Pathfinder Map Pack: "Sewer System" [RPG]

I've used the Sewer System map pack extensively in my Curse of the Crimson Throne campaign.  It's perfect for representing the random twists and turns of a sewer system, and contains enough special cards (one with a ladder to the surface, a couple with pipes, one with a partial cave in, etc.) to represent most situations a GM would like to portray.  The detail on the cards is impressive--there aren't clean flagstones and blue water down here!  Instead, there's a variety of debris, rubbish, cracked stones, and so forth.  In short, the "feel" is really good on these cards.  It probably is worth noting that the sewer tunnels in this set are a uniform 3-square width, so GMs who need something narrower for a real claustrophobic feel would be out of luck.  I'd also recommend GMs figure out ahead of time what the effects of sewer terrain will be (are there balance checks to run on the sides, is the sewage channel difficult terrain, are there risks of diseases, etc.)--it'll all add even more flavour to the experience.  Overall, this product is a real winner--I probably use it more than any other map pack.

Starfinder Adventure Path # 2: "Temple of the Twelve" (Dead Suns, Chapter 2) [RPG]

 

NO SPOILERS

Although my view is an outlier according to the Paizo forums, I thought Chapter Two of Dead Suns was the best of the whole AP.  My barathu envoy PC had a blast connecting with the NPCs and background of the chapter, and although admittedly that may have just been a fluke, I do think the adventure is put together and that good use is made of the setting.  It's still an adventure that is very much on rails, but the writer has hidden it here better than in other chapters.  I was also impressed that the adventure made great use of some resource limitations that players often skip over but that well-prepared players are rewarded for thinking about.  Anyway, more on that later.  Here, in the "no spoilers" section of the review, I'll cover everything except the adventure.

First up, it's a cool cover image both in the foreground and the background.  I'm still not a fan of the overall design aesthetic, but I think this one works a lot better than the cover for Chapter One did.  The inside-front and inside-back covers are stats, background, and interior layout for a new bad guy ship that appears in the adventure and could easily be re-used by a GM in other contexts.

The back matter starts with a ten-page gazetteer of the planet Castrovel.  Castrovel has four large continents, three of which are ruled (respectively) by lashuntas, ant-like formians, and xenophobic elves, while the fourth continent is a sort of agreed "no-go" jungle wilderness full of megafauna and exotic plants.  The section starts with a handsome two-page map spread of the planet and then goes into an overview of each of the four continents.  It's a well-written and interesting overview, though not as self-consciously full of adventure hooks as some RPG gazetteers are.  A couple of bits I liked is the idea of Mountainheart Cities (cities built to be retractable into subterranean chambers in times of war) and a "portal grove" owned by a green dragon who sometimes hires adventures to explore their myriad destinations.  I should note that a quick skim of the Pact Worlds hardcover shows that its entry for Castrovel is largely a reproduction of the text in this AP volume.

Next up is an eight-page overview of the Cult of the Devourer, a chaotic evil movement devoted to anarchy, destruction, and bringing about the end of the universe.  The entry quite cleverly and persuasively discusses how a group devoted to anarchy and chaos could also form an "organisation", and there's an excellent description of how they recruit from the dissatisfied elements of society.  I like the distinction between "wall breakers" (the visible berserker thugs the pubic is cared about) and the "hidden ones" (devotees who live "normal" lives but are secretly gathering information, sabotaging defenses, spreading rumors, etc.).  The Devourer is a god, and sometimes it sends representatives called atrocites to help particular cells of the cult.  The scariest part of the cult are "feaster cells" that are like the reavers from Firefly: they will happily spend their time making sure an unconscious foe is dead and start engaging in cannibalism rather than do the (tactically smarter) thing of moving on to the next active threat.  The section includes a new mystic connection ("Devastator") that is really powerful compared to most.  It also includes some new gear, such as disintegrator weapons (used by one of my later PCs).

The "Alien Archives" section of this issue introduces seven new creatures.  Two of them are playable races: "ferrans" (squat humanoids from Ratheren, the high-grav world detailed at the end of the issue) and "woioko" (watery humanoids from the planet introduced at the end of the last issue).  Other creatures include "kaukariki" (super annoying monkeys), "lore guardians" (essentially golems, but with enough differences to warrant a separate entry), "whiskered renkrodas" (standard predatory dinosaur), "sky fishers" (aerial threats with handy camouflage), and "yaruks" (trampling herd animals).

The new planet on the "Codex of Worlds" page is Ratheren.  To be precise, Ratheren is a moon that once orbited a planet that was sucked into a mysterious black hole-like space anomaly!  Those who reacted to the threat quickly enough built a shielded city on the moon, but no one knows what happened to the planet itself.  It's a solid SF hook and perfect for a GM to use their imagination with.

Overall, an excellent selection of supplementary material.  

