Scales of War Adventure Path... How is it?

[Shroomy]

While the layoffs sucked, they hardly fired half the staff that created 4e. BTW, here are the authors of the current AP modules:

Rescue at Rivenroar - Dave Noonan
Siege of Bordrin's Watch - Robert J. Schwalb
The Shadowrift of of Umbraforge - Scott Fitzgerald Gray
The Lost Mines of Karak - Greg A. Vaughan and James Larrison
Den of the Destroyer - Rodney Thompson
The Temple Between - Ari Marmell
Fist of Mourning - Robert J. Schwalb

Now, I'm not familiar with James Larrison, but everyone else on that list was deeply involved in the 4e development or is a key WoTC freelancer.

BTW, while I thought that the first adventure had some good ideas in it, I was overall disapointed with its bland execution. And while I thought "The Shadowrift of Umbraforge" was too railroady, IMO, the remaining adventures are good to very good ("Fist of Mourning" is a fine sidetrek, its just unfortunate that it has nothing to do with the rest of the AP).

 

[Cyronax]

I've read through all of the adventures for this adventure path and found them wanting. They are very very repetitive in terms of monsters used in the early adventures, and if I'd run them I would have altered them significantly. Basically I feel like they just used the Kobold, Goblin, and Orc entries in the MM and rarely if ever bothered to gin up new varieties of these kinds.

The thing I did like about the Scales of War was their Background Options. Its an article in Dragon (one of the early, free ones) which lays out a lot of generalized benefits that are somewhat less powerful than the background benefits in the Forgotten Realms Players Guide, but cool options nonetheless.

C.I.D.

 

[Ydars]

Hey Shroomy! How dare you inject some actual data into this discussion! That is just not DONE on an internet messageboard.

Seriously though; I do talk some rubbish sometimes don't I ?

What is your explanation for how these adventures have turned out? Do you think they were rushed out? Low priority? Or do they think we will lap up any old nonsense?

I am just completely non-plussed by what WoTC do sometimes.

 

[Truename]

I wonder if this is what happens when you decide to contract out your adventure work to freelancers (who were not privy to the experience of creating 4E like Mearls et al)?

I also I'm wonder if this is what you get when you fire half the staff who created 4E because now the bedrock of the system is finished?

My final musing is to wonder whether WoTC will learn from this in the future?

Hhhhmmmmm.

It's not that bad.

Here's my (spoiler-free) mini-reviews of the seven adventures so far:

1. Rescue at Rivenroar. I've DM'd this one. Starts out with a great encounter and quickly goes into tedious, boring, senseless dungeon crawl. Written by Dave Noonan, which makes me wonder if it was a rushed repurposing of one of his dungeon delves.

2. Siege of Bordrin's Watch. I've DM'd all but the last few encounters of this one. It's linear and combat-focused, but it has a strong theme and nearly all of the encounters are dynamic and interesting. It includes a complete, well-detailed city and bunch of new monsters.

3. Shadow Rift of Umbraforge. Just dripping with flavor and exotic locales. I'm looking forward to running this one. The ending is on some heavy rails, but I expect that I'll be able to fix that. There's a major continuity snafu with the previous adventure, but that's only a problem if you run Siege without reading this one first.

4. Lost Mines of Karak. I'm not sure what to think of this. Despite the title, it's not really a dungeon crawl. There's a nice variety of locations. I'm having trouble imagining how it will play out (as I usually do.)

5. Den of the Destroyer. Others have praised this one. It's the most dungeon-focused so far, and looks pretty good, with interesting locations, NPCs, and lots of new monsters.

6. The Temple Between. This one just looks awesome. Huge, epic in scope, it really feels like a capstone to the heroic tier adventures. The only problem I have with it is that it's supposed to tie together the plot points from the previous adventure, but the big reveal was a surprise to me--and if it didn't make sense to me, what will my players think? I'm left wondering how to foreshadow it.

7. Fist of Mourning. Yuck. Feels rushed and disconnected... a lot like Rescue at Rivenroar, in fact. The adventure advises that you can either drop the PCs at the dungeon entrance or use the slow start; the slow start read-aloud text says (I'm not kidding): "So, you have your task. Now you’ve chosen to investigate elements of it." Add in unrelated, reused art and it really feels poor. On the good side, it's optional, and given the snowstorms around that time I'm willing to give WoTC a bye on this one.

The Adventure Path as a whole: Except for 1 and 7, the individual adventures are serviceable and some look really promising; the overarching plot seems weak, but there are connecting elements and as DM I intend to play them up. They may work better in practice than they do on paper.

 

[Ydars]

An excellent summary Truename! So just a few bad apples in an otherwise sound apple-cart?

Perhaps these bad eggs have just tarred the whole AP with the same brush? I read Rescue at Rivenroar and was seriously unimpressed with the ending. I think I have skimmed all the others and all that jumped out at me were the errors and inconsistancies. Perhaps they are worth a revisit.

 

[Shroomy]

Hey Shroomy! How dare you inject some actual data into this discussion! That is just not DONE on an internet messageboard.

