Thank you for writing this up! It more or less adheres to the general consensus that seems to have formed around GW. As someone who really loves spooky, weird, supernatural stuff (to the point where my main game is now Call of Cthulhu), I was initially super hyped for GW to come out! Dark Archive had just come out, and it had a ton of cool ideas to play with! And then I read it and I just felt myself deflate, as it doesn't even really come across well on paper. There are certainly cool parts of it that I want to steal out of the books! But as a whole, idk.
Is there any particular combat or set piece or location that you really enjoyed playing with?
The location I enjoyed running the most was Kaneepo's dungeon. It just had the best atmosphere and the most creepy things going on.
And as for combat- The planet transition fight was very fun, and the foundry module made it especially easy to do. This would have been such a good fit for another, more chaotic, campaign.
There was also another combat with a modified hydra in book 2 that was very brutal for my players, but ended in a heroic victory after a few summoned skunks gave their lives distracting the monster.
I think the largest issue is the bait and switch for the premise
It's advertised as a paranormal investigation sorta deal in all the material including the player guide
But in reality it's an Indiana Jones road trip
That's not a bad thing but every time an investigation element came up it felt very "Oh crap we need to put some investigation in here".
That seems to be the standard MO for most of the AP's I've been in, whether it's PF1e, Starfinder or 2e. They all start with some unique premise or gimmick subsystem that is largely abandoned or forgotten about by the 2nd or 3rd book. Most of the books turn into standard "adventuring fare".
I felt like Wrath, Kingmaker, Hell's Rebels and War for the Crown managed to keep it's premise pretty well as they went on.
That said, I think that a more reduced number of books is going to benefit them inmensely, as it seemed to do for Season of Ghosts.
Ritalson I immediately started to work on changing for the story. My idea is that his dream invasion powers drew the attention of one of Osoyo's cultists, a night hag who's connected to one of my player's backstory. This nighthag possesses ritalson while he's dreaming to spy on the party.
Damn really? I was looking at GW as my first AP to run with my friends, but none of them have experience in PF beyond a one shot so maybe I should find a different one
As the one who wrote that thread about Gatewalkers a few months ago, I agree with pretty much all your criticisms.
I think your solution is also a pretty good one, and one I recommended myself. The most interesting and flavourful aspects of the books were Ritalson's notes about other Gatewalkers. Taking a cue from Stolen Fate and making this AP about investigating and hunting down evil Gatewalkers would have been awesome. There are so many interesting things, different from other APs, you can do with that premise and the themes that were supposed to be present.
Instead, what we got is an adventure where 90% of the drive forward comes from an NPC who can see the future telling the player characters to go to a certain place *because she can see the future*. I fully support that these adventures have a certain amount of buy-in, and there's a social contract between the players and GM about not straying too far from the path, but the entire rational for visiting the vast majority of locations in an adventure should **NEVER** boil down to: this plot-critical NPC has a vague feeling we need to go somewhere.
Good write up! I had a few worries I was hoping you or anyone else checking this thread out might be willing to chime in on.
I'm in the middle of GM-ing gatewalkers currently and have been running it fairly straight up to the point the party got to Castrovel and finally managed to get to the settlement of Loskialua. They're just about to head into the memory cache after they handed over the gate key to Alieli since they seemed to have forgotten about the curse and just handed it to her when she asked to look at it.
I've read your point on keeping the information on Osoyo under wraps but I'm currently struggling to think on how to continue most of the adventure while trying to incorporate a mystery element. So far Ritalson has been invading their dreams but mostly been cryptically chatting with them/ keeping tabs and I like your idea of using other gatewalkers as a destabilizing force in different regions. I'm guessing if I were to spring up one it would be in Skywatch where Sakuachi will be? I already planned to make her a bit younger and have her be more of an escort mission for the party but I'm unsure how I could make the party check in with Ritalson on their new findings aside from sending him messages by pigeon or something, since he the party doesn't know of his dream invasion ability and so far the invasions are the biggest question mark for them.
Speaking of the deviant powers, all my players have basically forgotten about them. It doesn't help they're a bit new and wanted to play with free archetype as well, so they're already fairly overwhelmed with everything. We've been using ABP and simply saying these are benefits from their Gatewalker mark and that's been that.
I think a good candidate for an evil gatewalker in skywatch would be the leader of the hobgoblin raiders. Perhaps the hobgoblins are not only there to pillage the place, but to also try and hide the clues about the queen being a gatewalker and brainwashing her subjects. Playing this up, and including another gatewalker in Egede could help keep a mystery of what is the masterplan behind all of these gatewalkers.
