Product– Pathfinder Adventure Path #163: Ruins of Gauntlight
System- Pathfinder 2nd Ed
Producer– Paizo
Price– $24.00 here https://paizo.com/products/btq023hs
TL; DR– 92%
Basics– Strange lights in the mist! The old lighthouse calls! The local crazy calls forth a group of adventurers to see what horrors her harrow cards have foretold! A dungeon crawl for characters level one to four.
Mechanics or Crunch– This is a straight up dungeon crawl. There is a dungeon lighthouse in a marsh. You are told to check it out. Overall, its slick quick rooms with lots of fights. There are some things I think are a bit rough like some things are listed with different names, so that made the experience a bit harder to dig through as a GM. However, the players have solid fights with fun things to discover. 4.5/5
Theme or Fluff– This is a dungeon crawl. There is a town and it gets a full write-up in both the player guide and the first adventure, but honestly, it’s background. The adventure literally just starts you at the foot of the dungeon. I would like a bit more lead up for my players. Otherwise, this megadungeon ends up like the random generated dungeons where I just mindlessly kill orks on my phone. The dungeon is nice and atmospheric, so the story beyond the start is built on show don’t tell. 4.5/5
Execution– PDF? YEP! Hyperlinked? Kind of. The writing is good, the layout is nice, and the flow is quick. The book has bookmarks in the PDF, but it doesn’t have clickable links in the parts. That would help as this is over 60 pages and hopping around is a pain. What I absolutely LOVE is the maps. There is a separate map file given with the PDF. That map lets you add and remove things like secret doors and the grid. That makes life SO much easier to run and align online or digitally. Paizo knows how to make a solid book. 4.75/5
Summary– Been looking forward to this one for a bit. Some hack and slash is fun, and having some Pathfinder hack and slash is a blast. Now, the one thing I think I would like different is a bit more story to the carnage. Some lead in as my players need to know why they are killing things. The crunch is good, but a few things are just slightly off enough to annoy the GM. Players won’t notice. The book itself is solid and something I loved to read. This adventure is a solid start to a good old fashioned kick in the door and kill the bad guy campaign. 92%
Throat Punch Games 