ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution - Act One: The Investigation Begins

BobertoEnFuego · Jan 26, 2017

5 out of 5 rating for ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution - Act One: The Investigation Begins

Been a long time fan of the Pathfinder adventure modules, but after a while the formula gets stale and old.
1.) BBEG doing bad things
2.) Adventurers must kill BBEG
3.) The adventurers win and save the day

Zeitgeist takes this formula and throws it out the window in a spectacular way. It instead poses an "Idea" as the BBEG, and how do you kill an idea?
The writing is amazing and the adventure never loses its pace. The entire world of Zeitgeist is tied together in a nice bow where subtle hints dropped in Act 1 have a huge impact all the way up to the finale of the adventure path.

I highly recommend this adventure path as it is amazingly done.

Hitomi Camacho · Jan 26, 2017

5 out of 5 rating for ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution - Act One: The Investigation Begins

Best of the best, an amazing adventure path that works perfectly for the 4th edition of DnD

spiteski · Jan 27, 2017

5 out of 5 rating for ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution - Act One: The Investigation Begins

As the title says, this group captivated me and my group, and we've thoroughly enjoyed the breath of fresh air this Adventure Path breathes into your typical RPG table. Plenty of political intrigue, action, and fine character developments abound in this journey. Heavily recommended!

Yaztromo · Jan 28, 2017

4 out of 5 rating for ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution - Act One: The Investigation Begins

This campaign is absolutely fantastic and a real breakthrough.
It mixes some elements from the very early OD&D (Dave Arneson awarding level ups at the end of each adventure or adventures cycle, rather than adding up experience points) and "modern" / steampunk concepts, including delusions leading to the very "modern" concept of Revolution!
It is a great conceptual step forward under many points of view (one of the many: you can deal with the highest levels of your nation from the very first adventure, without having to go through introductions etc. bit by bit) and the layout of the adventures, the support information, the artwork, the flavour... all of them instant classic.

However, playing it I found a kind of conceptual contradiction: this campaignis a kind of step away from epic fantasy (where a single hero can grow level by level, becoming semi-divine and almost untouchable by "mere" first level, lower beings), but doesn't use a ruleset that fits this "modern" and, I would say, "democratic" approach, where words can deal more damage that swords.
D&D4 and Pathfinder are both made for that sort of epic fantasy with super-heroes and this really clashes with the underlying flavour and concepts of this campaign. It would have been more fit using a game system where you do NOT gain levels (that during the campaign de fatco turn you into a semi-divine being), but you can gain skills, that caan give you some small advantage, but after all a gunshot should be able to kill you straight away!
After all, this is the "revolution": the king is not semi-divine, but is a man like all other men and you can shoot him (see what some anarchists did in modern history) and you can behead him, if you want. Epic heroes and Omeric heroes are unmasked as cheats! That is for me the background of the modern revolution and the right interpretation of steampunk in this adventure cycle!

Do I think that ZEITGEIST would have had the same commercial success by using a simpler game system (with no progression levels like D&D and Pathfinder), possibly even a system made up by them just for this campaign?
My answer is: absolutely YES! This stuff is too brilliant on its own to owe any debt to any game system. In this case the game systems used owe a big debt of gratitude to the campaign!

Tobold · Jan 30, 2017

5 out of 5 rating for ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution - Act One: The Investigation Begins

The Zeitgeist Adventure Path is an excellent product for a more mature audience that wants more from role-playing than heroic dungeon-crawling fantasy. There is an extremely deep story stretching over 13 adventures, 30 levels in 4E, that throws out classic good vs. evil and replaces it with the battle of competing philosophies on several different levels. Frequently the players have complete freedom of where they would like to stand in conflicts like natural magic vs. technology, or industrialists vs. workers, and the story allows for very different developments and actions by the players.

For the 4th edition version it has to be remarked how the Zeitgeist AP finds an excellent balance between role-playing/story-telling and tactical combat. It will keep all sorts of players with different preferences happily occupied for a long time. The only downside is that it takes a lot of time before the real "villain" is revealed, and players will need to be satisfied with partial victories in each adventure until they reach the final.

Odysseus · Jul 19, 2019

5 out of 5 rating for ZEITGEIST: The Gears of Revolution - Act One: The Investigation Begins

Overall Zeitgeist is an excellent product. The setting, the NPC, the layout, the plot, I could go on , its all excellent.
If you like investigation style adventures, Gears of Revolution has some of the best written.
If there is a fault, it tends to be on Act 2 of each adventure. And the campaign as a whole can take quite a while. But neither of those are reasons not to run it.