TL;DR-And now the low point of the adventure path 2.5/5

Plot-Spoilers ahead!- The pirates are Full Free Captains of the Shackles, but now must prove that they are truly made for the Shackles and become members of the pirate council.  Before this, they undertake an investigation to find who is feeding information to hated Cheliax.  After the mystery, they are sponsored to undertake a race through the eye of Abendego.  Finishing the race, the players are almost true members of the council.

GM Impressions-Well, my players were mostly bored at this point.  The characters are mid level in this adventure, and this is where most campaigns die, and this one almost made mine go out too.  The nature of this adventure is basically fun, but my players really didn’t enjoy the island hopping and social side of this adventure.  Also, some of the plot does not make sense as extremely powerful groups know the answer and will only help the PCs if they perform a few fetch quests for them.  This kind of killed the momentum of the previous, awesome adventure.  I was bored, and the players were bored.  Nothing in  the story really fed my interest and the PCs had a hard time finding aspects to keep things going in their own right.  Its not a bad adventure, its just not as much fun as the other parts of the adventure path.  The adventure does finish with the amazing race through the storm.  That really woke the PCs up, and gave me something to keep them going.

Good-This adventure finishes with a phenomenal race in a typhoon.   Also, there is a chance to real build the work of the adventure path.

Bad-If your PCs don’t want world building, then they will get bored.  My PCs decided to ask for a simpler way to get out of the fetch quests.  Your PCs may to if they are the killy-killy stab-stab types.  Keep that in mind

Final Thoughts– This is the low point of the path.  It’s not “bad” as Paizo doesn’t do much bad, but coming of the high of the previous adventure, it’s the low point of the path  (not Jurassic Park 3 bad compared to Jurassic Park 1, but Star Wars 6 compared to Star Wars 5).  Keep in mind the wants of the PCs and you may have to do some heavy lifting as a GM to keep the pace going 2.5/5

It’s time for my weekly game review, but this week is something special because it’s time for a video game review!

Shadowrun Returns

TL;DR-Not perfect, but damn fun.  Please help, I can’t stop! 85%

Platforms-Steam and OSX

Graphics-The graphics are serviceable to good.  The view is approximately 3/4 overhead, which brings with it some great and some bad.  The view gives a good view of the rooms, but also leaves some of the details obscured.  Since the game is cross platform with the lowest resolution in the iOS, the best the graphics can do is iOS.  This is not bad, but again not the best it could be.  Also, icons appear that the player can click on.  But, they do not stay visible, and when multiple things are in the same area, it’s hard to click on the proper icon. 3.5/5

Story-This is story is amazing.  I might not thing this game is game of the year, but I can’t stop playing!  It feels Shadowrun through and through.  And since this game is a story game from the RPG, this is the most important part to nail. And they real did nail it! 5/5

Mechanics-There are two area for mechanics: character mechanics and game mechanics. Let’s look at the game mechanics first. This game is point and click.  You point and click.  Point and click.  Battles tend to get a little stale over time as you tend to do the same thing over and over.  Its not bad, but in the longer battles it gets to be a problem.  You click on powers and the click on people to use them.  Players only get so many items before the start of an encounter.  Players have an home base that they go to before missions to buy gear and then recruit new runners to their team.  Character mechanics next.  The Characters have the standard Shadowrun stats that we all know in love.  Beneath each stat is a few substats that build on the standard stats.  An example is Strength.  Below the standard strength stat is close combat.  This replaces the standard skills of the Shadowrun game.  It’s not bad, but it’s different.  All and all, a fun game with a little bit of drag. 4/5

Shadowrun Feel-The game feels like Shadowrun.  Story that feels like a Shadowrun game with characters that are ripped from a Shadowrun game book.  If you can’t find some people to play a home game, this is a about as close as you can get.  Its not completely the RPG, but its damn fine.  Also, when the main game is done, go get some player made content.  I LOVE games that allow players to make content.  This makes the game feel even more like the RPG. 4.5/5

Final Thoughts-So I’ve complained about a few issues, but honestly I can’t stop playing.  Its a lot of fun and makes me want to play some more table top Shadowrun right now. It’s a pretty cheap buy in for about $25 bucks.  Go get it-17/20-85%

TL;DR- Best part of the adventure path 5/5

Plot-Spoilers ahead!- The pirates now have a ship and begin to be pirates.  The player have a chance to grab an island for territory, make some alliances and explore an sunken dungeon.  At the end of the adventure, the players will move from small time pirates to Full Free Captains of the Shackles.

