| 10 people marked this as a favorite. |
I posted this as a response to UpliftedBearBramble's thread for Campaign Prep of Book 1 Pactbreaker but I figured this Adventure Path needed it's own feedback thread. Here are my thoughts on the first book so far.
Before diving into specific chapters, I want to highlight some inconsistencies found in the book. For instance, the location of Corozal in the Viridian Nexus is described as both 200 miles and 50 miles away in different paragraphs. Additionally, the timeline of Valanar the Green’s tenure is conflicting; he’s mentioned as being elected in 4700 and ruling since, but another part claims he’s ruled for 17 years. Clarification on these points would be great.
The Greenwood Gala is an engaging start to the adventure, with well-developed NPCs like Alyce and Tanasha adding depth to the event. The activities, including the Cabber Toss and Flyting Contest, are creative and fun. However, the rules for the Parasmati game need further clarification to ensure smooth gameplay. It’s also unclear if there are additional background events that could allow for potential failure by the players, as the current setup seems to guarantee their success.
The terror attack is a pivotal moment, but there are several unanswered questions:
Starting Unrest Points: The initial amount of unrest that the players should contend with isn’t specified.
Valanar the Green’s Inaction: As a 15th level Archdruid, Valanar’s failure to defend himself from the seedpod is puzzling. Did he deliberately allow the attack? His unwillingness to be resurrected hints at deeper motives that need exploration.
Investigation Gaps: Players can find evidence linking the terror attack to Taldor, yet there’s no immediate investigation, and no one claims responsibility. The GM is left without clear guidance on the perpetrator’s identity, which is frustrating for both the GM and players. The GM not knowing who perpetrated the attacks in Book 1 or 2 is not acceptable. I'm not a player you don't need to keep me in the dark.
At this stage, players possess a map indicating a location tied to the terror attack, yet Emorga insists on prioritizing the search for Corozal to foresee future events and reduce unrest. This feels disconnected from the main narrative. As of right now you could remove all of Chapter 2 and it wouldn't impact the overall story the AP is trying to tell.
Flashpoints: Each flashpoint in this chapter appears isolated, lacking a cohesive story arc that advances the main plot. The tasks—though varied and potentially engaging—do not uncover new evidence or further the investigation into the attack. Seemingly used to waste time before the vote for a new Wildwood Lodge leader takes place in a months time.
This chapter revolves around a crucial vote at the Gala grounds, now marred by a recent terror attack. What was Wildwood leadership doing in the month the players were gone?
Vote Dynamics: The introduction of new guests vying for leadership feels sudden. Why is there no representation from the Wildwood Lodge to reclaim their position? Lodge officials are mentioned as being present but not actively participating, which is confusing.
Influence Mechanics: Gaining influence seems pointless when the vote is inevitably stolen by Ruzadoya Swiftmane. This undermines players’ efforts, leading to frustration.
Aftermath of the Vote: After Ruzadoya’s unexpected victory, the narrative lacks urgency. Despite the treaty being nullified and the Gala attendees accepting an undead leader, the players are told to wait 8 hours before leaving. This delay is perplexing given the high stakes.
Downtime Misalignment: Post-escape, players are given as much downtime as they like. This is illogical as immediate action is required. Taldor’s implication in the terror attacks and the nullification of the treaty demand a swift response.
Political Response: There’s no mention of Eutropia’s reaction to the unfolding events. Given Taldor’s significant role, her response is crucial and should be clearly addressed.
Consistency: Ensure information is consistent throughout the book, especially regarding key details like distances and timelines.
Clarify Rules: Provide clearer rules and potential outcomes for events like the Parasmati game.
Investigative Path: Establish a clear investigative path post-terror attack, allowing players to follow leads and uncover the perpetrators.
Narrative Urgency: Maintain narrative urgency, especially after significant events like the terror attack and the vote.
Political Dynamics: Detail the political dynamics and responses from key figures like Eutropia to provide context and direction for the players.
Player Agency: Ensure players’ efforts have meaningful impacts on the story, avoiding scenarios where their actions feel futile.
Thank you for taking your time to read all of this feedback. I hope it helps improve future AP's.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
So this is a tall order, the module itself has an astonishing amount of “What do I do as the GM” moments where I personally feel when running games I shouldn’t be kept in the dark as a player would. That being said I’ll forgo generalizing about Paizo’s module method of writing and concentrate on Pactmaker as best I can to show how much we are missing from a complete narrative for the start of an Adventure Path.
*
Chapter 1
The PCs are expected to be the winners of the Gala, despite being active security. There are no alternatives other than to make more events to ensure they win. I understand it’s to spotlight the players, so it causes no issue in the story.
I have confirmed with Foundry VTT, other DMS, and rereading that the method of winning is either total points earned being higher than the other team wins a stretch, but whether it’s best two out of three stretches or total points scored is the victor. I’ll do what feels right.
We never discover the identity of Valenar the Green’s killer or the group that instigated his death. When given the clue about a map with spores that was found in a Taldan official’s tent, the GMs are instructed to send the PCs into the forest for a month to engage in flashpoints. At the end of this month, no one even mentions Valenar’s death or the responsible party for the Gala attack.
Valenar the Green is a level 15 Druid capable of casting rank 8 spells (according to the pathfinder wiki) , and yet a plant based creature hiding in an ordinary pouch killed him in quick succession to the exchange, with no explanation as to why. He’s one of the most powerful people on the island. Emorga has the ability to see the future, and doesn’t see this event happening, or chooses to remain silent on it with nothing said in the backmatter to mention any vision on the most important event of the year for them. That means suspending disbelief is stretched not only for a handful of NPCs, but also their subordinates.
I greatly feel this weakens the role of the PCs, and really sticks to gamifying the need to level up and provide encounters. For a game that starts out and ends so socially based in the influence system in the spirit of War of the Crown it happens to give me the impression that the logical progression of thought after an attack would be to investigate.
The druids couldn’t keep up security at the Gala which was the first huge red flag that the event had grown out of the means for them to control and regulate. The trees and support Druid aren’t at the scene of the most important event at the Gala when the darkwood and the seeds are exchanged, coupled with mentioning the whole reason for the trade is to trust one another. Yet there is still the need for security and the PCs are tasked with the brunt of that responsibility over others.
Taldor is strangely silent for something contributing to it’s military power, and the whole of its river trade network. Tanasha doesn’t seem to alert Empress Eutropia or call an emergency meeting of the senate. She doesn’t seem the sort to withhold information given the situation where Taldor is being viewed as responsible.
Valenar really didn’t do much of anything except die. He’s not given backmatter or any sort of introduction. I don’t believe he can be this important to holding everything in the forest when he doesn’t so much as cast a spell, or tell the PCs thank you before his death. He appears and then is out of mind for the rest of the adventure once the PCs kill his controlled corpse.
Chapter 2:
The Conrasu cannot be talked to like a regular NPC, and forces the use of the research subsystem as a means of filler. Fine, but it doesn’t go anywhere or contribute towards the flashpoints in a meaningful way or Chapter 3.
In “Severed at the Root” this system starts to directly contribute towards the story, but there are little more than breadcrumbs here now. This is just a jumped the shark opportunity for something that should have been introduced later.
Traveling the Verduran forest is fun, but it’s a waste of time. Helping people who don’t even come to election, and enact meaningful differences to the ending or effort. The PCs follow the Paizo narrative where the same result is given for any degree of work. Small details change, but the story remains immutable, so there is no sense of urgency with a month’s due date hanging over them.
Many of the flashpoints as I’ve alluded to are pointless other than to gain exp and treasure. I accept filler and all it’s empty promises. We’re here to see the forest and get to know its denizens, but it’s done in a situation that doesn’t fit the story or can be done in an enjoyable way. Our reason for helping is to stop a wild hunt we can’t affect or see in the background and no NPC questions our motives.
The mindset of helping these people is to reduce unrest. The rules of which seem as unclear as Prismati scoring, so I’ll just do what feels right given the amount of effort the PCs put towards them.
The map is in the wrong hands. Letting the Druids have it to delay finding the portal for module 2 just delays things. If the story can be finished in a single module it would make more sense that Taldor and Andoran couldn’t react in time. We’re literally told a month must pass to put us in a position to help, and we can’t when the month is up.
No druids come forward to the PCs. We are left with Emorga, and that’s it. We don’t see any active Wildwood lodge members who can clue us in to what is happening outside of Emorga who seems like she is more invested in the PCs than the actual events.
Chapter 3:
Waiting 8 hours for the cover of darkness after the results of the election is basically suicide. Had this unfolded before me, I’d have run on the spot. We’re clearly in over our heads, and major political powers have had a month to at least make an announcement claiming their innocence, and prove it by cooperating.
Having the NPCs detained and having to rescue them is fine, but the PCs aren’t obligated to stay in a place they know and have been told flat out is hostile with nothing keeping the newly elected centaur from harming them now.
Emorga again didn’t see the centaur coming back, or the events following the election.
