Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

I honestly don't even know where to start in reviewing this book.  It was my bible for the longest campaign I've ever ran, and I've paged through its 428 pages so many times, I'm surprised my copy is in as good of shape as it is.  Equalled only by the Curse of the Crimson Throne hardcover compilation, the Rise of the Runelords Anniversary Edition is the most detailed, impressive, and gorgeous presentation of a campaign I've ever seen.  It's a testament to James Jacob and the wonderful visual and art design folks at Paizo for putting it together.   In addition to the core adventures, the book includes an incredible array of supplementary material throughout its appendices: gazetteers, bestiaries, new magic items, and more.  And interspersed throughout are full-colour, detailed maps, high-quality artwork of NPCs and monsters, handouts, useful sidebars to help the GM in running particular scenes, and more.  I really can't rave enough about it.

I've already reviewed the substance of each of the six chapters of the adventure path in my reviews of issues # 1-6 of the monthly publication they originally appeared in (available on the Paizo website).  This Anniversary Edition is no lazy cut & paste compilation or mere updating of the original 3.5 rules to Pathfinder.  Everything has been refined, revised, polished, and packaged together to make a whole that is even better than the sum of its original parts. James Jacob read through countless posts on the forums about the original adventures and added encounters, explanations, and more to help everything flow even better.  I've compared the original versions to this revised package, and with only a couple of exceptions, the revisions are a sound improvement.

As far as I'm concerned, this is the best presentation of a classic fantasy role-playing campaign available.  You'll get hundreds of hours of gameplay out of it, experience characters growing from battling goblins at level 1 to battling the greatest threats the setting has to offer at level 18.  It's a satisfying, meaty, epic campaign, and this Anniversary Edition does it full justice.