Pathfinder Second Darkness
Dec. 31st, 2021 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have read 4/6 of this adventure path, very slowly, and it is a slog.
Part 4 is made of endless trigger warnings. The book seems to think players will have fun from pretending to be evil. But we play an adventure game where we get to go around and defeat evil. So why would it be fun?
Also you spend *far* too much time being a tourist. You can only watch a lot of the time. You dont get to make a difference for ages and ages.
I have said before I hate when the story presents you with dead bodies and tells you to go find the cause, because I want an adventure where you can make a difference and save people. This whole section is, by design, worse.
Your characters get called in to do clean up after really grisly things. And then escort the murderer home. If you fail in that task you get a set of mithril knives that are not for fighting with but are very decorated and expensive. But to succeed in your mission you have to do what you're told a lot.
Same with slaves. You cannot organise a slave escape. You get sent to go bring back the heads of escaped slaves. Getting the information you've been sent for means doing the evil thing again.
Also the triggery things dont happen one at a time so you could tweak a section and avoid a specific thing. This is a city of debauched evil so everything terrible happens at once. You dont just get sent on a mission to a drug dealer, you get sent to a drug den where the air is addictive, which is also a brothel, where the slave prostitutes get tortured . And the advice to the GM is to hold off on asking players to make Fort saves until they've all stepped in it, whatever it is this time, so as not to clue them in and let them act differently. But the advice isnt to give them clues to be in control of their own actions.
It's gross and annoying and wrong.
The next section leaves the evil town of evil people though (but does not leave the baked in problem of 'evil races'.)
But I can think of a handful of different ways to derail the adventure in the part I just picked up simply by having a different conversation, phrasing things in true ways that wouldnt trigger the expected response, so the intended impression of plots made of wheels within wheels would be really difficult to build, or ever set off. One guy's entire stance is based on denying X exists, but there's no inherent reason to mention X, plus, also, you could have brought X along in a sack and have recently been given missions to do so, so in two varied ways, not the conversation the book assumes happens.
And at this point I really, really, should pick a different adventure and read that instead, but, I apparently do not do that.
I'm going to try and skim to the end.
Dont like this adventure.
... and I'm reading it so slowly I'm only remembering the highlights anyway...
Part 4 is made of endless trigger warnings. The book seems to think players will have fun from pretending to be evil. But we play an adventure game where we get to go around and defeat evil. So why would it be fun?
Also you spend *far* too much time being a tourist. You can only watch a lot of the time. You dont get to make a difference for ages and ages.
I have said before I hate when the story presents you with dead bodies and tells you to go find the cause, because I want an adventure where you can make a difference and save people. This whole section is, by design, worse.
Your characters get called in to do clean up after really grisly things. And then escort the murderer home. If you fail in that task you get a set of mithril knives that are not for fighting with but are very decorated and expensive. But to succeed in your mission you have to do what you're told a lot.
Same with slaves. You cannot organise a slave escape. You get sent to go bring back the heads of escaped slaves. Getting the information you've been sent for means doing the evil thing again.
Also the triggery things dont happen one at a time so you could tweak a section and avoid a specific thing. This is a city of debauched evil so everything terrible happens at once. You dont just get sent on a mission to a drug dealer, you get sent to a drug den where the air is addictive, which is also a brothel, where the slave prostitutes get tortured . And the advice to the GM is to hold off on asking players to make Fort saves until they've all stepped in it, whatever it is this time, so as not to clue them in and let them act differently. But the advice isnt to give them clues to be in control of their own actions.
It's gross and annoying and wrong.
The next section leaves the evil town of evil people though (but does not leave the baked in problem of 'evil races'.)
But I can think of a handful of different ways to derail the adventure in the part I just picked up simply by having a different conversation, phrasing things in true ways that wouldnt trigger the expected response, so the intended impression of plots made of wheels within wheels would be really difficult to build, or ever set off. One guy's entire stance is based on denying X exists, but there's no inherent reason to mention X, plus, also, you could have brought X along in a sack and have recently been given missions to do so, so in two varied ways, not the conversation the book assumes happens.
And at this point I really, really, should pick a different adventure and read that instead, but, I apparently do not do that.
I'm going to try and skim to the end.
Dont like this adventure.
... and I'm reading it so slowly I'm only remembering the highlights anyway...