A superbly crafted adventure that can be played as a stand-alone module, or as an excellent introduction to the Curse of the Crimson Throne adventure path. Also, a vivid, highly enjoyable read in the literary prose of a classic dickensian tale.
The players' guide contains an informative article on the background of the city of Korvosa, and the adventure along with a supportive article, allows for the players to augment their character's stats via harrow readings.
A must have adventure, likely to please all, and about as good as they get! So why only 4-stars? Well, the scripted ending (Zorro to the rescue!) is rather contrived and some what ludicrous, but the saving grace here is that the players are free to determine how the final event unfolds, and its conclusion. The players enjoyed the adventure as much as I did running it.
As other reviewers have stated, Shards of Sin is a huge dungeon crawl in an enormous site, composed of numerous levels. Some levels have little or no relation with one another. Two of the levels have silly, inane creatures that made it difficult to hold the players' interest. These levels, running one on top of the other, could easily be replaced with encounters exploring/investigating Magnimar street, perhaps following a lead or clue that requires the PCs to find an entrance to the sewers below the city, leading into their next level of confrontation.
Most likely I will be running this adventure again with another group, but with a small variation. The adventure mentions that the site complex lends itself well for the players to make multiple forays into the site, but it is up to the GM to give the players something to spend their time on between forays. This is where an imaginative and creative DM can shine.
Overall, our group found Shards of Sin most enjoyable, with the only exception noted above, and introduced the players to the Pathfinder Society. Perhaps a bit less dungeon crawling, and more romping in Magnimar's streets would add some interest.
The PC group had a great time with this module, but I must confess that I substituted a few of the creature encounters in the crypt to give the adventure some variety. Too many skeletons in the closet!
Converted this module to 4e and scaled it to a Level 4 rating. This adventure has a great story line and can easily be customized to most heroic tier adventure parties, to avoid a high probability of a TPK. Yes, the pregen characters are not of much use to play the encounters, as is! My rating is based on running this adventure as converted above, and having a blast. It is a rare occasion when an adventure is ideal enough to be a perfect match for all playing groups, given the diverse character builds. One character was lost, and another was a close call. Hey, these things happen!
