Excellent setting, well thought out adventure! ^ I have recently started this adventure with two players, and it is very challenging. The adversaries are unique and well thought out. The adventure path is pretty solid, with some nice twists and plenty of options. Well meaning groups can certainly wreak havoc in this adventure! :) I have been gaming for 20+ years, and this is one of my top 5 modules, ever.
Not quite what I was expecting ^ This seems like a good campaign overall if you are really looking for something to occupy a full level spread from start to end, but I found the presentation to be very linear and somewhat disconnected. It definitely showed its nature of being a rebinding of serialized adventures previously published in a magazine. On the plus side the artwork was generally good, though some of the artists shift throughout. The adventure itself is also a bit odd, involving a somewhat obscure brand of evil outsiders and a strained "big evil-doer conspiracy" somewhat in the vein of the classic Slavelords property, but with an even less plausible mix of conspirators who basically amount to little more than "level bosses".
I was hoping to see more tie ins with the setting of Greyhawk, the rumor of which is why I bought it, and while its kind of cool to have something to represent the little fringe of land south of the Sea Princes and north of the southern jungles, it's such an esoteric place to set an adventure on Oerth -- no one has a really good reason to go there, and there's pretty much nothing of note (from a cannon perspective) nearby. This may have been the point for the developers from the perspective of keeping it generic enough to be printed in Dungeon as a generally useful supplement, but it makes it of limited usefulness to most Greyhawk campaigns.
Finally my major complaint about the product is that the page background is a very drab tannish color that gets very tiresome and murky to look at for long.
Shackled City AP HC ^ I have a subscription to Dungeon and had all of the issues that comprised the SCAP so you would think that I wouldn't want to spend the money to upgrade to the HC. Well for a long time that's what I thought too. Then I got a good look at the HC. It's worth every penny, from the convienence of having the entire AP at your finger tips to the added details about Cauldron itself and the smoother transitions between adventures, Plus it includes an entirely new adventure.
pretty good compilation ^ I was pretty wary at fost when I saw this product, so I actually waited a quite a few months before I got it. Now that I've read through it and am ready to use it for play, I can see where they've tweaked it to flow better than it did during the original monthly release.
I do like the maps made, and the plot option paths are better, more cohesive without being railroading.
I do plan on getting the Age of Worms when it is available
Shackled City worth the investment ^ The Shackled City Adventure Path provides a complete campaign for the Dungeons and Dragons game taking player characters from 1st level through 20th level. This beautiful hard cover book contains 12 adventures that make it possible.
The adventures themselves are fairly strong, though some of the connections are a bit tenuous. Most DMs will want to modify the adventures in some ways, though the product is flexible enough to do that.
It includes some nice features, including a multi-page map book the DM can pull out and refer to conveniently. It also includes a poster map of the city of Cauldron (where most of the adventures occur) suitable for hanging. It has a pre-apocalyptic eruption on one side, and a post-eruption on the other.
The hardcover differs from the adventures published in Dungeon in that James Jacobs (An editor of Dungeon) has tried to rework some of the adventures so that they flow well together.
The only real failing is that the "bad guys" in the adventure are too successful at keeping a low profile. The final arc of the adventure is fighting a number of bad guys individually that the PCs have never even met.
This minor problem can be overcome simply by introducing some of the villians (if not their overall objective) earlier with some foreshadowing.
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