SPOILERS

The backstory to the adventure concerns the Temple of the Twelve, a sort of monastery/observatory on Castrovel constructed by ancient elven scholar-priests.  The temple’s builders had observed a strange ring of twelve stars in the sky, which their research and divinations indicated was of great cosmic significance.  When they had learned as much as they could on Castrovel, the temple’s builders departed for parts unknown, leaving the building to gradually fall to ruin in the jungles around it.  Centuries passed until, shortly after the Gap, an explorer named Halkueem Zan braved the interior of Ukulam (the wilderness continent) and located the Temple of the Twelve, narrowly escaping with his life and enough notes from his journey to become famous.

Part 1 of the adventure starts off right where Chapter One left off.  As the PCs fly their new ship off the Drift Rock and back toward Absalom Station, it’s attacked by a Corpse Fleet ship called the Iron Rictus.  Essentially, it’s the required starship combat because otherwise the chapter doesn’t have any.  And an annoying trend continues: whether the PCs win or lose the starship combat doesn’t matter, as the story proceeds exactly the same either way.

On Absalom Station, there’s no more intrigue or adventure to be had with resolving the conflicts between Astral Extractions and the Hardscrabble Collective.  Instead, Chiskisk of the Starfinder Society tells the PCs that the symbols they found on the Drift Rock are similar to those found in the diaries of Halkueem Zan stored in the Qabarat University of Xenoarchaeology and Xenoanthropology on Castrovel.  Obviously, the connection needs to be investigated, so the PCs are about to go planet-hopping!

As an aside, the chapter goes to great lengths to establish how reckless, unprofessional, and irresponsible Halkueem Zan was as an archaeologist—he’s portrayed as very much an Indiana Jones-type rather than a serious, careful scholar.  But my PC loved the stories of Halkueem Zan and tried to imitate him as much as possible, which was great fun.

When the PCs reach the university, they get caught up in a “pulled from the headlines” situation.  One of the professors on campus has unwittingly said something perhaps factually true but nonetheless incredibly offensive, and activists have called for his resignation.  The professor, however, doesn’t think he’s done anything wrong and is upset that he’s been suspended by the university.  The adventure only presents one solution, which is to persuade the professor to apologise.  A one-sided and simplistic answer to a complex problem is the sign of poor writing, and I’m not impressed with how it’s handled here.

Anyway, once the PCs get access to the office of the scholar they need to speak to in order to see Halkueem Zan’s notes, they quickly figure out she’s been kidnapped!  To be precise, the PCs could miss every single one of the many clues in her office, but a police detective will then arrive and find everything they missed and explain it all to them.  Examples abound of why people complain that Dead Suns is an adventure on the rails.  Fortunately, I guess, my group did things very conventionally in Chapter Two and railroading wasn’t as visible a problem as it would be for us later.

In Part 2, the PCs have taken a magical gate to a coastal staging area on Ukulam in order to follow the trail of the kidnapped academic.  This part of the adventure requires some heavy wilderness travel, and really takes advantage of things like rations, heat endurance/armor environmental seal charges, ammo reserves, etc.  In short, all those things that lazy players neglect come into the foreground here, and I loved it!  This part includes a really exciting, well-handled chase sequence as the PCs have to escape from an angry herd of beasts.  Other problems include natural hazards, memorably annoying poisonous monkey-creatures, and the first signs of who’s responsible for the kidnapping: the Cult of the Devourer!  It seems the Starfinder Society isn’t the only group to put two and two together and realise the Drift Rock could connect to the Temple of the Twelve.  There’s a long-range sniper encounter (always good to make weapon range increments significant), an interesting encounter with a diseased cultist left for dead, and then great set-piece battle in, on, and around a giant statue of a reclining elf (good staging makes all the difference!).  The artwork and maps help make everything clearer.

In Part 3, the PCs reach the Temple of the Twelve.  To get inside, they have to get past an ancient guardian who is one tough dude!  The temple itself is full of interesting lore and very flavourful.  The first hints may come to the players that the Drift Rock is actually a small part of an ancient sun-destroying weapon called the stellar degenerator (“It’s not a copy of the death star, you see, because it like, brings death to the stars!”)  The rest of the cultists are here, but they’ve already transmitted their findings to a mysterious location in the asteroid diaspora and set up the next chapter of the AP.

Overall, there are definitely some flaws in Chapter Two, but they’re much more noticeable on reading it afterwards than on the first instance.  I had a great time in this part of the adventure, and it remains probably some of my favourite Starfinder gaming to date.

