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

[Wormwood]

No MacGuffin, no adventure. That would have been nice to know when running Siege, eh? The setup to get the players into the meat of the adventure also doesn't make much sense.

Oh man, I'd actually forgotten that.

Talk about frustration---I pored over the previous adventure trying to find that [MacGuffin] feeling like an idiot the whole time.

Unfun.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I actually played all the way through Age of Worms, after which I was no fan of Paizo, or of 3e anymore. As a player I got the impression that there was too much story that only the DM was exposed to. IMO APs are meant to be played, by everyone at the table.

Yeah, but then that's the fault of the DM and not the adventure. A DM that's used to working with published material ((especially material rich with background info) knows how to get that story to the PC's in one way or another so that it doesn't remain in the background and enhances the feel of that particular game.

Youre right the AP's ARE meant to be played by everyone at the table, but it's up to the DM to serve as a conduit for that material to somehow make it to the players and make it relevant to at least some of them.

 

[Truename]

I'm playing through SoW now. My players are in the final encounters of Siege at Bordrin's Watch.

So far it's been okay. I ran Rescue at Rivenroar with just two PCs and it was not much fun. Pure dungeon crawl. The initial encounters in the city are okay, but the dungeon has no rhyme or reason. Ick.

Then, with a new group fresh out of H1, I ran Siege. Far better than Rivenroar, linear as others have said, but that hasn't been a problem. The encounters are mostly pretty interesting and I can't wait to run the final encounter, which looks like a lot of fun.

It's serviceable but plain. I've been adding a lot of incidental flavor to make it more interesting. I've also put extra effort into having the monsters do interesting things during encounters, such as figuring out what will happen once the fight goes against them.

Still, it's better than making my own campaign (I'm a new DM and I don't have a lot of free time) and I like the idea of a whole pre-made campaign. I think the players like it more than I do.

Finally, I agree that the editing has been lackluster. A lot of early mistakes, and the writers don't seem to be talking to each other (as someone said). That's gotten better as WoTC has gotten their feet under them with DDI and digiDungeon.

 

[delericho]

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.

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.

Of course, that says nothing for the Scales of War path (I haven't read it and haven't played it, so can't comment). However, I would be hopeful that the next path would be considerably better.

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 think there's a lot of truth in that. I ran my group through Shackled City, and would very much like to run them through several of the other paths. But there are so many of them out there, and so many other campaigns that I want to run...

 

[Spatula]

I agree with most of Spatula's main points, except I disliked Rescue at Rivenroar quite a bit. The plot is fairly stupid, the dungeon doesn't give you any helpful hints as a DM on how to change things up, and some of the encounters (

Spoiler

the one with the ochre jelly that comes out of the painting

) are just stupidly implemented.

No arguement there. I think the basic outline is sound (rescue the prisoners from the goblins), but the dungeoncrawl is definitely lackluster. No theme to the opponents, no traps!, and featureless rooms to fight in. But it's easy to redo the monsters, adding in some traps in the process, and placing terrain in the rooms.

You know, I didn't think of it, but the adventure doesn't tell you how the warband deals with the players as they attack the dungeon. I guess that's what you meant about "how to change things up."

Spoiler

I'm changing the encounters to be more goblin and undead themed (making liberal use of Open Grave), and getting rid of the grab-bag monsters in the process. I think that if I do end up running it, whenever the players retreat, I'll have some of the dead raised as zombies (by the wight) so that they can still occupy their posts. And cross off one prisoner as payment for services rendered (or to fuel the animation ritual), each time that happens...

EDIT: Another problem with Rivenroar that I noticed - the adventure is designed to take 5 PCs to 3rd level (or maybe just barely short of it) assuming you clear everything out. But there's only 14? treasure parcels, instead of 20, plus 400 gp in quest rewards (which doesn't make up for the 6 missing parcels).

You'd be better off running something else and then starting things off with Bordrin's Watch, in my opinion.

I thought that too, since it seems everything from Siege onwards is based in Overlook. But the story does actually return to Brindol later on, and it looks like Den of the Destroyer actually makes use of the events in Rivenroar, which won't have much impact if you didn't go through the 1st adventure.

 

[scrubkai]

At least reading through them, I was not impressed with the first two modules.

Den of the Destroyer and The Temple Between seem to be much better modules then the first few, and also seem to have started to twist all the plot threads together.

But I haven't run anyone through the modules, so I can't say for sure if they play that way.

(I had hopes that those two modules were a sign things were getting better, but the Fist of Mourning let all the air out of those hopes for me.)

 

[Truename]

(I had hopes that those two modules were a sign things were getting better, but the Fist of Mourning let all the air out of those hopes for me.)

Fist of Mourning looks terrible. I'm going to be skipping that one. I'm hoping it was a last-minute effort because of the Seattle snowstorm. It certainly looks it.

 

[Ydars]

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 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.

 

[Rechan]

I also 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?

Didn't they do the same thing right after 3.0?

 

[Ydars]

They did indeed.

I am now wondering if this might be why it took about 6 years for WoTC to start producing decent 3.5E adventures (Red Hand of Doom etc)?

Forgive my musings..........................