I DMed this module for my local gaming guild and it was a blast! Every player was 1st level, and 2 players had never played the Pathfinder system before (though they had played 3.5, so there wasn’t much explaining to do). Out of 5 players, 2 had made characters and 3 played pre-gens (Kyra the cleric, Valeros the fighter, and Damiel the alchemist).
I modified/edited some dialogue, mostly the intro boxed text, to make it more appealing and less demeaning to the characters. I just didn’t like the tone that opening dialogue set. One encounter turned very deadly
, and I put on my kid gloves to make sure everyone kept having a good time. Valeros the fighter got his head caved in anyway/finally, after dropping into negatives 3 times. I was rolling hot and the players were not, which can happen. [My DM combat rolls are always out in the open, for good or ill to the players. My fudging of situations comes in other forms, such as NPCs giving injured characters healing potions to keep fighting because they have money riding on the outcome, etc] Luckily Valeros was a pre-gen, so I gave that player another pre-gen when the encounter was over. He chose the cavalier, which was fun, but not as flavourful as the alchemist.
The disguise/infiltrate idea went over very well, with the players having fun keeping a low profile. The faction missions were mostly interesting and allowed some fun secret note passing. The last encounter provided some laughs when an item was almost stolen from the party from an unlikely source.
The end result: all 5 players are looking forward to next month when I will DM Part 2 of this story.
Well done Crystal for writing an entertaining adventure!
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