D&D 3E/3.5 Savage Tide and Age of Worms - worth the hype?

[kaasimir]

I read about Savage Tide and Age of Worms for quite a while now and many people seem to have liked them a lot based on most of their reviews and forum posts.

Revently I found someone who offered me the Dungeon magazines that included them, so I researched a bit if I should buy into them.

However, after reading a quite in depth summary of Age of Worms and it seems ... quite railroady actually? Only by reading it sounds a lot that the players need to follow the instructiona they get or otherwise risk derailing the whole campaign.

I get that the setting and enemies are epic, but the way that leads to them, not so much, at least it seems so.

A similar story about Savage Tide.


So I'm basically asking - not having read the whole adventures, are they worth the money and time to read into? Or is the DM required to make heavy changes to the material anyway, to keep things on track?

Thanks a lit in advance and have a great day!

 

[aco175]

I had the Savage Tide modules and DMd the first few before it fell apart. They are ok and did not need much adjusting. I played in the Age of Worms and it was fine as well. They are railroads, but that is what you get when sign up for a path like this. If the PCs are made to be part of the story, then they can play without it feeling like a railroad.

 

[Yora]

They are basically Pathfinder Adventure Paths. I guess that's what you get with these.

Savage Tide at least manages to make the players encounter a number of famous names from the Abyss, but no clue how well any of it plays.

 

[Voadam]

I played in games that started off, but did not finish, all three Dungeon APs and they were fun.

I eventually bought the Dungeon magazine issues later but have not read the adventures to see how they are actually presented.

I would second looking at Paizo pathfinder adventure paths to see if you like the style of their APs, particularly their more saving the world type ones like Wrath of the Righteous which also deals with Demons similar to Savage Tide.

Paizo APs sometimes have issues connecting the various adventures together as one continuous plot instead of loosely connected adventures, and the first ones can sometimes have nothing to do with the climax villains, and the later ones can sometimes have issues being climax points that tie into the older stuff.

The three dungeon APs were Paizo's first forays into adventure paths so I'd expect they'd have some growing pains. Shackled City in particular I hear the original people wish they'd had more foreshadowing or tie ins for the earlier stuff. The Dungeon APs get to tap into the D&D Greyhawk, Abyss, Kyuss, Isle of Dread, Dragotha history in a fun way that Pathfinder could not though.

 

[GreyLord]

They are okay, but not worth the hype.

The only reason I think those two get the hype they do is because they were never formally published in any other form than in the magazine, and collecting all those magazines can be tough for those who did not have subscriptions at the time.

I have the magazines on my shelf, but I haven't been extremely impressed with the campaigns themselves.

Paizo has made better APs since then (IMO), such as

Rise of the Runelords (first AP, but they knocked it out of the park with this one).
Kingmaker
Skulls and Shackles

Several there to choose from which, IMO, are better overall APs than the two listed above.

 

[TheSword]

Age of Worms is absolutely worth the hype, speaking from experience having DM’d it once under 3e and working through it again under 5e. I can’t speak for Savage Tide, though I have heard good things from @GuyBoy about it.

There are genuinely interesting modules which feature some original adventures. The Whispering Cairn is a great dungeon… one of the best low level dungeons I’ve seen. There is a good city adventure, a grand tournament, links to D&Ds past, and some great high level adventures… including one that takes place during an ongoing siege on a giant’s fortress… by dragons! It’s some pretty epic stuff. In fact the campaign does a really good job making NPC dragons intrinsic to the story. Rather than tacked on a just big fights. It also makes the shift away from endless dungeon crawling to a nice mix of smaller locations that have more impact.

The campaign is only railroady up to a point. Each module is gated between a start and end point but that doesn’t mean the module has to go as planned and the campaign is robust enough that the PCs can change sides or seriously mess up and the campaign can continue. Essentially within the module’s gates the PCs can pretty do anything they want. Each module is pretty well fleshed out and there are some great NPCs across the path.

