Forums: Wardens of Wildwood: Warden of Wildwood seems to betray it's own fantasy (spoiler, from the store summary mainly) (2024)

Warden of Wildwood seems to sell itself on the fantasy of being defenders of the wood. The player guide make it very explicit than beyond morality, what unite the PC here should be before all the will to defend the woods, the way they chose to do so is secondary, they can be peace loving or anti colonial assassins, but their motivation must be to defend and care for the wood.

Yet the summary of the adventure I can see on the store (as well as disussion on this AP I've seen elsewhere) imply that the main villain isn't any threat to the wood, but extremist trying to fight back against the aggressor "the wrong way". Now I won't say that ecoterrorism is good or anything, mad druids or fey or elemental commiting mass murder to defend nature are villain worthy of being defeated, but... To have them be the main villain the "defender of the wood" AP?

It's would be like an AP were the PC play rebels against an evil regime, except that the main villain are other rebels going to far, and the "victory" is just a return to the status quo were the evil regime still rule uncontested. Sure, evil bloodthirsty revolutionary can be villains, and could actually work great as secondary villain in a "rebellion" AP, but when the adventure sell the fantasy of being a rebel, it's expected that the main villain is the evil regime, or at least some structure/character representing the regime. Since the whole appeal of playing a revolutionnary to begin with is to fight the system, not to protect it from outside. Or for another exemple, it would be like a "crusade AP" (like wrath of the righteous) that focussed not on fighting evil demons but instead of fighting overzealous inquisitors, they may be villain, they may be powerfull enought to be the big bad of an adventure, they shouldn't be the big bad of the crusade adventure.

With the way the player guide present the situation (and with the way I perceived this AP before reading it), I would expect the lumber consortiom or something akin to it to be the actual bad guy, so that the player can defend the woods against those that seek to destroy it. Defending the people from outside the forest (including the evil lumber consortium) from the revenge of those within is the exact opposite of the fantasy that this AP seems to represent, it's not being defender of nature, but defending peoples from nature's revenge.

At the very least, it seems like a failure of the player guide to set such expectations on it's "morality" section and not follow through with it, but it actually feel in tune the way the AP "present itself" on the outside as a whole, from the name, look and promotional arts, it really feel like this is meant to be the "defend nature" AP. If the villain was meant to be "nature extremist" from the inception, I don't think it the AP should have presented itself that way.

I do have to say however that while I was eyeing this AP and intended to maybe DM it, I haven't read the modules (yet), I'm reacting purely on the "summary" section from the store and on various bits of info I gathered around the internet, so it is possible I somehow misunderstood everything and the main villain really is part of those people aiming to destroy the forest for profit. If it's the case, feel free to laugh at my overreaction.

Note that the main villain is of the "need to destroy the [forest] if that is what it takes to 'save' it" mindset. As in killing anyone (including the rest of the forest inhabitants) that doesn't agree with doing things their way and even

Dragonchess Player wrote:

Note that the main villain is of the "need to destroy the [forest] if that is what it takes to 'save' it" mindset. As in killing anyone (including the rest of the forest inhabitants) that doesn't agree with doing things their way and even

This I heard, it's a bad guy, that much is certain, but it's still one who have the overt goal of avenging and protecting (altho in a twisted way) the wood, right?

That's what I find wrong here, the AP is presented as a "defend the woods from greedy humans that are slowly destroying it", and then it turn out that you don't fight the greedy humans and instead focus solely on someone that is trying to do exactly that, but in the wrong way.

It's as if wrath of the righteous was about stopping an evil inquisitor that was trying to close the worldwound by blowing up Mendev somehow. Yeah, it's a villain that should be stopped, but it isn't the kind of villain you "sign up for" in this AP, you play the anti demon crusade AP because you want to fight demons, not overzealous crusaders.

From everything I heard about this AP, within the modules the party seems to be supposed to be a "force of neutrality" that restore the status quo in the end, and where the greatest threat (and thus the main villain) is "on the wood side". But this simply does not fit with the player's guide telling us that the pc must have the woods interest in priority, and that the status quo is that the humans are breaking the treaties and over logging.

willfromamerica wrote:

Yeah, it’s definitely a case of mismanaged expectations and poor framing. I read through the books and prepared my group beforehand, so they’re now playing as agents of Taldor/Andoran/the Wildwood Lodge itself trying to restore peace to the area, and that’s going really well. But it’s not exactly how the AP was advertised.

