Shackled City vs Age of Worms. FIGHT!

[Nightfall]

I agree with Pants, I couldn't say it's the better run mod but damn if it doesn't READ great. Even so I didn't think Hall of Harsh Reflection was that bad. Encounter at Blackwall Keep, that was pretty weak. I could live the Three Faces of evil for one reason: The Gray Aspect. That was FREAKING sweet.

 

[HeapThaumaturgist]

We're just starting Encounter At Blackwall Keep. So far, at least the random encounter was interesting. A random 1/2 CR orc managed to single-handedly keep half the party at bay AND drop the party cleric.

I wanted to keep him.

Tomorrow we'll get into the actual adventure and see how it goes.

For us, the Ebon Aspect at the end of Three Faces got taken out rather quickly. Enlarged raging barbarian flanking with a cleric did him a number very rapidly.

My favorite part of Three Faces of Evil was finding the magical sheild in the workshop and THEN going to fight the temple of Erythnul ... think about it. >.<

--fje

 

[Steel_Wind]

The only reason I singled out Hall of Harsh Reflections as hitting a discordant note was due to fan feedback concerning the plot of the module on the AoW forums on the Paizo site.

It has its detractors. There were, relatively speaking, a lot of complaints about the

Spoiler

doppelgangers

on the Paizo site as compared to all of the other AoW adventures. Even James Jacobs admits the plot in HoHR is something they would only dare to try once a decade.

 

[Pants]

It has its detractors. There were, relatively speaking, a lot of complaints about the

Spoiler

doppelgangers

on the Paizo site as compared to all of the other AoW adventures. Even James Jacobs admits the plot in HoHR is something they would only dare to try once a decade.

That's what I liked about it, especially the nice combo of dungeon-crawling and RPing that it [seemingly] could generate.

Hall of Harsh Reflections spoilers...
[sblock]It took cajones to use dopplegangers in such a way, I'm glad they did it.[/sblock]

 

[Nightfall]

*agrees with Pants*

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

Please read my posts before you respond to them. I never said that "everything else done in the fantasy genre is 'unique' or 'creative' all the time" - I didn't even suggest it. What I did suggest is that some things have been done repetatively and/or more than other things, which is absolutely true. I also siad that I could see where somebody who has done 'Thing X' many different times might grow bored with it, which I don't think is an unreasonable thing.

Hell, in the "adventure path #3" thread, one of the first things someone brought up was that it shouldn't be about a race to stop an evil cult from ending the world...again. It's a popular and beloved trope, but it doesn't need to be there every time. Not that I dislike it in the AoW, but stuff gets overdone eventually.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

But by any other measure, and certainly any objective measure ,the Age of Worms is a superior product line which builds with the knowledge of all the errors and mistakes made with the first Adv Path and has done its level best to avoid them. The Hall of Harsh Reflections aside (not the best of the series, but by no means is it a bad module) it's been a resounding success.

While I might drop some of the superlative, I'd agree that this is the key point here. Age of Worms is "okay, that Adventure Path thing worked so well we're trademarking it. Now that we've done it once, why don't we have a really decisive go at a second one."

AoW is better because it's Adventure Path version 2.0. It's likely that the third one will be even better, given that some lessons have been learned from this one too, if we are to judge from some of the developer posts over at the Paizo message boards.

 

[Alzrius]

Coherency of Vision & Storyline: The first Adv Path was literally made up as they went along with no idea of the destination or how it was going to get there

Factually untrue, we know that The Shackled City was planned in advance. Unless you mean WotC's Adventure Path, in which case, I don't know for sure but I could believe that pretty easily.

 

[Steel_Wind]

Factually untrue, we know that The Shackled City was planned in advance. Unless you mean WotC's Adventure Path, in which case, I don't know for sure but I could believe that pretty easily.

There was an outline for the first Adv path, but all indications are that it was very mutable according to the info Erik and James have dropped so far.

I may have overstepped the line by saying they had no idea of the destination, but the route taken seems very ad libbed as they went along. Erik's posts so far have indicated the planning of SC by Chris Thommason was ad hoc compared to the Adv Path 2 - and that's something they wanted to improve on in AoW.