I need to add another five star review.
This is a rich and complicated module with so many great things going for it. I had a blast running this session in a home game that went overtime. Major spoilers ahead.
Pros and Cons:
PROS:
- The first fight is an explosive and horrifying ordeal for the party. In my game, the adventurers allowed both the wounded guards into the Devil’s Fork. The party witch was then cinematically ripped apart by an Annis Hag, and was left bleeding out, saved only by her False Life Spell (teaching a valuable lesson about the power of this spell!) She was saved by the plucky Halfling bard as a magical fog cloud descended and the two party archers struggled in vain against the fog, missing their targets completely. These glass cannons were rendered inert by the hag superior tactics, and one of the rangers was killed outright by the fearful wrath of Rend, before persistence and a revived witch ended the hag threat.
- The layered importance of “Find the True Heir” faction mission works wonderfully. Multiple Pathfinders are initially wary of each other’s faction missions, but once they realise they are all looking for the heir, they were lulled into believing they were working with allies. They scoured the village, dropping inappropriate questions to serving girls, until they forced a confession. Great RPing to be had.
- It’s hard to measure, but this module kind of had it all. It has tricky social situations for RPing. It has epic, challenging combat straight out. It has bizarre icky gonzo threats (what’s that coming out of the lake?) it has villains that you despise (Sabas in my game was snivelly and rude while Gaunt Blackfist was an utter psychopath that the adventurers were thirsty to kill). It ticks so many boxes it gets full marks from me.
CONS:
- There’s so much going on that the potential for overtime play is high. Maybe don’t slot this in for a time limited convention?
- Requires a flexible GM. With the word count, you need to be able to hold the hand of the party through much of the RPing and the discovery of clues. But really, all modules have this issue.
I agree with Entropi (see below). As written, this scenario is an unfulfilled and unglamorous trudge through the mud. As a GM, I felt I needed to edit and tweak encounters to make this scenario work. SPOILERS AHEAD.
PRO:
-The closing scene where the Muckmouth tribe discusses the possibility of alliance with the Pathfinder Society is a nice touch, and is a great chance for some decent roleplay. The diplomacy modifier penalties listed is a nice addition. More meta-quests like this, please.
-The Cheliax faction mission. Great job on this, it's a streak of colour that really shows how the faction mission can challenge the players creativity and create tension. Beautiful.
CON:
-The adventurer stat blocks are woeful. Is it a condition of membership to the Aspis Consortium that you need to take the worst multi-classing ideas and feat choices in the game? The 'archers' selection of feats is basic at best. My party played up and it was still mostly a cakewalk, aside from a little bit of stonewalling during the boss battle.
-There has been no effort made on the terrain description. Aside from a paragraph telling us what muddy conditions are like, there's little effort to show the terrain of this adventure locale. I needed to redraw the waterfall room to make it seem like a challenge for the party.
-The lack of fulfillment in the story. How did the enemy trespass into the Tapestry? Who is behind it all? If this is a three part story, tell us so. Don't leave us hanging here.
-The elephant in the room for the 'Wonders of the Weave' series is the lack of imagination seen in the creation of Hao Jin’s tapestry demiplane. A demiplane can be anything – a crystalline forest, an MC Escher landscape, the innards of an enormous creature. Anything! What we get instead is a misty, featureless swamp, inhabited by creatures found in material plane Golarion. It’s a lost opportunity that the world within the weave wasn’t actually wonderful. This was a great opportunity for an imaginative and interesting adventure locale for PFS play and the developers blew it.
This is how you handle a good delve story. It’s just a shame that the title and offering of the mod suggested a different quest entirely. I was expecting planar mystique, so it was weird to find a story that’d probably be better suited to Osirion itself.
PRO:
-This is a creatively written and well handled dungeon trawl. I have added a star for the ingenious combinations of monsters and environmental hazards that cover the opponents bases and make for a more difficult and challenging number of combat encounters. Both the thinking behind the encounters, the dangers of the environment and the layout of the dungeon are top notch. Jonathan Keith knows how to write a good delve.
-A dungeon puzzle that is just hard enough. I was grinning while sitting back and watching my players try to decipher the hieroglyphics.