She hasn’t been used in any meaningful way to prevent events. Giving the PCs an oracle that has no ability to see future events to influence them is frustrating. It would have been better to give the PCs an NPC that could shape the story more, rather than the attitude of accepting things happen and we’re stuck reacting more than influencing on a system that is hyping up changing people’s minds and actions to in turn help us.
The centaur’s sister gives one line of doubt, and stops. Having the sister NPC didn’t contribute to the story and we’re at the same point without her now.
Critically succeeding and Succeeding give two hugely different impressions. The Druids seem unable to process her resurrection, and cannot identify an undead creature or not for themselves. This is also highly off putting that the fey rally behind her, to the point where disbelief isn’t suspended it’s just neglected. We need this to happen to progress the story, despite having it should be prevented.
We’ve reached the point of the module where I feel the story is on level with Zack Snider’s productions over a TTRPG narrative. It seems cool that it happened, but is never explained, processed, justified, or given a reason to be present in a system where the mechanics for recall knowledge tell the player directly there is a problem even if their initial reaction is favorable to seeing someone return from the dead.
Influenced NPCs are basically here to be collected in module 2 as a means to fill a base of operations, which is made obsolete almost immediately into “Severed at the Root”’s chapter 2. We never return from the given information so they are left to fend for themselves and aren’t directly helping the PCs anymore.
The Verduran forest is treated as its own country, and doesn’t have any form of stability. There is no supporting leadership despite Emorga and others on the island once Valenar the Green is killed. It took one death to create this much chaos, so then there was never any degree of peace or control below the surface.
There is also no way the Wildwood lodge was holding peace or enforcing peace in the forest before or after Valenar’s assassination. Killing Eutropia didn’t cause this much chaos, despite it being a false death in War of the Crown.
*
So that’s about it. I’m holding out hope that module 3 will shed some light on Valenar the Green not fighting back.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
He doesn't fight back because the author requires him to die to advance the plot. Mystery solved.
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
He doesn't fight back because the author requires him to die to advance the plot. Mystery solved.
I know you're correct it's just disappointing.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I always was kind of confused by how little chaos War for the Crown had. It should have been more like this
| 9 people marked this as a favorite. |
Jessica Catalan seems to be significantly more experienced writing adventures, so I was expecting to see that level of writing from her previous works here. Most of her credits do come from sourcebooks and some adventure paths, with Blood Lords: Ghost King’s Rage being the most recent entry before Severed at the Root.
This is directed at Severed at the Root, module 2 of Wardens of Wildwood.
Chapter 1: Remnants of the Past
It seems like the better position that is more heavily fortified and safe while still in the forest is Wispil. Tanasha would let us stay and we’d be able to still be well defended. Why didn’t we run there? There would have been the ability to get to the Verduran nexus as well which is nearby.
The skeleton in the cave, if the description on the ax is to be believed, is 4000+ years old and has not disintegrated to dust in that time. Surely we will be told what magic is in this cave that has persisted since the first age of exploration by Emorga.
Jaerdan the Green never gets a follow up on who killed his Grandfather, but asks the PCs to do so following the events of the chase from the Wildwood election. Oh wow, this poor boy. While mentioned that you can form a bond and take him under your wing as a protege no further material is ever given to develop him or his request. He’s another dead end collected NPC for the sake of having people populate the cave who is relevant to the story by a relation.
Trauma inflicted by fey somehow causes sulfur zombies to rise from several Taldan spies. That’s not how undead work, and no one with Khaprickle is a necromancer.
Oppara is aware of what is happening, since the lion’s blade agent is alive. No action is taken to aid the PCs by Taldor. Knowing Jessica was aware of Geb and how it’s structure works and that she’s written pathfinder and starfinder society scenarios, she meant for this to be a self contained adventure that continued a plot thread she was given hoping there was a light at the end of the tunnel she would construct.
Treeraiser is incredibly hinted at with clues, but never even brought up; we get Zebik, a green man; whom I’ve never heard of and has apparently chosen .
The lattice network in which the staff is connected to the Plane of Wood, and Zebik; yet later on Ruzadoya is completely unaware of them and their locations.
The dweomer cat apparently has the same exact power keeping him immortal that Ruzadoya Swiftmane has reanimating her and making abominations, and yet he isn’t in pain or the least bit bothered.
The staff is simply too powerful for a party of PCs half its effective level when they find it. This is a real jump the shark moment that hands the players a loaded gun expecting them not to pull the trigger- and still may do so in Chapter 3 to get past the gauntlet to the Dragon’s lair.
The dweomer cat doesn’t join the lodge, and wants to live with a horrible fungal abomination who somehow remembers him after the transformation and 4600 years of pure pain and torture.
Khaspricle’s fight is horribly underwhelming and quickly forgotten in the wave of what’s coming.
Chapter 2: Aberrant Growth
The PCs accomplish very little here, as confirming with the fey from the first world confirms that they aren’t involved in any way with the plane of wood shenanigans. Yet we know this as it’s constantly told to us again and again with every discovery. This encounter itself does nothing to advance the story.
Druids apparently have no common sense, nor do they seem to oppose Ruzadoya in any meaningful way. This is incompetence to a whole new level, and they don’t seem the least bit bothered that people are being transformed into abominations and are keeping their powers while teaching people the secret language ‘Wildsong’ they are forbidden from teaching others to assure the ritual has a higher success rate. This goes against the basics of their class we as players and the DM understand. Druids lose their powers under these circumstances. Also Ruzadoya is killing the tree, and cutting it up for loci/foci. This is probably a major reason why the language is secret as its influence is causing the ritual to have a higher success rate for a reason that is never explained. This isn’t a suspension of disbelief, we are in an absence of it.
Do you need to cut a cube shaped hole in someone’s chest before sticking a cube in? It’s not elaborated on. A 5 inch x 5 inch x 5 inch cube insinuates that their hearts are being cut out and the loci/foci are being put in its place.
Can a wood kineticist instantly recognize these cubes and their powers, and can extract elements to get the cubes out of people? This isn’t even touched on or explained, yet it’s the same place their powers come from. Considering the author wrote Rage of Elements that information is missing, and they would know best.
The Druid’s transformation scene is a truckload of checks that results in no new information, as we don’t see this Druid we see against the person who put a cube in his chest. The Druid cannot remove the object either despite it being related to nature and the checks not being that hard. What is the point of this? We have no connection to the Druids, and considering what they are doing I don’t feel any sympathy towards them. This death is a deserved one, and I doubt the Players will feel differently.
Clues lead to redundant clues when it comes to determining the plane of wood, Zibik, and encounters involving Ruzadoya's chosen.
The attack phases to defend the lodge are just to overwhelm the players with numbers at this point, and many NPCs can die. Grenabor is of little use if you have a genuine bard in the party. I feel like we collected everyone into one place to make it easier to kill them. Couldn’t we just go to another cave? We could essentially blow everything up with the invaders inside.
Emorga could potentially prepare the heroes a “Heroes Feast” Ritual in time for the attack, but it is never mentioned as a possibility; and would be significantly more useful than Grenabor’s bonuses. She should be able to sense or see an attack coming against the lodge. No one has set snares or traps around the lodge.
Ruzadoya sends no woodwarps other than low level infected commoners at this point, yet has brutes in spades to spare with a pair of Chimeras of all things.
Chapter 3: Shadow of the Dragon
Regardless of outcomes in failure and NPC deaths, the story continues. The Dragon, the Naga, and the Gloaming Arbor take most of the chapter to result in a massive influx of player income simply being found on the ground at the player’s feet.
A ridiculous amount of money happens to be just lying on the ground, all over the place. The dragon doesn’t add any of the dragon slayer’s treasure to its horde because the Dragon has no horde, and yet every single piece is perfect for killing this specific dragon. There should be at least 6k of currency on this dragon as his personal horde for the encounter, and yet he has nothing on him despite being an artist.
Ishoran hasn’t been heard of, or seen in centuries but it’s assumed he is alive and willing to help. That’s reaching quite a bit even for fey. The lodestone cannot be destroyed or moved, but Ishoran can be killed, and killing him in this state is certainly a mercy. It’s not listed as an option and leaving him to filter the nether realm energies out of his body for centuries seems ridiculous when his affliction is so great only a wish ritual will work.
At that point of cost a raise dead will work and be faster if we really want him at all. Leaving him to exist stuck in a single place and not even inform Grendabor who doesn’t seem concerned for his safety and well being despite helping them save the forest is boggling.
There are archetypes that deal with ghosts and shadows, and helping him should be more apparent and related to a short term reward. We surprisingly don’t need him or his information, as the leshy’s can give all this away without an encounter as well. Why wasn’t this or the leshies edited out to save space? We have so many clues, leading to redundant clues again.
