Slavelords of Cydonia: An Epic Adventure Sourcebook for Levels 1-20 (Grim Tales) (BAG04202)

I bought this hoping it would be a great adventure with lots of good ideas contained within. However, I would say that it does have a lot of great ideas, I don't think it's a great module/adventure. It's certainly not bad at all. If you wanted to use it with your typical D&D or Pathfinder game, you'd need to learn new rules and a new gaming systems to be able to play this mega-adventure as is, or else you'd need to do some heavy modification/adaption. However, I do like that it's chock full of ideas.

It's become quite the thing nowadays to do a series of epic adventures that can take characters from humble beginnings to superhero-like power. The downside to those is that (aside from a substantial time investment) they largely railroad the characters, and their serial nature can make it almost impossible for even an experienced GM to accommodate the various monkey wrenches the players will throw into the game.'Slavelords of Cydonia' avoids those pitfalls nicely. Not only is it a superb adventure, filled with exotic locales, and fiendish opponents, it is a godsend to GMs whose players are famous for doing exactly the opposite of what you expect. Unlike conventional modules that are essentially linear, 'Slavelords' is loosely structured. Broken into 5 sections, the book contains the major milestones of the overarching campaign, along with numerous options, hooks, NPCs, and so forth to allow the players a great deal of freedom in how they proceed.Also, the book is complete by itself, and was conceived and written as a single piece. No waiting around for next month's (or next year's) module, and no wondering where things are going to end up. The GM has the whole story in his hand, and doesn't have to worry that six months from now a new module will be invalidated because of something the players did. And it is much more than a simple series of adventures, it is an entire toolkit for the GM, including excellent rules for mass battles, a bestiary, and lots of good advice on how the GM can adapt the book to their own style.'Slavelords' is designed for 'Grim Tales' (in my opinion, the best alternate rules for d20 ever published) but can be easily adapted for other d20 variations. For an inexperienced GM looking for a challenging game that's more than just reading chunks of text from a module, this is a perfect fit. And for the veterans, this book is so flexible and full of options and ideas, you could run it for months and never have the players suspect they're playing a published adventure.