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I went with this AP for a nomadic leadership + hexcrawling adventure.
It would be possible for a GM to include leadership roleplaying and a mechanical system for your following. However, these things are almost non-existent in the adventure written. For most of this AP the following will be not far behind the players, just off screen. There is freedom in this, but it is not what I expected. I wanted rich npcs with lots of travel events that reminded players of their responsibility and identity.
The hexcrawling is mainly done with fixed locations that players can tackle in any order or skip. This will obviously require high levels of prep from a GM. I was expecting something more dynamic that would showcase why people love exploration in games.
This is a very progressive and unique adventure. You will visit very few permanent settlements, rarely use coins, and see indigenous characters saving themselves and others from tyrants. At one point the box text stated that "objects in this horde rightfully belong to the people and should be returned". That is a misstep in giving players agency, but I applaud the concept.
Our run-through has taken roughly 120 hours. My group is low rp, high problem-solving and about a third of our time is spent in combat.
tidbits
The first few sessions were made great by the fantastic inciting incident.
Book 2 was a very exciting standalone adventure where I could never predict what the players would do next. I pulled back on a lot of the guidance and let my players go loose.
I’ve had a lot of trouble with the villain plot not making much sense to me or my players. There have been two spots where this caused me huge problems. Otherwise, I have been able to adjust the adventure to tastes.
We still have about 3 sessions to go before completing the adventure. My players are having a fantastic time and I’m hopeful that the final sessions will be a fulfilling conclusion!
Some tips
I’d recommend having a session 0 talk with the players about who the Broken Tusk people are. Let your players have creative input here. They will be much more invested if they create traditions, npcs and history. They should be able to change just about anything in the last century (syron-period).
Continue to introduce your npcs for the first dozen sessions. There is plenty of space to include your own custom roleplay day to day travel events.
There is a lot of warfare in the adventure that is handled narratively in the background. I changed this by running my own personal hack of the MCDM Kingdoms & Warfare system.
At one point I discovered my players were not tracking treasure because they weren’t able to spend it for so long. Since then, on level up I just allow them to abstractly “purchase” a free magic item or two of specific earlier levels. I’d recommend using auto-progression instead.
This guide by Putty was incredibly helpful in understanding the adventure and making the AP my own.