I’m going to be a single dad for the next few days. My lovely wife is doing some consulting work in the great North and I hold the fort here in Montreal with my 6 year old son and 4 year old daughter. My online presence might be somewhat limited.
Yesterday’s mail brought up a rather hefty package from Paizo.
I opened it and lo and Behold, I got the next issue of Pathfinder as well as the long lost Issue #4 I never got back in December! Weee!
On to the review:
Adventure Synopsis
A plague breaks out exceedingly fast in the city of Korvosa and catches the PCs in the middle of it. Drafted by a church, the PCs fight a losing battle against the spread of the plague.
As they progress in the adventure, the PCs trace the ones responsible for the plague and follow the chain of guilt up to the City’s newest Monarch.
High Level critique
I’m not going to do a critique based on it’s content because the adventure actually failed to interest me. It’s a series of Urban scenes that develop the story of a unnatural plague spreading in a city and nothing can do anything about it.
(The Authors are very careful to point out that there are not enough clerics to cast sufficient Remove Disease in the city to prevent it).
That being said, I’m not much of a fan of Investigation-driven urban adventures.
To my eayes, the plot feels rather railroady as it assumes that the players will help the uncle (a NPC they met in the 1st part of the adventure) of a young girl that fell sick from the plague. It’s expected that the PCs will cough up the cash needed to heal her.
Then the adventure assumes that the players will side with the church that charges to heal people to investigate the plague further.
One reason why I don’t catch on the adventure is that I don’t really like Gritty adventures all that much, especially at low levels. Getting PCs caught in the middle of an outbreak, while great on paper, forces players to live the pretty unheroic role of trying to find the source of the plagues while people are dying.
I’m perfectly aware that a few weeks I specifically argued the opposite that you should have the apocalypse hit your campaign once in a while. However, in my mind, you should do that when the PCs are used to the gaming world and are established heroes of said world.
When nothing much can threaten the PCs, threatening the world is an appropriate approach.
But now, we have a bunch of level 4 PCs stuck in a plague-ridden, chaos-filled city being played by a Queen gone insane. In my book, that’s not the kind of adventure I picture my players enjoying.
Oh and yes, the Queen they so romantically saved in the 1st part is the actual BBEG here, she can’t bear having to be the monarch of the unwashed and the poor.
That being said, you might really dig that type of against the clock investigative adventure.
Bottom line, with my interest in 3.X melting faster than ice in a Fission reactor and the failure of the product to grip my interest, I will put an end to my subscription. While the product remains a very high quality one, its contents no longer meet my needs as a gamer.
If and when Paizo goes 4e, I’ll revisit the line.
Breakdown of the Issue
- Introduction: Where the editor talks about the real challenges of making disease an actual, non laughable challenge in D&D (The solution, hit the world, not the PCs)
- Seven Days to the Grave by F. Wesley Schneider: A 52 page urban adventure taking characters from level 4-7.
- Plague and Pestilence by Rick Miller and Edward P. Healy: A 6 page essay on comparing Fantasy plagues with real world ones. Interesting for people with limited background in medical microbiology :). It covers Epidemics, Pandemics, Medieval Physician equipment, new Diseases and herbal remedies.
- Abadar by Sean K Reynolds: The description of the Church of Abadar, God of cities and laws.
- The Pathfinder’s Journal by James Jacobs: The usual World specific background presented through the eyes of ‘historical’ pathfinders
- The Bestiary by Sean K Reynolds and F. Wesley Schneider
- A random Encounter table for the Korvosa Crypts
- The Luekodaemon: A CR 9bNeutral Evil Plaguebringer Fiend (Paizo’s take on the Yugoloths)
- Daughter of Urgathoa: A CR 8 undead tentacled monstrosity
- A Giant Fly/Giant Maggot: A CR1 Fly and a CR 1/2 offal eater… ‘Nuff said.
- The Lawgiver: A CR 15 Gargantuan Construct with a Freaking Big Hammer.
- The Nosferatu: Ugly Vampire Template that can turn into a Swarm.
YMMV… Have a nice weekend!
If you’re going to be looking for a 4e set of adventures, I believe that Necromancer Games (a partner of Paizo) will be doing an adventure path in 4e pretty soon after it’s out.
