Recession Reviews: Paizo's Adventure path Reign of Winter 1-3

by Frank Gori


Times are hard and while a gaming book beats any trip to the theatre, our loved ones don’t always see it that way. When you can spare the money what products deserve your hard earned gaming dollars? Who balances enough crunch with the fluff to allow the frugal GM to recycle, after all the best games are the ones you can play over and over again without losing interest.

Normally we’ll not being doing half an AP all at once, and any who wish to review something in this format should email me a request at theflyingpincushion@gmail.com

Book 1 The Snows of Summer :

Written by: Neil Spicer

Page count: 98 counting the inside covers

Throw Away pages: 23 (covers, forward, advertisements, and a story not directly useful to the adventure)

Golden Pages: 34 (reusable npcs, spells, reusable maps, monsters, new items)

Cover price: $22.99

Price per page: $0.23

Modified price per page: $0.21 = Cover price/pages + golden pages – throw away pages= modified price per page

Crunch to Fluff Ratio: 4.36 to 1

Our Rating out of 10: 8.5 quite reusable

Description (minor spoilers): The party starts in Taldor if you follow cannon and moves on thru a magic portal to Irrisin. Along the way your players gain the power and responsibility of a mantle that ties them to Baba Yaga.

Reusable pages include several new monsters like Frost Firs, House Spirits (Fey), Winter animals some of which the party druid or ranger may covet (Giant Weasel), new winter themed items like the spear of manhunting, new winter themed spells like snowball, allot of good NPCS, and 2 locations one could use separately or combine into a more interesting whole.

These pages can enrich winter in any setting but the adventures themselves can easily be cut and pasted into other adventures or settings. In particular it melds well with Kingmaker, Tales of the Old Margreve, or if one were inclined it’d make a fine evil sub realm in Ravenloft.

Book 2 The Shackled Hut :

Written by: Jim Grooves

Page count: 98 counting the inside covers

Throw Away pages: 27 (covers, forward, advertisements, way too much about the ecology of winter wolves, and a story not directly useful to the adventure)

Golden Pages: 30 (reusable npcs, spells, reusable maps, monsters, new items)

Cover price: $22.99

Price per page: $0.23

Modified price per page: $0.23 = Cover price/pages + golden pages – throw away pages= modified price per page

Crunch to Fluff Ratio: 3.26 to 1

Our Rating out of 10: 7.5 reusable with light reworks

Description (minor spoilers): The party romps thru Irrisen and has a number of memorable fights.

Reusable pages include several new monsters like Dawn Piper (Fey) and mirror men but not as much as the previous installment (sorry don’t see anyone using courage heart ever really), though this has a winter fey template you can use to empower any fey the template is something I’ve seen before in Carnival of Tears. The new winter themed items have a real standout in the rime pelt, and the write up on Millani is particularly good. The encounters presented are actually in my opinion a little more interesting then the previous installment though some are severely underpowered.

This would meld well with the APs adventures and realms I mentioned previously or in any homebrew looking to strike a Russian fairytale element.

Book 3 Maiden Mother Crone :

Written by: Tim Hitchcock

Page count: 98 counting the inside covers

Throw Away pages: 27 (covers, forward, advertisements, a god writeup that has little bearing on the story and barely covers a niche and a story not directly useful to the adventure)

Golden Pages: 39 (reusable npcs, spells, reusable maps, monsters, new items)

Cover price: $22.99

Price per page: $0.23

Modified price per page: $0.21 = Cover price/pages + golden pages – throw away pages= modified price per page

Crunch to Fluff Ratio: 3.26 to 1

Our Rating out of 10: 8 reusable

Description (minor spoilers): The party romps through a creative and interesting dungeon culminating in a fight with a potent centaur.

Reusable pages could well be the whole book as dungeons are almost universally reusable. That said the reusable pages are all or nothing. You either want it all or you’re likely to want none of it.