Now I know for others this may not be the scenario that really ramps them up but for me and my usual party we had an absolute blast. The river ride was a ton of fun with out resident fighter turned captain driving the boat with one hand while trying to fire crossbow bolts and pulling dirty tricks with various chunks of rigging. The fact that we spent most of our time on the same boat allowed us to better coordinate our efforts and prepare for the various encounters that came down the river and considering we had a lvl 1 in our party and were playing up that little fact was a godsend. The final fight was an absolute blast with our party and watching as our samurai nearly got obliterated by a shocking grasp longsword crit and having to struggle as my cleric and the cad fighter had to fend off the boss & his goons while our samurai tried to not bleed out and our gunslinger fought off goons prone as he tried to reload is an encounter that I will not soon forget. In the end the scenario was a great flip on some old concepts and the boat and aquatic travel really helped liven up what would have been just another item quest-athon.

Interesting concept introducing boat management however whole scenario felt very rail-roaded. Ran this low tier and combats lacked challenge, particularly the final battle. Making scale models of the boats and using two blank flip mats for the final battle was very effective IMO.

This scenario doesn't stick out in my memory and was kind of bland like its prequel. I also dislike traveling on boats (the predictable encounters and the time wasted just to describe the fact that we traveled makes it seem pointless to me) so this was not my favorite. I don't remember it being horrendous, though. My group did have fun trying to find a captain willing to take us on our adventure.

Player Review (played up, mid tier)

Not a particularly memorable scenario (arc). The combats where I think the highlight of this one, though I typical prefere a more even spread playstyle the RP was just lacking and not interesting there where no real twists or mysteries, and no sense of being part of something epic, exploring something new, or really much besides just being there. I think this scenario really suffered from trying to push the Tian Xia material too much, (matter of preference, probably great if that's your thing).

I played and GMed this scenario via PbP at the low tier.

I know that the nature of these scenarios is that they tend to be railroads but the rails aren't supposed to loom quite so large as they do in this one. There were very few decision points and the combats were all pretty similar.

That said, there are a pair of potentially non-combat encounters that can be resolved peacefully, and they can be pretty rewarding.

The second last encounter is pretty dull and the BBEG is either a threatened TPK (if colour spray hits a bunch of PCs) or a powderpuff (if she blows her concentration check or something to cast in melee, in which case her ability to avoid damage is comically poor).