D&D 3.5 vs Pathfinder 1e

As I've been re-reading a ton of 3.5 books, and reading a lot of Pathfinder 1e books for the first time (the rulebooks, I mean. Adventures and setting stuff I was more familiar with) I'm again forced to the conclusion that Pathfinder 1e isn't necessarily better than D&D 3.5, nor was it really necessary. It did some things better, and some things not as well. This is leaving me wondering if my "preferred" D&D-like rules would actually be a hybrid of Pathfinder, 3.5 and a few ideas from Trailblazer. I'm revisiting some of the posts I was making in 2009/10 when both were still relatively new, and I think that I still agree with it.

Pathfinder changed stuff that didn't need to be changed. What are the changes that I actually think are improvements vs changes that I don't care about or even worse, don't even want? I'm including an old 3e era Wayne Reynolds Dragon Magazine cover of a rogue, just because rogue was one class that needed some extra help, in my opinion. The Trailblazer rules clearly "priced" it as one of the most poorly balanced on the short-shrift side of all of the core classes. 

(I never did get around to costing a bunch of other classes from the Complete books, after saying that I suspected that they would come out even lower in value than the lowest ones Trailblazer costed, using the Trailblazer costing formula. I still actually want to do that, even though it's been more than fifteen years since I thought of doing it. Just for funsies.)

Let me, as I love to do, make a bulleted list. For all of these, even if house-ruling 3.5 rather than adapting Pathfinder, I would want to adapt these changes.

• CMB/CMD: Combat maneuvers were kind of a mess in 3.5. It was a joke that nobody ever remembered how to do grapple correctly, but bull rush, trip, and all kinds of other things were equally cumbrous. Simplifying all of these maneuvers to two statistics, Combat Maneuver Bonus and Combat Maneuver Defense and have them all work more or less the same was a much needed simplification. This, indeed, may have been Pathfinder's best initial contribution to the d20 system, at least when it first launched. It later added more things that are arguably even better, but we'll get to those later. 
• Skill Consolidation: Trailblazer did this too, as did Star Wars SAGA Edition and various other late d20 games, but I think Pathfinder's skill consolidation was probably the best one. But not by much. All of these games independently did more or less the same thing.
• Archetypes: Archetypes aren't really unique to Pathfinder. They were an expansion and formalization of rules that appeared in the PHB2 during 3.5. However, they became the gold standard in character customization. In fact, they became so good that they completely made prestige classes obsolete, which I don't think anyone anticipated at the time. 
• Classes: I wouldn't necessarily have said this early on in Pathfinder's run, but after I've got the entire spread before me, I think ignoring the 3.5 classes and just using Pathfinder classes is fine by me. They are more powerful compared to 3.5 classes, which is the main reason I advocate for using all of them instead of cherry-picking. Frankly, even without archetypes, most of the classes are built to be more flexible and have longer, more a la carte lists of abilities to choose from. This is even true for the psionic classes, but let's be honest; the only psionic class that I ever really loved was the soulknife, and if worse comes to worst, you can get that from the 3pp Ultimate Psionics book. Of course, this comes with my caveats already spelled out; I'm using E6, and you can't take any fullcaster option until 2nd level, and monk and bard are just banned because I like those classes. If you like the idea of either the monk or the bard, you can get there without using the class; brawler is more what I'd want a monk to look like, and the Freeport noble with some minor magic and jacked up perform skill is more like what I'd want a bard to look like. 

On the other hand, I think most of the rest of the system, I'd rather use 3.5. 3.5 races. 3.5 combat, where they differ, etc. I'm actually not really a fan of the Pathfinder races and the way that they're written, even though in my current readthrough I've really only closely reviewed the core book races so far. I'm also not a fan of the power creep that they represent. And I'm not a fan of additional power creep with traits; especially when they recommend taking two of them! If they're supposed to be equivalent to a half-feat, why would they automatically give characters a free feat? The "mixed blessing" traits of Unearthed Arcana are a much better design, honestly, although they should be seen as optional, not as expected. 

I do need to re-read Trailblazer again, and compare it to what I'm reading in Pathfinder Core Rulebook, as well as do the class math that TB allows for to make sure that I've got them balanced. Or at least according to that formula; no guarantee that Trailblazer's balance formula is completely correct. Still, it's better than any alternative.

Reading update and Greater Taldor Remixed

Quick reading update... what I tend to post the most lately, sadly. I finished the slim Pathfinder Companion book Taldor, Echoes of Glory, which I bought in physical form when it was new. I actually have the next two Pathfinder Companion books in physical form which I bought when they were new, Qadira, Gateway to the East, and Cheliax, Empire of Devils. While I know that the themes of a lot of these lands are the whole point, I feel like one of the problems with Golarion as a setting (and one of the main reasons for my Golarion Remixed project, when I get around to making the next update for it) is that the themes are actually too strong; they feel one note and almost caricaturish. Some of them need to be strong; Varisia as a frontier, for instance, or Ustalav as the horror area, Osirion as fantasy Egypt, etc. but I feel like the following themes are borderline ridiculous, and I don't mch like them: 1) Taldor as old-fashioned monarchy characterized by sad, pitiful decline, 2) Cheliax as taken over by devil-worship, 3) Galt as the never-ending French Revolution, and 4) Andoran as crusading Marxist abolitionists and anti-monarchists. Heck, a third of the counties of Ustalav have an anti-nobility bourgeois hierarchy and have the Galt and Andoran themes already built in without it being so over-the-top that it's a joke. 

So clearly that's going to be a major portion of my remix project, to make these elements, to the extent that I end up using them anyway, make more sense, feel more real, and less like a cartoonish caricature. I've kind of hinted at these points before, but let me make them more explicit here in this post. Let me do it dot points style:

• 
  All of the areas that have formerly been part of Greater Taldor and/or Greater Cheliax remain in loose association with Taldor still as a kind of confederacy of sorts; somewhere between Scotland's relationship with England and Canada's relationship with England. They all consider themselves culturally part of Taldor to a greater or lesser degree, and consider each other as allies in times of need, but otherwise operate pretty independently. But, because they all come from the same cultural and legal tradition, their governments and legal backgrounds are more similar than different.
• What is today Taldor and Cheliax remain the anchors of the agreement, and rivalry between Egorian and Oppara remain high, as each jockeys to be the more prominent or prestigious partner. Oppara is more hands-off, preferring the laissez-faire association that currently exists, while Egorian would prefer to centralize and federalize more... in exchange for greater tribute, of course. 
• Andoran is the among the silliest of nations in Golarion as written. Making it a large, prosperous area that operates independently under a Senate of sorts, mimicking the Senate of Taldor (and Rome, for that matter) with Codwin I as, instead of a former Marxist or Jacobin style leader, is a hands-off noble who, due to generations of legal bindings, couldn't have a very active role even if he wanted to. I see him as not terribly unlike King Charles, except if Canada had a separate king. Andoran Remixed was never part of Cheliax, but based on geography, is of course, between Taldor and Cheliax, and frequently serves as a go-between smack dab in the middle of the two rivals. Because of its own strong military and mercantile resources, it's one of the more powerful voices in Greater Taldor, and doesn't feel the need to curry favor with either, and they are in many ways becoming a third pole on the rivalry; only mitigated by the fact that Almas isn't interested in pursuing influence at the expense of Oppara or Egorian.
• Molthune, Nirmathas, Lastwall and Galt are all quieter frontier areas, if you want to call them that, and some of the silliness like Galt's never-ending revolution are to be greatly toned down. The conflict between Nirmathas and Molthune is also going to be less like open warfare and more of an internal issue like The Troubles. These are supported by troops from Taldor, Andoran and Cheliax as needed, but only against outside enemies, not against each other.
• More far-flung colonies, nations or others that have some ethnic Taldoran influence include Sargava, Ustalav, Korvasa, Magnimar, Absalom and others, and while not part of Greater Taldor per se, they are kind of like "junior members" in a mostly symbolic way with Greater Taldor. 
• Cheliax's House Thrune may well be devil worshippers, but not openly, if so. That's more of a conspiracy theory than something confirmed and open, and may well be based on the basalt Gothic architecture style as much as anything else. No doubt there are really bad people in House Thrune, but it's arguable that they are worse than any other noble house in any other nation, necessarily. 