That's a really good idea, and I wish I done that retrospect. After 30 hours of reading and prepping later with other DMs, we also realized what was happening with the advertisem*nt not only misleading what the campaign was about, but just outright not even being aware of what is happening in the product itself for the DMs.

Scarablob wrote:

That's what I find wrong here, the AP is presented as a "defend the woods from greedy humans that are slowly destroying it", and then it turn out that you don't fight the greedy humans and instead focus solely on someone that is trying to do exactly that, but in the wrong way.

It's not just Paizo doing this either, It also happened on Dave's paid advertisem*nt and explanation of the plot and it's elements on 'How it's played' channel where he discusses

Even after being paid by Paizo and getting the modules for free, reading the module shows that his 'interpretation' of the plot in the second video specially for DMs that has all the spoilers in it, he cannot get the plot right or accurate. I can see in the first video hiding details stressing the video was for prospective players, but even in that he cannot get ancestries and the number of new materials correct. Even cherry picking our discussions on the forums he couldn't get the premise right. There was no quality check from advertising, or in their partners to showcase this.

what you could do is be a bunch of Andoran-friendlies/diplomats. like, you are there to try to negotiate for Andoran to join the treaty.

maybe you run a one-shot where you investigate a massacre of lumber consortium loggers which points to the Blackwood Moot. or how something like that gets your pcs the role of diplomats.

When the disaster happens, you side with the moderates against the radicals.

this would keep your party's agenda clear: peace in the forest is the goal, not destroying the invaders of the forest.

It's probably the right thing to do to run this AP, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a less interesting premise than what I though this adventure was about.

I hope Spore War manage to actually deliver the "defender of nature" fantasy, altho having the villain be demons makes it a bit less interesting than having them be lumber barons. It's one of those fantasies where most of the bad guys being human(noid) makes it more interesting than them just being a bunch of monsters.

Scarablob wrote:

It's probably the right thing to do to run this AP, but it doesn't change the fact that it's a less interesting premise than what I though this adventure was about.

I hope Spore War manage to actually deliver the "defender of nature" fantasy, altho having the villain be demons makes it a bit less interesting than having them be lumber barons. It's one of those fantasies where most of the bad guys being human(noid) makes it more interesting than them just being a bunch of monsters.

yeah, i was pitching this to my players as "you get to be forest people" and your post made me think...

they aren't really interested in this AP, but I would probably make them all be Andoran emissaries and force them all to be humans or halflings, so i don't have to do so much work on the back end.

So for me as I am working on my own prep for this as this one grabbed my interest I am doing two things.

The first big change I am doing is I am making the big bad tied to blight, specifically the blight of Aryzul as the Verduran forest does have ties to the plane of wood, and trying to destroy and corrupt the forest even as they claim to be doing it all to save it(which they are not doing in the slightest).

The second is I am making the Lumber Consortium a secondary main antagonist. They are going to play a much bigger role, as well as Andoran politics will play a much bigger role.

As I'm learning more about this AP, I feel like there's two "path" one might go to make it a cohesive adventure that won't derail.

One is as Yakman said, to make the party "human"/stranger to the forest working for or on behalf of andoran or taldor, that want the forest to remain peacefully and not wildly attack everyone around. In which case it's a whimsical AP about being stranger in an enchanted forest, allying with the good animal and fey trying to defend their home against their more evil counterparts.

The other is to cut the human element as much as possible, sideline andoran and taldor as much as possible, and have the party be mostly (or better, only) enchanted woodland creatures trying to defend their home against a rising corruption/autocracy(?). In which case it's also whimsical but there isn't that "fish out of water" element since the forest is the party's home. From what I heard it would be like a game of Root with the story being a conflict between forest creatures about who get to rule it. If I do end up running it, I think it's what I'll go for.

In that second scenario, the "human side" should be sidelined as much as possible because if the player are creatures of the woods, they are likely to want to fight the humans if their lumbering is shown as an actual threat to the woods. So it should be shown more as a small issue being overblown by the villains to not derail the AP by having player side with the bad guy or go on a anti human crusade themselves.

