Pathfinder, as a rules system, has never interested me.  I don’t care for Dungeons & Dragons, and specifically didn’t care for the 3rd Edition, which took an already clunky and convoluted game and dialed it to 11.  Is it more purposefully designed than previous editions?  Sure.  Does it make me want to play it?  Absolutely not.  So Pathfinder, which is sometimes referred to as D&D 3.75, was never going to be for me.  I can, therefore, not judge anything about the mechanics of this book.  The stat blocks or the level progression.  I read this with the idea that if I were to eventually try to run the campaign, I would be using a different rules system altogether. 

I gather this was not the first adventure path, but Rise of the Runelords has become one of the more popular, “classic” Pathfinder campaigns.  The anniversary edition that I read, a hardcover released on the 5th anniversary of the modular release, is the first material for the game I’ve ever read.  It was my first introduction to the world of Golarion, which I gather has been majorly fleshed out over the last 20ish years.  On that subject, I’ll say that Golarion seems to be a perfectly serviceable version of the sort of Generic Fantasy Land that many traditional Fantasy RPGs take place in.  It’s perhaps not as bland as The Forgotten Realms.  But it’s not as unique a take on the standard tropes as something like Earthdawn.  

There is a sort of tonal whiplash between art direction, general vibes, and specific content.  By that I mean, the art makes it look like a maybe more cartoony, high fantasy adventure.  If not light hearted, at least not too grim.  This is reflected in a lot of the overall vibe of the writing, which reminds me a bit of cartoons like Pirates of Darkwater or The Thundercats, or a video game like Skyrim, or a movie like Pirates of the Caribbean.  Even the initial description of the goblins put me in mind of slightly comedic mischief makers.  However, once I started reading the events of the first adventure, that was totally disrupted, as the goblins began graphically murdering local dogs and kidnapping children for food.  Um…  OK.  This sort of thing happens a few times throughout, where the overall tone is suddenly thrown way out of whack by material that doesn’t seem to fit.  The whole sequence where the shopkeep’s daughter tries to seduce a PC is something I’d rather just forget I read. 

While I don’t have experience reading or playing in the classic D&D modules, there were things about Rise of the Runelords that reminded me of what I know about the Giants series, as well as The Temple of Elemental Evil.  Not to say this is just remaking those.  It’s not even a one-for-one comparable thing like how DCC’s Moonslaves of the Cannibal Kingdom is supposed to be an answer to D&D’s Isle of Dread.  It’s not that close.  Just that I think maybe those parts of this campaign were inspired by those previous modules.  

This campaign is meant to take you from low level to quite high.  I get the sense that a GM is meant to have some side adventures planned, or to allow PCs to really take their time and explore their own stuff at various stages.  While I think you could rush through the story beats of the book without deviating, I don’t think that would serve it very well.  I don’t know how character advancement works in Pathfinder, but it seems to me that you’d need to (to take a term from video games) grind a bit to make sure you were at the right levels to face advancing dangers.  You start in a small town that is attacked by goblins.  From there, you face increasingly nasty foes, including ogres and giants, as well as a weird cult and some other nasty monsters.  Over the course of several adventures, which take you beyond the village, to a large city, and to other weird places, you’ll uncover a network of villains, all playing their part in the return of an ancient evil.  Finding and facing off against that evil is the ultimate goal.  

I suppose I should have expected a somewhat generic story.  That’s why people play this sort of Fantasy.  There’s nothing wrong with it.  But ultimately, it left me a bit underwhelmed.  This was still fairly early days for Paizo.  Have they gotten more bold over the years?  I don’t know.  Whatever the case, it became clear to me early on that I would not be running this.  It did spawn a few ideas that I wrote down.  And it reminded me of a couple things I want to visit or revisit.  But I will not be running Rise of the Runelords for a group, whatever the system.  

Generally, I like the art.  It’s not really my style, but it’s well done.  Some images are quite evocative.  A design choice that I found I really didn’t like was the “parchment paper” background on glossy pages.  Game companies have only recently started backing off the glossy page thing, which can’t go away soon enough for me.  But it’s really the parchment effect that makes the too small print on walls of text much more difficult to read than it should be, especially for these old eyes.  There’s even a slight gradient, where it gets a bit darker toward the bottom of the page, which makes that section sometimes near unreadable.  I don’t know if they’ve continued along that line or not.  Again, this edition is from 2012, so there’s been a lot of time to course correct on design.  But at least here, it was not fun.  

Overall, I thought this was fine.  Not for me, but fine.  It seems sort of like the Phandelver adventures from the D&D starter boxed sets, or Keep on the Borderlands from the old days, where it’s many peoples’ first adventure with the game.  No doubt that gives it a certain nostalgic value for those people.  And I will say, it’s a more cohesive and “finished” adventure than The Lost Mines of Phandelver.  At least I know who the villain of this is, what he wants, and what he’s doing, and why.  I wouldn’t have to go in and rewrite half of it, like I did with the Black Spider.  So, while Rise of the Runelords is ultimately not for me, I can see why folks might find it fun.  Like with any massive, epic story arc campaign, I can’t imagine having to put in the work to keep PCs on track, but also keep them from rushing ahead without picking up all the needed stuff along the way.  But I suppose that must work for folks, because there are so many of these bigass epic adventures out there for various games.  

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