Dungeoncrawling

I finished Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, which was a very tedious dungeon-crawl to read. I was excited to finish it and move on to what I expected to be a more trad-style adventure in the next chapter (two) of the Legacy of Fire adventure path, "House of the Beast" I think it's called. And... right off the bat, the introduction is a love-letter to dungeon-crawls and a proclamation that this one is a dungeon-crawl. I tried to read it, but I found my mind wandering a lot, and it was hard. It's hard to read dungeon-crawl adventures as reading material, although I can understand how they can be played. I still don't enjoy them a lot, but again, as reading material, they are dreadfully tedious. I had to stop reading partway through and tell myself that I'd come back to it later. That was disappointing. Not that reading modules is always the most exciting thing, and I know that every adventure path probably has at least some degree of dungeon-crawling, but it was disappointing when I wanted to cleanse my palette from a very tedious dungeon-crawl to immediately turn to another one, even if it isn't as tedious as the one I just read by a long shot. I'm not sure how much this particular adventure path is really my speed, to be honest with you. I think the next adventure after this one looks better, but the whole genies and Arabian Nights vibe is... well, it's OK, but it's not my favorite. In spite of the fact that hiking in the desert is a hobby of mine (at least in the winter, when the weather is cool, if we're talking about the American southwestern desert. I've had great trips to Moab, Hanksville, Grand Junction and Big Bend National Park, and I'd love to do more in Arizona and New Mexico in particular.)

I don't want to skip ahead, but of the upcoming adventure paths, I think the next one, Council of Thieves, will be fun to read, even if it's not necessarily a highly regarded campaign. I never was going to run it as written anyway. After that is Kingmaker, which seems to be one of the absolute favorites, but ironically, I am wary that it isn't really my thing. Serpent's Skull and Carrion Crown are next, both of which I've read in the past, but not for many years, followed by Jade Regent; another one that I don't think I'll enjoy as much... although we'll see. Sometimes these can be better to read than to play (or vice versa) so I'm trying to be open-minded instead of just focusing on themes and stuff that I already know that I enjoy.

Skull & Shackles is after that, which I expect to like, followed by Shattered Star (lots of dungeon-crawls again) and Reign of Winter (which I already know that I'm annoyed by one of the final chapters where you literally travel to the Bolshevik Revolution in real world Russia in 1918 and fight Rasputin, which seems hoaky beyond belief.) Anyway; that will keep me busy for a while. If I really finish all of those before the end of 2027, I'll be doing really well, without looking at the rest of them beyond that. Even if I have a pretty good clip of reading these, I doubt I'll finish the PFRPG adventure paths before the end of 2028. Then I can decide if I want to read the 2e ones, or take a break. Especially considering all of the other gamebooks that I also want to read during this period.