Minireview: Pathfinder #14, Children of the Void
Children of the Void (written by Mike McArtor) is the second part of the “Second Darkness” adventure path. In it, the PCs are expected to launch an exploration expedition to the site of a recent meteor crash (an island some ways off), based on recent evens and some clues encountered in the first installment. This might take some railroading… but probably not. Convincing players to run after treasure is usually not all that hard.
Needless to say, there are complications. In addition to pirates (yarr!), the PCs will also encounter some alien creatures which may or may not be related to the meteor. There are people to save, some treasure to be found, and an island to explore… and of course, some clues that will point PCs toward the next adventure.
The book(let) also contains some info about the solar system Paizo’s game world of Golarion exists in. Interesting stuff, and a bit unusual for a D&D game.
I have mixed feeling on this adventure path, so far. The first part was pretty interesting, as is this one – but they feel very loosely connected. I have the feeling that the continuation story may have problems with players going “why should we do that?”. The players are expected to run off again after this, while they may well feel that they’d rather stay put and keep their collective noses out of other races’ businesses. So… some railroading may be needed. I guess that’s my problem with the “adventure path” concept in general: they tend to be very linear, with sometimes quite minimal support for players doing Something Totally Different.
While I did like this installment, it did contain one real “wtf?” moment: a spacefaring race (one that lives in vacuum, to boot) which communicates partly by smell. Anyone see problems with this? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?
Fri, 02 Jan 2009 13:03 Posted in Books, Games
Tags dungeons and dragons, paizo, pathfinder, second darkness