Aside from that, WotC has said that the Dungeon magazine adventure paths will continue in the 4e online Dungeon magazine.
I’m probably going to give the Necromancer guys a look… now if only I could secure a Reviewing deal… I may try to contact it’s Prez… 🙂
Just tell them you’re the guy with hundreds of hits for the 10 word adventure thing. 🙂
As an aside – I note that there’s monsters in these Pathfinder magazines. Am I alone here in thinking that the very last thing D&D needs is more monsters? There’s like 300 or more (excluding templates and other variants) in MM1 alone – has anyone seriously run out? Most GMs, in my experience, tend to use the same monsters over and over (with variants) rather than go for variety (which is fair enough, too – how many sentient humanoids can you reasonably need, anyway?), suggesting to me that even MM1 probably has lots of monsters that have rarely seen the light of day.
You know what Gazza, I just might!
As for the Monsters, Graham mentioned something to the effect and we thought that since the Pathfinder RPG won’t have a Monster Manual, maybe the Pathfinder monsters (at 6-7 per issue) will end up in a Pathfinder Monsters volume.
I like new Monsters Gazza, mostly because it allows me to throw new threats at my players without spending too much time preping (Instead of spending time templating/advacing MM1 monsters).
As I mentioned before the concept of monster advancement was brilliant, it’s execution… Not so much. (Credits to Paul Reiser here)
Hey, then I stand corrected. I personally found myself really struggling to think of a REASON to use most of the monsters in even MM1, let alone any of the others. Every sentient being can’t really just be dropped in for a single adventure – what sort of society would they have? What do they eat? Or to quote Jack Nicholson’s Joker, “Where do they get such wonderful toys?” (since they obviously can’t buy them from humans, and so on).
I tended to like undead and constructs a lot – they have no ecological considerations, and even the intelligent ones aren’t typically very chummy or technologically minded – but they do tend to screw with a lot of character concepts (no criticals, and more importantly no sneak attacks). I’ve run most of my campaigns with no intelligent races other than humans, and even then I’ve had to hand wave dragons and so forth (because you HAVE to have a dragon at some point).
Though it could certainly be argued that I’m overthinking things a fair bit.
Combine this to the point you made that a lot of monsters never see the light because they are
a) Boring…. a Yet Another Evil Humanoid
b) Good Aligned… If you don’t fight it, why make stats for them?
I always loved the Monsterous Compidiums, sure I could never use all of the monsters that are in them, but that doesn’t make them less cool. They also show you how to make old monsters new again with just a couple of modifications, like zombies who are more like their movie counterparts that eat people and have infectious bites, YES!!!!
Back to what you said, Chatty. I find the fact that the players aren’t high-tailing it out of the city to be heroic. At lower levels, it is excellent experience to conduct investigations, at fourth level, they aren’t heroes quite yet. There is a problem with railroading the party, I don’t really see a good motivation in helping just one random family out of the thousands . . . just because. The poor plagued girl should be replaced with an NPC that matters to the party, a family member, sweet-heart, a friends daughter. Helping random people IS kinda Retro-Stupid.
If they are outsiders, and fancy themselves famous, then THEY could be the reason for the plague, thus they would need to clear their names. It sounds like the module needs a lot of tinkering, which is kind of crazy as it is suppose to fit right in with its own setting, ain’t it?
I like the premise, put it just seems to take too much character cooperation to pull off successfully . . .
Ripper Xs last blog post..Mastering Epic Levels part 2
I read it more into details and the NPC requesting help actually resorts to insults and guilt-tripping if the players refuse to cooperate. Not a good sign…
I agree with you that hacking the scene to target a NPC that the PCs actually cares about is the best approach.
Another thing that bugs me in that adventure is that while the plague is supposed to target the non-Chelish and/or poor citizens (Chelish are the Rich descended of the original settlers), the vector bearing the plague is Money!!!!
Ummm… that’s not a good idea… You want to target the poor and the sub-citizen, infect the food given by churches that tend to the poor or infect the food that the poor eat but the rich don’t like Onions or potatoes…
Then again, it’s given that the city’s queen is insane…
Ouch.