Other than that, I'll probably defer on assigning any specific remix changes until I either get to a setting product that details those countries in more detail, or an adventure path or module that requires me to detail any of it. Honestly, I don't intend to set a lot of stuff in Greater Taldor necessarily, but some of the adventure paths I know for sure take place in Cheliax and/or Taldor. 

• Even Curse of the Crimson Throne is tangentially related, given Queen Ileosa's background as a minor Chelaxian noblewoman, although if I adapt this, any references to Greater Taldor are probably moot.
• Council of Thieves takes place in Cheliax. 
• Serpent's Skull takes place in Sargava, but if I remember correctly, nothing really needs to be changed.The Vidrian Revolution I have absolutely no interest in, but it doesn't feature in any APs or even modules that I can see; it all happened in the background in the update to the setting between 1e and 2e. Most of those updates, honestly, I'm not really in favor of.
• Carrion Crown is in Ustalav, but given that that was even once (briefly) a part of Greater Taldor prior to the Whispering Tyrants's first rule, and that Lastwall was founded specifically by Taldor to fight him, there may possibly be some Taldoran influence here and there to address.
• Hell's Rebels and Hell's Vengeance are both set in Cheliax and strongly feature the devil-worshipping theme of House Thrune. I'll probably need to rework these at a root level to use them in my remixed setting.
• Strange Aeons features a section that travels through Taldor, but I don't think too much of it needs to change.
• Ironfang Invasion features the actual invasion by monsters of a protected member of Greater Taldor, so it may well require some significant reworking in the remixed version too. Again, assuming I have any desire to ever run this anyway.
• War for the Crown is the iconic political thriller AP in Taldor. Of course, it, along with most of the Paizo Golarian as written stuff, is all about installing a progressive grrlboss as the new leader. But it can probably be used even if I change that. The AP, I understand it, is full of all kinds of high magic. Two candidates to the throne are resurrected after being killed, for instance. I'll probably have to change more than just turning Eutropia (or her role, anyway) into a man.
• Tyrant's Grasp is about the fall of Lastwall, and therefore impacts Greater Taldor. Then again, I'm not sure that I'm a huge fan of the meta-story changes in some of these APs as a concept. The reality is that I'd be very unlikely to run them, even as heavily redacted and changed as I do. More likely, I'll simply borrow material from them but in a different context.

A lot of the backstory of these nations is related to their religion, particularly that of Aroden, which was the patron god of Taldor and it's spin-offs, and who's death was a seminal moment in the theme of the whole setting. Given that I don't intend to use Pathfinder's religions, but substitute my own, that also will have an impact on the details of the setting. But my PANTHEON tag isn't quite ready for a major update quite yet.

Reading

I finished the last part of Yig Snake Granddaddy by SPCM, a four-part 5e D&D campaign that goes with the SPCM book. While I didn't really like the first campaign that much, Ghoul Island, this one I thought was a much more compelling concept, and it really kind of made me more in the mood to focus on snakes, snakemen, reptilian enemies, alien enemies, etc. The concept is that there's some serpentman dude who's slowly enacting a phased ritual which is "prehistoricizing" an area, bringing back dinosaurs, and, because it's Lovecraft, also bringing back Yithians and Elder Things, and their cities, which were there back in the Mesozoic. The campaign had a few different subthemes, or aesthetics, maybe—part of it was a kind of Lost World or King Kong like exploration of a wilderness full of dinosaurs and other exotic wildlife hazards, part of it was a kind of "Expedition to the Barrier Peaks" with the Yithians in their city, that had very science-fictiony elements. In fact, kind of prosaic science fiction elements, honestly; should have been more alien! But still; not a lot of D&D campaigns tread that particular water, so it was interesting. And there was the "invasions" of the Elder Things city which was more overtly Lovecraftian horror, with their shoggoth break-out going on and all kinds of things like that, as well as the invasion of the city that the serpent-folk were attempting to conquer. 

This isn't really how I imagined it, but hey, a quick Grok prompt, and it's something for some visual interest.

Anyway, while I obviously didn't love every detail, because I never do of anyone else's campaign, this was still one that I found relatively appealing and interesting, and I had more fun reading it than not. This is Saga two of six; I'm not going to start the next one for a little while because I want to read at least another full Paizo Adventure Path (maybe two) and a 5e campaign (maybe two) before I turn back to this again, but the next one is called Dark World and involves getting the characters sent to Yuggoth to be in exile and try and find their way home, I believe. In fact, I can confirm that. I just did a google search (which these days is really usually a Gemini query) and got this AI summary of all of the campaigns in the series, all of which I'll eventually read and discuss briefly here.

The Cthulhu Mythos Sagas by Petersen Games are structured as 4-act massive adventure paths. They are listed below in their chronological release order:

    1. Ghoul Island (Late 2019)

• Core Entities: Ghatanothoa (The First-Born of Cthulhu) and Deep Ones.
• Themes: Apocalyptic dread, isolation, decay, and local cult infiltration.
• Topics: The story starts with a shipwrecked party arriving on the remote, tropical island of Farzeen. It begins as a localized island survival mystery but escalates into a frantic battle against an ancient undead threat. Players must stop a apocalyptic cult attempting to wake an entity slumbering deep beneath the ocean floor.

    2. Yig Snake Granddaddy (2020)

• Core Entities: Yig (The Father of Serpents) and Serpentfolk.
• Themes: Prehistoric survival, lost worlds, and biological devolution.
• Topics: This campaign plunges players into a primordial landscape dominated by dinosaurs, pterodactyls, and ancient reptilian masterminds. The plot focuses on a fanatical serpentfolk cult trying to revert the modern world back into its prehistoric state. Players must navigate primal wildernesses while fighting to maintain their humanity against ophidian corruption.

    3. Dark Worlds (2020)

• Core Entities: The Mi-Go (Fungi from Yuggoth) and the Zepzeg.
• Themes: Cosmic isolation, planar displacement, and techno-organic horror.
• Topics: Triggered by a mad ruler's catastrophic arcane ritual, the adventurers are violently ripped from their home plane. They find themselves cast across the cosmos and marooned on the nightmare alien world of Yuggoth. The saga handles themes of survival in a physically hostile environment under the unsettling observation of the insectoid Mi-Go.

    4. The Big Sleep (Early 2021)

• Core Entities: Tsathoggua (The Sleeper of N'kai).
• Themes: Political instability, global doom, and pervasive lethargy.
• Topics: Cultists threaten to unleash a worldwide curse that plunges civilization into a supernatural, un-awakening slumber. Players must navigate the fracturing political landscapes of kingdoms and empires to assemble an army. It culminates in an active, macro-level war to prevent the ravenous Great Old One from consuming all living things on Earth.

