The Smuggler's Seal (PFRPG) PDF

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Counterfeits and Contraband

A windfall of a potential inheritance drops in your lap but before you can claim it you must sneak into the City Archives to plant the forgeries that cement your claim to this illicit legacy. Your sudden gift comes with hidden strings attached, however, leaving you entangled with a web of smugglers and dodging the city guard and an array of the rich and powerful. When a nefarious rival sabotages a lucrative deal and confiscates your goods, you must take matters into your own hands to get back what you have rightfully stolen, and only the mark of a ministerial seal can make it happen. Are you clever and daring enough to purloin The Smuggler’s Seal and secure your fortune and fame in the underworld?

The Smuggler’s Seal is a Pathfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for a 2nd or 3rd character. It can be easily expanded for a small or standard group of PCs, but is ideally suited for use as a one-on-one adventure with a single PC and GM. It can be run as a standalone adventure or side trek, as an accompaniment to the “Red Queen Adventure Path,” or to continue the tale started in Orphans of the Hanged Man as the first full-scale one-on-one adventure saga, the Guildmaster One-Player Adventure Path! However you use it, this daring urban escapade will help Make Your Game Legendary!

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An Endzeitgeist.com review

5/5

The second of the 1-on-1 adventure modules that can act as an optional introduction to Curse of the Crimson Throne clocks in at 48 pages, 1 page front cover, 1 page inside of front cover, 1 page editorial, 2 pages of introduction, 1 page ToC, 2 pages of SRD, 1 page advertisement, 1 page back cover, leaving us with a total of 38 pages of content, so let’s take a look!

This review was moved up in my queue at the request of one of my patreons.

Full Disclosure: I have received this adventure some time ago for the purpose of a fair and unbiased review. Since then, I have accepted the position as lead developer for Legendary Games. I have no stake in this product’s success or lack thereof, as it predates me accepting this position, and I have not worked on it in any capacity, shape, way or form.

Well, first things first: This can be run as a direct sequel to the excellent “Orphans of the Hanged Man”, but it does not necessarily require that you have finished its prequel. The module does come with a full and proper array of player-friendly full-color maps. It is intended for a character of 2nd level, and the adventure comes with a new CR 1 monster, the scroll sentinel,, which is an excellent example for how damn good Legendary Games’ monster design continues to be: The creature has a cool Achilles’ hell and several unique abilities – and it does come with its own illustration. Rather cool!! A pregen is also included in the deal.

Scaling information for 3rd level are included for your convenience, and the module sports copious amounts of read-aloud text to help you evoke a concise atmosphere, including different introductory angles if the PC hasn’t played “Orphans of the Hanged Man.”

This being an adventure-review, the following contains copious amounts of SPOILERS. Potential players should jump ahead to the conclusion.

..

.

All right, only GMs around? Great! So, the old master thief, alas, finally passes away from old age; however, the Pc being his heir of sorts, does receive a letter that passes the valuable city properties one alias of the Hanged Man had, to the PC. A trip to a helpful forger later, and the PC only has a simple task ahead – slipping these forgeries into the city archives! The set-up for the region where the archives are located is pretty nice, providing benefits and notes for PCs doing their proper legwork casing the joint. No less than 6 (!!!) means of ingress are provided with notes on the checks and things required to get in, and the staff is similarly associated in detail with the default NPC arrays. The vault itself is also impressive, for example regarding monster choice: Pyraustas can be found (though the color of the letters of their header is black when it should be white in one of the rare formatting glitches), a bronze asp (fully statted, templated iron cobra) - and traps.

All of these have something in common that I hope to see in PF 2, when it comes, more often: They can be resolved via ROLEplaying, not just by rolling the dice; indeed, that’s the preferred method! The bronze asp has a particular program that allows for full bypassing, the traps can be turned off or avoided by clever PCs – brute-forcing is always possible, yes, but it’s so much more rewarding to do this the clever way. This heist, by the way, is only the first part of this adventure!

