Age of Worms - Likes/Dislikes? [MY PLAYERS KEEP OUT]

[TracerBullet42]

Since the Great Server Crash of 2006 has temporarily disabled my search function, I thought I'd start up a new thread about the Age Of Worms adventure path in Dungeon magazine. I am considering starting up this campaign and would like to hear what others have thought about it.

So...what say you?

 

[frankthedm]

Good and Bad: The enemies and opposition are built tough to handle Min/Maxed PCs. This means small mistakes can lead to high kill counts.

 

[Baron Opal]

I think it's great. I have used it piecemeal in my homebrew campaign. The first three adventures are pretty strongly tied together. I found that there was a natural break for me after the third adventure to insert my own thing thereafter. I will use a couple of the later ones further on when the PC's get to a higher level. It's not that I dislike the other mods, I just want to steer the campaign in a different direction.

This is an adventure path. Thus, there is some railroading. Or, at least, where the tracks are can be obvious. There is enough supplementary material, however, that it's ok if the players want to see what's over yonder. And, the adventures themselves are interesting enough and flow well together so that the view from the train is nice.

There are times when the PCs have to have their act together, or they get squished. If they are a cohesive unit, they can overcome the challange. If not, they have to be aware enough of their situation to know that retreating and regrouping is a viable option. Also, they should not be surprised if they come back the next day to discover that there have been some changes while they have been away.

As I mentioned above, there are some natural breaks in the flow of the adventure path. You can substitute other adventures in, or insert some side treks easily at these breakpoints. There is a pleasant variety of dungeon crawling, urban politics and smackdown amoung the adventures.

 

[Emirikol]

It's adequate. Although it's well-balanced, all of the dungeon crawls have just kind of gotten old.

There have been some high points, namely that it is incredibly well-balanced for D*D. The monster selection has been good, etc.

Some pet-peeves, but nothing serious (I DETEST when there are random encounters where the "random" dwarves, or travelling gnomes aren't given even one single name to work with).

I'd give the series a B.

jh

 

[Herremann the Wise]

If you were looking to start a new campaign, I would highly recommend it.

If you want to play it out of the box, then you will most probably find that the players will feel a little boxed in (I would not call it a railroad in the strictest of terms; just well guided and signposted).

However, if you take the time to expand some of the sections, change others around and generally put your own stamp on the campaign, then I think you will gain the true benfits of this wonderfully written and conceived adventure series. In addition is the fantastic support on the paizo website where downloads for each of the modules are available as well as a highly populated messageboard for asking a slew of questions. Here you will most likely run into the authors of each of the modules if you need to ask a specific question or two.

In my own Age of Worms Campaign:
- I used the Greyhawk Setting (for which I purchased a few 2nd ed. odds and bods)
- We use the Core Rulebooks and the Complete Series for the rules (We are actually playing ruls as written - No Houserules! )
- The characters in the main are non-optimised, (rolled stats are certainly interesting - in eight characters we have only had two 18's)
- With a party of five, we had no casualties for the 1st and 2nd modules (very much opposite to what others have experienced) but just recently with another player added, we lost two characters to one of the Spawns (a very nasty encounter).

My main deviation away from the modules is to try and breathe a little more life into Diamond Lake by putting "Lord" Smenk at the top of the heirarchy there. I weaved one or two other threads in to fill out a few motivations for the characters but have otherwise stuck well to the central thread of the modules.

In short, I thoroughly recommend giving the Age of Worms a go..

Best Regards
Herremann the Wise

 

[delericho]

I'm hoping to adapt it to a Dark Sun campaign at some point. From reading through the adventures I think it's probably better than the Shackled City, which is saying a great deal given how much I enjoyed that campaign.

One thing I learned from Shackled City is that when working with an Adventure Path, it's a good idea to treat it as the A plot of your campaign. The DM would then be wise to add his own B and C plots to increase the richness of the whole, to tie the campaign to the specific characters, and to reduce the feel of railroading. (This will probably necessitate some adjustment of XP and treasure awards.) The truth is that a published campaign simply cannot be tied to your specific group and cannot, as a practical matter, allow much deviation from the main plot of the campaign. The available options just explode beyond the first few choices. Therefore, to really make it live, you need to add to it. It will run "out of the box", but it might start to feel like a bit hard going nearer the end if you try doing this.

 

[Festivus]

At present my group is working through Three Faces of Evil.

Likes thus far: It's an end to end campaign designed to take players from level 1 to level 20 with minimal work on the part of the very busy DM (me). The overarching story is very heroic, and I suspect the players will have a great sense of accomplishment when done if they succeed. The encounters are tough if approached the wrong way, but cakewalks if certain tactics are used. It seems like every encounter has a weakness that if discovered makes for easy going. There are opportunities for each of the group members to shine throughout, although I am waiting for when they need to have some diplomacy... it will be interesting.

Dislikes thus far: I find errors left and right that must be corrected beforehand. Three Faces of Evil seems particularly rife with errors. The plot is a bit railroadish (mentioned before) but it was fairly easy to add in some side quests when they didn't want to go the direction the AP wanted them to go in.

Overall, if you don't have the time to develop your own campaign, this is a great route to go.

 

[dungeon blaster]

I'm currently running AoW and I heartily recommend it!

I started the PCs off at 3rd level and gave them 32 point buy. Other than that I'm not using much in the way of house rules.

The AoW is challenging, and some of the battles are downright nasty. For PCs to survive they will need to be able to plan ahead and know when it's time to retreat and reevaluate. The modules do a good job of providing hints to the PCs, but it will be up to the players to pick up on those hints. My players are learning this the hard way

We've had one death so far (although all of the characters have hit the negatives several times) and I expect more to follow.

 

[eris404]

As a disclaimer, I have not played or run these adventures. I have read every adventure, though, and I feel that they're a bit uneven in style. That is, some are much more interesting and ingenious than others. Also, I'm not a fan of Kyuss and I'm sort of tired of the epic save-the-world-from-evil-cultists plotline. I think the background detail for the area was well-done and had a lot of flavor to it.

 

[Arnwyn]

Good and Bad: The enemies and opposition are built tough to handle Min/Maxed PCs. This means small mistakes can lead to high kill counts.

I'll ditto this.

Pros:
- Great story, IMO. I like Kyuss and Dragotha and all that stuff.
- Good monster selection and variation.
- Allows for easy breaks in-between adventures to do other things.

Cons:
- Way too dependent on Greyhawk geography. The storyline is fine (I have no problem fitting Kyuss et al into my FR game), but the geography was tough and time-consuming to adapt, especially considering the cool backdrops included (Alhaster, I'm looking at YOU!). The conversion notes were poor and didn't take advantage of the nifty included backdrops.
- As another poster said: uneven adventures. Some are clearly more inspired than others.

Overall, I give it a "B", and found it inferior to Shackled City.