    5. Have You Found It? (Mid 2021)

• Core Entities: The King in Yellow (Hastur).
• Themes: Paranoia, political intrigue, and infectious madness.
• Topics: Confined almost entirely within the massive metropolitan city of Tiarazan, this campaign leans heavily into social investigation and urban mystery. After a series of minor local disturbances, the glowing Yellow Sign appears upon the moon, spreading madness through the populace. Players navigate high-society political treachery and dimensions-warping architecture to stop a young aristocrat's nihilistic plot.

    6. Skin Deep (Early 2022)

• Core Entities: Deep Ones and shifting eldritch infiltrators.
• Themes: Psychological espionage, murder mystery, and hidden rot.
• Topics: The campaign starts as a tense murder investigation tracking a legendary serial killer who seemingly vanished eighty years prior. As clues unfurl, players discover that a shapeshifting race of monsters has deeply infiltrated the governments of rival human kingdoms. The plot shifts into a gritty gauntlet of war mitigation, political maneuvering, and weeding out invisible monsters hiding in plain sight.

Anyway, of that batch, the next one is actually the one that I'm least excited to read, but we'll see. I didn't expect to necessarily like Yig Snake Granddaddy, but that may partly be based on the incredibly stupid name the campaign had. And yet, I found it rather charming when all was said and done, and although I couldn't help but think about how I'd change it, the fact is that while reading it, my mind was often fired up thinking about how to use some of that material that I was reading, so that's exactly what I want to read these things for in the first place, right? It's also interesting to read someone else's take on elements that were very prominent in the Freeport material (serpentmen, Yig, etc.) yet done somewhat differently.

I still believe that, contrary to first, immediate ideas, it's better to do Lovecraftian themes without really borrowing specific Lovecraftian stuff. Yithians and Elder Things in the jungle felt kind of hoaky and fan servicey rather than anything else, honestly. But if they'd been, say, mind flayers and aboleths, done suitably creepy, it could have been just as good if not better, in spite of their prominent nature in D&D. Of course, it's no secret that D&D has always borrowed a lot of elements from the Lovecraft circle... just as it's no secret that it essentially divorced them from their context and just made them monsters. The refrain is that it was up to the DM to make them creepy, if that's what you wanted them to be, but the reality is that hardly anyone ever really thought of them that way.

And these SPCM Sagas, while overtly and heavily Lovecraft Circle influenced, don't really do the themes very well either. It's D&D. You're meant to be, to borrow the TV Tropes expression, "Big damn heroes" saving the day heroically, and at relatively high level, for that matter. The Lovecraftian stuff is more superficial aesthetics than anything else; these are just D&D campaigns. The Dread mechanics are mentioned off-hand several times, but that is just window-dressing too, honestly.

Anyway, so yeah! Paizo Adventure Path (Second Darkness) coming up next, and WotC campaign Princes of the Apocalypse. Then we'll see. I don't want to overcommit on adventure reading. I have other trawls that aren't adventures too that I'll be working in there while I'm doing it.

Freeport "iconics"

I should look at the books more closely, but there are, I think, about four or five "iconic" Freeport characters in the latest round of products, i.e. the Pathinder Freeport: City of Adventure and the Return to Freeport omnibus, which works as a single relatively large campaign style adventure. Probably the Freeport Bestiary too, although that's mostly illustrations of the actual monsters.

1. The swashbuckler girl on the cover. She's almost certainly the iconic "freebooter" class, which is the most iconic class from the book and relative to the setting overall. And, as I've said many times, low status game designer men love man-acting grrlbosses, so I guess that makes her iconic in a sad way too. (I'm not at all suggesting that women can't be adventurers. Just that I don't buy them acting like and performing like men rather than like women. Make Women Feminine Again. Or at least make masculine pseudo-men rare again, rather than the majority of characters. Blegh.)

2. There's also a cross-dressing noble elf, or half-elf that's shown a lot. She wears a Colonial American coat, or maybe a cheesy high school marching band uniform, and dresses like a man. Dresses quite a bit like George Washington, in fact. It wasn't clear for quite a while if this character was supposed to be a man or not, but some pictures show that under that coat she does in fact have boobs, so I guess that solves that question. Sadly, the noble is another pretty good class, with a ridiculous iconic.

3. There's a survivor, based on the older class which is now an archetype. The whole thing seems superfluous in Pathfinder, since it's the same territory as the brawler, but I think they were fond of the old 3.5 era class that they'd written up. She's also kind of ridiculous; an orc or half-orc girl dressed like a skinny Ned Land from the old Disney 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea movie.

4. There is, occasionally shown, a couple of white men, or at least they are probably white, although pretty dark. Maybe they're "Hispanic" in a fantasy sense. One of them is the Inquisitor, and he dresses like a pretty typical witch hunter in a long black coat, except instead of a Puritan hat, he wears a black tricorn.

5. The other one is a fancy looking dude with darkish skin, but a George Washington wig. I don't know what either of those classes are, but neither one of them seems to be a Monster Hunter, which would be the other "iconic" new class from Freeport: City of Adventure. 

Like I said, they aren't true iconics; there's no bio or backstory, there's no stat block, there's not even a name associated with them, I don't believe. But they are frequently illustrated, enough so that it's clear that they were developed like iconics, i.e., they had visual design, and that visual design and specific look was obviously passed around to the artists and they were told to use them in subsequent illustrations. 

In any case, the last two characters are potentially intriguing concepts. The last one in particular is something that you don't usually see in D&D, The visual design kind of caught my eye, and I thought that I wasn't seeing enough of that character. If I recall, he was carrying either a sword cane or something like that, which contributes to making him look kind of fancy. I thought to myself, hey, I'd like to have a D&D character who has that look, although maybe I'd do something a little different. So here's my version of it, with a cobra staff (he's maybe some kind of spellcaster(?) and a rapier. I know, I know... I'm not really very in to spellcasters. But I can find some way to play up the investigative or even academic side of this guy rather than making him a typical D&D jock, like most of my characters tend to be, that would interest me. Almost a Call of Cthulhu character in a D&D game... for loose definitions of D&D.

I say as I'm literally playing a sorcerer in my 5e campaign right now. I didn't notice right away, but for this third version, posted here, he put his hand in his coat Napoleon style, but the staff he was holding is still standing by itself next to him. Lol. AI. Could be worse. There could be a third hand, I guess.

Paizo Iconics - Oloch

Although he looks like and leans in to stereotypes for orcs, he's supposed to be a half-orc. Oloch was designed before Paizo got the memo that "evil orcs" is no longer OK in the every changing litany of Clown World blasphemies, but he doesn't actually show up much in any art or anywhere else. It's a little bit like they made him and then were almost immediately embarrassed by him or something, so quietly pretended like they forgot about him. 

In any case, he's a warpriest, which as it sounds, is another hybrid class; part fighter part cleric. Which... makes him conceptually just like a paladin except without the lawful good restriction. Sure, sure—he's a little bit more clericky in some ways than the paladin, and mechanically he's a little different, and—of course—evil Seattle hipsters are offended by any restrictions that a character concept might have to be lawful good—but conceptually it's still the same idea. I'm not sure that chaotic neutral Oloch is a better character concept than a paladin. But, of course, I don't really like the iconic paladin either, so in terms of just plain being a better character... I dunno. Maybe.

Paizo Iconics - Quinn

Quinn, the iconic investigator, is an obnoxious concept. He's an "African"; he's clearly said to be of Garundi descent, but he's from a noble family of Galt, the iconic "France?" And, of course, he's supposed to be elegant, refined, sophisticated, and very intelligent, dedicated and patient. 