Having secured the inheritance, the PC gets an offer from aforementioned forger to building a smuggler’s network – once more, clever observation, with degrees of success and various different means, allows the PCs to recruit, in one way or another, a variety of colorful characters – by free will or coercion. A ragpicker savant ghoststory teller, grindylows (good if you treated them well in Oprhans…), a philandering customs agent and more all can be found – this is basically a “getting the gang together” type of scenario.

However, things don’t end with the smuggling operation – a rival, a very powerful foe, Jaylin Rinegold, has the warehouse seized…and the last man to cross Ms. Rinegold did not fare well. Some inquiries will point the PC to an alchemist, and then, well, it’ll take the application of both the short-lived alchemical brews, marker dye to counter invisible threats, and the skills acquired so far to make it through Rinegold’s mansion: A schedule and reconnaissance details are included, and a guards and wards spells that confuses targets, shrouds doors and cloaks the hallways in mist makes for a super-exciting high-stakes infiltration. Arcane locked doors and those covered by illusions are appropriately noted with glyphs on the GM map for easy and convenient reference. The hands of the former thief that informed the PC btw. still tip toe as crawling claws through the house, making for an interesting souvenir for the poor man. The infiltration here is not piece of cake – the final boss may *just* be an imp (convenient silver provided nearby…), but a final and pretty challenging effect of the global enchantment can have important information slip through the PC’s grasp…and here, the ministerial seal can be found, allowing for the end of the blockade of all those delightful goods, ending the module with the PC having established themselves as a force to be reckoned with.

Conclusion:
Editing and formatting are very good on a formal and rules-language level, I noticed no serious hiccups. Layout adheres to the two-column full-color standard of the Curse of the Crimson Throne plugins, and the pdf comes with nice full-color artworks. The cartography is in full-color as well and features player-friendly versions – big plus! The adventure comes fully bookmarked for your convenience.

Michael Allen and Matt Goodall provide a glorious one-on-one adventure in this offering: “The Smuggler’s Seal” continues to teach the PC to be smart, observant and provides for plenty of different solutions for the problems faced. The learning process is palpable, and the adventure covers a surprising amount of ground, offering more bang for your buck than you’d imagine. I estimate that this could cover up to 8 or 10 full sessions if you take your time with roleplaying conversations, and few players will finish it in under 4 sessions. This has a ton of material to offer and does the heist genre and its various tropes exceedingly well. So well, in fact, that I really wish for the style to continue. It’s not just the challenges or details – it’s the freedom to tackle problems in different ways, the rewarding of roleplaying over simple good die-rolls, that makes this so fun and exciting. This is a worthy sequel to the excellent predecessor and probably manages to exceed its appeal even. If you’re looking for an excellent heist-y module, look not further! As an aside, while it may require lower level PCs and some tinkering with the challenges, I can see this warrant being used for a group as well. It’s that interesting. This receives 5 stars + seal of approval.

Endzeitgeist out.


Scarab Sages Webstore Coordinator

Now Available!

Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

Woohoo for the latest one-on-one adventure!

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Thanks again to Liz Courts for more excellent cartography and layout. Looks great!

Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Indeed - fabulous maps and some terrific art pieces to go along with a really fun adventure!


*fidgets* I want to get this but I have been getting far too greedy lately. ;)

Was there ever a portrait or full-body art of the pregenerated pc in this series? I get the impression that this series could really be told as a fantasy fiction series as well.

Are there any new subsystems or sections introduced within on how forgeries and counterfeiting should be handled?

CB

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010

As for the pregen character that comes with the adventure, we haven't illustrated her specifically, but the Smuggler's Seal cover is pretty much how I see her.

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010

While the forgery aspect of the adventure isn't that wide scale, we do make use of a simplified version of the rooms and teams options from the downtime rules in Ultimate Campaign.


Thank you for the information. I am not that familiar with the downtime options myself (my initial assessment was that it could have used some more testing). Simpler is better for solo adventures.

CB

Contributor

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Matt Goodall wrote:
Thanks again to Liz Courts for more excellent cartography and layout. Looks great!