We have leshies give us a ‘question and answer period’ when this information has been repeated by several sources now, and the leshies themselves aren’t an encounter or opportunity to influence the dragon. The sprites could have communicated all this, and merged the encounter, and presented the same amount of treasure. Mentioning the cabin, which we cannot explore or utilize in a closed region doesn’t help the PCs or give them an opportunity to rest with all that is in this area.
The obstacle/barriers between the PCs and the studio are 400 damage average per player, 40 each obstacle, with the potential for 4 hours worth of fear 4, sickened 4, clumsy 4, and an encounter for each obstacle. This also assumes you move immediately to the dragon influence, which no break is given arriving at the heart of the Arbor.
Why does Unaasi deal fire damage in an explosion instead of piercing and bleeding like tree related kineticism usually produces through Plane of Wood channeling? Jessica, you wrote Rage of Elements. Your name is on the credits of the sourcebook, did you just forget?
This goes a bit beyond the expectations of the Paizo narrative and directly at the source material the adventure draws from, by the actual author of the source material. This is a new low for Paizo’s writing. There is no excuse for this one.
“Hello Avathreal the Realmshaper, allow us to tell you our backstories” influence gauntlet/battle is definitely beyond deadly, not severe; and immediately follows a highly deadly gauntlet of obstacles/encounters with debuffs that also can keep players from earning influence in addition to losing an additional 4 in the final two rounds of topics. That’s interesting to read, but far too much challange for a party of 4 players.
There is no explanation of what happens if the artifact is used as collateral, nor does Emorga tell the pcs directly not to offer it as leverage for the Dragon.
Whether or not the Dragon joins in Ruzadoya’s chosen, Unnasi can potentially run or explode damaging everyone. This can destroy his own subordinates with fire despite being tied to the plane of trees which should deal piercing and bleeding damage-not fire like a tree kineticist- and more importantly kill the dragon. I suppose that’s the real reason the Naga is there to hand us the ritual in that case.
There is quite a lot of whiplash between battle and subsystem here, and the stakes are so high you’d think this was the climax of the book with us performing the actual ritual in Module 3 to confront the Wildwood Lodge. We instead race to perform the ritual now and that serves as our anti-climax to the book with rolling some checks- which is a real downer from the victory we just hard earned.
Having all the forces of the lodge divided between the six lattice spheres, immediately following an attack that we barely survived, and leaving the base unsecured with no defense; and performing a ritual that many of them can’t mentally handle or contribute towards is folly. The continuity of the module just falls apart here.
The ritual requires the six lattice-work sphere parties to all start the ritual at the same time, and all the pcs must be at a singular sphere. So if anyone else’s sphere is attacked they can’t help anyone, and Emorga the most powerful NPC of the lodge is with the players. Emorga doesn’t even roll the most important check of the book, and cannot critically fail even with all the complications unless you change Emorga’s primary roll to 31 instead of 33.
Ryzodya is alerted either way, and of course can send an army to one of if not all of the lattice spheres. While she can coordinate those forces over distances, the PCs cannot, and most of the members of the player lodge are non combatants and it’s painfully obvious they will die. Now Ryzodya knows where the lattices are. This is critical, and yet when looking for new locations she doesn’t even consider them first. We can’t even contact the other lattices to ask how the ritual is going on their end.
The ritual is just too ambitious without more support, or a named NPC stronger than Emorga.
This would have served as a better means of pacing in book 3 where the actual siege happens to drive us to attack immediately, but after the ritual is concluded we are sentenced to wait 2 weeks of inactivity to give Ruzadoya a head start in the plane of wood ahead of them to act as a means of urgency. Either both authors didn’t communicate that well where the stopping point was, or the next author knew and intentionally forced the PCs to wait pending the ritual.
Why can’t we offer the power from the ritual to either the dragon or the naga? It would mean securing their help in the ritual, and still drain the tree. It fits into all their goals. They don’t have to steal it. If the PCs explain themselves well enough, they should not only offer to help but mention it coincides with what they want. Adding this as a complication is a complete seeming rug pull moment. We aren’t using that power for anything ourselves, we lose nothing giving it to one of those two NPCs.
Ruzadoya can somehow deflect the ritual, but it is never explained why, as all the rituals and foci/loci are made by other people and Zibik really hasn’t shown himself. Even as a graveknight or new variant there is no explanation of “how” or “why” Zibik brought her back in her current form. We could only assume it’s feedback from the leylines, and somehow she interferes through brushing up against our minds like with the staff.
Observations:
The Dragon knows where the Sphere network is, and is chased to one by Ryzodya’s chosen so she knows where they are for certain now physically as well. Khasprinkle knows where the staff is, and Ryzodya knows where the Gloaming Arbor is, and it’s pretty telling they are a threat and don’t act on information before the PCs gain it/catch up. She still has an army of hundreds, and somehow we’re going to just take a boat and get to the isle of Arenway?
At this point of the story the players must rely on obviously evil and dubious sources for help, as well as the recent attack makes them desperate enough to the point where they are asked to voluntarily bleed treasure despite most PCs having invested items like weapons and armor they cannot mechanically part with representing 600gp of each of their 2300gp level 10 wealth to start, if not more of their personal wealth.
The plan forced on them which they cannot alter or suggest alternatives like burning the tree, and they cannot leave until it is agreed too and fulfilled without the ability to do a side quest or earn income as we are told and shown it is urgent. Players will have property runes, striking runes, and armor runes all of which cannot be touched. I’d rather pull a Sylvannis and just burn it, that would cut it off from the Plane of Wood for certain and it’s already dying.
I’m failing to find a connection with these lodge NPCs or form a bond with many of them as they all feel like dead ends, and I’m someone who loves to make connections with fictional characters to bring the PCs to the front of the story. We can’t follow up on Valenar the Green’s death, we can’t investigate who Ruzadoya was before the massacre, and we can’t invest time or resources into people to make them combat ready for the attack.
None of these many lodge members bring the PCs to the front of the story. Vandalya for the most part says nothing about her sister or even what happens next. She doesn’t even mention her clan or what became of them under her sister. Emorga only speaks for the sake of the plot, and Grenabor is really just there for the sake of having someone who can organize.
Druids don’t care much for history or their past it seems. They failed their job, completely and utterly. We need something else in the place of Druids. They can’t be trusted, or solve problems on their own. It’s been a theme of Paizo now for years. They certainly can’t think for themselves.
Suggestions for Improvement:
Establish a consistent and easily accessible NPC Folio for reference: At this point there are so many NPCs I can’t even keep track of them all. I will need to construct an NPC folio, something that Paizo used to do, but no longer does. This is necessary in case a PC suddenly asks “Who is this again? Where did we meet them? What do they do?”, which is something I find myself doing more and more. The section in chapter 1 with the columns is nice, but that list quickly grows and will keep growing.
Explain why the Druids of the Wildwood lodge are allowing this to happen, and are willing to sacrifice their powers and beliefs to uphold the vision of Ruzadoya. She is asking a lot to defend a forest she is also destroying. This scorched earth method isn’t reminding anyone of other methods used before, and it seems history repeats itself. An election doesn’t mean people will just sit back and allow themselves to be turned into monsters in the literal sense. Teaching people Wildsong literally turns off their class powers. How are they even contributing past that? Again Jessica’s primary credits are sourcebooks. Suspension of disbelief is turning to absence of disbelief.
Have more of the NPCs condensed into a single character or group/faction to make them more manageable. Had the NPcs been a faction in the forest like the centaurs or even the fey then I’d be more apt to refer too and remember them and their contribution than a spread out rag tag group of misfits all of whom are so scattered and unfocused that I struggle to remember them and simply read them aloud from a sheet of paper. I know who Emorga is and her abilities. Make them at least as half as recognizable as Emorga is, or simply let them stay in the background and not be a bunch of red shirt deaths to be pitied as a missed opportunity.
Explain it to me like I am five. A lot of these situations and Ruzadoya could be better explained if we just knew something other than a few statements of “She is Zebik’s chosen.” Well great, why her? We need that reasoning or at least some established connection other than she is his champion. What is she, is she undead for certain? At this point we should at least have more information after meeting the dweomer cat, there was so much potential to show evidence here and understand something.
Zebik can’t find his own stuff: We gain no further insight into who is responsible for everything going on, other than hints at Zebik and he only seems to be able to talk to Ruzadoya giving her the means and details of a ritual and yet not being able to say where a storehouse with his staff is despite it all being connected to the spheres and to the green man.
The pacing of the AP is horridly jagged: We go from major conflicts to whimsy and sub systems so many times it gives me whiplash during prep. What is the tone? Is it supposed to be body horror and terrorism, or something else to do with hope and building a town?
The most important and closest NPC to Ruzadoya isn’t helpful: Vandalya Swiftmane is uncooperative and unhelpful when it comes to discussing Ruzadoya and her motivations in life, or how to bring her down. Was that information not available at this point, despite us having all the pieces and the sister? There is a huge missed opportunity here, if Ruzadoya is a graveknight her sister can certainly destroy the armor that will allow her to keep coming back. She could have also identified it by now, or at least told us how it formed.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
This feedback is directed at Book 3: Shepherd of Decay written by Mike Kimmel
Chapter 1 For the Rooftweft!: The siege is an incredibly satisfying and fun pay off for all the work in the previous 2 books. So much so that the adventure should have ended here, as it provides a good resolution in terms of the story; and establishes control back in the Verduran. Very few issues here.
