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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2008089" data-attributes="member: 18387">One other person to date has also posted a review so I'm going to try not to repeat what he said other than to say I completely agree with him.  Don't ask me why.  I'm also a big Birthright fan and looked at steampunk with a scepticle eye, especiall y after some of that silly looking artwork that came out in Dragon Magazine.  Art is a big thing for me, as it sets the tone of the game for my players.The Longest Night, Book One of The Witchfire Trilogy (I love that campaign name!) is an excellent product and though some of the more unconventional elements can be taken out and fit into any campaign, the authors did a great job in providing a tone and flavor to the world that I'm starting to fall in love with.Though I did give this product a Superb rating as I think it deserves, no review is too useful unless it points out some of the problems with the product.  This is not to say that the product is bad because of its flaws, but it is certainly something that the consumers and designers alike should look at, either because its a slgiht problem or its just a slight problem for me.The first of my complaints, is that the beginning and ending are horrible.  The beginning has a horribly modular onset so that you could use any campaign world and any characters.  The ending was likewise made both very modular and very cliche to leave a very "What will happen now?" kind of feeling since, literally, anything can happen now.  In practice, however, I'm dreading the end of this adventure because I know it will leave my players very frustrated and they might feel cheated.  Also, the end requires them to make "an important decision" but I'm not too sure if the players, at such a time will know the importance of their decision.  Likewise, I'm fairly certain that they are not going to pick one of the two decisions listed.  This isn't really a problem per se, but it is kind of annoying to have the middle of the adventure written so well but with little thought going into the beginning or the end.My second complaint is that there was no handout that I can photocopy and give to the players.  We went to generate characters and when they asked what kind of characters would be appropriate I was left to do little but shrug.  So finally they asked what I recommended for their character composition and background, but I just had to shrug, reminding them that I only had 1/3 of the adventure and very little campaign information.Naturally since there were undead on the cover, I got a paladin and a cleric in the party.  They asked what choices they had for clerical domains.  I just sort of shrugged and invented a few.  My point is that the writers of the adventure gave very little information on character generation or anything to be used for making backgrounds.  My main complaint, however, is that a witch hunt is sort of at the center of the book, but no information was given in relation to witchcraft and society.  I told my players not to be sorcerers because it looks like, based on my interpretation, that all the sorcerers were considered witches.  Or maybe it was just all the female sorcerers.  Or maybe all the evil female sorcerers, I don't know.  There seem to be plenty of wizards around and magic has been heavily integrated into society, but it seems like all the sorcerers get hunted down and killed.  I don't know why.  No information is given.  You'd think something like Magic and Society would be a definite thing to add in an adventure/campaign that had a huge emphasis on witchcraft hunts.   I still don't know if its because the society hated witches or if the society just hates *these* witches because of what they had done.  One of my players asked, if being a witch/warlock was a requirement to being a sorcerer.  I just had no idea and finally banned wizards and sorcerers from their character generation choices.I don't care too much for then name, Morrow, as the name of the deity which all the PCs worship.Finally, we had some rules for guns, but not many.  I recalled seeing somewhere that pistols costed 800gp but I couldn't find it again, so maybe I was wrong.  We have rules for loading guns now and rules for how ammo is made and how much it costs.  But that's it.  I assume we are supposed to use the DMG rules for guns, but I'm not too sure.  The DMG guns are not that great, all things considered.  Also, one player mentioned to me that in a society where guns were a little more common, there would be no need to make them Exotic Weapons and perhaps they should be considered Simple Weapons like the crossbow.  For those of you who are worried about such a thing, one look at the DMG entry on firearms should show you that they are not easy to get at character generation.  The availability of guns was another thing I was curious about, since although they are supposed to be rare, the various guilds and shops in the merchant-city of Corvis is supposed to be able to supply you with pretty much anything.I would have appreciated a full-page map to hand to the players (though there's one at Privateer Press' website so that's not so bad), at least three or four pages of campaign introductory material, a section about witchcraft since its intregal to the plot and the NPC's motivations, and some recommended character concepts.  I still don't know, for example, if a knight walking into Corvis in full plate mail is an uncommon thing or not.  I guess nothing is that uncommon in Corvis.  But does the city Watch have similiar protection or do they just rely on dexterity and such?Also at the center of the plot is a magical sword that although not nearly as cliche as a Sword+1 or a Holy Avenger or anything like that, I still would have preferred something a bit more original.-Lord Rahvin</blockquote>

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