Having the humans (or the lumber consortium in particular) play a much bigger role as secondary villain like Vyshan said would be a third option, but from what I've heard it would ask for a much, much bigger amount of legwork from the DM to work, since it's apparently not supported at all in the modules themselves.

Scarablob wrote:

As I'm learning more about this AP, I feel like there's two "path" one might go to make it a cohesive adventure that won't derail.

One is as Yakman said, to make the party "human"/stranger to the forest working for or on behalf of andoran or taldor, that want the forest to remain peacefully and not wildly attack everyone around. In which case it's a whimsical AP about being stranger in an enchanted forest, allying with the good animal and fey trying to defend their home against their more evil counterparts.

The other is to cut the human element as much as possible, sideline andoran and taldor as much as possible, and have the party be mostly (or better, only) enchanted woodland creatures trying to defend their home against a rising corruption/autocracy(?). In which case it's also whimsical but there isn't that "fish out of water" element since the forest is the party's home. From what I heard it would be like a game of Root with the story being a conflict between forest creatures about who get to rule it. If I do end up running it, I think it's what I'll go for.

In that second scenario, the "human side" should be sidelined as much as possible because if the player are creatures of the woods, they are likely to want to fight the humans if their lumbering is shown as an actual threat to the woods. So it should be shown more as a small issue being overblown by the villains to not derail the AP by having player side with the bad guy or go on a anti human crusade themselves.

Having the humans (or the lumber consortium in particular) play a much bigger role as secondary villain like Vyshan said would be a third option, but from what I've heard it would ask for a much, much bigger amount of legwork from the DM to work, since it's apparently not supported at all in the modules themselves.

the problem with the second path is I can't imagine my players not wanting to side w/ the BBEG

Yakman wrote:

the problem with the second path is I can't imagine my players not wanting to side w/ the BBEG

Which is why sidelining the humans greatly would be the best way to do this, cut out the consortium, make the humans actually respect the lumber treaty and the villain taking offense as them harvesting any tree, or of them existing near the forest at all should do the trick. In effect making the villain a genocidal autocrat wanting to kill human no matter the grief and to seize power through any mean necessary, this should prevent the party from siding with them.

The real hard thing would be if you want the party to fight that villain and to keep the lumber consortium in the plot, or even to expand them as big secondary villains, since the consortium is what will make them want to side with the villain. In that scenario, you'd really need to push the genocidal/racist element from the main villain to 11 to make sure the party don't side with them, and to push the consortium greed even more to keep them "on the radar" as villains on top of the crazy autocrats, and thus to make the party side with a third faction that aim to fight both of them off.

Possibly introducing some kind of link between the villain and the consortium despite their conflicting goal should do the trick. Like, if the villain decide to give the consortium some leeway to grow the anger of the woodland inhabitant by giving them an enemy (and presenting themselves as the solution), while the consortium is making bank from this situation because the villain antics allow them to completely disregard every treaty because "the woods is attacking us anyway".

Scarablob wrote:

It's would be like an AP were the PC play rebels against an evil regime, except that the main villain are other rebels going to far, and the "victory" is just a return to the status quo were the evil regime still rule uncontested.

Bad example, we got exactly this.

Scarablob wrote:

Yakman wrote:

the problem with the second path is I can't imagine my players not wanting to side w/ the BBEG

Which is why sidelining the humans greatly would be the best way to do this, cut out the consortium, make the humans actually respect the lumber treaty and the villain taking offense as them harvesting any tree, or of them existing near the forest at all should do the trick. In effect making the villain a genocidal autocrat wanting to kill human no matter the grief and to seize power through any mean necessary, this should prevent the party from siding with them.

The real hard thing would be if you want the party to fight that villain and to keep the lumber consortium in the plot, or even to expand them as big secondary villains, since the consortium is what will make them want to side with the villain. In that scenario, you'd really need to push the genocidal/racist element from the main villain to 11 to make sure the party don't side with them, and to push the consortium greed even more to keep them "on the radar" as villains on top of the crazy autocrats, and thus to make the party side with a third faction that aim to fight both of them off.