Emorga, having been a previous leader of the Wildwood Lodge, contributes nothing to the knowledge of the siege; including not naming the tree in the root speaker event which she would have known. She has information of the Druids written on her back reaching thousands of years before the Wildwatcher spirit gave her sapience, “Emorga has [now] served on the Lodge council for the better part of a millennium and, in her centuries of life, she has witnessed the rise and fall of many leaders and political factions both within and without”, and at this point she ceases being useful. For someone who has been with us this long and been our support she just fades into the background forcing us to roll checks for any information we can get for the island. It’s odd she doesn’t have any presence here. Book 1 back matter is completely ignored.
The players aren’t allowed to act till 2 weeks after the ritual of the previous book to shut down Iydillis. This gives Ruzadoya a massive head start, as the siege will be longer than a single day and require more time to discern how she escaped.
We also have no leader heading the Wardens at this point with Ruzadoya gone. She's named no one to lead in her place as anyone useful to her went with her to the plane of wood. She literally leaves her remaining supporters to die, with the promise of reinforcements which aren’t coming. If there was anywhere on the isle to booby trap it’s here, sadly none of the remaining supporters have leadership qualities so it’s a war of attrition.
The entire “root speaker” activity is pointless busy work. We also choose the worst possible point of entry on the island, being the most defensible it holds the least amount of resistance from the Wardens. The palyers not even given the option of questioning one of the druids for the name or anything about where Ruzadoya is, until we find one trapped in a tree by their own magic. Oh Druids.
Livi Leapingheart is put into a prison which is underground with dirt walls. She is an awakened rabbit spy, and forgets that she is able to burrow. Not sure what happened here as she can easily get away given her skill set and awoken animal heritage, but you apparently are required to save her. She spends all her time “ staring at Druulbach in quiet defiance”. Her getting caught at all conflicts with everything we know about her. She provides the obligatory Paizo marsh giant fight which seems to be a guarantee in all recent adventure paths.
Fey Skinner has no art or explanation other than he is there, and a hazard in the Feywrithe.
The Wardens of Zibik were spawned by Ruzadoya and defend the portal, so this greatly reinforces she is the chosen of the Green man as they did not attack her but attack the players.
Emorga doesn’t come with us into the Plane of Wood, and suddenly decides it’s time for her to assume leadership. We’re given the choice of whom we want to bring with us once the portal recharges, but there are only two who will be people from those listed. Madge for the radiation, and Vandalya for the magical crafts, and a satisfying conclusion with her sister?
Chapter 2: Cradle of Knot We follow Ruzadoya to the plane of wood and are immediately waylaid by people she’s interacted with ahead of us by 2 weeks+.
The entire town is a time sink, with a contribution based economy that the PCs need to participate in for the lackluster information of purple spores leading them to Zibik’s speakers, and not even to Zibik which is locked behind the pathfinder’s ritual.
The whole of the chapter ends with a wish that may force them into slavery, or at the very least benefit the greedy Errashid. The wish can’t have anything to do with Zibik or Ruzadoya. That is rather frustrating, and pointless that the chapter ends with something the player cannot even use. This chapter more than any other kills the pace of the adventure much like Book 3 of BloodLords: Field of Maidens chapter 2, where we establish relations with a faction that contributes nothing to the story in exchange for basically no useful information. Just a collection of chores which don’t even benefit the player's goal. This is a recurring theme for Paizo’s style.
Chapter 3: Ruin and Renewal
This chapter more than any of the others required me to reach out to Andrew White, and find out what the ideal ending was supposed to be. I’ll be posting that conversation in the DM prep thread.
Search points on a busy work subsystem lead to the captured Pathfinder. He says “She claims he(Zibik) spoke to her directly and believes that her undeath is the result of her conviction and a sign of Zibik's favor.” This is our first real doubt of the connection as Green men don’t have anything to do with the undead, she had said at the election she was brought back by the Verduran. She clearly adjusted the story the more she learned about the Green man. It’s a bit late to spread doubt on something that’s been loudly broadcasted for 2 of 3 books now.
After more search points, busy work and spore samples we need to do another ritual, critically failing this ritual means losing more time. Good place to have Emorga here, but we needed to leave her behind. She’s been the ritual person for so long now it’s almost sad to do one without her. It would have meant more to have her conduct the final ritual with us as that was her recurring theme with support.
This is where the adventure could have been easier to pursue Ruzadoya as this is the only region in the plane of wood where there is stone. That would have been a better clue except they are supposedly many of these all over the place, but still better places to start looking than wandering around looking for purple spores.
Ayrzul contacts the party in the cave, and it leads to nothing. Okay, but accepting their offer of the mace shows Zibik you aren’t on their side at all, and impedes the point of the trip. There is mention of a “primal haunt” involving the radiation, but there is no such mechanic or hazard stated here. This led me to think Ayrzul created Ruzadoya, but no. She was just angry.
‘The offer’ - “Zibik would depart the Plane of Wood and thereafter allow the blight to regain its strength and consume more of the Plane of Wood, enabling Ayrzul to resume conquering the plane. The entity made a brief attempt to convince Ruzadoya earlier, but she was too focused to even acknowledge the offer.”
So this is where a lot of people, including Dave from (@howitsplayed on youtube) became confused with what Ruzadoya’s main plan is: which is to convince Zibik to come to the universe and destroy the two countries. This gets twisted in with Ayrzul’s plan, which is not Ruzadoya’s plan; but she believes it’s worth the risk if it happens. It’s worth mentioning this as someone who was paid by Paizo for a review of the AP and received the adventure for free couldn’t untangle this section of the module, and is established as explaining material well.
Obligatory Influence battle, like with the Dragon from book 2. Ruzadoya dies with absolutely no dialogue or reaction from Vandalya if you brought her sister with you as the magical craftsperson. Zibiki demands to know who the players are, and what they want. He tells them he knows nothing about creating undead, but was intrigued by Ruzadoya. Big oof moment here for the story, which will be clarified in the writer’s response in the DM prep thread. Given what we got in the 100 page count limit, it doesn’t add up that she was a fraud including the two primal wardens of Zibik, the ritual for the abominations from Iydliss, and a host of other supporting evidence form the Druids who accept an undead as their leader after a democratic election.
There is a wealth of backmatter focusing on continuing the adventure, and even restarting everything from the beginning. One of the continuations is taking and wearing the graveknight armor, which at this point; would be beyond foolish. Lini gives the armor to Droogami in the module art, classic Druid move given this adventure.
Oddly enough teaching wildspeech has the consequences of people unable to control primal magic to manifest it once learnt. This leads to a linguist realizing the power involved in the language and teaching it to everyone. The pervasive magic option is mentioned making Wildwong a rare, and no longer a secret language. This causes catastrophes to happen if left unchecked. Again, Druids do nothing.
The dragon in the gloaming arbor seeks to turn the entirety of the Verduran into the Realm of the Fellnight sort of demiplane. This reminds me a lot of Court of the Shadow Fey with the shadowy realm killing or transforming all it touches from Kobold Press in the Midgard campaign setting. I really like this option, but it depends on the Dragon or Naga living past the ritual in book 2.
If Zibik does present a danger, the nations are able to vanquish him in the ‘bad ending’ at a huge cost. The writer did not respond with confirmation on the canonical ending, as all APs have one.
The Wildwood lodge remains the same, yet it came about at the fall of Ghorus’s lodge. Shouldn’t the name of the lodge be the Rootweft now? That seems to be the theme that the new lodge defeats the old and takes over.
Recommendations for Improvement
Less is more: We had an overwhelming number of NPCs in the supporting cast introduced throughout 3 books. This in turn overwhelms the DM with having such a vast cast that contributes very little. Very few of them were useful, or even applicable for an actual conclusion on the level Madge was. Madge not only was able to prevent and treat the radiation in the plane of wood without ever having encountered it before, she was able to learn even more recipes and produce consumables throughout the adventure and final leg of the adventure for the players. Emorga maintained her uses for books 1 and 2, but quickly fell by the wayside for the conclusion as well.
We had a 3 book adventure take on way too much, in terms of not only NPCs but the story it was attempting to tell through the character Ruzadoya. We as the DMs aren’t told about Ruzadoya being a fraud, and that all the supporting action in the story shows she is the chosen of Zibik based on what the players hear, see, and experience.