Seriously though; I do talk some rubbish sometimes don't I ?

What is your explanation for how these adventures have turned out? Do you think they were rushed out? Low priority? Or do they think we will lap up any old nonsense?

I am just completely non-plussed by what WoTC do sometimes.

I think that it comes down to a time and/or a resouce issue, like it usually does when talented people create something mediocre or downright bad; like I said, Rescue at Rivenroar has a lot of good ideas in it, but they aren't executed very well. I also wouldn't absolve the editors, since its their responsibility to get this stuff right.

 

[ki11erDM]

APs are good for introducing worlds. Pathfinder is a great example, tons of back story and interesting info along with some reasonable adventures. Saying that; the AoW AP utterly killed any interest I had in 3.x and in Greyhawk for that matter and the ST read to be just as bad.

Trying to create an AP in a ‘generic’ world is not going to give you a good product in the end and defeats the whole point of the AP. If I am going to ever DM an AP again I want it to have ALL the information in it I need… I don’t want to have to do any prep work outside of reading it. The current AP in Dungeon is soulless because it does not have a larger world wrap around it and if I am going to spend the time generating that then I am going to spend the time making my own adventures.

I hope they have learned that and will create the next AP in FR or in whatever campaign world they are going to publish after Eberron. I know they want adventures that are easy to put into any world… but they already have that with the rest of Dungeon, they should be using the APs to put a spot light on a world.

 

[Spatula]

The current AP in Dungeon is soulless because it does not have a larger world wrap around it and if I am going to spend the time generating that then I am going to spend the time making my own adventures.

*shrug* It's set in the implied setting, and details its region fairly well. The city of Overlook, for example, (from adventures #2-4) has a lot of space devoted to fleshing it out. In general it follows the DMG advice of starting small and building up the areas of interest from there, which has been good DM advice for a long time now (I think there's some similar advice way back in the 2e DMG).

What is your explanation for how these adventures have turned out? Do you think they were rushed out? Low priority? Or do they think we will lap up any old nonsense?

Well, I'm guessing the early ones suffered from the authors being overworked. Getting 4e out the door, starting up the new Dragon & Dungeon, DDI stuff... when the first batch of adventures were being written, there was a lot of other stuff going on at Wizards. Plus the rules were still in flux.

But part of that is also that they bit off more than they could chew, I think. With the DDI in general, but the AP idea specifically. "Oh, it's just a bunch of linked adventures, how hard could it be?" Without fully realing all the work Paizo had come to put into the AP concept. You can see this back when DMs starting asking about getting an overview of the whole AP. "We don't want to ruin the surprise," was the answer, which showed that they weren't up to speed with how Paizo had evolved and refined the concept. Or that Wizards hadn't figured out the outline yet, but I believe Ari Marmell has said that that isn't the case (and in any case I'm more likely to believe ignorance over maliciousness).

 

[13garth13]

Bear in mind that this is WotC's first crack at an Adventure Path (well... technically their second, but those first eight 3.0e adventures were a long time ago). Paizo learned a lot of lessons from Shackled City and Age of Worms, lessons that WotC now have to go and learn for themselves.

But part of that is also that they bit off more than they could chew, I think. With the DDI in general, but the AP idea specifically. "Oh, it's just a bunch of linked adventures, how hard could it be?" Without fully realing all the work Paizo had come to put into the AP concept. You can see this back when DMs starting asking about getting an overview of the whole AP. "We don't want to ruin the surprise," was the answer, which showed that they weren't up to speed with how Paizo had evolved and refined the concept. Or that Wizards hadn't figured out the outline yet, but I believe Ari Marmell has said that that isn't the case (and in any case I'm more likely to believe ignorance over maliciousness).

Ummm...not to pick nits, but weren't Chris Youngs and Dave N. (pre-axing natch) folks who worked on the Shackled City....in fact, wasn't Chris Youngs (aka Chris Thommason {sp?} )the editor of Dungeon at the time of the Shackled City AP?

This speaks to me volumes about whether they knew in advance what the issues/concerns of a vast undertaking like an AP are, i.e. attempts to fob this off as beginner's mistortune are somewhat off base...Chris Youngs in particular
should darned well have known what he was getting into.

Cheers,
Colin

 

[Olaf the Stout]

I have to say, I went from being a huge fan of the Paizo adventure paths to being thoroughly disappointed in the new 4e adventure path. It seems to me that 4e really hadn't hit its stride when the first few adventurers were being constructed and they just came out... meh.

I haven't run them, but that shouldn't disqualify me since I think hardly anyone runs adventure paths anyways. APs exist for us to read, drool over, and wish we had time and the friends to run it even though we don't.

I'll have to disagree with you that people don't run AP's. I'm running a group through the Shackled City AP at the moment. One the players in that game is also playing through the Savage Tide AP in another group.

And judging by how many people post about the AP's on the Paizo boards, I'd say that there are quite a few groups playing them at the very least.

My SCAP is certainly going well at the moment. It's probably the best campaign that I've ever run.

Olaf the Stout