Yeah, sure, that's "iconic." And he hates crime and injustice. Someone who wrote that has spent too long breathing Seattle fumes of delusion.

In spite of that, visually, he's not a bad character, really. I'm not sure what I think of the Investigator; one of the Advanced Class Guide hybrid classes that's sorta rogue sorta alchemist. I think the investigator is better as an archetype for some other more straightforward class rather than a pseudo-magical hybrid class.

Anyway, Quinn got a 2e visual refresh too. I'm not sure what was what made them decide to do some characters and not others, but he got one anyway. Not much changed except the pose and a few details of the clothing that you can barely see under his trenchcoat, but the 1e image is significantly better.

Paizo Iconics - Jirelle

I think it's interesting that we're back to single-name characters. Last names came briefly, but then left, and these characters are now like Madonna or Cher again. 

Sad family story again, half-elven, but obviously not very white, and a raging grrlboss who acts nothing like a woman. Jirelle could be one of Green Ronin's favorite Freeport NPCs or iconics. Which I think would be interesting to talk about. Freeport doesn't have iconics in the traditional sense, i.e., I'm not aware of them being named or bios being released. But they do have about half a dozen characters that get illustrated a lot. The female swashbuckler (freebooter, in their case, since they're obviously showcasing their own class) is certainly one of them, and she looks like she could be the very similar half-sister of Jirelle. She's illustrated by Wayne Reynolds too, for whatever it's worth. And she almost looks Asian in the 2e edition, but James Jacobs being a visually low status weirdo from California's Lost Coast is certainly the kind of guy who's likely to have yellow fever, and he created her.

I like the Freeport Freebooter better than the Paizo Swashbuckler. I don't like classes with really fiddly mechanics, like having a pool of points to spend to do your stuff. The Freebooter is just mostly a fighter, but instead of all the boring bonus feats, he has a bevy of assassin, rogue and swasbuckler like a la carte abilities to choose from. It's more straightforward, easier and more fun to play, and does exactly what I expect a swashbuckler class to be without being a "game within a game" mechanically complex whatever.

Jirelle had a second image done for 2e for whatever reason, so here's both of them. She wasn't really changed, though, other than her pose. And she lost her little smirk or smile. Isn't that the bare minimum that a swashbuckler is supposed to do? Someone needs to watch some Errol Flynn stat. And knock it off with every backstory has to be tragic. 

Here's a couple of Wayne Reynolds Freeport grrlboss images for comparison. 

Just for the heckuvit, here's another grrlboss pirate swashbuckler from Razor Coast, a 3pp Pathfinder adventure. Low status men really do seem to love them their action grrl grrlbosses for some reason.

Paizo Iconics - Balazar

Balazar. Gnome summoner. I've got to give it to Paizo that they actually really leaned into the gnome "story" that they're trying to tell. Balazar as a prankster who pranked his way through tragedy and danger, without ever taking anything seriously, etc. 

It's not really the best story, but y'know. Gnomes aren't really a very interesting race, so I've got to give them (and Keith Baker with Eberron) in trying to give them some kind of unique character that maybe isn't quite what you want it to be, but at least it's something. I think Paizo's take on gnomes works. I like Eberron's better, because Paizo feels a little too much like kender + fairies.

For whatever reason, Balazar didn't last. They did do a 2e summoner iconic, but now it's an ... African little girl. I wish I were kidding, but I'm not. 

Balazar's eidolon, or summoned spirit or whatever exactly it is looking like the chicken of doom is another joke, I presume. 

"The bird let out a slow chicken cackle. It sounded like a chicken, but in her heart she knew it wasn't. In that instant, she completely understood the concept of a chicken that was not a chicken. This looked like a chicken, like most of the Mud People's chickens. But this was no chicken.

This was evil manifest."

 - Part of Terry Goodkind's most infamous passage, mercilessly mocked in the early days of Usenet.

Delayed Friday Art Attack

Man, I haven't done a Friday Art Attack in a long time. Because I just finished my Freeport Trawl, I thought I'd highlight the Wayne Reynolds covers that he did for Freeport. Because I have ll of the products, I do—after all—have all of the covers. 

There is actually one more WAR cover piece set in Freeport; the Fantasy AGE 2e cover. It's set in Freeport, but it's not a Freeport product. And I don't have it, so... eh. It's a pretty nice piece. A little too grrlbossy for my taste, but otherwise not bad. It's also readily available, since there's a pdf of the Quick Play rules available for free that includes it. A PDF24 Toolbox extraction of the image, and good to go.

Anyway, in no particular order...

Tales of Freeport

Fantasy AGE 2e (in Freeport)

Freeport: City of Adventure

The Pirates Guide to Freeport

Black Sails Over Freeport

Denizens of Freeport

Freeport Trilogy Fifth Anniversary Edition

Creatures of Freeport

Freeport Trawl is FINISHED!

Well, last night I finished Return to Freeport which was the last Freeport product. I've read them all as part of the trawl, with one exception; The Player's Guide to Freeport. However, there's a note on the shop listing for said product, which I'll reproduce below:

Note: The content of the Player’s Guide to Freeport comes from Freeport: The City of Adventure. It has been broken out separately to give players easy access to the material in a book that contains no setting spoilers.

So although I didn't read or even pick up that product, I actually have read all of the content in it, because everything in it comes from another book that I did read recently. Now, granted; although I'd never done anything like this before, and a lot of these products I'd never read before (even some of the earlier 3e products that I've had on pdf for years if not decades already by this point—Freeport the setting is two and a half decades old now, and even the latest products are almost a decade old. So I was pretty familiar with the setting. I'd read the original trilogy of modules at least a couple of times, and even read actual play posts (before doing them as videos or podcasts was popular, write-ups after the fact were the way to go.) I'd owned the system-less setting book since it was new, and I've read it several times. In at least some ways, I still like some aspects of it better than the newer, bigger, bolder setting book that came out with the Kickstarter getting close to fifteen years ago now. And I had read some of the other modules here and there, and the d20 version of the Companions many times too. Now that I've read the whole darn thing, every product, beginning to end, what do I recommend actually getting, reading, and most importantly, what do I think of the whole thing?

First things first; some high level discussion about the setting itself and the arc of its products.

Tone: Freeport sells itself as three things: 1. a D&D setting, with most of the things that that means in terms of magic, fantasy races, etc. 2. a pirate setting, with at least some of the things that that means in terms of culture and technology, although how well its done at emulating the pirate-ness and how it did so evolved over time. And 3. a horror setting, with prominent Lovecraftian elements front and center, including an original plot in the original few products that featured serpent-men like Robert E. Howard had in "The Shadow Kingdom," (probably the best Kull story) including Valossa which is clearly a "gloss" on Valusia, Yig, which Lovecraft created for "The Mound" which he transparently almost completely ghost-wrote for Zealia Bishop, and the Unspeakable One, which is one of the elements Lovecraft borrowed and expanded on somewhat after reading Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow. I'm not completely sure who first proposed merging Hastur, the King in Yellow and the Unspeakable One, but Freeport gives "him" pride of place as its preferred big villain. Probably the RPG industry through Chaosium's Call of Cthulhu game and even D&D itself through the early Deities & Demigods printing, building on rambly writings of August Derleth. 