Inform the DM like Bloodlords did at the start for the overplot and developments with the antagonist so the DM can plan accordingly. DMs are kept in the dark until the final confrontation which at that point we learn there is nothing between her and the Greenman she didn’t either project or lie to herself and everyone else- and that much I only got from the responses from a writer in the AP. We don’t see that anywhere in the AP. We’re just left to infer without anything concrete, nor do we see Vandalya confront Ruzadoya for her betrayal and becoming the thing she hated the most. Someone who exploits the Verduran and its people for their own gain. Having that one small bit of character development would have helped tremendously because that makes her such a tragic villain who betrays her own beliefs she held in life, reanimated in death by that hatred of outsiders, and ultimately becomes worse.
Pacing The story’s pacing after the siege was completely derailed. It didn’t get back on track in time for the conclusion and was left unsatisfying after all the busy work. The siege was the strongest place to have ended the adventure with the momentum we had gathered in book 2.
The dreaded 100 page count limit: We’re coming to an age where this is just an excuse. Adventure paths can be released in a virtual media only format, and still be readily accessible for any physical table. I understand hardcovers and core releases will always have physical releases, but softcover adventures have constantly been short changed by missing intent or materials with editing needing to cram in to that 100 pages limit. The amount of resources which go into an AP are more than the sum of their parts and writers, there is the design department and creative department all working to make the 100 pages work. The problem is that the amount of people going into the APs may be hurting their final product, as too many cooks spoil the broth.
I’m going to echo Niktorak here, and say player agency again. Nothing we did mattered at the election, the ritual, or even at the ending. The adventure itself was the players and DM along for the ride with all limbs inside the cart at all times. I haven’t run an adventure that made me feel ineffective as a DM before, this is a new experience in about three decades of running ttrpgs. Prep in itself was a trying, and uphill battle.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Thankyou for posting your review and sharing your thoughts on this AP. I sincerely hope the Paizo writing team take on board these observations and adjust their output accordingly.
Creative Director
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Thankyou for posting your review and sharing your thoughts on this AP. I sincerely hope the Paizo writing team take on board these observations and adjust their output accordingly.
We always take feedback into account and appreciate feedback and observations, never fear! Just keep in mind from the expectations management side of things that even when the feedback inspires us to adjust output accordingly, those adjustments won't see the light of day anytime soon. For example, the next Adventure Path I'm starting to work on hasn't even been anoucned yet, and Spore War (which starts in January of next year) is already out of development and in various stages of editing, layout, and prepping to ship to the printer.
Still; thanks for the feedback always!
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I know my play group wish to play this AP after Rusthenge, but there are so many red flags telling me I should dissuade them. If anything, I think that the major lesson(s) learned from this is that there needs to be better quality control and systems set in place to keep an AP mechanically sound and narratively aligned.
I love the concept of exploring the Plane of Wood at the end as it gives players a sneak peak into a setting not featured in an AP before.
That said, Paizo has a lot of work to do if it's going to build player and GM loyalty amongst all those departing from other systems and TTRPG firms. If pagecount is an issue, cut the amount of unnecessary side characters. A GM can always insert their own if needs be, and really the point of an NPC should be to fill in gaps the players might not have (crafting, healing/resurrection, magical items, plot-info and device(s)) and demonstrate to players the consequences of agency- both the players' and the NPC's.
1. Cut unnecessary backmatter if doing so would allow better AP detail on its plot/mechanics. New items and spells are great but maybe provide instead a list of available loot/thematic spells using stuff already published, with the most important backmatter pages dedicated to those most crucial to the plot. Most of the expendable (single-use) items in the backmatter are not important to the plot, and could prob be replaced by content already created in the core.
2. Take a leaf from Magic: the Gathering's design process- both past and present- by exercising more unified oversight over each "set"/book of an any respective "block"/AP. The design lead or body of leads must be more clear on the direction of their AP and be able to make executive decisions as to its direction. TLDR The process needs to be more cohesive in terms of theme, narrative, and mechanics.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
TLDR The process needs to be more cohesive in terms of theme, narrative, and mechanics.
From what I learned about the process, entire departments and several writers are involved in the creation of an AP, and they all work from the same outline from an unknown source which can be extremely vague in itself, as it was commented that the outline was unclear about certain points in this AP which the entire story hinged on.
There doesn't seem to be an easy way to coordinate that many people while simultaneously writing all the modules in the AP, and those departments will not test the product, nor read it cover to cover to ensure that level of cohesion. The editing/layout is simply for getting it to print, not overall consumer satisfaction.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the better quality control and having standards for keeping an AP mechanically sound and narratively aligned, but as we were just told any such feedback won't see the light of day anytime soon. We're simply meant to consume what is output.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
TLDR The process needs to be more cohesive in terms of theme, narrative, and mechanics.From what I learned about the process, entire departments and several writers are involved in the creation of an AP, and they all work from the same outline from an unknown source which can be extremely vague in itself, as it was commented that the outline was unclear about certain points in this AP which the entire story hinged on.
There doesn't seem to be an easy way to coordinate that many people while simultaneously writing all the modules in the AP, and those departments will not test the product, nor read it cover to cover to ensure that level of cohesion. The editing/layout is simply for getting it to print, not overall consumer satisfaction.
I agree with you wholeheartedly on the better quality control and having standards for keeping an AP mechanically sound and narratively aligned, but as we were just told any such feedback won't see the light of day anytime soon. We're simply meant to consume what is output.
Nonsense. (In the kindest way). Each of the main AP’s has a lead author no? I don’t see why these main leads can’t communicate with each other better to coordinate. There could totally be an AP lead to manage the coordination. Magic the Gathering also tends to have multiple sets in various stages of development that are meant to be released in a linear fashion for a broader narrative arc.
There ought to be a way to stagger the development of each AP book so that there is a consistency throughout the whole. I absolutely refuse to believe there’s nothing to be done. I likewise don’t understand why my standards would be considered too high. Non-gaming books get a great deal of editing, why would we satisfy ourselves with lacklustre product?
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
Thankyou for posting your review and sharing your thoughts on this AP. I sincerely hope the Paizo writing team take on board these observations and adjust their output accordingly.We always take feedback into account and appreciate feedback and observations, never fear! Just keep in mind from the expectations management side of things that even when the feedback inspires us to adjust output accordingly, those adjustments won't see the light of day anytime soon. For example, the next Adventure Path I'm starting to work on hasn't even been anoucned yet, and Spore War (which starts in January of next year) is already out of development and in various stages of editing, layout, and prepping to ship to the printer.
Still; thanks for the feedback always!
I want to begin by expressing my appreciation for the hard work your team puts into creating immersive content. However, after running Wardens of Wildwood for my group and spending considerable time reviewing it, I’ve come to the difficult decision to step away from the Adventure Path. Book 1, despite its inconsistencies, felt like an introduction I was willing to forgive. Yet, as we moved deeper into Books 2 and 3, it became clear that the problems weren’t isolated—they were systemic and significant enough to detract from the overall experience.
The progression felt disjointed, with chapters like Wildfires standing out for how disconnected they were from the main storyline. Instead of building momentum, it felt as though the players were being stalled. Tasks and encounters appeared without significant narrative payoff, and the sense of urgency—a critical component in a political and suspense-driven campaign—faded into the background.
By Book 3, the weight of unresolved storylines, like Valanar the Green’s death and the lack of direction around key political and investigative plot points, left me with little faith that the Adventure Path could deliver a satisfying conclusion. My players, eager to influence the story’s outcome, found themselves sidelined. The system’s mechanics, particularly in moments like the Wildwood Lodge vote, felt like they undercut their agency rather than empowering it. That feeling of “no matter what you do, the outcome remains the same” was the final nail in the coffin.
As a GM, I often enjoy filling in gaps and adjusting modules to fit my group’s narrative, but there’s only so much that can be done when the core framework feels inconsistent. Despite BrambleBear and I conducting over 40 hours of livestreamed reviews and exploration into this AP, it became clear that the issues were beyond simple fixes or adjustments. It’s a disappointment, especially after being drawn in by the potential of the setting and themes of Wardens of Wildwood.
I appreciate Paizo’s commitment to listening to the community, and I hope this feedback is taken into consideration for future projects. There’s a clear passion behind the writing, but the execution, especially in narrative cohesion and player agency, left much to be desired in this instance.
Thank you for your time and for fostering a space where this dialogue is welcomed.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
On a side note, it's incredibly disheartening to have invested so much time into reviewing this content only to see my review hidden on the product page. It feels like all the effort the community puts into providing constructive feedback is being suppressed. This isn’t just about my experience; others in the community are also being silenced. I question the integrity of a 4/5-star rating when feedback like mine is hidden. If only positive reviews are shown, what’s the point of this system? It feels misleading.
Pretty confident that's just a website glitch. There are plenty of positive reviews on Paizo's website that don't show up on product pages either.
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
First of all, I'd like to thank Niktorak and Bramble for the work theyve put into reviewing, and trying to work out this AP. Also to paizo staff and some writers dropping in different threads- this means a lot to us consumers.
I am disappointed in Paizo with this AP. It looks like a really fun theme, with some excellent points..and just devolves into a prep mess that for me is the opposite of what an AP is supposed to deliver.