Thank you! ...Missing doors aside, of course. ;)

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010

1 person marked this as a favorite.

I have to say I did like how you made it easy for a GM to take the unlabelled map and use it electronically, without revealing the secret doors and other hidden bits. Not an easy map to draw by any means.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

That gets my curiosity going - I use Roll20 for my online games and maps that do not have any spoilers in them helps cut down on the amount of time I have to spend on getting said maps ready for online gameplay (between using fog of war or dynamic lighting, it can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple of hours, depending on the size and complexity of the map).

What is the expected level for the player character to reach at the conclusion of this adventure?

CB

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010

The completing the adventure gets the PC to 4th level.

Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

2 people marked this as a favorite.

New version with corrected map uploading at various sites!

Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010

2 people marked this as a favorite.

One of the maps in this adventure was particularly tricky to create for this reason:

Spoiler:
The PC needs to commit a burglary at a mansion protected by a guards and wards spell. So the map has to show:

  • unlocked doors
  • locked doors
  • 'arcane locked' doors (that aren't otherwise locked)
  • locked 'arcane locked' doors
  • and some of these doors are also hidden with illusions from the 'lost doors' effect of the guards and wards spell.

    So, definitely a fun map to adventure in but also a difficult map for a cartographer to visually convey that information easily. Liz Courts has done an exceptional job of making this map easy to read.


  • 3 people marked this as a favorite.

    A map with guards and wards actually displayed on it? Damn, that sounds like it looks cool! *eyes wallet* Hmmm.

    CB

    Scarab Sages Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games

    2 people marked this as a favorite.

    I thought it was a pretty inspired idea and tough to pull off, but here it is!


    Is C5 in the mansion supposed to be the west parlor? The description says it is the downstairs corridors.

    Is the stairway north of C13 supposed to be open to the hallway on the north end?

    Thank you.

    Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010

    powerdemon wrote:

    Is C5 in the mansion supposed to be the west parlor? The description says it is the downstairs corridors.

    Is the stairway north of C13 supposed to be open to the hallway on the north end?

    Thank you.

    The east and west parlors should both be labelled as C6 (they have an identical description). C5 is the description for the downstairs corridors.

    There is a hidden door on the south side of the foyer that opens into those two stairways (you may want to re-download the adventure, I believe that we corrected the map to fill that in). There are no exits to area C13 on the ground floor, the stairs ascend to the upper story and descend to the basement.

    Hope that helps.


    Thanks Matt. I downloaded it last week from drivethrurpg. I do not seem to have the changes you mentioned.

    I see that 13 is blocked off. It's just the stairs immedietly north of that that confuse me.

    Edit: I redownloaded the pdf and it is the same.

    Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010

    1 person marked this as a favorite.

    I'll email Jason to check that. The revised version still has the mislabelling of C5 and C6 but the doors on the south of the foyer should be there as blue circle, indicating a arcane locked door hidden by a silent image. When Jaylin is receiving visitors these doors would be open, to allow guests to ascend either of the two staircases up to the upper landing (C14) and then into the drawing room (C15) or the study (C16).


    1 person marked this as a favorite.

    Thanks Matt. That makes a lot of sense.


    In following adventures in this series, will Collin/Colleen be brought up again, or can I advance them as I want? Specifically, I'm wondering if there is a point where they are no longer young and lose that template.

    Spoiler:
    So far, I plan to have them be the right hand or lieutenant of the player. It seems like we are heading towards starting a thieves guild.

    Contributor, RPG Superstar 2010

    2 people marked this as a favorite.

    As per other Adventure Paths we don't rely too much on a specific character surviving (or not surviving). Feel free to stat Collin/Colleen as you will. The pacing of the adventures means that there can be plenty of down time between them, giving a young urchin plenty of time for a growth spurt when it suits.


    Thanks, Matt!


    2 people marked this as a favorite.

    Reviewed first on endzeitgeist.com, then submitted to Nerdtrek and GMS magazine and posted here, on OBS, etc.

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