As I've said repeatedly throughout the trawl, this tone and these themes were not applied consistently. I'm not a fan of the subversive "the monsters are actually the good guys" theme that the original trilogy had with K'Stallo; who's clearly supposed to be seen as friendly and sympathetic, which is ridiculous. But they walked that back somewhat by minimizing his role and introducing another faction among the serpent-men who were more hostile to the player characters and their races and cultures. Chris Pramas, who before founding Green Ronin had also worked on Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay for a while, tried to do what they did and add puns and wink-and-nod in-jokes to the setting. Way too much of it. The British have a talent for doing that subtly without over-doing it, whereas in Freeport it came across as more ham-handed and silly; it really ruined the tone for some products... but other products were appropriately dark without any real puns or silliness. I suppose that's what happens when you have multiple authors and even multiple line editors; Robert Schwalb in particular seems to have been a fan of the more grimdark, horror side of things (hardly surprising given that his own personal design magnum opus is Shadow of the Demon Lord) and anything he worked on was more serious and dark. 

In addition, there were other changes that gradually crept into the game over time. Original Freeport felt almost old school in some ways. Very humano-centric and sword & sorcery feeling. Over time, technology advanced unrealistically rapidly, and suddenly almost anyone of consequence had piratey flintlocks and cannons and sometimes even all kinds of other clockwork technology. Even the illustrations migrated from looking more Medieval sword & sorcery to looking more Colonial America or at least British colonial West Indies. New races started appearing, and suddenly were very important. It started with orcs, hobgoblins and goblins, and that was OK for a time until their prominence and position in the city started to become so notable that it was almost a parody. But then there was the azhar, who leapt from "didn't even exist" to "now have a super prominent role in the setting" almost overnight. And then "island trolls" popped up, and suddenly were all over the place; the island is a tiny little place; how in the world did they just appear out of thin air almost at the end of the run of the products while pretending tacitly that they were somehow just unknown for centuries on an island smaller than most modest sized towns in America? And why did they need to be invented at all, when they aren't really "trolls" but just a new variety of big, strong goblinoid? Something wrong with bugbears, if you're going to be D&D derived already? This rather rapid migration of new elements that significantly changed the setting, without any explanation of why was both jarring and unwelcome. Although I wonder if I hadn't read all of the products in (mostly) chronological order if it would have been subtle enough that I wouldn't really have noticed it. Even more perplexing is that the very latest products, the ones for Pathfinder 1e, suddenly had a lot of Pathfinder assumptions built in. Setting assumptions, I mean, not just mechanical assumptions. Suddenly the divs, for example, become the main bad guys of Return to Freeport, and they were introduced in Bestiary 3. I mean, sure, they are mythological creatures, but they're a somewhat esoteric mythology that hadn't been explored in D&D and D&D derivative games before. This isn't the only thing where Pathfinder setting specific things worked their way into the Freeport setting, but it's maybe the most prominent one.

Even less welcome is gradual enwokening of the setting. All of the orcs and whatnot were obviously a metaphor for a progressive simpleton narrative about black people. The art hardly shows a single white male at all anymore. Almost all of the iconic characters that they show off are women. Many of the factions are led by women, none of whom act in the least feminine. This is also not surprising; the same thing has happened to Wizards of the Coast and Paizo both too, so why not spin-off companies formed by other Seattle weirdos who worked at one (or both) of those companies in the past like Green Ronin or Kobold Press? The great culture wars of woke producers against their anti-woke consumers is the defining cultural moment of our age the last few years, and Green Ronin (and the rest of the Left Coast hipsters) are on the wrong side of it. Freeport seems to have ended as a franchise for new products (at least for now) but Green Ronin are virtue-signaling hard in their other products that their wokeness has increased exponentially since the last Freeport product was released in ~2019 or so. At this point, I almost hope that they leave it fallow before they make it even worse in this regard. Or, if not, wait until woke is completely broken and nobody is willing to make woke entertainment products anymore.

Adventures. The high water mark for the "wrong" tone are probably older, larger adventures like "Hell in Freeport" and Black Sails Over Freeport, but one notable problem was that a lot of the adventures did some unusual things, either 1) mostly took place in places other than Freeport (like Hell, in "Hell in Freeport") or 2) had very little to do with pirates or pirate themes. In fact, especially in the earlier adventures, they mostly just felt like very typical D&D adventures, and often surprisingly high fantasy, high powered D&D adventures. This may be considered also a clash in tone with the low fantasy dark fantasy nearly horror vibe, but I think in the case of the adventures its especially notable, and kind of a different problem, where adventure design is done without consideration of tone at all, in many cases. Not all the time; Black Sails clearly has silliness baked in, especially the sequence that's meant to be a case of the players characters literally playing the old Donkey Kong game where they climb ladders and jump over flaming barrels that apes are throwing at them. Others, like "Hell in Freeport" and many others, and even other parts of Black Sails are just too epic and high fantasy to feel like Freeport; rather, it feels like Forgotten Realms. 

On the other hand, some of the modules, often third party or later appearing ones, are better. Parts of Return to Freeport featured significant ship to ship action, for instance, which is as piratical as you can get, and many others are more low key crime stories, ghost stories or the like, rather than the typical D&D story of "stop the summoning of the dark god who wants to destroy the setting" thing, which happened more than once in the Freeport oeuvre, including in the original trilogy, and of course in the Black Sails module. Return to Freeport, "Dark Deeds Over Freeport," the little adventure included in the Companion books, and most of the Adamant Press adventures, the Goodman Games haunted house adventure, and many of the often small and not completely fleshed out adventures in books like Tales of Freeport had this vibe, and made Freeport feel a little smaller and more grounded in scale. They are mostly meant to be interlude adventures in a longer campaign, I think, but in a way, they really provide the backbone for a campaign that is more what the setting claims (my term, I know) to be about in theme. Although, of course, there's no campaign thread between them. They're mostly disconnected. Which, in some cases, is what OSR-like people, among others, would want to see anyway. Not that I am one, or that the designers had any idea of making Freeport an OSR friendly setting, but y'know. It is a perfectly valid way to structure campaigns, without there being a "thread" through it. 

Quality Over Time. While I think the original trilogy is, in many ways, among the best product for the line, I think that the really best stuff was quite late, and the line really stepped it up quite a bit both in terms of physical quality; better art, full color, etc. but also in terms of products that are honesty better designed. Before reading them, I expected that the big fat Pathfinder Freeport: City of Adventure was just the system-less setting book and the Pathfinder Freeport Companion mashed together, but that was not the case; the mechanics were greatly expanded and improved and even the setting stuff was rewritten, revised and looked at again. I also thought that the Pathfinder Freeport Bestiary was mostly just going to be a system update to the older d20 Creatures of Freeport, but no, it's almost a completely different book, and a significantly better book. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised all around by the Freeport Bestiary; it's one of my favorite monster books, whereas Creatures of Freeport was pretty meh. Even though there were obviously some of the same creatures involved in both. Although I'm not suggesting that I'd run Return to Freeport as is, I did in general find it to be among the best adventures—whether you consider it one big adventure in six chapters, or six linked adventures as it was originally published. In fact, the first one or two in particular were among my favorite adventures in the entire Freeport corpus, and the one with all the pirate ship combat was... I dunno, maybe it needed a little more mechanical oomph... but otherwise it's kind of surprising that this hadn't been done in the setting before this point. Unfortunately, the idea of going to "Dark Freeport" in a pocket mirror dimension to fight the big bad villain of the arc was a little corny. With some work on the end, I could turn Return to Freeport into the best Freeport campaign you could get, in theory. 