In general, they are an alternative to my having to homebrew a campaign, and when I dont have time to do so (we have been running one til level 14 but my time is limited), an AP should do the leg work and I should just have to read and do light prep.
If I need to do as much, or more prep, than a homebrew, I could also just buy a D&D/Any other publisher or game adventure and convert that.
I have not run it, but did purchase book 1 and when I started to struggle with some inconsistencies, I came to the forums to check if it was just me - and if I indeed wanted to run this further with my players.
Problems that have been with Paizo since early APs are still some of the most troublesome parts of their products unfortunately. The disconnect between modules, between writers and plotlines...this does not make for a satisfying AP. I have found that the one off adventures generally sit better, because of a tigheter, more focused plot, and perhaps attempt less ambitious stakes.
It has been a while since I posted, I have run some Aps, and I used to be very active on the forums, particularly some AP ones (Skull And Shackles, having done a long campaign and as much homebrewing AP within it).
I know Paizo can do amazing, you did very well in heading into 3 book APs, but I just want you to consider changing something if these products have consistently the same issues: writers disconnect, plot disconnect, theme jumping around, lack of including the information the GM needs rather than fluff the GM struggles to present (i.e. backgrounds of hostile npcs without a way to convey to players the story, vs having a map, more stat blocks and tables or anything that'll cut prep and needing to fix things).
I am looking forward to Spore War as a forest campaign instead of this, and will continue home campaign until then.
Ps. A lot of this criticism comes from holding Paizo to higher standards than other publishers, where their adventures are nowhere as detailed and delightful to run as Paizos, so I say everything with respect and love for their work.
| 6 people marked this as a favorite. |
The one-two punch of Valenar’s murder never being solved in the story and then Ruzadoya’s return never being explained is one of the most egregious missteps in a Pathfinder AP I can think of. Both of these plot points FEEL like they should be part of a massive reveal, and they just never go anywhere.
I finished running the AP yesterday and somehow missed in my initial prep that Zibik actually had nothing to do with where Ruzadoya was getting her power. I don’t really understand all of the painful visions of Zibik PCs are supposed to have if it turns out he’s a totally nice guy? I ended up explaining it as Ruzadoya’s power and the visions being a trick executed by Ayrzul, who was trying to manipulate Ruzadoya into spreading his blight to the material plane. But yeesh, this is one of the messiest Pathfinder APs to come out of 2nd edition.
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Reading the review/feedback, I do feel like the Pathfinder AP problem with NPC cast has been increasingly a thing ever since Crimson Throne(which did it great), but its been increasingly become silly since 2e started.
Like Strength of Thousand has multiple times problem where each book has each new author introduce several new npc cast members who don't have that many in written events on top of already large cast of npcs. There are only one to three who get any screenlight, so it was weird when in book 4 we got several npcs (mostly new) with us who did nothing (because actively taking them to talk to mzali npcs would penalize us), then book 5 AGAIN introduces five new npcs we are apparently supposed to hang out with if we want to. Haven't seen our dormitory buddies since book 3's class trip :'D
I know its easier to introduce new npcs writer can play with as much as they want than make assumption that npc from book 1 is still around, but its really really hard to get invested in new npcs in book 5 when you know they won't stick around anymore than book 4 ones did.
(then there is Edgewatch problem where pcs' npcs colleagues exist barely in single paragraph and never do anything in the campaign itself for 99.99% of it :'D)
I think part of what highlights it being problem in 2e is that most of 1e ap books were often self contained: they set in new area with new npcs while old ones were left behind in previous area. In 2e there are lot of adventures set around a "home base"(your keep in age of ashes, circus in extinction curse, the base itself can move or it is somewhere pcs return to) or involving same region/city a lot, so it highlights how npcs don't actually stick around as "relevant" outside of what gm does with them.
|
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Wow I accidentally combined "screen time" and "spotlight" there huh. But yeah addition, I have another theory:
I was wondering why it didn't feel as much big problem in 1e aps that DID have home base or set in single region and I think there is secondary reason to it: Pathfinder 1e rarely introduced new characters that were assumed to hang around that didn't have statblocks. If it did, they were usually extremely minor quest giver npcs or like shop owners and they still had classes and levels listed so they could be built if gm wanted to. 2e is much more comfortable with introducing new npcs that don't have any kind of stats just for roleplaying and its in larger quantities since they don't each need a new statblock(or even shared generic one).
As such, its easier in 2e to overwhelm pcs with amount of npcs that don't feel mechanically relevant or combat capable and its harder to put you into headspace of "how are these npcs going to help pcs in this mostly combat focused campaign or stay relevant if pcs don't roleplay downtime". Like in 1e you could use leadership feats and cohorts to take your favorite npcs with you and even then it was easier to have party npc where gm just keeps adding levels to their original statblock.
(in general though, important thing to counter this would be that npcs have small scenes in each book and don't just constantly introduce new npcs to fill same roles the previous npcs could fill. in 2e fist of ruby phoenix is one of few that does this better since that one has other tournament competitors assumed to survive their fight thus they get to stay around to show up in later books as well to have their own quests and events. Crimson Throne npc cast felt relevant because the adventure detailed what npcs will be doing in each book and they often returned in later books, so it felt like they never truly disappeared even when they were offscreen)
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
The one-two punch of Valenar’s murder never being solved in the story and then Ruzadoya’s return never being explained is one of the most egregious missteps in a Pathfinder AP I can think of. Both of these plot points FEEL like they should be part of a massive reveal, and they just never go anywhere.
I finished running the AP yesterday and somehow missed in my initial prep that Zibik actually had nothing to do with where Ruzadoya was getting her power. I don’t really understand all of the painful visions of Zibik PCs are supposed to have if it turns out he’s a totally nice guy? I ended up explaining it as Ruzadoya’s power and the visions being a trick executed by Ayrzul, who was trying to manipulate Ruzadoya into spreading his blight to the material plane. But yeesh, this is one of the messiest Pathfinder APs to come out of 2nd edition.
finished running it? what's your schedule!!?
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I had hoped the "Oh, we can't possibly have our AP authors coordinate via Teamspeak/Discord, they have day jobs and live in different time zones" issue had been resolved in the last ten years. Seems not.
|
Creative Director
|
| 7 people marked this as a favorite. |
I had hoped the "Oh, we can't possibly have our AP authors coordinate via Teamspeak/Discord, they have day jobs and live in different time zones" issue had been resolved in the last ten years. Seems not.
We do this now, and have been for a while. I've been using Discord to help with this since Season of Ghosts (and Curtain Call, and Spore War, and an upcoming unannounced adventure path I'm starting to develop in a few weeks), and it's working well.
Sometimes it works great.
Sometimes though, especially when the team is hit with unexpected complications (such as the OGL crisis, which hit Curtain Call somewhat hard but hit Wardens of Wildwood a LOT harder), no amount of Discording will fix everything.
I can't overstate just how disruptive 2023's OGL situation was to Paizo. 2023's products most impacted were those on the rules side, while Narrative's were more late 2023 and early 2024. You saw the exact same disruptions when we shifted from 3.5 to 1st edition Pathfinder, and then again from 1st edition to 2nd edition. The difference there is that edition changes are things we plan ahead for. The OGL crisis caught the entire industry by surprise, and while the switch to the remastered rules isn't a new edition, it had a lot of the same ripple effects. Compounded by the fact that we had to make those changes more swiftly and with less preparation than an edition change.
Feedback is always welcome, but I hope that folks are already seeing an improvement in connectivity in stories—be they late legacy Adventure Paths like Season of Ghosts, or ones like Curtain Call and the upcoming Triumph of the Tusk, which are increasingly not being impacted by day-and-date change3s from the remastering.
My great hope is that now that we've completely distanced ourselves from the OGL that we won't have to scramble to change the schedule at after the actual last minute, which we've had to do three times so far (once when we lost the magazine license, once when it became apparent that 4th edition D&D wasn't going to be open or be a rules set we were interested in using for our stories, and more recently with the OGL crisis).
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
finished running it? what's your schedule!!?The one-two punch of Valenar’s murder never being solved in the story and then Ruzadoya’s return never being explained is one of the most egregious missteps in a Pathfinder AP I can think of. Both of these plot points FEEL like they should be part of a massive reveal, and they just never go anywhere.
I finished running the AP yesterday and somehow missed in my initial prep that Zibik actually had nothing to do with where Ruzadoya was getting her power. I don’t really understand all of the painful visions of Zibik PCs are supposed to have if it turns out he’s a totally nice guy? I ended up explaining it as Ruzadoya’s power and the visions being a trick executed by Ayrzul, who was trying to manipulate Ruzadoya into spreading his blight to the material plane. But yeesh, this is one of the messiest Pathfinder APs to come out of 2nd edition.
My wife and I play every day as our quality time/before-bed activity, so this is the 10th adventure path we’ve played through since we started in late 2021. We’re insane people, I know.
