Pathfinder 13 review .. sort of.
Paizo Publishing is a small company that publishes DnD adventures, a sort of journal/adventure anthology (called Pathfinder) and soon to release a revised ruleset for DnD 3.5 to keep that ball rolling in the wake of the debacle that was the 4th ed release and blunder with the new GSL. Wizards really screwed the pooch and what seems to be a good game with 4th ed. (Never mind they forgot to do any real play testing apparently) But enough of the recent history lesson.
The intention of this post, and hopefully 5 more in the future is to review the latest adventure path Paizo is publishing Second Darkness. Paizo started doing adventure paths back when they were publishing Dragon Magazine for Wizards until that plug was pulled to put Dungeon and Dragon magazines online. This is the 3rd 6 installment adventure path under the Pathfinder moniker, and I think they did 3 longer ones in Dungeon. You would think they would have it down by now, however this first installment, while based on a good idea fails on several points that make necessary for any DM to do some serious mods to keep it from completely feeling like a railroad to the players.
MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD
The adventure (Shadow in the Sky) hinges on HUGE assumptions, that leave the DM screwed if the players do not allow themselves to be pushed and prodded in the right direction. Assumption: The players are going to all want to hang out in a gambling house, get involved when bandits/thugs show up and then take a job offered to them to continue working in the club. After they take or a coerced/convinced to follow along, the subsequent scenes assume your players are slightly shady and willing to be conviently gullable. To top that off, there is a giant mysterious cloud hovering over the city the adventure starts in, everyone in town is talking about it and the adventure as a whole essentially ignores it.
Most players I have DM’d for in the past have always assumed when a huge weird thing is presented to them they are going to becurious and funnel their attention toward that. The minute you try to move them away from that, they will feel the prod and lose interest in the sessions. The rest of the booklet is dedicated to support material. This is up to the expected Paizo standards. However this review is only concerned with the actuall adventure.
Overall this path has potential, the first adventure falls far short unfortunately.
