GoCorral

I should preface this review by stating that I have only read the Jade Regent adventure path as research for my China RPG endeavor. I have NOT played through the adventure path as a DM or as a player.

I initially wanted to look at Jade Regent because it used to be the only Pathfinder 1e adventure path set in Pathfinder’s Far East equivalent region of Tian Xia. Tian Xia is another word for China, translating directly as “Under Heaven.” One of the historic names for China is the Middle Kingdom as the Chinese viewed their country as the place between Heaven and Earth. So Tian Xia = China, right? Well, yes, but no. Pathfinder’s Tian Xia is equivalent to Asia and the Jade Regent adventure path focuses on a section of the Tian Xia region that is actually equivalent to Japan, not China. Right off the bat the adventure path is kind of missing my target.

Another issue with Jade Regent for my purposes of wanting to run at least a Far East campaign is that the first three adventures are not even set in Tian Xia. The adventure path starts in fantasy Europe and the adventurers must travel on a trade route over the arctic circle to reach Tian Xia. I’ll go over each of the adventure modules in turn and give my thoughts on them. If you’re interested in playing Jade Regent yourself, I will probably be giving some spoilers for the modules but nothing extreme. I’d say its fine to read this and still play through the adventures.

Part 1: The Brinewall Legacy

I thought Brinewall Legacy was a funny adventure. A lot of the encounters seem way too strong for low-level parties until you read the encounter notes. The monsters are meant to be roleplayed as incompetent buffoons. The first major challenge is a bunch of goblins with fireworks. They are just as likely to set themselves on fire and explode as they are to point the fireworks at the PCs. Later on the major villain of the adventure is watching a play put on by illiterate bird people and he becomes absolutely infuriated when his theatrical production is interrupted by the PCs. So much so that he runs away to go pout for a little bit before returning to fight.

Brinewall Legacy feels like a fine start to the adventure and it also has the most support for one of the key features of the adventure path, NPC friends. The players are intended to complete the adventure path along with an entirely separate party of four NPC friends that travel along with them. During Brinewall Legacy one of these friends, Ameiko, discovers that she is the heir to the Minkai Empire in Tian Xia. That sets off the adventure of journeying to the Far East to reclaim her birthright. Seems fine, but it also sets up Ameiko as the true main character instead of the PCs that are playing the game to be heroes. To me it felt like the designers of Jade Regent put their own PCs they tested the adventure path out with in as NPCs that still get to go through the campaign again. This seems to actually be true for Ameiko who is a past PC of one of the writers.

It’s easy enough to fix the focus on the NPCs though. There’s even a suggested section for how the players can play as the NPCs or replace them with their own characters. So my plan if I were to run Jade Regent would be to at least replace Ameiko with a PC so one of the players can stand in the spotlight instead of an NPC.