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
We do this now, and have been for a while. I've been using Discord to help with this since Season of Ghosts (and Curtain Call, and Spore War, and an upcoming unannounced adventure path I'm starting to develop in a few weeks), and it's working well.
Sometimes it works great.
Sometimes though, especially when the team is hit with unexpected complications (such as the OGL crisis, which hit Curtain Call somewhat hard but hit Wardens of Wildwood a LOT harder), no amount of Discording will fix everything.
I can't overstate just how disruptive 2023's OGL situation was to Paizo. 2023's products most impacted were those on the rules side, while Narrative's were more late 2023 and early 2024. You saw the exact same disruptions when we shifted from 3.5 to 1st edition Pathfinder, and then again from 1st edition to 2nd edition. The difference there is that edition changes are things we plan ahead for. The OGL crisis caught the entire industry by surprise, and while the switch to the remastered rules isn't a new edition, it had a lot of the same ripple effects. Compounded by the fact that we had to make those changes more swiftly and with less preparation than an edition change.
Feedback is always welcome, but I hope that folks are already seeing an improvement in connectivity in stories—be they late legacy Adventure Paths like Season of Ghosts, or ones like Curtain Call and the upcoming Triumph of the Tusk, which are increasingly not being impacted by day-and-date change3s from the remastering.
My great hope is that now that we've completely distanced ourselves from the OGL that we won't have to scramble to change the schedule at after the actual last minute, which we've had to do three times so far (once when we lost the magazine license, once when it became apparent that 4th...
Why are reviews like mine being hidden on the product page? I understand the OGL situation was difficult, but if we can’t inform fellow consumers about a product, what was the point of reviewing and livestreaming all this content? It’s really disappointing.
Tighter cohesion between books is essential, and in a digital age, there’s no excuse for such issues. Maybe it's time to reconsider the 100-page limit if it’s holding these products back.
We’ll keep reviewing these APs, I really hope reviews stop being hidden for the communities sake. As for Triumph of the Tusk, I hope it lives up to expectations because we've started our deep-dive into Curtain Call and so far it's looking rougher than Wardens. Thanks for your time.
|
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Honestly that's probably a website bug, none of my edgewatch reviews got hidden and those were super long essays(I think one of them legit broke the word count and had to be edited down, so I posted rest of it in product thread) to explain why I gave them low score even if I liked something about adventure.
If you have your review somewhere, I recommend trying to rewrite it or edit it to see if it fixes it assuming you don't want to ask customer service if someone can take a look at website and fix it
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sometimes though, especially when the team is hit with unexpected complications (such as the OGL crisis, which hit Curtain Call somewhat hard but hit Wardens of Wildwood a LOT harder), no amount of Discording will fix everything.
I can't overstate just how disruptive 2023's OGL situation was to Paizo. 2023's products most impacted were those on the rules side, while Narrative's were more late 2023 and early 2024. You saw the exact same disruptions when we shifted from 3.5 to 1st edition Pathfinder, and then again from 1st edition to 2nd edition. The difference there is that edition changes are things we plan ahead for. The OGL crisis caught the entire industry by surprise, and while the switch to the remastered rules isn't a new edition, it had a lot of the same ripple effects. Compounded by the fact that we had to make those changes more swiftly and with less preparation than an edition change.
Feedback is always welcome, but I hope that folks are already seeing an improvement in connectivity in stories—be they late legacy Adventure Paths like Season of Ghosts, or ones like Curtain Call and the upcoming Triumph of the Tusk, which are increasingly not being impacted by day-and-date change3s from the remastering.
My great hope is that now that we've completely distanced ourselves from the OGL that we won't have to scramble to change the schedule at after the actual last minute, which we've had to do three times so far (once when we lost the magazine license, once when it became apparent that 4th...
That’s fine James, but telling us after the fact we bought the entire AP doesn’t help us there. If you do feel that strongly about this to respond twice to our feedback thread and really believe we’re in the right here, I’d call for an errata because this AP is suffering the most so far from it. You have every reason to revisit and fix this one considering what you yourself have just said.
From what I can see Curtain Call is suffering just as much if not worse, but I will leave that for the thread it belongs in. I’ll let you know when I complete my review and live prep. It hasn’t been too convincing so far.
I feel you are being disingenuous with us and simply trying to have the final word and hoping it goes away. I can tell you now it won’t, a lot of us paid 90 USD+tax for all of the Wardens of Wildwood AP and a lot of groups shied away from it despite me personally showing everyone on youtube, discord, and in my own group how much the authors cared to help us, and work with us.
At this point simply telling us those adventures are better doesn’t fix this or the issue of trust. Had you been transparent with us before the adventure went on sale and asked us to curb our expectations, then I could have seen lowering my expectations. Telling me to do that after I buy all the Adventure Path is not a good look.
|
Creative Director
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Why are reviews like mine being hidden on the product page? I understand the OGL situation was difficult, but if we can’t inform fellow consumers about a product, what was the point of reviewing and livestreaming all this content? It’s really disappointing.
I have no idea. My guess is (as mentioned above) a website bug. I'll ask tomorrow once everyone's back at work, but I have no insights into how anything involving web pages anywhere work. That said, there are more ways than posting reviews on product pages here to give feedback...
|
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Sometimes though, especially when the team is hit with unexpected complications (such as the OGL crisis, which hit Curtain Call somewhat hard but hit Wardens of Wildwood a LOT harder), no amount of Discording will fix everything.
I can't overstate just how disruptive 2023's OGL situation was to Paizo. 2023's products most impacted were those on the rules side, while Narrative's were more late 2023 and early 2024. You saw the exact same disruptions when we shifted from 3.5 to 1st edition Pathfinder, and then again from 1st edition to 2nd edition. The difference there is that edition changes are things we plan ahead for. The OGL crisis caught the entire industry by surprise, and while the switch to the remastered rules isn't a new edition, it had a lot of the same ripple effects. Compounded by the fact that we had to make those changes more swiftly and with less preparation than an edition change.
Feedback is always welcome, but I hope that folks are already seeing an improvement in connectivity in stories—be they late legacy Adventure Paths like Season of Ghosts, or ones like Curtain Call and the upcoming Triumph of the Tusk, which are increasingly not being impacted by day-and-date change3s from the remastering.
My great hope is that now that we've completely distanced ourselves from the OGL that we won't have to scramble to change the schedule at after the actual last minute, which we've had to do three times so far (once when we lost the magazine license, once when it became apparent that 4th...
That’s fine James, but telling us after the fact we bought the entire AP doesn’t help us there. If you do feel that strongly about this to respond twice to our feedback thread and really believe we’re in the right here, I’d call for an errata because this AP is suffering the most so far from it. You have every reason to revisit and fix this one considering what you yourself have just said.
From what I can see Curtain Call is suffering just as much if not worse, but I...
this is a mildly outlandish request / expectation.
No company is going to say "Just cancel your subscription for a few months, our product is gonna be sub-standard."
Why are reviews like mine being hidden on the product page? I understand the OGL situation was difficult, but if we can’t inform fellow consumers about a product, what was the point of reviewing and livestreaming all this content? It’s really disappointing.I have no idea. My guess is (as mentioned above) a website bug. I'll ask tomorrow once everyone's back at work, but I have no insights into how anything involving web pages anywhere work. That said, there are more ways than posting reviews on product pages here to give feedback...
Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking your free time to look into this, sorry for directing the issue at you, I know it's not your fault.
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
I’m all for constructive criticism but feel increasingly uncomfortable with the tone this sub thread is taking. There’s no need for conspiratorial thinking.
Give em time to look at the issue.
|
|
I’m all for constructive criticism but feel increasingly uncomfortable with the tone this sub thread is taking. There’s no need for conspiratorial thinking.
Give em time to look at the issue.
or look at it as an opportunity for a really solid Pathfinder Infinite product which helps assuage the "pain points" in the AP?
I mean... to me there's a framework there for a great story. But for a DM to lead a party through it, well... that's a lot of work. If I decided to run this, I would appreciate a supplement which might answer some of these questions.
|
|
I'm enjoying Curtain's Call much more on first reading than with this one since I could tell even without reading everything in detail that there are missing information or weird details in this one. Curtain's Call seems fairly gm heavy to fill in details(since the opera can be anything based on party's campaign), but its explicit about that so I don't feel bothered by that aspect of first two books as result of it.
|
|
| 5 people marked this as a favorite. |
Honestly might have worked better if they had held off for a few months on this one..
|
|
Honestly might have worked better if they had held off for a few months on this one..
** spoiler omitted **
you could also add in randomly spawned monstrosities rampaging through the woods. that might lead to retaliations from the humans on the forest folk, further upping the tensions.
Some huge storm of godsblood (dunno how the mechanics work) hits during the convocation, SOMETHING SOMETHING, V's dead now, and oh my oh my, time for war.
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
Doing the best I can is the only look I have to give.