Possibly introducing some kind of link between the villain and the consortium despite their conflicting goal should do the trick. Like, if the villain decide to give the consortium some leeway to grow the anger of the woodland inhabitant by giving them an enemy (and presenting themselves as the solution), while the consortium is making bank from this situation because the villain antics allow them to completely disregard every treaty because "the woods is attacking us anyway".

MY PLAYERS... are murder-hobos. I love them to death, but they'd be first in line to the murder all the humans party.

Which is why I would make them play humans representing Andoran or post worm-Galt. If I were to run this and let them be awakened aardvarks or something, they'd be riding that centaur all the way to massacre town.

I agree that the comms and advertising on this AP are off, as I too expected the big bad to be someone from Andoran, Galt, or Taldor. Admittedly, I'm not too upset about this as it makes the campaign more approachable for my largely moderate-to-less-than-moderate conservative playgroup. But as the lone liberal guy that believes in anthropogenic climate change, I too was left scratching my head.

Even if extractive economic actors are the secondary villains, I've yet to hear word on any secondary big bad who would represent that. This in my mind is where the adventure falls flat. The AP should have had a subthread where the characters figure out who was behind the *event* that caused the eco-extremism, and tie that threat to bad faith actors on the lumber-industry side. The nature-aligned players would then eliminate the threat of the (evil) loggers responsible of initial war-crimes, before moving on to eliminate extremists on their own side.

Had they done this, Paizo would have delivered an AP badly needed in the world right now, where horrific reprisal is met with ever disproportionate reprisal. Ignoble means are not justified by noble ends.

Mammoth Daddy wrote:

I agree that the comms and advertising on this AP are off, as I too expected the big bad to be someone from Andoran, Galt, or Taldor. Admittedly, I'm not too upset about this as it makes the campaign more approachable for my largely moderate-to-less-than-moderate conservative playgroup. But as the lone liberal guy that believes in anthropogenic climate change, I too was left scratching my head.

Even if extractive economic actors are the secondary villains, I've yet to hear word on any secondary big bad who would represent that. This in my mind is where the adventure falls flat. The AP should have had a subthread where the characters figure out who was behind the *event* that caused the eco-extremism, and tie that threat to bad faith actors on the lumber-industry side. The nature-aligned players would then eliminate the threat of the (evil) loggers responsible of initial war-crimes, before moving on to eliminate extremists on their own side.

Had they done this, Paizo would have delivered an AP badly needed in the world right now, where horrific reprisal is met with ever disproportionate reprisal. Ignoble means are not justified by noble ends.

the lumber consortium is that villain. you run into some of them in book 1.

it's easy enough to add scenes with NPCs who can discuss the destruction caused by the lumber consortium, easy enough to have scenes where the PCs come across clear cut areas as they cross the forest.

But to keep the PCs from joining the villains, they have to be forest-outsiders who recognize that THEIR SIDE is the one who started this, and it's going to have to be THEIR SIDE which fixes the problem.

heck, now that I'm looking at this AP a little differently, I think you could easily reflavor it to be a little more palatable.

I strongly agree, and moreover the whole AP is much more a CIA counter-revolutionary psi-op. The players are reducing revolutionary fervor to return the status of the forest as an exploitable resource for the surrounding colonial powers.

The excuse for this is presented as this kind of eco-death cult that is thematically associated with radiation poisoning, but it is weird to have the nature spirits be the ones associated with anti-natural radiation-like sickness.

Bootslack wrote:

I strongly agree, and moreover the whole AP is much more a CIA counter-revolutionary psi-op. The players are reducing revolutionary fervor to return the status of the forest as an exploitable resource for the surrounding colonial powers.

eh. dunno about going that far.

you could very well just be the moderates who are aware that the extremists are dangerous to a working solution to a sustainable problem. BUT... I know that my players at least, were they given the choice to be elves or uplifted animals, or leshies, or other 'foresty' type ancestries, would certainly choose them, and would 100% join the bad guys rather than take the path that the AP puts you on.

as such, I'd pretty much insist that they be Andoran or Galtan diplomats / emissaries, trying to sign onto the Pact, having already developed good relations with the Lodge in their earlier adventuring career.

Quote:

The excuse for this is presented as this kind of eco-death cult that is thematically associated with radiation poisoning, but it is weird to have the nature spirits be the ones associated with anti-natural radiation-like sickness.

co*ckroaches are natural too!

but the undead clearly aren't.