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Rise of the Runelords #3
Pathfinder Adventure Path #3: The Hook Mountain Massacre
The Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path continues! The notorious Hook Mountain ogres, known for their violent and savage ways, have slaughtered the soldiers of Fort Rannick. The few surviving rangers need heroes to help them retake this key fortification before the ogres use it as a staging ground for further assaults on the region. Yet why have the ogres chosen now to launch this sudden attack? What sinister force grows in the surrounding wilderness, and what ties to the mysterious Sihedron Rune do the ogres of Hook Mountain hide? Are the rumors of an army of giants massing for war true?
This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path continues the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path and includes:
- "The Hook Mountain Massacre," an adventure for 7th-level characters by Nicolas Logue.
- Advice and encounters to spice up the task of commanding a keep, by Mike McArtor and James L. Sutter.
- An extensive gazetteer of the region of Varisia, including wandering monsters and more, by James L. Sutter.
- The third installment of the Pathfinder's Journal, by James L. Sutter.
- Six new monsters by Nicolas Logue.
Cover art by Wayne Reynolds
This volume of Pathfinder Adventure Path continues the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path and includes:
- "The Hook Mountain Massacre," an adventure for 7th-level characters by Nicolas Logue.
- Advice and encounters to spice up the task of commanding a keep, by Mike McArtor and James L. Sutter.
- An extensive gazetteer of the region of Varisia, including wandering monsters and more, by James L. Sutter.
- The third installment of the Pathfinder's Journal, by James L. Sutter.
- Six new monsters by Nicolas Logue.
Cover art by Wayne Reynolds
94 pages, Paperback
First published November 14, 2007
45 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 29, 2019
Basic Plot: Someone has been killing the rangers of Fort Rannick, and the PCs are on the trail of who could be behind it.
Book #3 of 6 in the "Rise of the Runelords" adventure path written for D&D 3.5 rules, set in the Pathfinder world.
There's a lot of disturbing material here, and if the foreword is to be believed, it got edited down for content. If you like horror roleplaying, there's a lot of very fertile ground here for scaring the bejeebers out of your players, or at least disturbing them a LOT. Even my crew- who do their very best to keep everything lighthearted and more-than-slightly slapstick- had moments where they paused and maintained seriousness.
There is so much wonderful backstory to this entire adventure path that it's hard to work it all in. The players still don't necessarily have a clue as to what's REALLY going on. I'm not entirely sure that's a problem, but it is disconcerting. I have TONS of info from these modules, but almost nowhere in the module are there ways for the players to find some of it out. They get frustrated sometimes by their lack of info- they know they're being kept in the dark. Maybe that's just good suspense building. We'll see...
Book #3 of 6 in the "Rise of the Runelords" adventure path written for D&D 3.5 rules, set in the Pathfinder world.
There's a lot of disturbing material here, and if the foreword is to be believed, it got edited down for content. If you like horror roleplaying, there's a lot of very fertile ground here for scaring the bejeebers out of your players, or at least disturbing them a LOT. Even my crew- who do their very best to keep everything lighthearted and more-than-slightly slapstick- had moments where they paused and maintained seriousness.
There is so much wonderful backstory to this entire adventure path that it's hard to work it all in. The players still don't necessarily have a clue as to what's REALLY going on. I'm not entirely sure that's a problem, but it is disconcerting. I have TONS of info from these modules, but almost nowhere in the module are there ways for the players to find some of it out. They get frustrated sometimes by their lack of info- they know they're being kept in the dark. Maybe that's just good suspense building. We'll see...
July 12, 2008
Another good chapter in the adventure sequence. The heroes end up going into the woods in a rural area and fighting ogres. I guess this gets them ready for part 4 where the gians show up, but I think that is going to be a mess.
The adventure was good and it allowed me for some side adventures too, my group seems to like them a lot. The small town of Turtleback Ferry provided me with some fertile ground to create some NPCs that they will be using now theat they are the keepers of the Keep at Fort Rannick.
The adventure was good and it allowed me for some side adventures too, my group seems to like them a lot. The small town of Turtleback Ferry provided me with some fertile ground to create some NPCs that they will be using now theat they are the keepers of the Keep at Fort Rannick.
April 22, 2020
Such a wonderfully disgusting adventure. Its The Hills Have Eyes, Pathfinder edition, and oh my this trek across Varisia is filled to the brim with murderous hillbilly ogre brother-sons and truly insidious traps where you can just see the fingers and toes flying. Part 3 of the Rise Of The Runelords adventure path is where things inevitably get more combat-focused, as they typically do here and going forward with Pathfinder / D&D printed campaigns due to the power creep of the party leveling.
While I normally much prefer the earlier adventures focused on interacting with the townies and building up the party's reputation, there's still plenty here to like even if room-by-room combat isn't your thing (and it is most definitely not my thing). We learn some backstory about Shalelu that becomes important in later adventure paths, and there's plenty of room for roleplaying and backstabbing after saving the surviving Black Arrow rangers. I really like that they took the time to focus on multiple ways to approach assaulting Fort Rannick so the players will come up with a solid plan that doesn't necessarily have to be just fighting ogres for round after round after round.
The backstory with Lucrecia running the floating gambling parlor (and the subsequent events at Turtleback Ferry) are the weak link of the adventure, simply because it has so little to do with the party and the group never saw any of that happening in real time. It might have made more sense to put those events in Sandpoint and weave them into the previous two adventures. That being said, the floodgates powered by captured pit fiends is really cool, and lets the party interact with enemies normally way, way, way above their level while dealing with a potential moral dilemma. The fight with Black Magga is also a nice way to break up standard combat since the players can't really beat such a high level threat, and instead need to save people from a flood while trying to drive off the beast.
Although a very short segment, the "Keeping the Keep" article ended up being the focus of the campaign for our group when we played this years ago. The players were having more fun running Fort Rannick's day to day operations than with the Karzoug backing metaplot, so that became the main thrust of our adventures for the rest of the campaign.
The gazeteer of Varisia is also worth noting, because there's dozens of adventures worth of material to mine there. When these were coming out month to month, it was epic to get these overviews of the expanding campaign world in real time.
While I normally much prefer the earlier adventures focused on interacting with the townies and building up the party's reputation, there's still plenty here to like even if room-by-room combat isn't your thing (and it is most definitely not my thing). We learn some backstory about Shalelu that becomes important in later adventure paths, and there's plenty of room for roleplaying and backstabbing after saving the surviving Black Arrow rangers. I really like that they took the time to focus on multiple ways to approach assaulting Fort Rannick so the players will come up with a solid plan that doesn't necessarily have to be just fighting ogres for round after round after round.
The backstory with Lucrecia running the floating gambling parlor (and the subsequent events at Turtleback Ferry) are the weak link of the adventure, simply because it has so little to do with the party and the group never saw any of that happening in real time. It might have made more sense to put those events in Sandpoint and weave them into the previous two adventures. That being said, the floodgates powered by captured pit fiends is really cool, and lets the party interact with enemies normally way, way, way above their level while dealing with a potential moral dilemma. The fight with Black Magga is also a nice way to break up standard combat since the players can't really beat such a high level threat, and instead need to save people from a flood while trying to drive off the beast.
Although a very short segment, the "Keeping the Keep" article ended up being the focus of the campaign for our group when we played this years ago. The players were having more fun running Fort Rannick's day to day operations than with the Karzoug backing metaplot, so that became the main thrust of our adventures for the rest of the campaign.
The gazeteer of Varisia is also worth noting, because there's dozens of adventures worth of material to mine there. When these were coming out month to month, it was epic to get these overviews of the expanding campaign world in real time.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews