Tabletop Review: Adventure Quarterly, Issue #5 (Pathfinder)

Adventure Quarterly #5
Publisher: Rite Publishing
Cost: $9.99 (PDF)/$19.99 (Physical)
Page Count: 73
Release Date: 03/13/2014
Get it Here: DriveThruRPG.com

Although the days of high quality monthly tabletop RPG magazine have long since passed on, we do seem to be having a nice resurgence of quarterly magazines with top notch content…even if the magazines aren’t actually coming out every three months. We’ve got The Unspeakable Oath and Gygax Magazine for example, but TUO hasn’t come out since August and Gygax #4 is a few weeks late. Hell, it’s been almost a year since The Savage Insider had its last issue.

Which of course brings me to Adventure Quarterly #5, the product we are reviewing today. It too has had almost a year since it’s last issue (technically nine months), which is a bit surprising because Rite Publishing is perhaps the best company in regards to Pathfinder licensed products in terms of getting things out on time. Pathways, RP’s monthly free magazine, is as close to clockwork as this industry gets. Plus AQ is the closest thing we have to Dungeon magazine anymore, as it is nothing but adventures. So was it worth the wait? Well, yes and no.

First, let’s talk my big problem with the piece, and that’s pricing. As much as I have enjoyed previous issues of AQ, the thing is too overpriced, especially compared to other quarterly gaming magazines. The cost of just the PDF version of a single issue of AQ is the same cost as a physical AND digital two pack of The Unspeakable Oath, which may not be 100% adventures, but does tend to be a superior product, writing-wise. Same too with Gygax Magazine. It is also of the highest quality and it’s only five bucks for the digital version and only $8.95 for the physical. So why the higher price tag for AQ? Well, a few reasons. The first is that it is Pathfinder and Pathfinder products do tend to be a bit higher priced than other RPGs. The second is that AQ is in full colour where the others I have mentioned are mostly in black and white. Finally, at least in my experience in this industry, it’s more expensive to pay someone to write an adventure than it is to write an article about some facet of gaming. While all of these things help to explain part of why Adventure Quarterly is price so much higher than other quarterly tabletop mags, it doesn’t explain all of it. Honestly, the fact I could buy digital copies of both TUO and Gygax for the cost of just one issue of AQ is enough to make me lean towards not recommending the magazine on just a price basis. However if you only play Pathfinder, the fact that this is your only Dungeon equivalent means you are pretty much stuck with this and the high cost each issue comes with.

Of course, cost doesn’t matter much if something is of high quality. You should, theoretically, get what you pay for after all. So if the adventures in AQ #5 are all amazing, that can offset the price tag issues I have with the magazine. Let’s take a look at each one.

Our first adventure is The Ruins Perilous Level 3 – The Sensodrome. This is a continuation from previous AQ issues where the goal was to release one level of the dungeon per issue. This is a great idea on paper, but it doesn’t work quite well in reality. After all, the high cost of the magazine, tracking down back issues (you’re better off going through DriveThruRPG.com for those) and the long time between issues makes The Rune Perilous series not very conductive for actual play. If this was a monthly magazine it would be one thing, but it’s quite another to have to wait a minimum of three months per dungeon crawl level. The PCs are essentially stuck. No, this adventure would be better off collected as one piece and sold separately, or in a monthly magazine. Now this is not the fault of the adventure itself, but it doesn’t prevent most gamers from getting any use out of it.

Besides these issues, The Sensodrome is simply a generic dungeon crawl experience. It favors roll-playing over role-playing and is little more than a hack and slash affair. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it’s not necessarily an experience a lot of gamers want. Granted, Pathfinder or D&D gamers are more apt to enjoy this sort of thing than say, World of Darkness or Call of Cthulhu players, but it does still mean that the audience for a piece like this is limited by the nature of the adventure style and doubly or even triply so by the release date of each level.

Now all of these negatives aside, The Sensodrome is a finely crafted sixteen room dungeon crawl designed for 3rd Level characters. It could use a bit of an introduction which would allow DMs to run this as a one-shot one level piece instead of waiting to combine all the Ruins Perlious levels, but that is true about any dungeon released in stages. You will also need several other books to run the wandering monster table as monsters are pulled from all sorts of other locations like The Tome of Horrors Complete, The Book of Monster Templates and so on, but the core adventure has all the stats you need to play the adventure without any additional purchases, which is a big plus. There are some fun and challenging encounters for PCs on this level and it’s pretty free with the experience so characters should level up AT LEAST once in this piece. I enjoyed the layout, the monsters and the obvious creativity in this one. It’s just too bad there are so many other negatives weighing this down. That said, I am really looking forward to Rite Publishing putting together a collected Ruins Perilous piece (if it ever gets finished) as that will be a top notch dungeon when all is said and done.

Our second adventure in this collection is The Legacy of the Fishermage, which is for four to five 9th Level characters or a party of six 8th Level characters. This is a really fun and long (for a magazine based release) adventure. It’s also a bit silly. I’ll admit the “Salmon of Wisdom” that is highlighted in the adventure made me think of “The Fur-Bearing Trout” from Earthworm Jim. I should also point out that this is almost the polar opposite from The Sensodrome, which is nice as you get two well-designed pieces that together highlight how diverse Pathfinder adventures can be.

The adventures revolves around a sage’s repeated misadventures in trying to catch the Salmon of Wisdom and his bad luck with apprentices. This time the sage is long dead, but the salmon has two new hunters in the form of an Ogre and a disgruntled changeling. The PCs become involved after saving a dwarven priest and learning about the legend (there are several other hooks to get the characters into the adventure). There are a lot of riddles to solve, locations to visit, monsters to vanquish and of course, a magic fish with the wisdom of the universe to find. I also really liked the subtle bits of humour in this adventure. The climactic encounter with the Salmon of Wisdom is quite amusing, for example. The end prize is a nice bonus to which ever character(s) get it and this is really one of the better Pathfinder adventures I’ve seen published in 2014 so far. It might not be a seller by itself, but it is the crown jewel of this issue.

The third adventure in Adventure Quarterly, Issue 5 is Paradox and it’s for 18th Level characters. It’s very combat intensive and it is designed to be a Campaign Ending Event. I’m really not a fan of some random adventure being the way a campaign ends. Something like that should really be cooked up by the DM to tie up loose ends and provide closure. Instead this adventure hits on all sorts of things that tend to be red flags, warning a DM and player that there is a bad adventure ahoy. It has time travel (which tends to do far more harm than good to a game unless you are playing a game specifically about time travel), a magical McGuffin that threatens all of reality, a really work story hook that sort of railroads the players into the adventure even if they don’t find it interesting, and monsters that seem to be thrown in simply for the sake of combat than any real story cohesion. It’s a pretty weak adventure in all respects, but then, writing any adventure for characters of this level is a pretty daunting task. So while *I* found this to be very lackluster and trite with robotic lions armed with chainguns and the like, I’m sure someone will get a kick out of this. Unfortunately I’m the one reviewing it and this adventure was supersaturated with all of my personal Pathfinder pet peeves. How is that for alliteration?

Our fourth and final adventure is actually a short encounter segment entitled, Sleep, Interrupted. This is a fun really short piece that can be inserted into any adventure, published or homebrew, and it happens when the PCs are settling down for a much needed sleep. It’s a spooky little piece involving ghost orcs who died in the cavern the PCs are resting in. Sleep, Interrupted is nothing fancy but it’s a good battle and potentially provides some fine treasure. The encounter is scalable between CR 6 and 9 and so there is some flexibility to be had. Nice job for a short piece.

So those are our four adventure pieces, but wait –there’s more! We have a two and a half page article by the lord and master of Rite Publishing himself, Steven Russell. Like the first piece in AQ#5 this article, entitled, “Wide-Open Sandboxing Part II,” is a continuation from the previous issue. However unlike The Runes Perilous, this article works as a stand-alone. It’s basically advice on how to come up with memorable NPCs quickly. Steven suggested cribbing from various trusted sources like lists of names, stat a block similar to what you are looking for instead of designing it out yourself, and taking personalities from existing characters and modifying them slightly instead of doing copious amounts of work like pages of background text for a character LARP style. The advice is sound, especially if you are an inexperienced DM or adventure designer as it really does speed the process up. Long-time DMs may turn up their nose at the advice because they want to do all the work themselves, even for a character who might not even show up in the adventure based on the choices the PCs make. You know what? That’s okay. Steven isn’t presenting this advice as a way you SHOULD do things, but as an option to make your life easier. The article is worth reading even if you have no intention of taking it to heart.

So all in all, Adventure Quarterly isn’t too bad. There is one adventure I’d give a thumb’s up to, one I’d give a thumb’s down to, a decent encounter, an adventure segment that is well designed but falters by being a quarterly installment piece and an interesting article. While the price point is far too exorbitant for what you get, especially compared to other quarterly gaming magazines, devout Pathfinder fans will find one truly solid adventure in the mix and that might be worth the price tag. Everyone else though might as well hold out for the next issue or a price drop, if they get it at all. Adventure Quarterly has a lot of potential and it’s nicely done, but in the end, you just aren’t getting your money’s worth – at least with this issue.


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4 responses to “Tabletop Review: Adventure Quarterly, Issue #5 (Pathfinder)”

  1. Ben McFarland Avatar
    Ben McFarland

    Color’s more expensive, that’s the truth of that. It really is an order of magnitude to go color versus B&W.

    1. Alexander Lucard Avatar
      Alexander Lucard

      To a degree, colour does indeed jack up the cost to produce a magazine and thus, it is passed along to the sticker price for potential purchasers as well. However, the price tag on AQ is a bit extreme even compared t other full color quarterly gaming mags. A good example is the late, lamented Kobold Quarterly. That was full color and had a slightly higher page count than AQ. Yet it was $6 for the PDF and $9 for the physical compared to $10/$20 for AQ.
      So Like I said in the review, full colour explains some of the reason AQ costs more than its peers, but not all.

      1. Ben McFarland Avatar
        Ben McFarland

        For some reason I didn’t see this reply until now.

        I can speak to some of the difference in the two– KQ had a robust advertising program, which was run by the fantastic Ed Healy, now of Gamerati, and that’s going to help offset page costs. KQ did not need as many pieces of art as AQ, and it certainly doesn’t involve as many maps. Each piece has a definite tag, and Rite does take care of their artists. The editing and layout for the magazine were lighter than the adventure book. Even just the cost of the material is less– magazine work for KQ was definitely at a lower rate than AQ pays.

        To compare AQ#6 has 11 pages art/maps for AQ, and KQ#23 has 23 1/3 pages for adverts, 10 2/3 pages for art and maps (I did not count the PFS scenario art and maps, as they generate their own in-house and would have provided that to KQ). That gives KQ#23 58 pages of content, and AQ#6 has about 58 pages of content, once you remove the OGL. This is approximate, but they’re about equal in content, but KQ had the benefit of all those adverts, which drops costs.

        Now don’t get me wrong, I like the adverts, because I like learning about new gaming material from a variety of sources, and KQ did that. There are a few pages of in-house adverts, but that’s ok, they deserve to toot their own horn and the content was never all-Midgard, all the time. AQ is advert-free, and that function is covered by Pathways, which is free to download.

        Aside from KQ, who else is there in the full-color, RPG magazine space? Gygax? They have adverts. Unspeakable Oath? They have adverts and they’re mostly B&W. I’m not sure what other options there are to choose from– Dragon isn’t print and I’m not even sure it’s a “magazine” any more. There’s White Dwarf, but that’s certainly a house organ and only for GWS.

  2. […] Magazines of great quality like The Unspeakable Oath, Gygax Magazine, The Arkham Gazette, Adventure Quarterly and more only got a single issue out in 2014. Long gone are the days when you could reliably get a […]

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