Granted, like I've said many times, there is no printed campaign or adventure path that I can run as is, and I do pretty substantial rework to all of them if I plan on using them for anything. But using the basic structure of the original trilogy, the Return to ... sextology, I think the word is, and some of the other adventures scattered throughout otherwise could be reworked into a pretty brilliant Curse of the Corsair Coast. When I get around to actually planning out that campaign brief and outline, I think that the Freeport material will be my go-to source for raw material—although how much the end product resembles Freeport when all is said and done is TBD... who knows? Maybe I can accelerate my pace at reading the Adventure Path trawl, and read Skull & Shackles before I do Curse of the Corsair Coast, and see if any of that can be added to the stew as well.

Overall, and I've said this many times too, Five Fingers from Privateer Press, i.e., is better in many ways. It has a more consistent and more compelling theme, and it understands what it wants to do more. However, it is also a bit more closely tied to its parent setting, Iron Kingdoms. Freeport is supposedly supposed to be more modular and usable in any setting. I feel like this started to feel slightly less true over time, as Freeport gradually accreted an actual setting, mostly, although it still kind of stubbornly refused to ever name any of the gods for clerics, etc. except for two pirate gods, a "good" one who's a cheery swashbuckler like Errol Flynn and a bad one who's a monstrous murderer. Given how much the "God of Knowledge" featured in the signature adventures, it started to feel obnoxious that it was always just the generic "God of Knowledge" after a while. Whatever. It's not a big deal, but in general, if they were going to create a setting of sorts to attach Freeport to, I wish they'd just gone ahead and done it. It's easy to change stuff, but it's a little bit obnoxious to not have it at all and it needs to be added by the players. Also, in spite of the fact that Freeport had all of the "companions" for various systems, it really only worked very well for systems that felt pretty much exactly like D&D. In fact, when they migrated to Pathfinder, even though Pathfinder started off being essentially just D&D 3.5+, it felt like it got just a bit more of its own character, and became somewhat more compelling in a way.

None of the settings or adventures ever made by someone else work completely for me, but Freeport does a lot that I like, and gives me a decent framework to modify rather than needing to build from scratch. I'm 100% on board to use Freeport material as the baseline for Curse of the Corsair Coast, and I think that when all is said and done, I can probably use more Freeport material that I have and with less modification than I've been having to do for the Paizo adventure paths. Like I said, I'll review some other pirate-themed stuff first; Skull & Shackles and I'll probably read Five Fingters: Port of Deceit once more before I really define Curse of the Corsair Coast, but that's only to give myself an abundance of resources to work with, not because I need them.

APs and Campaigns Ranked by AI

Google's Gemini, or whatever their AI is that answers your search before they actually show you links, ranked the Pathfinder 1e adventure paths for me. I asked it to expand it's initial summary to include the full list, but I didn't check if it actually got everything or if it missed one. AI isn't actually as good as it should be at catching everything, which should, of course, be its strong suit.

Commentary came with the AI rankings. It's not mine. 

Tier 1: The Masterpieces (S-Tier)

• Curse of the Crimson Throne: Ultimate urban intrigue campaign.
• Hell's Rebels: Masterful political rebellion sandbox.
• Kingmaker: Definitive kingdom-building open world.
• Rise of the Runelords: Classic foundational heroic fantasy.

Tier 2: High-Quality Favorites (A-Tier)

• Iron Gods: Thrilling high-tech science-fantasy blend.
• Ironfang Invasion: Gritty guerrilla warfare and survival.
• Mummy's Mask: Traditional Egyptian-themed tomb exploration.
• Skull & Shackles: High-seas pirate sandbox adventure.
• Strange Aeons: Atmospheric Lovecraftian cosmic horror.
• War for the Crown: Intricate high-stakes political espionage.
• Wrath of the Righteous: Epic mythic-power demonic warfare.

Tier 3: Solid But Niche (B-Tier)

• Carrion Crown: Gothic horror anthology style.
• Legacy of Fire: Classic Arabian Nights genie tale.
• Reign of Winter: Whimsical plane-hopping folklore journey.
• Return of the Runelords: High-level epic trilogy conclusion.
• Ruins of Azlant: Fascinating underwater colony survival.
• Shattered Star: Direct old-school dungeon crawl.
• Tyrant's Grasp: Grim apocalyptic survival finale.

Tier 4: Heavily Flawed (C-Tier)

• Council of Thieves: Disjointed city-based organized crime.
• Giantslayer: Repetitive and exhausting giant combat.
• Hell's Vengeance: Highly restrictive evil-aligned campaign.
• Jade Regent: Frustrating caravan mechanics subsystem.
• Second Darkness: Jarring mid-campaign tonal shift.
• Serpent's Skull: Disappointing lost-continent jungle exploration.

Now, I don't pretend to be a fan of the same things as the mainstream. Seeing Carrion Crown down at B-Tier when I think it's probably the best one in many ways was weird. Why is it niche? It has the same themes as Curse of Strahd, which is largely seen as the best 5e campaign. Seeing Strange Aeons as A-Tier, when I didn't even think it was as good as Carrion Crown (although maybe I had higher expectations of it too) was weird. And I had the impression that Council of Thieves was relatively well received, but I guess not. Given that all that this AI answer is is scraping reddit posts and whatnot.

Anyway, for funsies, I did the 5e campaigns too, including the modular ones, which Gemini wanted to exclude at first.

S-Tier: The Masterpieces

• Curse of Strahd: Unmatched gothic horror sandbox.
• Lost Mine of Phandelver: The gold standard of entry-level D&D campaign design.
• Tomb of Annihilation: The pinnacle of 5e hex-crawl survival and lethal dungeon design.

A-Tier: Great & Highly Popular

• Keys from the Golden Vault: Widely praised as one of the best overall anthologies. It provides heist-focused standalone missions that are phenomenally easy to run and incredibly player-driven.
• Waterdeep: Dragon Heist: Exceptional urban roleplay and sandbox element mechanics.
• Candlekeep Mysteries: A library-themed collection focused on episodic investigations. Universally loved by DMs for its versatile, "plug-and-play" formatting.
• Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden: A gritty, isolationist sandbox praised for localized survival dread.
• The Wild Beyond the Witchlight: Whimsical feywild adventure celebrated for its brilliant pacifist run options.
• Storm King’s Thunder: A sprawling giant-slaying sandbox that captures classic grand-scale fantasy.

B-Tier: Good with Caveats

• Ghosts of Saltmarsh: Nautical-themed compilation mixing classic modules with robust seafaring rules. The town itself functions well as a campaign hub, though the maritime chapters require work to link up smoothly.
• Tales from the Yawning Portal: Recreates legendary, lethal old-school dungeons like "The Sunless Citadel" and "Tomb of Horrors." Great for tactical hack-and-slash tables but totally barren of connective narrative narrative tissue.
• Quests from the Infinite Staircase: A collection of updated classic 1e/2e modules. Highly creative sci-fi/fantasy concepts, though it relies heavily on the DM to fill in structural gaps.
• Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus: Spectacular Mad Max hellscape with an opening chapter that feels detached.
• Dragon of Icespire Peak: Reliable quest-board-style layout that works cleanly but lacks a grand plot spine.
• Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep: Compelling narrative backed by great rival NPC mechanics, tuned specifically for Exandria fans.
• Out of the Abyss: Brilliant Underdark survival escape that loses momentum in its clunky political second half.

C-Tier: Flawed or Niche Appeal

• Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel: Culturally rich, vibrant settings packed with imaginative standalone lore. Panned slightly by community rankings due to highly inconsistent adventure scaling and balancing issues.
• Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage: An immense, deep megadungeon built for combat tacticians that leaves roleplayers wanting more.
• Princes of the Apocalypse: An elemental dungeon crawl that drags under confusing sandbox pacing.
• Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk: Shifts a beloved classic into late-game cosmic horror dungeons that feel tonally jarring.
• Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen: A rigid, rail-thin military campaign targeted mostly toward setting purists.

