Pathfinder Legends

After the promise of the second volume in this series, things drop off again in this third instalment. The story sees the heroes hired to investigate the sudden loss of contact with a fort of rangers (who sound a bit like the Black Watch of Game of Thrones to me, although that's probably a coincidence). On the way, they are suddenly, and rather inexplicably, captured by a family of hillbilly half-ogres, complete with southern US accents, before facing down the actual threat.

We're back with the wizard providing narration again, as he did in the first release, although not the rather superior second one. It's not too distracting here, and probably helps move things along, at least when he's describing the details of the setting, rather than what the other characters are doing. That setting has a number of nice touches, and some of the dialogue in the early segments adds further atmosphere, even if it doesn't add much to our understanding of the supposed viewpoint characters.

And then, basically, we get a long series of fights, which remain as difficult to follow as ever, and a chatty villain who seems to pop up from nowhere in order to gloat. Of course, it's part of the nature of D&D (or, in this case, its offshoot) that there's always plenty of combat, but it's a pity that here, in a format less suited to that, there doesn't seem to be much else, beyond a conundrum about how to stop a dam bursting. There is, again some backstory about the villain's plans and what happened to the rangers, which almost seems like it would have made a better story - but wouldn't, of course, make sense as a D&D scenario.

The sudden revelation at the end hints at something more to come, but really this is just another step in the adventure, feeling as a means of getting the characters from one place to another without anything much happening in between. The scenes with the half-ogres are the best part, since they're at least amusingly characterised, but the rest is a mixture of confusing fight scenes and traditional fantasy tropes. It may well have worked as a scenario intended to be played out over a few nights, but not so much as a 1-hour audio play.