CON:
-The elephant in the room for the 'Wonders of the Weave' series is the lack of imagination seen in the creation of Hao Jin’s tapestry demiplane. A demiplane can be anything – a crystalline forest, an MC Escher landscape, the innards of an enormous creature. Anything! What we get instead is a misty, featureless swamp, inhabited by creatures found in material plane Golarion. It’s a lost opportunity that the world within the weave wasn’t actually wonderful. This was a great opportunity for an imaginative and interesting adventure locale for PFS play and the developers blew it.
-The finale with the antagonist isn’t that interesting, leading the penultimate combat to be seen more as the ‘boss battle’ than the actual boss himself. While it’s good that there’s a chance to talk many of the NPCs out of the fight, there’s not enough storyline here to provoke much interesting conversation apart from ‘him bad, we good’.
-The Canid Carcanet is a cool item, but it’s cost value is prohibitively expensive. I can’t imagine any PFS character making the choice to lose their neck slot and losing 15,000 gold to this item, as flavourful as it is. Which is a shame, because it’s a great versatility-boosting relic that could be really nicely used in future games. Please cut the cost to 10,000 gold.
-We’re beginning to suffer here from pointless faction missions, in particular, the Qadiran faction mission. How exactly does a useless bauble improve their standing in Absalom, exactly?
This was an ambitious and panic-driven adventure that carries off an original story quite well within a limited time frame. The concept of the adventurers battling an insidious threat that cannot be taken out with a high bab and str bonus to a two-handed weapon is wonderful, and the focus on skills and knowledge in this adventure perfectly shows off Society's respect for skillful and well-rounded characters. This is a must-play for a party of smart players who want to get away from the hack & slash.
As you can see, the pros definitely outweigh the cons in this adventure.
PROS:
-Original, inventive concept for an adventure that escapes the dungeon yet is still packed with increasing danger to the characters.
-A brilliant 'Pathfinder: Emergency Department' scene whereby creative skills and knowledge are responsible for saving the day, not a greatsword. I would like to see more of these situations in future seasons.
-Immersive backstory for the origins of the evil.
-Simple, easy to use disease resources that lets the GM keep the threat foremost in the players minds.
-Suitable faction missions that don't feel 'tacked on'.
CONS:
-Maps drawn are too large for the medium sized gaming table.
-Combat seemed to be the norm for Pathfinder Society (easy), which means it really needed a formula for GMs to add more creatures to challenge the party. Front-line party members boasted they hadn't taken any damage at the end of the session.
-Fey presence:
Perhaps not enough of a Fey presence in the module. The fact that the Society client is a nymph queen, yet the PCs only stumble across one of her agents in the woods by accident keeps the fey out of the spotlight. Perhaps more could be discussed about Laurel's links to the good fey of the vale?
“Rorg the goblin stands up on top of the hillock, his pants down, his face creased in strain as he attempts to pass the three bottles of alchemists fire he pilfered from you and swallowed yesterday.
You and your goblin prisoners watch, horror-struck.
(rolls a d100, the result is below 50. 16 fire damage on a 6hp creature.)
Rorg shrieks and erupts in a miniature fireball. Your faces are splattered with bits of goblin as a miniature mushroom cloud blasts from what used to be Rorg. The rest of the goblins begin shrieking with delight.”
This is a hilarious and well-executed module that manages to perfectly blend adventure, spooky horror, comedy, cinematic battles and canny diplomacy. It captures the atmosphere of an accessible and fun Pathfinder Society mission and is a great choice for lively tables. It’s criminal to play PFS and not run this module.
PROS:
-The use of goblins. As everyone else has said, roleplaying the goblins is wonderful. As I told my table “think of them as 5-year-old children who’ve been chugging red cordial for two days straight.” Players who would normally slay monsters on sight suddenly have squealing little mischief makers tied to them and making their lives hell.
-The atmosphere of Irrisen is captured perfectly.
-The battles do not feel ‘inserted’ and for the most part, are differentiated.
-Faction missions are clever and build the theme of the factions, especially the Sczarni and Andoran missions.
CONS:
-The module has provided minimum guidance to the GM on how to add that extra flavour to the goblins. I suspect this has been done to allow serious tables to have the goblins be more sadistic and for wacky tables to have the goblin nudity, explosions, self-combustion, all-sorts. Creative GMs will excel, those that follow words as written might struggle to make the module as great as it can be. You must definitely give separate personalities to all of the goblins.
-The encounter in the woods is scaled back poorly for low level parties and results in a strange ‘one-trick’ creature that’s not as effective as it could be.
-The final combat map is gargantuan! Too big for any flipmat in it's entirety.
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