D/F-Tier: Structural Messes

• Tyranny of Dragons (Hoard / Rise): Written before core system rules were locked, plagued by railroad structure and severe math imbalances.
• Spelljammer: Light of Xaryxis: Community-panned for a brief, linear runtime and a tragic lack of robust ship-to-ship combat.
• Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos: Tries to build a magic university school simulator but lacks compelling structural mechanics, leaving the DM to track a dizzying calendar of events.

Once again, I strongly suspect that if I were to tier these, my results would be significantly different. But reading these summaries at least gives me an expectation of what the campaigns are going to be like and about. I find that minor spoilers like this are less important to me than having expectations that aren't met, i.e., if I think a campaign should be a certain thing, or I expect it to be a certain thing and I'm not aligned with the designers, I'm more likely to dislike it than if I understand what they're trying to do and how the community thinks that they did. A lot of the problems that the community will bring out, like math problems with Tyranny of Dragons, literally won't be noticed by me at all, both because I read the campaign and I'm playing in it, but I will never and would never run it. Also, the "culturally rich, vibrant settings packed with imaginative standalone lore" of Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel is much more likely to come across as obnoxious woke garbage to me. We'll see when I get there, I suppose. 

At this rate, sometime in 2030. Sigh. Also, check out that AI image, which I found online, not generated myself (I was out of images.) The tiefling girls tail comes out of the side of her hip. Sigh again.

Good modules

I've read quite a few modules in the last year or two as I've gone through my various RPG trawls, and I've got opinions. Some of these opinions I already had, but some of them crystalized just based on the process of reading a bunch of modules in relatively close proximity, and it made me think on what I liked and what I don't. This isn't meant to be a review of any particular module, publisher, or anything else, just a general discussion (occasionally with examples) of what I like and don't like. Keep in mind that I've run very few of these modules. I'm not currently running anything except for one-offs here and there, because of my relocation a couple of years ago; I joined a group that was in a recently started campaign, so while I"m not exactly at the ground floor, they were only a couple of sessions in to a new campaign. Because they were already going, I felt like it was poor manners to try and immediately subvert the campaign and offer to run something myself, needless to say, so what I've offered to do was run stuff sometimes when the whole group is struggling to get together because of scheduling. 

Of course, since the beginning of the year, my own scheduling and stress level has been a nightmare. But prior to that I had pretty good availability and more demand for playing than I was able to get from the group. Two other people in the group were in the same boat, so we were talking about running a partial group campaign in between regular sessions in the main campaign. That hasn't actually happened, although at least in some sense, that's a good thing, because it meant that the two "flakier" group members have been participating a bit more than we anticipated, and we haven't had to cancel as many sessions. Of course, it's also been at least 2-3 months since we've been able to get together now... but I'm a big part of that problem myself with my insane travel schedule, work drama and extended family drama. (It's not all drama. A wedding isn't really drama.) Anyway, this is a larger sample Millennial-looking D&D party than we'd have; our smaller group would be me and two players, husband and wife, and all three of us are Gen-Xers in our early to mid 50s. But an image of a posing fantasy adventurer party is an image of a fantasy adventurer party, and I do at least appreciate the lower fantasy vibe of it with regular humans in regular clothes, more or less.

So, I've read a lot of modules. Some old modules. Many old style but not really that old modules. Many newer modules. Many Dungeon Magazine adventures. Adventure paths. Book-form campaigns. What do I like and dislike?

- Site based adventures are very limited in their ability to be entertaining. Most of them lack much context for why the site is there and why PCs would be exploring it. In some, this is explicit; DMs are supposed to provide that context themselves, or weave the adventure into their ongoing campaign. This is a bit of a cop-out, though. It's easier to change, modify or even ignore context that it is to create one from scratch, so I'd rather have some. 

- That said, some of those set-ups and context texts can be either pretty bad or overdone. There's no reason to provide historical context for stuff in a dungeon that the party has no way of ever finding out other than the GM simply telling it to them. Adding that just to entertain the GM while reading the module strikes me as honestly kind of silly. And overly forced or unlikely context doesn't really do anyone any favors either. It will certainly have to be ignored. At least create context that tries to be useful and interesting, not just self-indulgent or contrived.

- Also, just exploring trapped rooms stuffed with monster and treasure was cliche in the early 80s and many people eschewed the whole paradigm. It's still a problem. I just finished this morning, because I woke up almost an hour early and knew I wasn't going to fall back asleep, "Heart of Nightfang Spire", one of the early 3e adventures. It's very site based and has no context, and it was a pain to read, not very interesting, and I found myself wondering how I could possibly make it fun to run or play. The context really matters, because without it, it's just a game... you're not doing anything that feels meaningful to the characters, to the setting, or to the fiction. 

- Many designers are too afraid of railroads. Others aren't afraid enough. Having a plot, through-line of events, or something like that is not a railroad. Forcing players to stick to that regardless of what decisions they make is what makes it a railroad. Writing adventures that call for forcing PC actions is bad. That's a railroad in the making. Writing adventures that assume a certain sequence of events, but doesn't force it, is perfectly fine. In fact, that's what I think I prefer after reading all kinds of alternatives. Well-designed adventures will have some built in leeway; "yeah, we assume that the players will do this, but if not, here's some other material so you're not just on your own completely."

- Because this is the way that I like to consume modules, and it works best for me running them somewhat loosely, I don't need a lot of exacting detail about what your players will see "on the ground" with their characters; I need a looser format, where I can fill in stuff depending on how it actually goes at the table, what my PCs actually do, etc. I was somewhat surprised, and I don't think a lot of other GM's will agree with this necessarily, but I think that the format that WotC uses for their one-book campaigns is actually the format that agrees with me and my playstyle the most. That doesn't mean that the specific adventures or the content is the best, just that I like the format. ~200 page campaigns that are written somewhat loosely and focus at least as much on events and plot-point opportunities as they do on site exploration and things like that—that's exactly what I want. 

- Paizo's adventure paths are the second best format for me. I rarely can run them as is, both because they do often tend too often to be written as railroads, because there's a lot of stuff that I have to change, and because they're too long, too meandery while they lose the plot for whole adventures at a time, and because they're too enamored with dungeon-crawls for my taste. But format-wise, they're pretty nice, and I've seen lots of good moments and "stealable" stuff in the (so far) seven or eight full adventure paths that I've read all the way through. It is a bit intimidating to try and read a whole thing of them, though. A full adventure path is six ~100 page books; nearly twice as long as I really need it to be. Especially since the fiction I can take or leave, the monsters can be in the monster books, and the setting stuff is also mostly replicated or abbreviated versions of content that ... also appears in one of the setting books.

- Old school and old school like modules that are site-based and offer little or no context, backstory or much in the way of hooks other than "there's probably monsters and treasures and danger in here; go check it out because that's the game that I prepared, so if you don't, I got nothing" are my least favorite. 