GM Impressions-THIS IS THE ADVENTURE TO MAINLINE PIRATES!  We’re past the level 1 problem of the first adventure.  Now the players get to go be real pirates, and ITS AWESOME!  I had a blast.  The players had a blast.  IF YOU WANT TO PLAY ANY OF THIS ADVENTURE PATH, THIS ADVENTURE IS THE ONE!

Good-You’re FINALY pirates in Pathfinder.  You have a ship, and you set sail.  The PCs can go ANYWHERE!

Bad-This is an improve heavy adventure.  The PCs just go after ships.  The book has some basic ships and a basic village they can attack.  You as a GM have to make it entertaining.  Its not hard, but you have to put in a little bit of leg work to make this fun.   Also, get ready for underwater aquatic combat.  If your PCs hate rules heavy combat, they will not enjoy that part.

Final Thoughts-Best part of the adventure path.  YOU ARE PIRATES!  No random skill checks.  No real control on your PCs.  Just GO!  Be pirates!  As a GM, read ahead, know your rules, and be ready to make stuff up on the fly!  5/5

Game: Storm the Castle!

Players: 1-4

Playtime(setup/play/clean-up): 120 minutes

Set Ending: Yes

TL;DR-A “Fun” game that fall just short of being fun-52.5%

How You Play: Players take the role of different factions trying to invade a castle full of good, heroic people.  You play as zombies, dark wizards, orcs, or dark elves.  Each round the players get gold and draw a card.  Then players do a blind bid to be the overlord.  As the overlord you get to choose two options on when to play and draw a special overload card.  Then play goes round robin with each player taking turns moving pieces, attacking the castle, and trying to defend the castle.  The game ends when a player invades the castle center or after a set number of rounds.

Theme: The theme and theme/mechanics mix of the game are well done in as far as the mechanics are well done.  This game is semi-“co-opetitive” games where players fight one another, but can’t spend all their time messing with one another or they are guaranteed to lose.  Each race gets its own deck of cards that show who they are, and these decks really give each race a flavor.  Some races even get different mechanics of the game like zombies and wizards getting magic, orcs getting some sappers, and elves having archers.  This aspect makes the game feel interesting and enjoyable. 5/5

 
Mechanics:  Here is were the games flat out fails.  There is no internal balance.  When I played, I pretty much dominated the game as the overlord once I got it.  You get extra gold as the overlord and you spend gold to be the overlord, so I just built in that gold to the bid!  Also, there is not enough ways to mess with other players, hence the runaway victor problem.  The final straw in this is the dice.  All events in the game are based on six sided dice, but the dice only hit 1/3 times with the first die having a critical chance where you hit and roll extra dice.  This is not “horrible” but more often than not you end up rolling four dice with zero hits!  When this happens once, its ok, but in the game I played we had whole rounds where attacks and defenders didn’t touch each other.  This makes the game feel less like a pitched battle and more like a game of two children in the back seat of a car screaming at each other playing the “I’m not touching you!” game.  It makes the game grind to a halt and not fun. 0/5

Instructions: Here is where things are worse.  The instructions are full of problems and the game needs errata to be playable.  Even worse the game’s errata doesn’t cover all the problems we faced in the simple version of the game.  Even then the games rules are too long for a simple game. 2.5/5

Art/Components:  Its good art.  The components need some work.  The tokens have two sides for ready and used.  Some of the used sides are hard to see.  Also the turn markers are two sided, but they have different values on the different sides….WHY?!  This makes giving out random turn orders very hard.  DON’T DO THIS GAME DESIGNERS! 3/5

Final Thoughts: Despite my ravings about this game, I didn’t hate it….I see so much potential in this game.  A bit more work and this game would be AWESOME.  I love the races and their differences.  The defenders are great and have personalities.  What kills this game is the crappy dice, the poor instructions and some component trouble. 10.5/20-52.5%

One second game fix-Take the dice you get with the game and throw them away in the garbage.  take a bunch of six side yatzhee dice and use them.  1-3 you miss,  4-5 you hit, and 6 your crit (but only one die that you color).  DONE!  Now you get a fifty-fifty miss chance that will make your game that much more fun and feel like a battle!