What's wrong with Reign of Winter?

[Keneth]

Back when Reign of Winter was first released, I head a fair few complaints about various parts of the adventure path. While that's hardly surprising with Paizo's track record, there's generally nothing that can't be fixed by a good GM.

I wanna know about your experiences with the AP. Have you run the whole thing? Was there anything that bothered you in particular? Did you spot any unfulfilled potential? What was your overall impression of the story—its strengths and its weaknesses? Is there anything you would do differently if you were to run it again?

Obviously, player opinions are just as welcome. Sometimes it's hard for a GM to judge the experience from behind the curtain.

[Ssalarn]

I actually liked it. I thought it had the distinct benefit of actually being challenging, even to a fairly well built party, and introduced a lot of interesting elements and challenges. It had the same problem that pretty much any AP is going to have regarding high level spellcasters and actually keeping them on track for the storyline, but that kind of comes down to the fact that in order to run any prewritten adventure above a certain level there pretty much has to be a social contract in place that the 9 level casters are going to play along and not ruin the whole thing.

[Keneth]

I'm in the habit of rewriting and tailoring each and every encounter for the party, so the challenge doesn't really concern me as much, although it's nice to hear that it's more evenly balanced. Too many Paizo adventures suffer from long stretches of zero challenge encounters, with the occasional overkill boss.

As for keeping the PCs on track, I don't think it's gonna be much of a problem. I do my best not to railroad the party in any direction, aside from an occasional nudge towards main storyline, but as long as you keep everyone interested enough, they generally don't stray far from where they're supposed to be going. Then again, it's a new group, time will tell.

What about the storyline? I'm concerned about going to Earth, it seems a bit of a gimmicky move, and a lot of people have mixed feelings about it.

[Haladir]

I'm in the habit of rewriting and tailoring each and every encounter for the party, so the challenge doesn't really concern me as much, although it's nice to hear that it's more evenly balanced. Too many Paizo adventures suffer from long stretches of zero challenge encounters, with the occasional overkill boss.

As for keeping the PCs on track, I don't think it's gonna be much of a problem. I do my best not to railroad the party in any direction, aside from an occasional nudge towards main storyline, but as long as you keep everyone interested enough, they generally don't stray far from where they're supposed to be going. Then again, it's a new group, time will tell.

What about the storyline? I'm concerned about going to Earth, it seems a bit of a gimmicky move, and a lot of people have mixed feelings about it.

I haven't yet run Reign of Winter, but it sure looks like a great adventure. I love the "dark fairy tale" feel of it overall, and the world-hopping.

I always custom-tailor encounters for my PCs (at least when I'm not too pressed for time), and I also find that doing so avoids the problem.

While I was indeed skeptical when I heard about it, upon reading it, I found that the Rasputin Must Die! section of the adventure actually seems like the most amazingly fun part of the adventure! It may be a bit of a gimmick, but I think it really works.

[Keneth]

While I was indeed skeptical when I heard about it, upon reading it, I found that the Rasputin Must Die! section of the adventure actually seems like the most amazingly fun part of the adventure! It may be a bit of a gimmick, but I think it really works.

Ok, for the sake of the argument, does placing the adventure on Earth play any part in that assessment, or would it work equally well if it were placed in a different setting?

[Karoht]

Great story.
Challenge factor is... a bit odd really. But that mostly depends on how literally your DM plays with the cold weather rules and such. If your DM is incredibly strict, and you roll poorly, you can be dead within minutes of starting the game. Also, the movement restrictions due to the snow don't help. Snowshoe's and Ski's are a dramatic help in the early encounters.

Also, we aren't sure if our DM was short changing us, but it felt like there wasn't really much in the way of loot. Our party hit level 12, we're just about to start book 5 I think, and we were at 50% of what we should be with WBL. I'd like to note that for the most part we were a 3 person party for the majority of books 3 and 4, at one point the DM added up all the loot for books 3 and 4 (literally everything, from every encounter) and said "yeup, you fought and killed everything, you opened everything, you found everything. That's all these books had. We kept a good log of everything we found, he let us check through the books, yes, we managed to verify that we had picked up everything, including some stuff that was nailed down that we probably shouldn't have been able to make money with. It doesn't help that in the early books, you're probably going to spend a lot of money solving your mobility issues and something to help you deal with the weather.

