Pathfinder Module: "Flight of the Red Raven" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

I ran Flight of the Red Raven for a standard four-PC party, updating the module where occasionally necessary to use Pathfinder RPG rules (it's written for D&D 3.5).  I thought it did a great job keeping up a sense of pace and excitement while introducing some memorable NPCs.  There's little that grounds the adventure in Golarion, which I guess is a plus or minus depending on what setting you use.  The encounters, especially in the latter third, definitely get challenging, and I think using slightly higher-level or more numerous PCs than recommended would be better for an average group.  Still, this was a fun adventure and one worth playing despite its age.

SPOILERS

The module begins in the town of Azurestone, a mining and farming community near the Fog Peak Mountains.  Several reasons of a mundane nature are suggested for why the PCs may be in Azurestone during its annual harvest festival, and the module encourages the GM to run some carnival style games and other little events to get the PCs familiar with the town and its inhabitants.  "PCs in town for a festival" is one of the more common openings to an adventure in RPG gaming, but it works just fine here.  As we'll see, however, the PCs won't be staying in Azurestone long, so this isn't an adventure where it's crucial they establish a strong connection to the community. (It might also be worth noting that, although formally Azurestone is in Galt, there's no flavour or setting-lore related to the "perpetual revolution" there--this adventure could easily be set anywhere there's a town, a forest, and some mountains).

The morning after the festival, the townsfolk are shocked to learn that the Vernal Key has been stolen from the town's church.  The Vernal Key is a minor magical artefact that has kept winter from descending upon Azurestone for generations, and witnesses saw a local folk hero (a Robin Hood type) named the Red Raven make off with it.  The PCs, of course, are asked by the townsfolk to catch the Red Raven and return the Vernal Key before a harsh winter (which the community has never prepared for) descends on the town.  If the PCs don't have a good tracker with them, an NPC joins them.  It's a solid beginning to the module.  There's a potentially fun bit where, on the night of the theft, accomplices of the Red Raven try to distract the PCs by either getting them drunk, seducing them, or starting a massive bar brawl.

The chase begins!  The next major part of the module consists of the PCs following the Red Raven's trail across some rugged plains, through a forest called The Boarwood, across the Kantele River, and then into the foothills of the Fog Peak Mountains.  It's not very likely the PCs actually catch up to the Red Raven (he has a head start and does some additional forced marching, while the PCs probably have to slow down to keep from losing his trail), but the module does have a sidebar covering what happens if they do.  The pursuit is more than just movement rates, terrain modifiers, survival skill checks to keep on the trail, and random encounters.  Outlaw allies of the Red Raven have set up several ambushes to help ease the Red Raven's escape.  There's an attempt to bury the group in a rockslide as they pass through a quarry, lure them into a false campsite where a giant spider lurks, knock them into the water as they cross a narrow rope bridge across the river, and more.  

I think the encounters here are handled well, and they clearly serve the purpose of adding some excitement to the pursuit.  The Red Raven's allies are all given names and personalities, which was smart thinking since it's likely some of them could get captured and interrogated.  Their goal is to slow down pursuit, and not necessarily kill anyone--though the tactics they choose could certainly be lethal!  The issue I had when running this is that the module provides that if any of the outlaws are captured after any of the ambushes and successfully persuaded to cooperate, they'll lead the PCs to their campsite where the rest of the outlaws are resting.  In my game, this happened after the very first ambush, which curtailed the possibility of any further planned encounters.  Rewarding PC success is a good part of adventure design, but it was simply too easy and too much of a reward.

