AUTHOR: AMANDA HAMON / PUBLISHER: PAIZO INC / RELEASE DATE: OUT NOW
Hellknight Hill is the first part of Age of Ashes, a fantasy adventure for the Pathfinder Second Edition roleplaying game. As the name suggests, it’s a full-on sort of story, one that that will see the player take on demonic forces. It’s also a low-level adventure, taking the players from first to fifth level.
It’s also rather cleverly paced. The party start of in, of all things, a town hall meeting of sorts. The players will be looking for the normal sort of clichéd tasks low-level adventurers have to deal with. Luckily, this isn’t that sort of adventure; the story kicks the action up a notch in a surprising way and the campaign continues to do so throughout.
Players will have to think fast in order to deal with the initial problem and though the scenario is open ended the supplement is quite good at guiding the games master through it all. (It’s almost as if the game’s designers know how unpredictable players can be). Split into four parts, the storyline is highly adaptable to your party and also quite action focused. If you have the sort of players who bore easily and like rolling dice, then this is ideal.
We also get plenty of GM resources, which is good because the story is quite loose in places and you’ll need to fill the gaps. There’s a detailed backstory to the campaign and good resources on the town of Breachill, the campaign’s base of operations. Villains and bad-guy organisations are very well fleshed out and they’re also pretty interesting, though it’s likely your party will miss a lot of this.
This is a fairly violent and pretty dark campaign. DM’s looking to add a touch of horror or make the whole thing into an action-movie style fantasy tale will find it fairly easy to do so. There are enough twists to keep the players on their toes and even the most oblivious of parties should find the world interesting. Hellknight Hill is a strong starting point for all sorts of campaigns and is worth a look, but expect to have to tinker with the scenario so it suits your players.