Thank you for trying to clarify things for us and taking the time to do so. Definitely some of the answers you got here were slightly uncalled for, with unreasonable demands. There's only the going forward reasonable suggestions that are useful.
It makes sense that the OGL thing put production through the ringer, we have to accept that that's just what business is like, constraints happen and it just has to move forward.
You've explained elsewhere, and others have too, how planning an AP works, and the intricacies of so many authors, schedules, availabilities and writing as it goes or all at once so hard to plan ahead. I dont envy the ordeal that that is, and I admire the quality Paizo tends to put out, incessantly, theres no breaks between APs!
However, as someone who has followed since early, this connectivity/author/module disconnect is the number one issue that kept creeping up in all feedback about APs. Picking up an AP quite far into 2e and getting a heavy does of that is not an excellent experience. I hope it is the difficulties you explained (though that still comes at my consumer expectancy, I'll likely go for reviews before purchasing next time). Ghosts has been quite good, I hope that is the trend.
Whilst the topic is hot, i'd like to strike this iron:
With 3 AP modules, I would prefer to see the same authors, or a collaboration of the same authors, through the same modules, to reinforce continuity. Perhaps you're already doing this, or it is complex with freelancers, but this is always one of the most requested things in those threads I feel.
The difficulties of AP story writing, as Paizo has explained, are challenging - players do unexpected things. But most groups buy into the AP giving the major strokes.
And what's important to me at least:
I need the AP to do the legwork. To find the numbers, challenges, give me options, what ifs, and tools. NPCs definitely fall into that but the roulette of NPCs have to be more than pokemon collection (if they are going to take space in the limited page count).
And I need to know that if I do the prep for a couple of chapters, it isnt going to be an uphill prep challenge as we go through because previous authors werent in on what was happening on the previous modules.
The GM needs to know the plan ahead of time, so he can weave later chapter stuff in the early ones (which is impossible if module 3 isnt written/planned when module 1 is being done I guess).
Telegraphing early what the AP is - I really like to know in advance what fantasy it'll fullfill Is one of the 3 books a dungeon, the other one a exploration? I think this ties with the planning, what does an author want to do with their module.
Example:
Wildwood was a difficult one for me to understand what it was trying to do. Felt like it was going to be about learning of the druids and the arboreal enclaves...or about factions and vying for allies...or now about plane hopping?..but then the faction collection adventures we did before has no impact on it and the rest of previous books efforts are not important.
I'd have liked Wildwood to stick to 1-2 themes, and to choose 1-2 main mechanics and to carry them through the whole AP.
Is gathering allies and visiting factions in the forest key? Then let me decide the outcome of part book 3 with what I used my time in book 1, as an example.
I really find all conversation that we can have in these threads with you James, with any Paizo staff or freelance writers, interesting and special, so thanks again.
|
| 3 people marked this as a favorite. |
I'll throw my lot in with Errant above. When I run APs I'll often wait till the entire AP is out and take a chance to read it before I run it. Inevitably, I wind up spending some time pruning lost plot threads, foreshadowing villains early, or giving a payoff scene later in the book for something that was set up earlier. There's always some work needed and the disconnect between books can be especially jarring.
THAT BEING SAID: Paizo still puts out the nicest adventures in the industry. Everyone has an off day, including companies, and while I probably won't run WoW I'm glad to have a copies in my library to mine for ideas, NPCs and monsters to drop into a home brew game.
I will say, in the recent market research we were asked about how we would prefer APs- single volumes in hardcover or softcover, or continuing with a monthly subscription. One of the reasons I chose to vote for a single volume hardcover book was, hopefully, to help with the cohesiveness of the books and stories. Having them all in a single book gives a person a chance to read from beginning to end and spot issues before they get to print.
I had hoped the "Oh, we can't possibly have our AP authors coordinate via Teamspeak/Discord, they have day jobs and live in different time zones" issue had been resolved in the last ten years. Seems not.We do this now, and have been for a while. I've been using Discord to help with this since Season of Ghosts (and Curtain Call, and Spore War, and an upcoming unannounced adventure path I'm starting to develop in a few weeks), and it's working well.
Sometimes it works great.
Sometimes though, especially when the team is hit with unexpected complications (such as the OGL crisis, which hit Curtain Call somewhat hard but hit Wardens of Wildwood a LOT harder), no amount of Discording will fix everything.
I can't overstate just how disruptive 2023's OGL situation was to Paizo. 2023's products most impacted were those on the rules side, while Narrative's were more late 2023 and early 2024. You saw the exact same disruptions when we shifted from 3.5 to 1st edition Pathfinder, and then again from 1st edition to 2nd edition. The difference there is that edition changes are things we plan ahead for. The OGL crisis caught the entire industry by surprise, and while the switch to the remastered rules isn't a new edition, it had a lot of the same ripple effects. Compounded by the fact that we had to make those changes more swiftly and with less preparation than an edition change.
Feedback is always welcome, but I hope that folks are already seeing an improvement in connectivity in stories—be they late legacy Adventure Paths like Season of Ghosts, or ones like Curtain Call and the upcoming Triumph of the Tusk, which are increasingly not being impacted by day-and-date change3s from the remastering.
My great hope is that now that we've completely distanced ourselves from the OGL that we won't have to scramble to change the schedule at after the actual last minute, which we've had to do three times so far (once when we lost the magazine license, once when it became apparent that 4th...
Thank you for your detailed explanation and I hope I didn't come off as too aggressive. I just had to GM through quite a few AP's where the connective tissue between modules was very thin and therefore don't have that much patience for that kind of thing anymore.
I have heard great things about Season of Ghosts and am looking forward to GM'ing it one day. Curtain Call and Seven Dooms for Sandpoint also seem very exciting, but I got some other AP's to GM on my plate first. ^^
Anyway, onwards and upwards for the next AP's, I look forward to them and all the other stuff you guys are releasing right now! If I might make a suggestion unrelated to AP's, please get the errata for Player Core 2 done, there are a lot of issues which needs fixing (see the errata collection thread) and it's one of the two main books with all the remastered classes.
|
Creative Director
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
Anyway, onwards and upwards for the next AP's, I look forward to them and all the other stuff you guys are releasing right now! If I might make a suggestion unrelated to AP's, please get the errata for Player Core 2 done, there are a lot of issues which needs fixing (see the errata collection thread) and it's one of the two main books with all the remastered classes.
Not something I'm involved with, but I can guarantee that folks are working on errata. I have no insight to share into the schedule there though; since I'm focused on the adventure side of things these days pretty exclusively (and even then not equally on every adventure, since the whole narrative team splits that job... otherwise we'd never be able to stick to a schedule!), it's not my place to talk about that topic.
|
Creative Director
|
| 2 people marked this as a favorite. |
I will say, in the recent market research we were asked about how we would prefer APs- single volumes in hardcover or softcover, or continuing with a monthly subscription. One of the reasons I chose to vote for a single volume hardcover book was, hopefully, to help with the cohesiveness of the books and stories. Having them all in a single book gives a person a chance to read from beginning to end and spot issues before they get to print.
I am VERY EAGER to get a chance to look through that research soon, and the fact that we've actually been able to get that out there is potentially a huge step in the right direction. Message board posts are great and all that, but they're not really a great place to get big picture data.
|
|
I am VERY EAGER to get a chance to look through that research soon, and the fact that we've actually been able to get that out there is potentially a huge step in the right direction. Message board posts are great and all that, but they're not really a great place to get big picture data.I will say, in the recent market research we were asked about how we would prefer APs- single volumes in hardcover or softcover, or continuing with a monthly subscription. One of the reasons I chose to vote for a single volume hardcover book was, hopefully, to help with the cohesiveness of the books and stories. Having them all in a single book gives a person a chance to read from beginning to end and spot issues before they get to print.
One of the best things we did in our business was investing in more market research. I got training to be a data scientist in college, even if I'm not using it now, and always find there's so much to mine out of the data. I hope you all share some of the data with those of us who are curious.
Y'all are the best in the business, and I'm interested in seeing where the research leads you next.
|
|
Thank you very much. I appreciate you taking your free time to look into this, sorry for directing the issue at you, I know it's not your fault.Why are reviews like mine being hidden on the product page? I understand the OGL situation was difficult, but if we can’t inform fellow consumers about a product, what was the point of reviewing and livestreaming all this content? It’s really disappointing.I have no idea. My guess is (as mentioned above) a website bug. I'll ask tomorrow once everyone's back at work, but I have no insights into how anything involving web pages anywhere work. That said, there are more ways than posting reviews on product pages here to give feedback...
I saw someone mention on pathfinder society scenarios thread that website disappears reviews that are made before product is available for everyone to buy, but I assume this isn't exact same situation unless you were super fast in running and reviewing adventure. But apparently copy pasting review and submitting it again should make it visible again if the bug here works similarly?
Exact description for fixing it was "Try copying and pasting your original review, change the original review to no stars and blank it out. Then paste the old review and review it again."