Pathfinder: "Bestiary 2" [RPG]

 As its name implies, Bestiary 2 is the second full-length collection of creatures for Pathfinder.  It's a big (320 page) book, and introduces, according to the back cover, over 300 different monsters.  The vast majority of creatures get one page each (art, stat block, description), though there are a few pages with two monsters and a few monsters that get double-page spreads.  In format, it's very similar to the first bestiary collection.  Obviously, I can't review all the monsters individually, but I would like to list some of the creatures or new creature types that jumped out at me:

* Aeons: Embodiments of neutrality striving to maintain universal balance, these cosmic entities are hard to conceptualise but interesting and important for planar travel.  Several varieties are included here.  I particularly liked "bythos", monitors of disruptions to time or space.

* Agathions: Beastlike outsiders native to the neutral good plane Nirvana.  The theme works surprisingly well, with each type having a distinct role.  I've never really used these, but should.

* Aranea: Super creepy pic!

* Athach: Dumb, bizarre arm monster with no background.

* Crypt Thing: Special teleport ability is pretty cool.

* Daemons: Outsiders with a special desire to consume mortal souls.  Still too similar to "demons" and I don't really see what distinct niche they fill.

* Primal Dragons: Elemental-themed dragons plus a shadow plane-themed umbral dragon.

* Elementals: Four new ones here (mud, lightning, magma, and ice)

* Elemental (playable) races: Ifrits, undines, etc., are introduced here.

* Giants: Four new ones, including rune and taiga.

* Golems: Six new ones, with adamantine and clockwork the best.

* Gremlins: New creature type, a good and suitably annoying addition to the game.

* Inevitables: Lawful Neutral outsiders implacable in their goals.  Each has a good nice.

* Lycanthropes: Three new ones, with wereboars and weretigers having good, scary art.

* Megafauna: Four new ones.

* Nightshade: Introduced as a creature type, with a really cool description.

* Proteans: Chaotic neutral outsider type.  Not particularly interesting, and not obvious how to use well in a game.

* Qlippoths: Pre-demon residents of the Abyss, they hate demons and mortals whose sins form them.  A cool concept.

Generally speaking, there are a lot of high-CR and a lot of gargantuan- and colossal- sized creatures.  The book fills in a lot of the classics that weren't included in the first collection, and I also noticed a lot that appeared in Rise of the Runelords (including art reproduction).  However, there are also a lot I've never heard of before despite gaming for a couple of decades.  A good mix!  Overall, an excellent, high-quality expansion to a GM's toolkit.

Pathfinder Player Companion: "Blood of the Moon" [RPG]

Blood of the Moon is all about lycanthropes--“true” lycanthropes like werewolves, humans with lycanthropic ancestors (skinwalkers), and (I guess most broadly) creatures whose abilities are influenced by the waxing and waning of the moon.  I can confess this has never been a concept that I’ve been particularly interested in, and I only bought the book because it contains some stuff for my Groetus-worshipping Oracle.  On the other hand, I recognise the book definitely does fill a demand relating to the “big three” pop culture monsters: vampires, zombies, and werewolves.

We’ll start with the cover, which is downright awesome!  I often think these Player Companion covers are better than many of the ones that went on the game’s main rulebook line.  The inside-front-cover has capsule descriptions of the new “skinwalker” races introduced in the book: werebat-kin, werebear-kin, wererat-kin, wereshark-kin, wereboar-kin, weretiger-kin, werecrocodile-kin, and werewolf-kin.  (Yes, I was a bit embarrassed to write that sentence).  The inside back cover is a lunar calendar for the year 4713, and includes a new trait called “Child of the Moon” that gives a bonus to a particular skill depending on what phase the moon is currently in.  I remember having a player in a campaign that took this for their PC, and it was kind of a pain always looking up what the phase of the moon was before rolling a simple skill check.

Most of the book is about the new race, skinwalkers, and the variations listed above.  Skinwalkers are humans who are descendants of true lycanthropes and offer some of the flavour of true lycanthropes, relatively minor special abilities, and none of the risk of being feral murder-machines.  For each of the eight variations of skinwalkers, the book devotes two pages of description, traits, and feats.  Frankly, most are fairly forgettable in my opinion and I’m not convinced they’re a worthwhile addition to the game.  And in contrast to the amazing cover, the interior artwork is stiff and even a bit goofy looking--who wants to play a werebat-kin as pictured on p. 8?

The book does devote some pages to true lycanthropes, with some interesting flavour and detail.  There are also two pages of “lycanthropic gear”--alchemical items to help in fighting off lycanthropes, but also a pelt of the beast magic item that’s essentially a no-brainer for skinwalkers.  Two pages of the book are devoted to “The Moon” in the broadest sense, and includes a new oracle mystery (“lunar”) that is quite detailed and very useful. (though I should note that one of the included revelations, Primal Companion, is a really OP option).

Overall, I’d rank Blood of the Moon as one of the lesser entries in the Player Companion line.  Maybe it scratches an itch for some people, but throwing what’s essentially eight new races at the wall in one little book doesn’t really do justice to any of them; and I doubt, in terms of game mechanics and respect for game balance, they let players achieve what they really want.