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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 2410363" data-attributes="member: 22424">Warning: There be spoilers ahead!Again, spoilers:My group finished the campaign at the weekend. The plot is fairly iconic: an evil group of high-level characters seek to free an insane demon-lord from his prison on Carceri. Along the way, they are impeded (at first indirectly, and then directly) by the PCs, who rise from nobodies to become the undisputed heroes of Cauldron. There's more to it than that, of course, but I can hardly summarise 11 Dungeon adventures in one paragraph  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> The reason the PCs can't just turn everything over to the police: the powers-that-be in Cauldron are corrupt. The corruption starts off as a small thing, but gradually grows more and more intense, culminating in riots and the exile of good men.The adventures of the Shackled City definately seemed to fit a "mission of the week" theme. The group quickly found themselves with a number of patrons, who each sent them on a mission or missions. Later in the campaign, the PCs have the opportunity to start pulling their patrons into action against the forces that threaten to destroy the city (or, they would have, had my group been interested. They seem very adept at politics in Vampire, but hopeless in D&D for some reason). However, by that point, there are some fairly important things that need done, and the PCs by then are far more powerful than anyone else who might attempt them.For me, the strength of the Shackled City lay in the encounters that had been set up. The adventure locales are generally interesting and well though out, which means that there are several set-piece encounters that were really tense and interesting. That, and the fact that the preparation had all been done to a level I couldn't have matched.The weaknesses are exactly those you were concerned about: the DM has to really go to the effort of making sure the role-playing quota is filled (note: it really helps if you insist that the players detail their character's backgrounds - I didn't, and paid for it). And there's a huge amount of combat, much of which is difficult or impossible to avoid.If you are considering using this campaign, and don't already have the magazines, I recommend waiting for the hardback to come out. Paizo have apparently done a lot of work getting feedback on the campaign, and are working to fix many of the problems it faces.I wouldn't say the adventures were written by God. I wouldn't even claim they are the best Dungeon adventures I've seen. But I will say that the campaign was a lot of fun, and the fact that all the work of bridging the adventures and advancing the plot had been done for me was absolutely invaluable. I will even go so far as to say that the Shackled City hardcover is probably the single most useful d20 product coming out this year that I am aware of. I almost wish I hadn't played through the campaign, so I could do it all again.</blockquote>

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