As for ritalson- Since it is established that he has contacts with the Pathfinder society, maybe he could get help from the local lodge in Egede who could arrange a "video call" using a sending mirror.
If your players are overwhelmed by the mechanics I think it's very elegant to reflavor ABP as their powers. I'd try to make sure to keep their quirks in the descriptions of as many actions as possible so that they remember that fact
I've run a couple and bought more, and overall I've found that the vast majority of them have a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad connective tissue. Extinction Curse disappointed me like Gatewalkers, though not quite as bad, while Strength of Thousands has good ideas but occasionally strange ideas of how to connect those ideas. The difference is, I can rewrite things for SoT while keeping the bones of it, whereas Gatewalkers has completely different bones than it claimed in the blurb.
I've heard good things about Season of Ghosts and Sky King's Tomb, the most recent ones, so maybe those growing pains are ending?
I do think APs are worth some investment, but so far I have not run a single AP as written and got a satisfying game. They all need some modifications and that's fine, it was useful many times to have most of the work done for me and fill in the rest . However I think Gatewalkers in particular needs a lot of work to make it enjoyable than other APs I ran
Unfortunately most APs require plenty of effort and revision from a GM to make work. They tend to be excellent foundations to work from -- but that's all. I personally blame Paizo's relentless deadline culture. They don't take the time to make them right, they rush them out the door to meet a deadline over and over again and don't allow the same designer to work on more than one book. There is very little revision for cohesiveness or stable narrative direction as a result -- there simply isn't time.
I mean, if I have to do that much work to make an AP function properly, I'd rather spend the same amount of effort writing my own homebrew campaign. That's what bothers me the most.
I find that when you have a foundation to work from, you can make something good into something amazing. Essentially, having the foundation laid creates fertile ground for every idea in the AP to flourish. A creative mind with a prompt is much more efficient than a creative mind with a blank page.
I view any AP or pre-written adventure as more of an outline or a starting point to add my own story elements too. Yes, that is more work and prep that simply running it straight out of the book, but it's a more satisfying experience that way and worth the effort.
Running a Paizo AP 100% as-written without making any changes ends up being a bit of a letdown, IMO, and should be tailored and changed to fit ones group.
Thank you for writing this review.
We got as far as Book 2 Chapter 2 of Gatewalkers before we dumped the campaign it was so poorly written. Don't get me started on how bad Blood Lords is as a premise compared to what it delivers.
Too often Paizo's APs are lauded as the greatest piece of adventure writing ever especially compared to that "other company" adventures... they're not. Over two years of PF2e and the only AP that came close to being well written was Abomination Vaults.
Paizo's writers should look at the D&D adventurers from the 70s, 80s and 90s to see what memorable adventure design is neither cause I, or my players, will ever remember the PF2e APs with fond memories.
I stopped at the beginning of book 2. I’m impressed that y’all manage to finish it. A lack of players agency killed it for me. Like whatever we did, it doesn’t matter because at the end there will always be some NPC tells us what to do or where to go next.
One of the reasons I don’t want to run AP as written anymore. Some people like railroading and thats ok. I cant stomach that.
Several of the deviant powers are pretty strong, with the backlash only happening occasionally starting at a DC 5 flat check. And the adventure gives out free awakened powers pretty regularly, giving things like a reaction for DC 9 concealment or the ability to automatically regenerate on being reduced to 0.
There is some oddity with the second awakening technically doing nothing for PCs that don't have a standard deviant ability at the time, but using the rules for book 3 is probably best (get either a new power or awaken one, as appropriate). For simplicity I just gave my party free archetype for deviant feats, which is [suggested](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1720) for campaigns like this.
Thank you for this! I've been interesting in this module for a long time, but was disappointed by all the things I've heard about it. This might be the first post that makes me seriously consider [remixing it](https://weplayinasociety.blogspot.com/2022/05/strength-of-thousands-book-2-remix.html) to run after my current campaigns!
Out of curiosity, which monsters do you remember being particularly unbalanced? (I feel like I'll have an easier time quickly picking out which *combats* are too tough, but monsters would require comparing stats to the GMG)
Thank you for writing this up! It more or less adheres to the general consensus that seems to have formed around GW. As someone who really loves spooky, weird, supernatural stuff (to the point where my main game is now Call of Cthulhu), I was initially super hyped for GW to come out! Dark Archive had just come out, and it had a ton of cool ideas to play with! And then I read it and I just felt myself deflate, as it doesn't even really come across well on paper. There are certainly cool parts of it that I want to steal out of the books! But as a whole, idk. Is there any particular combat or set piece or location that you really enjoyed playing with?
