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PATHMASTER: Timeless Fort $7.99
Average Rating:4.5 / 5
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PATHMASTER: Timeless Fort
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PATHMASTER: Timeless Fort
Publisher: AAW Games
by Peter I. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 09/26/2013 13:10:03

The PATHMASTER products are part of an adventure writing and design competition from Adventureaweek.com. Five finalists from loads of initial entries were chosen to write an adventure each, and the winning adventure of the five gets to move onward and upward in the RPG writing industry. This review is a review of one of the adventures from the five finalists. I've reviewed each of the five final adventure submissions, culminating in me choosing my own personal winning entry for PATHMASTER. Each review has been concluded with a few comments on the adventure relative to the others, and some justification as to its position in the winning stakes. All five reviews have been posted at the same time, so if you're reading this, you can read the other 4 review entries as well. With that in mind, on with the review.

The Timeless Fort is a 51 page Pathfinder RPG adventure written by Luis Loza for 3rd level characters. The product presentation is neat and professional, with excellent maps, art and use of colour-coded layout to allow GMs to quickly find what they need. The product has a rather heavy background on each page and for the text boxes, so won't be suitable for all when it comes to printing. Writing is good, with good attention to detail, and good descriptive text that allows the imagination to run wild.

The Timeless Fort takes elements of the film 'Groundhog Day' and combines that into a compelling story with a hint of time-travelling madness. An ancient fort, host to a powerful artifact, is stuck in a time-loop, and the PCs, upon entering the fort, are cast into a world of kings and foes battling for control of the power of the artifact. The PCs are required to protect the fort as much as they can, while at the same time unraveling the mysteries of the time loop and so bringing an end to an ancient tale. While doing so, they are capable of being 'reset' in the time loop experiencing the same events again, as they struggle to make sense of events around them. The adventure is entirely location based in the fort, though the action, barring initial exploration, is largely event based with the PCs responding to swarms of events happening around them and the soldiers of the fort.

This is an exciting and dynamic adventure that will see the PCs rushed off their feet as they dash from one place to the next, facing foes from all sides while trying to deal with a potentially unreal situation and the many soldiers of the fort. It's a fast-paced action adventure, which looks like it will be a blast to run. While the time-travelling aspects might not be for everyone, I think these can (and probably should if I were to play it) be glossed over. I think incorporating the time-travelling is an interesting idea, but I think the execution was a little unclear in places, as to what consequences there were between time loops. I'm not sure players will really enjoy going through the motions to repeat something they've done before. For me, this adventure just doesn't need the time-travelling - it's a distraction to an otherwise strong adventure that is just fine on its own.

There are several things I love about this adventure. Firstly, there are a lot of factions involved, meaning the action is varied, and you're not bashing heads against the same old creatures all the time. Motivations for the factions are different, and it means that one moment you could be facing one monster crawling up from underground, and the next another monster trying to breach the fort walls. This makes it interesting both for the DM and the players. Secondly, there are a lot of things happening and a lot of events to play with. These make the action dynamic and fast, and similar events can easily be incorporated to change or add to the adventure. All the little parts of the adventure make for interesting scenes. I really liked the fact that several events could happen at once, and that while the PCs were dealing with one, other events could take place in their absence.

This is an excellent adventure that's full of action and fun. The encounters are interesting and action-packed, the story is good, and the event-driven nature means that the PCs will feel themselves being rushed as things happen fast and quick even when they're not around. While it's not an 'against all odds' kind of scenario, it can create a sense of panic as the PCs deal with too many things happening at once, and need to decide how to handle and best deal with the situations. Compelling narrative, great action, excellent dynamics, and a lot of fun. Excellent adventure.

As mentioned in my other reviews, Timeless Fort and Ironwall Gap Must Hold are very similar style adventures. Both are dynamic and action packed, with events happening around them, although I think the air of the mystical and the pace of the events in Timeless Fort is better. I really liked the pacing and number/type of events of Timeless Fort compared to Ironwall Gap Must Hold, but at the same time the time-travelling is a bit of a distraction. While To Walk the Dark Road has oodles of atmosphere, the dynamic and frantic action of Timeless Fort still give the adventure a unique feel. Cutting Silver Pass is really slow on the action front compared to Timeless Fort, while the more 'standard' adventure in Twilight Falling, while it comes with a good mix of atmosphere and action, doesn't quite match this on the excitement front. In the end, for me, it was a toss-up between Ironwall Gap Must Hold and Timeless Fort, and despite my feelings on time-travelling as a distraction, I think Timeless Fort wins out by a smidgen. I've rated this adventure as 1st in my list of adventures for the PATHMASTER contest.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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PATHMASTER: Timeless Fort
Publisher: AAW Games
by Thilo G. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/17/2013 03:01:06

