I picked up the Anniversary Edition of Rise of the Runelords, the very first Pathfinder adventure path. This is my review of the second module, The Skinsaw Murders.
I'm a great fan of slasher flicks like Friday the 13th. Strangely, though, I have no interest in procedural serial killer stories like Se7en or Silence of the Lambs. Luckily, the way I see it, the Skinsaw Murders is flexible enough to be told either way you and your gaming group prefer. You can lead your players along a path of careful investigation and clues, or you can propel them through a murderous assault of the senses until the killer pops up from behind a hedge to claim his pound of flesh.
That summarizes the whole of the second module. There's a serial killer on the loose, and the player characters are recruited by Sandpoint's sherrif to take the lead in the investigation while he and his men maintain order.
Of course there are clues about who or what is doing the killing, so the players have plenty to work with, should they choose to indulge in detective work. There are a few red herrings, and all the loose ends get tied up in the end, and all the clues add up nicely. I think this would be a very satisfying murder mystery, as long as you're looking for a serial killer mystery.
If your players aren't interested in thinking too much about the mystery, though, it's easy to make the story progress on its own. The killer's a thirsty for blood, so there's lots of room for more murders to happen all around the PCs. For reasons I won't spoil, there's even a good reason provided for one or more of the PCs themselves to be targetted as the next victim, so there's no shortage of tricks to craft this into a slasher horror story, or a buddy cop story, or whatever trope you love best.
There are clues in this module about a larger plot. That's important for the development of the next modules in the series. Conversely, the link from the first chapter to this one is slight, and that's clearly stated in the first module itself (Burnt Offerings is primarily designed to give the PCs experience and reason to protect Sandpoint.) Even so, there was a story seed or two planted in Burnt Offerings that gets fulfilled in this one, which skillfully gives this chapter, at least in retrospect, the feel of it being a really good side-quest that happens to dovetail nicely into the larger story.
I admire any RPG adventure author, but I especially admire the teams who assemble series (Adventure Paths, in Paizo terminology). I admit I have a few series that feel pretty tenuously connected to one another, and honestly that's not a terrible thing. There doesn't always have to be a strong plot-driven reason for the next adventure. Nobody's going to complain that the only reason they found the secret entrance to the Black Monastery was because they happened to be on a boring old fetch quest, and just happened to stumbled into it.
And yet there's something elegant when an author makes a promise, and then delivers. It's satisfying when a story element from months ago in your game resurfaces at just the right moment, or when the apparently arbitrary motivations of a serial killer suddenly makes sense in a greater conspiracy.
If that's true for you, then get ready for the Skinsaw murders, because it resolves a setup, delivers on promises, and plants some seeds for future stories. This is a very promising module. I enjoyed the story of Burnt Offerings, and I very much enjoyed it from a game design perspective, but Skinsaw Murders is a strong (and gruesome) story. Whether you intend to play through the whole Runelords adventure path or not, this one's worth looking at.