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Minireview: The Brinewall Legacy (Pathfinder #49)
The Brinewall Legacy (written by James Jacobs) starts off the latest Pathfinder adventure path: “Jade Regent”. In the long run it heads off towards the “Orient” of Golarion, but it starts off in Sandpoint – the same seaside town that featured in the first independently published Pathfinder adventure, “Rise of the Runelords”. Having a copy of that handly will help a bit here, since though the module contains some basic description of Sandpoint, the older module has a lot more detail which can be used to enhance things.
Things start off with a goblin hunt in a nearby swamp. Not the most illustrious of beginnings, but it escalates from there. Turns out a friend of the PCs has a mysterious family past which comes back to haunt her (and other people around her), and she badly needs friends to sort things out. Enter the PCs! This module ties in with the new “We Be Goblins!” Free RPG Day module in which the players play as goblins (providing some out-of-game background for some events here). Events lead the PCs to an old destroyed settlement, and the hidden history of how and why that settlement met its doom.
It’s a nice start, and the main plotline shows promise. The “hook” in the beginning is maybe a bit weak (what if the PCs aren’t interested in goblin hunting?), but that can be maneuvered around in multiple ways. The interesting thing here is the cast of NPCs – they are all given extensive writeups, and there is a “trust” mechanic for tracking how each NPC feels about each specific PC… and this can have direct mechanical consequences later on. It’s also assumed that the PCs go off “adventuring” together with many of these NPCs, which adds a new dimension to things. None of then are high-level, so it avoids the trap of “uber GM characters”. Neither are they pushovers, and they all have some agendas of their own. I liked this a lot.
It seems like this adventure path will feature a lot of wilderness travel. Here’s hoping it pulls it off better than “Serpent’s Skull”, which (I felt) severely underused the possibilities of its “exploring unknown jungle” premise.
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