I have been running a thread on broadening some of the adventures to be updated for my style of play, but there are plenty of people who like them as is, and modification is by no means necessary.

I’d say give it a try. There aren’t many campaigns I would run more than once. This is one of them!

 

[jeffh]

I tried running heavily modified Age of Worms in, of all things, the Star Wars universe. I first had the idea when I was reading it and playing Knights of the Old Republic at the same time back when they were coming out.

Big chunks needed to be changed out (e.g. Diamond Lake became Kessel, the Hextor faction in the second adventure had its whole dungeon replaced with a ship, locked down via codes the other two factions had, defeating all three meant the party acquired its own hyperdrive capable corvette). But I kept as much intact as I reasonably could.

It fell apart for reasons only minimally related to the adventures themselves, but they did less than they could have to help the situation. The Whispering Cairn is really good, but Three Faces of Evil and Encounter at Blackwall Keep Station are... not good. They're remarkably weak adventures that, plot-wise, could be omitted almost entirely, serving only to get the party to the level it needs to be for when the adventure begins in earnest. I'm sorry I didn't get to that part; I was really looking forward to getting them to Nar Shadaa for Hall of Harsh Reflections and The Champion's Belt. Those are, out of the first half at least, the adventures you're running this for as a GM.

 

[TheSword]

I tried running heavily modified Age of Worms in, of all things, the Star Wars universe. I first had the idea when I was reading it and playing Knights of the Old Republic at the same time back when they were coming out.

Big chunks needed to be changed out (e.g. Diamond Lake became Kessel, the Hextor faction in the second adventure had its whole dungeon replaced with a ship, locked down via codes the other two factions had, defeating all three meant the party acquired its own hyperdrive capable corvette). But I kept as much intact as I reasonably could.

It fell apart for reasons only minimally related to the adventures themselves, but they did less than they could have to help the situation. The Whispering Cairn is really good, but Three Faces of Evil and Encounter at Blackwall Keep Station are... not good. They're remarkably weak adventures that, plot-wise, could be omitted almost entirely, serving only to get the party to the level it needs to be for when the adventure begins in earnest. I'm sorry I didn't get to that part; I was really looking forward to getting them to Nar Shadaa for Hall of Harsh Reflections and The Champion's Belt. Those are, out of the first half at least, the adventures you're running this for as a GM.

If more work is done to improve the links to the town and less just dungeon crawls then I think 3 faces of evil has a lot of potential. If ran well it adds a lot of context to the game world and allows for a little politics.

Same with Encounter at Blackwall Keep. It sets up Ilthane and is the first true encounter with a Spawn of Kyuss and the threat the worms pose. It just needs some tinkering to make it work.

Here are my ongoing notes.

https://www.enworld.org/threads/age-of-worms-upgrades-encounter-at-blackwall-keep-spoilers-don’t-read-if-you’re-playing-in-the-campaign.681501/

 

[Enrico Poli1]

They are my all-time favourites, of any edition.
And yes, they're railroaded, so avoid them if you don't like. I personally enjoy experiencing a good story unfolding.
Both are a love-letter to the D&D tradition, especially AoW.
Both are very very difficult, designed to challenge optimized characters from late 3.5 era. ST in particolar is deadly and really hard to complete. I love this levels of difficulty.
ST is very cinematic, you have the distinct feeling of being in an adventure movie. To the point I ask the players to give their characters the faces of famosi actors (the same for NPCs: my Vanthus gas the face of Brad Pitt, my Lavinia gas the face of Gwynneth Paltrow).
I cannot recommend them enough

 

[hedgeknight]

I have never played in any of them, but owned the Shackled City AP in hardback for awhile, then finally sold it. I also collected all of the Dungeon Mags and Dragon Mags featuring the Age of Worms, and bound them into a single hardback volume. It was beautiful and I ran the first adventure out of it, but my players didn't like it. I kept it around for awhile and eventually sold it too...although I am tempted to recreate it again. I would definitely change a few things, but I love the concept.