2 out of 5 rating for Jade Regent Adventure Path
This is the first Adventure Path I ran, shortly after my introduction to Pathfinder. I struggled with it, partly because the rules of Pathfinder were new and overly complex to me, but because it added extra rules to the game that were even more confusing and broken, like the Caravan game play. I really loved the setting and the quality of the books, in both print and artwork. These were new to me and I fell in love with the concept of Adventure Paths. However I also learned to not like them. They are huge and time consuming to play and to really do them justice you have to dedicate 6 months to play them. I think they level people up too fast in the first place, despite having to go through months of play. Some parts are also better than others and the story telling and dialogue were not not consistent, I think due to the fact that different authors worked on different parts. I love the maps and the extra pieces, all the trimming that come extra, flip-mats, cards, etc., but it was actually to overwhelming and bogged my games down. The kids loved the setting like me, but I food myself frequently modifying the game so much for them that I wondered why I even bothered. The overall storyline was decent but fell flat often. I really liked the first part of the series, the mystery and conspiracy element always makes a great hook. The second and third books were good in parts but a drag in others, modification was needed, but overall okay. The fourth part just was terrible, despite starting out pretty good, but it quickly turned into an obstacle course and was very formulaic travel adventure, much like the previous part was turning into and totally lost the flavor of the setting quick. The whole adventure seemed to lose it's way and was not. The next two installments were solid, but still seemed to name drop, but lack cohesion. Major characters. minor characters they all seemed the same. The monsters introduced were okay, some were interesting and exotic, others just frankly not that interesting. The plot hooks, ranged from very poor to very good. There was a lot of missed opportunities and also too much directed adventure and formulaic gameplay. I found overall that this formula for the adventure paths eventually turned me off to the concept of them. I think they would have been better off creating a setting book, fleshing out the geography, introducing new monsters, magics, items, etc. Maybe include a chapter with some plot ideas, hook ideas, etc. Then let me play in that world and make my own adventures. I wanted to like this, loved the potential, but overall we all were turned off by the whole thing.