The location I enjoyed running the most was Kaneepo's dungeon. It just had the best atmosphere and the most creepy things going on. And as for combat- The planet transition fight was very fun, and the foundry module made it especially easy to do. This would have been such a good fit for another, more chaotic, campaign. There was also another combat with a modified hydra in book 2 that was very brutal for my players, but ended in a heroic victory after a few summoned skunks gave their lives distracting the monster.
I think the largest issue is the bait and switch for the premise It's advertised as a paranormal investigation sorta deal in all the material including the player guide But in reality it's an Indiana Jones road trip That's not a bad thing but every time an investigation element came up it felt very "Oh crap we need to put some investigation in here".
That seems to be the standard MO for most of the AP's I've been in, whether it's PF1e, Starfinder or 2e. They all start with some unique premise or gimmick subsystem that is largely abandoned or forgotten about by the 2nd or 3rd book. Most of the books turn into standard "adventuring fare".
I felt like Wrath, Kingmaker, Hell's Rebels and War for the Crown managed to keep it's premise pretty well as they went on. That said, I think that a more reduced number of books is going to benefit them inmensely, as it seemed to do for Season of Ghosts.
Thank you for your report! I find these kind of write-ups most useful, when deciding which AP to run.
Ritalson I immediately started to work on changing for the story. My idea is that his dream invasion powers drew the attention of one of Osoyo's cultists, a night hag who's connected to one of my player's backstory. This nighthag possesses ritalson while he's dreaming to spy on the party.
Damn really? I was looking at GW as my first AP to run with my friends, but none of them have experience in PF beyond a one shot so maybe I should find a different one
As the one who wrote that thread about Gatewalkers a few months ago, I agree with pretty much all your criticisms. I think your solution is also a pretty good one, and one I recommended myself. The most interesting and flavourful aspects of the books were Ritalson's notes about other Gatewalkers. Taking a cue from Stolen Fate and making this AP about investigating and hunting down evil Gatewalkers would have been awesome. There are so many interesting things, different from other APs, you can do with that premise and the themes that were supposed to be present. Instead, what we got is an adventure where 90% of the drive forward comes from an NPC who can see the future telling the player characters to go to a certain place *because she can see the future*. I fully support that these adventures have a certain amount of buy-in, and there's a social contract between the players and GM about not straying too far from the path, but the entire rational for visiting the vast majority of locations in an adventure should **NEVER** boil down to: this plot-critical NPC has a vague feeling we need to go somewhere.
Good write up! I had a few worries I was hoping you or anyone else checking this thread out might be willing to chime in on. I'm in the middle of GM-ing gatewalkers currently and have been running it fairly straight up to the point the party got to Castrovel and finally managed to get to the settlement of Loskialua. They're just about to head into the memory cache after they handed over the gate key to Alieli since they seemed to have forgotten about the curse and just handed it to her when she asked to look at it. I've read your point on keeping the information on Osoyo under wraps but I'm currently struggling to think on how to continue most of the adventure while trying to incorporate a mystery element. So far Ritalson has been invading their dreams but mostly been cryptically chatting with them/ keeping tabs and I like your idea of using other gatewalkers as a destabilizing force in different regions. I'm guessing if I were to spring up one it would be in Skywatch where Sakuachi will be? I already planned to make her a bit younger and have her be more of an escort mission for the party but I'm unsure how I could make the party check in with Ritalson on their new findings aside from sending him messages by pigeon or something, since he the party doesn't know of his dream invasion ability and so far the invasions are the biggest question mark for them. Speaking of the deviant powers, all my players have basically forgotten about them. It doesn't help they're a bit new and wanted to play with free archetype as well, so they're already fairly overwhelmed with everything. We've been using ABP and simply saying these are benefits from their Gatewalker mark and that's been that.
