so the story was fun ... and thats about all I have good to say about it
Verbal Duels - UGH
ran this at a local Con over the weekend ... the night before I told everyone who was going to be playing it to study the rules - only about 1/2 of them did and it still took an hour to set up
these Rules were So Clunky they made the Mass Battle Rules seem Fun
1) the Rules for Verbal Duels in UI are only designed for a 1 on 1 debate, yes there are rules for teams but this is not what the scenario follows
2) Calculating Determination is Vague - I can only assume we were supposed to have Each PC Average their Mental stats and then Average the average across all players and then add the number of players instead of HD ... this took some massive Mental Gymnastics to make it work
3) Assigning skills this was probably the most Confusing - sure we found a worksheet to help us on pfsprep.com but no guidelines were given as to if each player filled one out on their own .. or if they used the old "by our powers combined" - and how this interacted with the guardian spirits .. sure we had actions that the guardian spirits wanted the players to take but the whole thing seemed like a hot mess
Lets be honest ... any scenario thats supposed to fit into a 4-5 hour Slot that adds a mechanic that takes an hour + to just Explain and set up needs to die in committee - its just a bad Idea
this is Hands down the Absolute WORST Scenario I have ever run and now will cause me to read the reviews / product Discussion of Every Scenario I ever consider volunteering to run to make sure that there are no shenanaginy mechanics to be had
I would give this 0 stars if I could
and IMHO this Scenario needs to be retired out of circulation
Shame on you PFS for allowing this absolute piece of garbage past Editing
I admit I was (I believe) his GM for this and honestly feel bad about that prestige point because its Mechanically not hard to gain.
there is 3 Lines in a Wall of text - in what I must say is one of the really cool things in the scenario that says bad things could happen after the conclusion- but that has very little to do with what appears to be something happening "Now" --- and I PRAY this is not the "Clue" that PC's are looking for because the exchange is very entertaining and putting it in there is IMHO very underhanded
then there is this akward section saying "after X happens people agree to Y" along with the details of how to complete the 2nd PP but apparently only if the PC's ask for the help in the lead up to the "Favor" the faction asks them to do
Unless groundwork is is ad-hoc'ed very Early on there is no leads in either information point that even suggests that things are happening - Unless its that 3 lines of text in a very entertaining exchange
EDIT --------------------and unfortunatly the more I read ... it seems the 3 lines in the argument was indeed to be the "Clue" the PC's needed because of what is said in the Summary all pointing to "Future Actions of Faction B" -- Very Diappointing
the Story Felt Akward, the Hints and clues were overly Hard to interpret - Remembering what was reported to happen in certain areas was overly difficult, the 2nd prestige point -- EDIT was hidden in what seemed to be one of the most entertaining parts of the Scenario and in a wall of text no less ... its like throwing a spitwad at someone in a room foull of 100 people and expect them to figure out who it was