Strangely enough, this is exactly the kind of adventure I and my group love; situations where there’s a bigger picture/greater good than just a simple clear the tomb/grab the treasure thing going on.
The trick with plagues is to keep on the pressure. Let the bodies pile up and cull the excess of NPCs that innevitably occur during the life of a game. This has repercussions later when the Wizard goes off to his usual shoppe for spell components only to find it’s closed due to the alchemist’s untimely demise.
This creates a real race against time – can the players solve it before their loved ones kick the bucket?
And I can never have too many monsters. I love ’em, me.
Man . . . that is some crappy writing, right there. How uninspired.
How would an insane Queen keep her power? It sounds more like she should be either replaced by a doppleganger completely, or magically charmed. Either way mid-level PC’s don’t have enough support to actually change world events of this scale. . . at least they shouldn’t. 4th level characters aren’t all that rare, dealing with world politics is more on par with high-level adventurers, TRUE heroes whom everybody trusts and supports.
Getting rid of the poor people who don’t serve a function isn’t a new idea, but the consequences of getting caught just don’t warrant the risk, there would have to be an enemy of the Queen setting her up . . . unless, she’s like, only been in power for a couple of days. But even then the plot doesn’t seem to advanced, just look at who benefits and you’ll find your enemy. A 1st level soldiers could figure this thing out so, why would they need Player Characters to do it?
The entire thing is weak and uninspired, which is sad.
Ripper Xs last blog post..Mastering Epic Levels part 2
@GAZZA –
suggesting to me that even MM1 probably has lots of monsters that have rarely seen the light of day.
Very true. But just because you haven’t used them doesn’t mean you ever will, or ever want to.
This is the reason that the Monster Manual 1 for 4e will contain only monsters that you can legitimately drop into your game without some convoluted reason as to why you’re fighting good-aligned fey. For the fey example, most of them will be unaligned, and more chaotic and feral, giving plenty of reason to use them in an encounter.
I tended to like undead and constructs a lot – they have no ecological considerations, and even the intelligent ones aren’t typically very chummy or technologically minded – but they do tend to screw with a lot of character concepts (no criticals, and more importantly no sneak attacks).
I suppose you have yet to read my mini-dissertation/rant on the subject, eh?
It was my first blog post, and remains one of my most popular.
Wow, first thing I thought as I read through your synopsis of the plot was “this is a bad ripoff of Neverwinter Nights.” That game was a great example of how to execute a city-wide plague adventure for low-level characters.
I agree, having the church charge for healing certainly doesn’t encourage good-aligned PCs to want to work for them, though the possibility of finding a cure should be enough motivation.
That being said, the queen is under the ‘charm’ of some sort of Dragon spirit that wants to accumulate wealth and really doesn’t seem to care about political consequences of the queen’s actions.
Sounds like the kind of adventure I like in general, but not executed all that well. I think a primary problem with pre-written investigation adventures is that they tend to be way more open-ended than a dungeon crawl or similar, and so it’s hard to account for what the PCs will do or how they will react.
However, I abandoned Pathfinder when they announced they would not be supporting 4e. I thought the quality was great, but I buy adventures so that I don’t have to do work- if I have the time to convert stats between systems, I could just plan the adventure myself.
Dave T. Games last blog post..Free Comic Book Day is Tomorrow
Same here…. I actually sent a few feelers today to get my hands on 4e Adventure paths as soon as they are legal to distribute…
🙂
Probable responses as a player:
Disease – “Ok, cure the first couple I see. Uh… How many are there? Ok, how fast can I find someone with Craft Wand and set up a Mak-U-Betta twig factory?”
Requiring payment to keep your town from being a one stop, bring-your-own-spell zombie shop – “… I think these people need to see the light. The light at the end of the quarterstaff. Once we’re done here we’ll obviously have to find their superiors in other cities and continue our ‘theology’ discussion. This must be the main quest for this adventure.”
Mad queen – “Great. Level 15 adventurers who defeat mad rulers are benevolent heroes trying to protect the realm. Level 4 adventurers trying to defeat a queen they already rescued are obviously political dissenters unhappy with the amount of blackmail they can yoink from the royal coffers after the rescue.”
Sorry, I was in a strange mood. And felt like sharing for some reason.