A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 3–7.
When a samsaran dies, he is reborn again with few memories of his past lives. The cycle continues until he has earned a righteous place in the afterlife. After years of service and lifetimes of accomplishment, Venture-Captain Bakten nears the end of his noble existence and has begun investigating his past lives as a means of understanding Tian Xia's rich history. However, he cannot complete his research alone, and only with the PCs' assistance can they decipher the region's past.
This scenario is designed for play in Pathfinder Society Organized Play, but can easily be adapted for use with any world. This scenario is compliant with the Open Game License (OGL) and is suitable for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game.
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This game is confusing both as a player and as a GM (I have been both). The NPCs motivations and actions seem illogical at best and outright insane at worse. But what makes it worse is that several times it uses a story telling tool called "forced failure" to move the story forward. Forced failures can be great if used well, but usually aren't and these are no exceptions. Player work their hardest and try their best, only to have no way of succeeding no matter how clever or lucky they are, and are forced to watch things fall apart. The game also makes use of a lot of Occult Adventure's rules but most of the time it feels like they are forcing it into a non-occulty storyline just to make you buy the book. Do not play or run this game! The sequel wasn't bad though (and can be run independently of the original).
At its core, this is a sort of investigation scenario but structured to let people use a huge variety of talents to get to the end goal. The story is interesting, the settings are cool, and there is really something here for every type of player.
That being said, the combat is not balanced as written and the low teir tactics will very likely kill multiple pc's if there aren't some real combat monsters in the party. Know what you are getting into.
All told, this scenario and its sequel together are my favorite thing that has been produced for PFS. If a little more care had been taken with the combat balancing I would have given this 5 stars.
I played this and found it difficult to understand what was going on. I started to prep it and still found it hard to understand the story. (It's no secret that it is to do with resolving previous incarnations.) But after getting to grips with it I found it to be an intriguing adventure. It needs quite a lot of work from the GM to help players understand what is going on. Some mysteries remain unresolved after the end of Part 1. In fact the characters are deliberately misled so you need to deal with that player frustration and keep them interested. Players absolutely MUST play both parts and play them before they forget the complex plot entirely. Some of the combats are indeed very challenging. The out of tier adjustments don't really compensate enough (in my opinion).
But an intelligent group of players with some assistance and encouragement from the GM will find this a very rewarding adventure.
As a scenario type that has you doing a few different things in different locations, it has some of the problems that come with disassociated adventuring. Meaning, when a scenario gives you a list of things to do, it's sometimes difficult to make it feel like those things are all related.
That said, there's a lot of great opportunity for RP and world immersion here, but it really requires the GM draw it out of the scenario. For best effects, the GM would also need to do background research on the areas in question for a better historical/cultural context. Lots of work just to prep a scenario.
Overall: the flavor is great, the story is interesting enough, and it's a great set-up for part 2. Functionally, it needs a very dedicated GM who's willing to go the extra mile to make it really shine.
Scenarios usually release on the last Wednesday of the month, at close of business. If it gets pushed back, the availability date should update. I personally hope it is released today, as Tucson has a convention starting Friday with both of this months scenarios.
I am confused by a part of the timeline - Player Handout #2. For all of the incarnations but Malikeen, it shows more than a hundred years for each incarnation, but for Malikeen, it shows "6963 - 6961 IC", or effectively negative two years. What should the corrected numbers be?