An Endzeitgeist.com review

Full disclosure:

I was one of the judges of the contest that determined which pitches were chosen for the Pathmaster contest. I did not receive any compensation and thus do not consider my verdict compromised. The very presence of these modules means that I like the premise of all Pathmaster-modules, but can their execution stand up?

This Pathmaster-module is 51 pages long, 1 page front cover, 1 page editorial, 1 page ToC, 1 page author-bio/developer's note,1 page SRD, 2 pages of advertisement and 1 page back cover, leaving us with 43 pages of content, so let's take a look, shall we?

This being an adventure-review, the following contains SPOILERS. Potential players should jump to the conclusion.

When a crystal shard fell to earth centuries ago in an age of peace at the border of three kingdoms, its power prompted obsession on part of the three monarchs and led to disaster - sheltered away by guardians, the kingdoms whittled themselves down in trying to claim the shard, finally tracking it and its guardians, the Order of the Shard down to Fort Jamora, where they annihilated their last forces in a desperate claim for the shard. When the shard sundered in the chaos, it sent the fort and its assailants into a Grounghog Day-style time loop.

Now the fort is depicted i rather extensive detail and constitutes basically the groundframe for the PCs to work from - the PCs start with 7 Fort Points and add 3 per assault day. A true sandbox, the PCs have only a scarce amount of soldiers and reinforcements to make to the fort to withstand the challenges and assailants that would otherwise be beyond their power to surpass. In order to break the timehole, the PCs will have to guard the shard from the assault of an orcish warlord, a priest-king and an elven lord and finally a combined move by all of the monarchs-all three kings and their desperate gambit need to be vanquished in their attempts to gain control of the shard. Now the respective assaults of the king's and their henchmen (which include elementals, thieves and treants) are detailed herein, but more interesting for the PCs, they actually get to experience the creation of new buildings etc. in fast-forward and reap the benefits of actually knowing what will happen after experiencing it. Only if they manage to prevent the shard's shattering may they break the resetting of the timeline of the fort.

The PCs may use aforementioned FP as resources to defend the fortress during the final assault and overall, there are quite a few consequences and details on both fortress and occupants confound in making the loop an interesting concept to experience. The assaults per se are also cool and oftentimes rather imaginative - being catapulted into the fortress's courtyard and surviving the fall via feather fall, just to give you an example, would be one of the assault-techniques employed by the PC's opposition.

As with most AaW-modules, we also get player-friendly versions of the full color maps of the locales featured, though the maps this time around are not as mind-bogglingly beautiful as in some other AaW-modules.

Conclusion:

Editing and formatting are very good, with only a few minor glitches creeping into the pages. Layout adheres to an original drop-dead gorgeous 2-column full color standard with thematically-fitting full-color artworks. Cartography adheres to a full-color standard as well. The pdf comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Author Luis Loza has created a cool, uncommon adventure-premise/sandbox in this module - ambitious in scope, detailed and challenging, PCs can and probably will require the resetting of the fort's properties. The consequences of their performance make for more cool variety and a sense of empowerment for the PCs. That being said, this sandbox does waste one extremely cool opportunity: With consequences for the fort and fast-forwarding due to the unstable timeframe, this pdf could have utilized Ultimate Campaign's downtime-rules to exceedingly awesome effect. While the Fort Points mechanic works well within the frame of this module, actually using the donwtime-rules would have provided for a glorious, more diverse variety of consequences and player-choices. Handing them an amount of capital and making them earn capital for acing encounters could have made this even cooler in my book and fit in more seamlessly within an overall context. This would have also expanded the PC's option by oh so many options...

Now whether you consider this a blemish or don't mind, I still consider this the one and crucial missed chance of an otherwise cool, uncommon module with a nice premise that is executed with surprising panache. My final verdict will clock in at 4.5 stars, rounded down to 4 for the purpose of this platform and I look forward to reading more from author Luis Loza!

Endzeitgeist out.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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