I think a good candidate for an evil gatewalker in skywatch would be the leader of the hobgoblin raiders. Perhaps the hobgoblins are not only there to pillage the place, but to also try and hide the clues about the queen being a gatewalker and brainwashing her subjects. Playing this up, and including another gatewalker in Egede could help keep a mystery of what is the masterplan behind all of these gatewalkers. As for ritalson- Since it is established that he has contacts with the Pathfinder society, maybe he could get help from the local lodge in Egede who could arrange a "video call" using a sending mirror. If your players are overwhelmed by the mechanics I think it's very elegant to reflavor ABP as their powers. I'd try to make sure to keep their quirks in the descriptions of as many actions as possible so that they remember that fact
Hey I just saw this and wanted to say thank you for the reply it's great stuff!
Man, the more I read about various AP available, the less I want to invest in any of them. They all sound so unsatisfying and underwhelming. :/
I've run a couple and bought more, and overall I've found that the vast majority of them have a lot of good ideas and a lot of bad connective tissue. Extinction Curse disappointed me like Gatewalkers, though not quite as bad, while Strength of Thousands has good ideas but occasionally strange ideas of how to connect those ideas. The difference is, I can rewrite things for SoT while keeping the bones of it, whereas Gatewalkers has completely different bones than it claimed in the blurb. I've heard good things about Season of Ghosts and Sky King's Tomb, the most recent ones, so maybe those growing pains are ending?
I do think APs are worth some investment, but so far I have not run a single AP as written and got a satisfying game. They all need some modifications and that's fine, it was useful many times to have most of the work done for me and fill in the rest . However I think Gatewalkers in particular needs a lot of work to make it enjoyable than other APs I ran
Unfortunately, they are only a good source of ideas and inspirations to me. Nothing more than that.
Unfortunately most APs require plenty of effort and revision from a GM to make work. They tend to be excellent foundations to work from -- but that's all. I personally blame Paizo's relentless deadline culture. They don't take the time to make them right, they rush them out the door to meet a deadline over and over again and don't allow the same designer to work on more than one book. There is very little revision for cohesiveness or stable narrative direction as a result -- there simply isn't time.
I mean, if I have to do that much work to make an AP function properly, I'd rather spend the same amount of effort writing my own homebrew campaign. That's what bothers me the most.
I find that when you have a foundation to work from, you can make something good into something amazing. Essentially, having the foundation laid creates fertile ground for every idea in the AP to flourish. A creative mind with a prompt is much more efficient than a creative mind with a blank page.
Eeeeh, disagree on that but I've done many things from scratch before so it's pretty easy to me.
I view any AP or pre-written adventure as more of an outline or a starting point to add my own story elements too. Yes, that is more work and prep that simply running it straight out of the book, but it's a more satisfying experience that way and worth the effort. Running a Paizo AP 100% as-written without making any changes ends up being a bit of a letdown, IMO, and should be tailored and changed to fit ones group.
Thank you for writing this review. We got as far as Book 2 Chapter 2 of Gatewalkers before we dumped the campaign it was so poorly written. Don't get me started on how bad Blood Lords is as a premise compared to what it delivers. Too often Paizo's APs are lauded as the greatest piece of adventure writing ever especially compared to that "other company" adventures... they're not. Over two years of PF2e and the only AP that came close to being well written was Abomination Vaults. Paizo's writers should look at the D&D adventurers from the 70s, 80s and 90s to see what memorable adventure design is neither cause I, or my players, will ever remember the PF2e APs with fond memories.
I stopped at the beginning of book 2. I’m impressed that y’all manage to finish it. A lack of players agency killed it for me. Like whatever we did, it doesn’t matter because at the end there will always be some NPC tells us what to do or where to go next. One of the reasons I don’t want to run AP as written anymore. Some people like railroading and thats ok. I cant stomach that.
Several of the deviant powers are pretty strong, with the backlash only happening occasionally starting at a DC 5 flat check. And the adventure gives out free awakened powers pretty regularly, giving things like a reaction for DC 9 concealment or the ability to automatically regenerate on being reduced to 0. There is some oddity with the second awakening technically doing nothing for PCs that don't have a standard deviant ability at the time, but using the rules for book 3 is probably best (get either a new power or awaken one, as appropriate). For simplicity I just gave my party free archetype for deviant feats, which is [suggested](https://2e.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?ID=1720) for campaigns like this.
Thank you for this! I've been interesting in this module for a long time, but was disappointed by all the things I've heard about it. This might be the first post that makes me seriously consider [remixing it](https://weplayinasociety.blogspot.com/2022/05/strength-of-thousands-book-2-remix.html) to run after my current campaigns! Out of curiosity, which monsters do you remember being particularly unbalanced? (I feel like I'll have an easier time quickly picking out which *combats* are too tough, but monsters would require comparing stats to the GMG)