth ("scrapworth" was a good name for the reputation system). The 3rd module is a patchworld of encounters: an anti-technology village, another buried spaceship, and the lair of a rogue Technic League scientist. The 4th module let them encounter true aliens. The 5th module finally faced down the notorious Technic League. And the 6th module capped it all off with the flagship of the fleet. This is a good string except for the filler nature of the 3rd module.
How did you fix this? (Did you fix it?)
If i ever ran Iron Gods, i'd homebrew out book 3 almost entirely, and have the party fighting robotic dinosaur riding mutant orcs while riding salvaged motorcycles across the radioactive hellscape of Numeria.
Book 4 would also be dramatically re-written, where the party goes up against alien monstrosities, but i'd make it a lot crazier and it would be body-horror, involve someone screaming "I'M IN THE MACHINE!" and there'd be a chest-bursting monster in every encounter.
If i ever ran Iron Gods, i'd homebrew out book 3 almost entirely, and have the party fighting robotic dinosaur riding mutant orcs while riding salvaged motorcycles across the radioactive hellscape of Numeria.
Now that you have this great visual, you have to create a plot and hook for it. ;) In my experience, creating a deep enough plot to sustain three levels of play is the hard part.
Book 4 would also be dramatically re-written, where the party goes up against alien monstrosities, but i'd make it a lot crazier and it would be body-horror, involve someone screaming "I'M IN THE MACHINE!" and there'd be a chest-bursting monster in every encounter.
Okay, that may be a little too "over the top."