- Of course, style and quality are different axes, and a module can be on the good side of one axis and the poor side of another, or vice versa, or good on both or poor on both. I hoped to like the early 3e modules better than I have so far, and given that I've read five of eight, I'm confident that that's not going to change. However, once we get past the 1-20 level "pseudo adventure path" modules, I think that the next batch of them, which were spread out throughout the entire "3rd Era" period probably vary quite a bit more. I've read Expedition to Castle Ravenloft before, and honestly, I doubt that the famous and well-regarded Curse of Strahd for 5e is much better. I guess I'll see when I eventually read that one, right? In fact, in general, far too many of the 5e campaigns are really just trumped up leftovers from classic 1e modules. The next one on my list, Princes of the Apocalypse is really just the Temple of Elemental Evil put into Forgotten Realms and written in, maybe, a format that I'll like better. But I seriously doubt that they've done anything terribly interesting or innovative with it. The original is highly regarded albeit often seen as somewhat flawed, but this oneis usually perceived as middling at best by most who've read and/or played it.

On a completely separate tangent, just because, I found this cover image of a recentish Call of Cthulhu book: talk about missing the point. Cthulhu is supposed to be a game about terror, not about being embarrassed because you had an accident in the back of your pants. Seriously, what in the world are these characters doing? If they didn't just have diarrhea in the woods, they're desperately trying not to. I've seen people try to defend it as pooping your pants is the reaction of a terrified individual. No. I mean, yeah, sure, but that's not the point. The point of horror game cover art is supposed to evoke the theme and tone to the audience who would buy it, and if the audience who would buy it is making fun of the cover art because it looks ridiculous, then that defense is a non sequitur and is dumb.

Speaking of Call of Cthulhu, I often listen to Graham Plowman's stuff while reading my game books (including right now while typing this post), and it's mostly all based on Cthulhu stories, and is deliberately designed for reading and gaming. He's my favorite of the amateur "background music" artists floating around out there, mostly because he tends to stick with sounds, themes and tones that I like the best—dark, moody and horror, with occasional touches of action and terrifying excitement. My only complaint is that he likes the theramin a little bit too much, which sounds kind of corny to me because I associate it with corny 50s sci-fi b-movies. He doesn't always use it, but he does enough that it stands out in certain of his longer tracks, like "The House on Sentinel Hill" and "Yuggoth."

Curse of the Brine Witch

I finished the first adventure of Return to Freeport, "Curse of the Brine Witch." It's actually a really good adventure, written by Patrick O'Duffy, an old-time Freeport campaigner who worked for Green Ronin for many years. Apparently, he's from Melbourne and also does freelance work for White Wolf. Interesting stuff. Regardless, the adventure is quite good. Although I feel that the hook to get the characters involved is a little weak and forced, that's often true for published adventures (including the original "Death in Freeport") so I'm not going to count that too much against it. A good GM needs to come up with tailored starts that account for the PCs he actually gets, which no published adventure can possibly do. Another point against it, although this is pretty common for Paizo products too, and it's a moot point for me, is that it requires you to own a few other books, including the big Pathfinder Freeport setting book (which originally retailed for ~$80, so quite a lot) as well as two of the bestiaries, 1 and 3. I know that it saves a page or two to not repeat stats each time they need them, but it's not really worth it; it requires that you buy more stuff, which limits how much people will want to buy this product unless they already have them or already plan on getting them anyway. Even though, like I said, it's a moot point to me because I do own the referred to products, it's still a hassle to switch between various products to run a game, and it's obnoxious to tell people that they need to go buy other expensive products to properly use the one that they're reading. Maybe that's a principled or even ideological stand to take, though. I dunno. I need to use the OGL and SRD to copy portions of the Pathfinder compatible stuff onto my website to be able to even refer to how to use my conversion, but I'm going to do that rather than just say, "go buy this other book and read those few pages."

Today was an interesting day of work. I left early because there was a department picnic. I didn't go to that because I had to call into three separate meetings during it, and I figured I'd go home rather than stay in the office to do that, when nobody else was really going to be there anyway. However, two additional emergency meetings came up, so although I had some disconnected free time that I didn't exactly expect, I also wasn't able to actually quit for the day until nearly 8:30 PM, which really sucks. But, I did manage, like I said, to finish this first adventure, which was shorter than I expected; about ~35 pages or so. If they'd added the statblocks that they referred to, which they should have done (even if they're in the appendix or something after all) then it would have been maybe closer to ~40 pages. The whole omnibus is about 176 pages, I think, which is shorter than most of the WotC 5e campaigns, and significantly shorter than the Paizo adventure paths. But, of course, that's not exactly fair. While an adventure path issue is about 100 pages, only about half of that is the actual adventure, then there's several pages of setting material, new monsters (many of which don't feature in the module; they're just there because the writers thought they looked fun), episodes of linked fiction, and all kinds of other material. Still; at ~40-50 pages a module and six in an adventure path, the Paizo campaigns, ignoring all of the other material, are still 240-300 pages or so of module material; at least a third longer than this one, and maybe even almost twice as long. This doesn't really compare in size to a Paizo adventure path after all; it's not even as long as their earlier Black Sails Over Freeport. 

I was also a little bit amused to see that they recommended using the fast advancement, so that the adventure will get you to at least third level. I just re-read that in my Pathfinder Core Rulebook read (remember that while I haven't read it cover to cover, I've had it pretty much since it was new, and have read many portions of it here and there off and on for years) and thought to myself that I'd likely take the slow method, and then nearly double the XP listed there, so that instead of needing 3,000 XP to get to 2nd level, 7,500 to 3rd, 14,000 to 4th, etc. I'd require 6,000, 15,000, 28,000, etc. To my sensibilities, the entire "Curse of the Brine Witch" feels like what a 1st level adventure should feel like, and I'd be wary of even suggesting that at the end of it, you should advance to 2nd level for the next one. At least in terms of scope of the adventure, if not necessarily difficulty of the challenges.

I generated an image in Grok of the Brine Witch. Of course, Grok is the AI that, in my experience, is the least likely to actually do what you tell it to on image generation. I ran out of generations that I could use long before I got one that actually works; I don't know why it couldn't, despite very clear and repeated prompting, just have nothing but a gigantic eye inside the hood, or why the shark's teeth I requested around the eye and hood turned into a row of triangular decorations all along the edge of the cloak. Sigh. I only used Grok because I'd already used up all of my ChatGPT image generations. UPDATE: Got a slightly better one, and then hit my limit again this morning. Sigh. Anyway, I swapped out the image that I had for this improved version. This one just needs 1) I asked for it to be at night, and after a few tries, Grok completely forgot to do that, 2) I also asked for teeth around the eye, which Grok also ended up forgetting about, and 3) I'd like a little bit more brightness on the eye. It's a bit hard to see. Still, it's an improvement over what I had before. Honestly, maybe I should just be happy with what I got and not worry about the teeth, which Grok is unlikely to do well, I think. As soon as it lets me generate a new one, I'll try and get it done at night and otherwise let this one go. Honestly, I'm trying a little too hard to get this one done. It's just an image for this one post. I guess if I ever run this, I could use this as a player aid of some sort. I do like to have visualizations of what they're seeing sometimes.

When I first tried Grok for images, I quite liked them, but now I find ChatGPT reliably gives me my best results. If I do go for a premium account someday, that's the one I'd use. But again, it's not worth it for a minor toy. I don't need that many images, and even when I'm trying to correct ones that don't get it right, I'm OK with what I can generate already.

Maybe one of these days, I'll actually pay for a premium account so I don't run out after just a few images, but probably not. It's fundamentally just a minor toy to me, not something essential.

Anyway, I'd like to finish Return to Freeport by the end of the weekend. I don't want to overcommit, even to myself, and think that I'll get it done before then, but that's reasonable, I think. And 'll make a new post about module writing in general. As I've recently read quite a large number of them over the last several months, I've certainly developed preferences in terms of what I want a module to actually have and be like.