D&D 3E/3.5 Savage Tide and Age of Worms - worth the hype?

[carmachu]

Both are worth it. Great stories and adventures, although you probably could cut out one or two parts as they seemed there to level up. And some parts are stronger then others.

 

[glass]

So I'm basically asking - not having read the whole adventures, are they worth the money and time to read into? Or is the DM required to make heavy changes to the material anyway, to keep things on track?

I ran Age of Worms a while back, and it was a lot of fun to run and (I hope) play, although it got a bit unwieldy at higher levels - the big bad (Kyuss) has a statblock which is literally three pages (or was it four? I don't have my copy to hand).

Obviously, it is an Adventure Path, and there is a certain amount of linearity inherent in the format. It is also a "stop the world ending" plot, so there are strong motivations for the PCs to stick with the plot built in.

If you or the people you generally play with consider anything other than a wide open sandbox to be too railroady, then they are probably not worth it (although if they are cheap enough, they might be fun to read). OTOH if your group is OK with Adventure Paths in principle, then AoW is an excellent example, and not particularly railroady by the standards of such things.

EDIT: Actually, even if you are interested in published adventures at all, then it might still be worth considering at the right price, just for the 24 individual adventures. Actually, that is more like 72 individual adventures - the AP chapter is not the only adventure in each issue.

I only played the first chapter of Savage Tide before that group fell apart for reasons* unrelated to the quality of the AP, but I am going to be restarting it shortly (as a player again) and am excited about it, for whatever that is worth.

EDIT2: I am now playing Savage Tide again. Hopefully we will get past the first chapter this time. Session 3 tonight!

_
glass.

* Two of the players who were a couple split up and each moved to a different part of the country. Then the DM went to university.

 

[Vael]

Age of Worms was a traumatic event for me, I tried to run it modified for Eberron as my first time ever DMing a campaign ... it didn't go well and TPKed with the Necromancer in the first adventure. I didn't try to run games again until 4e came out.

I've debated going back to it and trying again, there is some variety in the actual adventures and some neat ideas.

Savage Tide has been a "I want to run this" since I read it. I'm not super stoked on the high level stuff after Scuttlecove, that feels more railroady. But the pirate ship, Isle of Dread is all interesting and I've considered running it in both 4e and 5e several times.

 

[hedgeknight]

Vael, my players never made it to the Necromancer encounter; they were done before that

 

[Retreater]

Is there a way to get these legally on PDF? (I have Savage Tide in print, but I'm more curious about Age of Worms. And would want digitally for VTT.)

 

[billd91]

Is there a way to get these legally on PDF? (I have Savage Tide in print, but I'm more curious about Age of Worms. And would want digitally for VTT.)

Legally? Not that I am aware of.

 

[hedgeknight]

You can purchase the pdfs over at Paizo.com. For the Age of Worms, they are $4.95 each.

 

[Voadam]

Is there a way to get these legally on PDF? (I have Savage Tide in print, but I'm more curious about Age of Worms. And would want digitally for VTT.)

Yes Age of Wroms are all available in PDF legally for sale $5 each from Paizo.

 

[BigZebra]

They are also legally available on archive.org: Dungeon Magazine #124 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

I ended up buying the PDFs though to get a better resolution.

 

[Retreater]

Yeah I don't mind paying. I just had trouble navigating the site to find them.