Once in the Fog Peak Mountains, there are a couple of encounters--one versus "hoary muntjacs" (see the paragraph on the appendices below) and another versus a juvenile white dragon.  Assuming the PCs are still on the Red Raven's trail, they'll then follow him right into a place they can't easily escape--a prison demiplane!  There's a bit to unpack here, some of the details of which the PCs might have learned from interrogating the outlaws earlier, and some of which they can learn from other NPCs inside the prison.  The magical prison takes the form of a series of icy tunnels and caverns.  It was built millennia ago by the Caliphate of the Djinn to house a traitorous member of their group who tried to poison his sovereign and assume the throne.  This genie is still trapped within the prison, and his name has passed into legend as the Jarl of the North Wind.  But why has the Red Raven stolen the Vernal Key from Azurestone and raced into the prison?  Love! Aww, shucks.  The Red Raven's girlfriend, a fellow adventurer named Geppa, led a crew to explore the mountains when they entered the demiplane and became trapped.  The Red Raven learned through hiring a diviner what had happened to Geppa, and how the Vernal Key was actually a magical key that could allow the bearer to create an exit.

But whether they think of him as a villain or a hero, the PCs still have to locate the Red Raven within the prison demiplane--and there are several winding routes to explore and dangers to overcome.  Most likely, the PCs will come across Geppa first, and then encounter the Red Raven for the first time in a corker of an encounter that includes (on various sides of the conflict) one ogre, the Red Raven (as a prisoner), four hardened followers of the ogre, two ice mephits, four zombies, and (probably) Geppa and another adventurer named Teko.  It's a lot for the GM to handle, but I actually really liked it.  I think too often in modern Pathfinder adventure-writing the number of foes is very small, and the PCs (and their pets) tend to outnumber the bad guys.  Here, you get a big, complex battle with multiple sides and a lot of uncertainty about what should happen.  And, there's still the big final battle against the Jarl of the North Wind in a separate encounter before the PCs are able to escape.  The series of encounters in the demiplane could wear down a group if they're not careful about husbanding their resources.  The adventure concludes with some alternative suggestions on how Azurestone reacts if they get the Vernal Key back and whether or not the PCs arrested the Red Raven.

The final few pages of the module consist of some appendices.  Appendix 1 introduces two new monsters.  One is a "hoary muntjac," which is essentially a reindeer's body with a wolf's head--not a particularly noteworthy contribution to the game.  The other new monster is a "snowdrifter," a murderous aberration of cold and darkness.  It has some interesting special abilities, and the artwork is pretty cool.  Appendix 2 covers the Fog Peak Mountains.  Most of the section consists of the history of a frost giant kingdom that once existed in the mountains, and then there's a brief list of some creatures that might be encountered there and adventure hooks that might draw PCs there.  I've seen much better gazetteers, and the section mostly came across as filler.  The last page has the stats for four Level 4 Iconics that can be used to play the adventure (though I think they'd be hard pressed in some of the more challenging encounters in the game).

The inside front- and back- covers are devoted to maps.   The encounter maps are quite large in terms of their total number of 5" squares (and one of the maps has a scale of one square = 40 feet, making for some ginormous encounters!).  I think it's important to have some encounters that start at large distances (to make ranged weapon increments relevant, for example), but a GM is going to need to spend some time thinking about how to handle them in terms of flip-mats.  There's also a quarter-page map showing the path the Red Raven takes from Azurestone to the Jarl's prison.  This was poorly done, as there's not even a distance scale--crucial when we're talking about a day-by-day pursuit where land speeds and terrain modifiers are supposed to be taken into account.

In terms of artwork, I'd label it as serviceable.  It's clearly in an earlier phase of Paizo's ability to get top-notch artists.  Geppa and the Red Raven look pretty good, even if the former clearly suffers from the "female adventuring in the winter in essentially a bikini" problem.  The jarl doesn't look scary to me, but that could be because of his hilarious slippers.

Overall, I thought this was a fun, fresh adventure.  There's some role-playing opportunities at the beginning, several wilderness encounters in the middle, and some dungeon-style exploration (in an interesting locale) at the end.  The module pays very good attention to detail, and there's lots to work with in terms of background and motivations of the NPCs and monsters.  The biggest contribution of Flight of the Red Raven, however, is bringing the concept of masked adventurers into the Pathfinder setting.  The Red Raven presented here is the same Red Raven that, years later, became the Iconic Vigilante, which is a pretty cool development!