Mini-Fluff: Pathfinder #3 Preview

This is a continuing series of short posts on Paizo’s Pathfinder adventure path magazine. The image is Copyright 2007 Paizo Publishings

I got issue #3 of this amazing OGL compliant adventure series about 2 weeks ago. Time for another capsule review/preview.

Issue number one was about Crazy Gobbo’s and an insane Assinar. Issue number #2 channeled a lot of the energies of Slasher/Thrillers movies like Se7en with a ghoulish murdering spree.

Issue #3 is one creepy magazine with a very strong ‘The Hills have Eyes‘ vibe to it. It features an adventure for 7th level characters called ‘The Hook Mountain Massacre’ (This is sooooo going into my Strawberry Shortcake RPG campaign….)

As usual, the production values of this magazine are stellar. After last week’s game, my players were browsing them and kept commenting on just how nice the art and look of the product was. (It also helped that a lot of the art features Well-endowed women in various poses).

As usual the magazine features the following Sections:

• Foreword by James Jacob: Where the editor mentions how disturbed the adventure’s author minds seems to be. He actually tells us that he had to remove things ‘That were just too gross’ to prevent the writer’s imprisonment. He also discusses the uses of movies as inspiration and is what sparked my recent obsession about using tropes as drivers of RPG adaptation.
• The Hook Mountain Massacre by Nicolas Logue: A 48 pages adventure where the PCs are set against a tribe of inbred, deformed incredibly perverted Ogres. Just to give you a feel for the author’s style here’s a short excerpt where a Marine Troll’s personality is described: “One of his favorite pastimes, in fact, is to tear away the flesh of his own face so he can feel the cool water rushing against the raw bone of his own skull…” Eeeeww
• Keeping the Keep by Mike McArtor and James L. Sutter: A short article on challenging PC’s when the manage to recapture a Fort during the previous adventure.
• Varisia by Jame L. Stutter: an 8 page Gazeteer entry on Varisia, the country where the current adventure occurs, complete with a beautiful map and an old-school Outdoor encounter chart.
• The third installment of the Pathfinder’s Journal by James L. Sutter : An 8 page journal-like entry on the World’s fluff. Completely optional but very well written.
• The Bestiary by Nicolas Logue (Crunch!!!) featuring: a Small flying Burning Skull, A Scary Undead humanoid with a mouth as wide as it’s head, A Scorpion-shaped Construct made of Skulls, bones and Chitin and a Huge Dune-like Worm abomination that I’m going to use in a game soon!

Adventure Synopsis: The PCs are asked to investigate a frontier human fortification known to be close to an Ogre infested mountain and whose inhabitant failed to send the usual periodic report. It is feared that it was destroyed by the Ogres. Of course, something far more sinister is behind these happenings.

Even though I will probably never play through these adventures, I am gleefully stealing stuff here and there for my other games.

I’ve subscribed and, so far, I’m a very satisfied customer.