As far as difficulty with encounters after book 1, I strongly recommend you have a reliable source of Remove Curse available at all times. Remove Disease/Remove Poison is recommended as well. Book 3 you get some heavy duty fear effects that can really mess you up, you want a Wand of Remove Fear because the buff it confers it something you want to have available often.

Druids and Witches are really good for this campaign, arguably better than Cleric and Wizard respectively. Arguably meaning in this context that a strong argument could be made in their favor.
Bards get screwed easily due to the number of Fae who typically have Silence as an SLA, or have it on their list of spells they can cast. Most things are immune to mind affecting/fear or are highly resistant to the enchantment school (particularly true in this campaign), so Bards end up in trouble really fast. Seriously, playing a Bard is hard mode here unless the rest of the party supports you well.
Rogues are also usually in trouble. It's quite difficult to get flanking/flat footed on most of your opponents. Quite a few things have high fort saves or are outright immune to poison. This doesn't leave a lot of offensive options for a Rogue other than ranged, and that becomes problematic. Also, lots of things fly early on, which can be difficult/annoying to deal with. This and the terrain means that melee can and will get screwed. High winds and reduced visibility (fogs, sleet storm, snow storms, thick forests) beyond 30ft typically means most ranged are screwed. Also, Windwall is abundant, and that spell is virtually the 'screw ranged who use projectiles' defense spell.
Snow storms and Sleetstorm are very potent battlefield control in the first few books. There are precisely two classes who CAN get Snowsight in Pathfinder (unless your DM houserules it as a spell in Pathfinder), both of which are more cold specialized casters. Oh look, lots of things in Reign of Winter are immune/resistant to Cold. Cold effects usually have fort save effects, most things you will fight will have high fort saves, if they aren't outright immune to the effect. Meaning that if you do make the choice to get Snowsight, you'll probably end up with a bunch of class features that you can't readily make use of in return. The easiest way to get access to it is to take 1 level of Oracle and pick the Winter Mystery, which has other useful perks.

Finally, there are the ambushes. Oh the ambushes. Lethal, lethal ambushes. How we survived those without a healer or a primary caster alive at the time I still do not know.

Best party build for this campaign is probably Druid, Witch, Paladin, other melee (Monks surprisingly do quite well), something else (Oracle or Wizard/Sorc). The campaign seems to favor witches thematically as well as mechanically, particularly if you take the Winter Witch archetype and the Winter Witch PrC. Clerics/Wizards who focus on Necromancy will also likely go far.
Also, I fully recommend any of your melee to pack a Firearm if possible. Taking the feat Amateur Gunslinger pays off when the conditions don't mess with you. If someone wants to be a full blown Gunslinger, it's very doable, but expect the conditions to make your life harder on you than normal. Also, access/availablility to firearms and ammo is especially limited in the early game, but highly available by book 4/5.

@Rasputin Must Die
You can place them on another world, so long as the forces are the same, and so long as the villian is Rasputin, and you at least imply that he came from Earth and spends time there. The events of that book could easily be elsewhere.

[Keneth]

Also, we aren't sure if our DM was short changing us, but it felt like there wasn't really much in the way of loot. Our party hit level 12, we're just about to start book 5 I think, and we were at 50% of what we should be with WBL.

Well that's fine, I usually give my players the same amount of wealth as heroic NPCs which slowly drops off to about 18% of normal WBL by 20th level. It's been more than enough in all the campaigns I ran.

As for the class advice, I don't intend to give them any, and hopefully they won't worry about such things too far in advance. Since the group has new players, I want them to learn the hard way how to be prepared, preferably without metagaming (which won't help much, since I alter almost all encounters). It might lead to some unnecessary deaths and gritty moments, but those are part of the game too.

[Haladir]

Ok, for the sake of the argument, does placing the adventure on Earth play any part in that assessment, or would it work equally well if it were placed in a different setting?

Actually, it does play a huge part of the assessment. I loved the novelty of setting a fantasy RPG adventure in a real-world historical setting. The fact that the PCs are engaging Russian soldiers in 1917 during World War I post-Bolshevik Revolution is a HUGE part of why this adventure is so much fun!

Ties to the the Romanov family. References to Nikola Tesla. Machine guns. A ruined Russian Orthodox church. Early tanks. And the bad guy is RASPUTIN! I mean, it's amazing!

A big part of the WOW! factor is that the players recognize where their PCs are, even if the PCs themselves do not. If you're going to change it up, you'd do best to run it in a setting that's familiar to the players.

The author, Brandon Hodge, tossed out some ideas on how to run Rasputin Must Die! in alternate fantasy settings. He wrote up a conversion to play it in the World of Greyhawk instead of Earth in 1917, with specific examples of how to change the flavor of things while keeping the stats. The write-up is over at the Paizo Messageboards (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2q4av?Inspiring-Alternative-Overlays-for-Rasputin). In that write-up, the villain isn't Rasputin, but Iuz; the inventor of the world engine isn't Tesla, but Zagyg; the troops aren't WWI Russian soldiers with machine guns, but orcs armed with magical enhanced crossbows; it's not a ruined Russian Orthodox church, but a ruined temple to Pelor; etc.

I was hoping that someone else would write a conversion for the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, or Krynn (or, for that matter, Middle Earth, Melnibone, or Hyrule), but nobody did.

[Gemini476]

Actually, it does play a huge part of the assessment. I loved the novelty of setting a fantasy RPG adventure in a real-world historical setting. The fact that the PCs are engaging Russian soldiers in 1917 during World War I post-Bolshevik Revolution is a HUGE part of why this adventure is so much fun!

Ties to the the Romanov family. References to Nikola Tesla. Machine guns. A ruined Russian Orthodox church. Early tanks. And the bad guy is RASPUTIN! I mean, it's amazing!

A big part of the WOW! factor is that the players recognize where their PCs are, even if the PCs themselves do not. If you're going to change it up, you'd do best to run it in a setting that's familiar to the players.

The author, Brandon Hodge, tossed out some ideas on how to run Rasputin Must Die! in alternate fantasy settings. He wrote up a conversion to play it in the World of Greyhawk instead of Earth in 1917, with specific examples of how to change the flavor of things while keeping the stats. The write-up is over at the Paizo Messageboards (http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2q4av?Inspiring-Alternative-Overlays-for-Rasputin). In that write-up, the villain isn't Rasputin, but Iuz; the inventor of the world engine isn't Tesla, but Zagyg; the troops aren't WWI Russian soldiers with machine guns, but orcs armed with magical enhanced crossbows; it's not a ruined Russian Orthodox church, but a ruined temple to Pelor; etc.

I was hoping that someone else would write a conversion for the Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, or Krynn (or, for that matter, Middle Earth, Melnibone, or Hyrule), but nobody did.
Sounds like an easy fit for Mystara, to be honest. Or at least for Blackmoor. Having anachronistic technology show up is basically a staple for that setting.

...I still think the tank in Rasputin is pretty awful, though. It's not very tank-y.

[Haladir]

I still think the tank in Rasputin is pretty awful, though. It's not very tank-y.

You mean the Tsar tank (area B3)? It's actuallty supposed to be terrible. I'ts based on a real-world experimental Russian tank (http://hubpages.com/hub/WW1-The-Russian-Tsar-Tank-the-Largest-Weirdest-Tank-Ever-Built) from 1915. Only one was definitely built, as the bizarre weapon had an unfortunate tendency to get stuck in the mud or in defensive ditches.

The magically-animated tank patrols are much more "tank-y".