What are some good, introductory, combat-heavy scenarios?


Pathfinder Society

Sovereign Court 2/5

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Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

I'm lucky enough to be teaching a Pathfinder class as an elective this year in middle school. So far, we've played a lot of Basic Box, but the kids are ready to move on to the full CRB and PFS. I took 6 kids to a Con in February and they loved it. What I'd like to do for the rest of the year is emulate the PFS structure in my class. I've got 10 kids who have volunteered to come in during spring break and play a PFS scenario (two actually, 5 kids one day and 5 kids another day). I'll GM, they'll play, get PFS credit, everyone is happy. Then when school comes back from spring break, those kids who have played will GM for the rest of the kids in class. GMs get more PFS credit, other kids get their PFS numbers and first XP, and when the next Con comes around in May, lots of kids will have PFS legal characters and a bit of PFS experience (both XP and RL experience) to go actually go to a COn and play with the wider community.

BUT, after the last Con I had my kids who went GM the mods they'd played for everyone else, and it only went so-so. Main problems was they had played more role-play intensive investigation type mods at the Con. With an adult GM, the more advanced kids loved it. But to then have those kids try to GM it for less sophisticated kids... not so much. The kids back in class just wanted to fight. Which is fine - they're 12-14. But I'd like to pick the next mods that I run for the GMs and that they then run for the rest of the kids in class with that in mind.

I'm looking for:
• Relatively simple plots, linear is fine
• Combat heavy
• Traps are okay but avoid tricky mechanics like haunts or things they have to keep track of like "plague points" or "corruption points"

Suggestions? (Thanks)

4/5 ****

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1-55 The Infernal Vault is a fairly easy to run linear dungeon crawl without any added mechanics.

Dark Archive 5/5 *

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2-11 penumbral accords a very straight forward go to the museum and have 5 combats. 6 if do optional encounter.

Sczarni

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Master of the Fallen fortress could be a really good scenario. It is combat heavy and offers a bit of lot of what a pc is going to encounter during combat and out of combat to give an idea of what to prepare for as the pc takes on more missions.

Problem for it that you have to be lvl 1 for credit. Can give credit for these lvl 1 encounters/modules to a lvl 2 pc once.

5/5 5/5 *

This is an actual class? For middle school? What kind of school is this?
I need to get on top of building that cosmic rewind button I've been meaning to invent.

Sovereign Court 2/5

Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
TheFlyingPhoton wrote:
This is an actual class? For middle school? What kind of school is this?

Regular ol' public middle school. We reconfigured the schedule and class offerings a lot between last year and this year, and ended up needing a bunch of electives fast. I pounced with my offer of "I have suggestion that will teach reading and writing skills, math, and critical problem solving..."

Thanks for hte suggestions, and keep 'em comin'. @ULfen Death Squad, Master of the Fallen Fortress should be okay. Only the kids who went to the first Con have level 2 characters, and they make up the majority of my GMs this time; the masses are all brand new level 1's. (They all have level 4-5 characters that they build with the Beginners Box, but I was intentionally pretty loose with those, so they're a bit off from the RAW. We-re rebooting for PFS.]

Grand Lodge 5/5 Regional Venture-Coordinator, Baltic

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Thornkeep part II The Forgotten Laboratory

We Be Goblins (Too)

Dark Archive 4/5

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Seconded with Penumbral Accords. Icebound Outpost is also pretty great.

Grand Lodge 3/5

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The Citadel of Flame is a straight forward dungeon crawl. There is a little bit of non-combat, but only as a run up to fighting something.

I run the 12-18 year old game at the FLGS, and the biggest hit I had was with Mists of the Mwangi. I reskinned the gas to make the PCs impulsive. If you get hungry, you eat. If you get mad, you hit. They loved it and ended up having a souvenir collection of ears, and playing kickball with skulls. Not standard PFS, but the kids got into it.

Sovereign Court 2/5

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Appreciate the suggestions everyone, thanks.

Silver Crusade 5/5

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The Veteran's Vault should be pretty good for your purposes. It's a pretty straight-forward dungeon crawl, it's got some fun bits in it and features a good variety of creatures. The last combat can be pretty nasty though, unless the PC's have a dwarf or a half-orc with them (or some other race with darkvision, but I'm making the assumption that the kids are mostly running out of Core). I ran it at a local con for some people that were all new to PFS, they all seemed to enjoy it.

1/5

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Mosaic; It sounds awesome what you're doing.

Somewhat off topic:

If you want feedback or ideas, we have an afterschool / efterskole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efterskole) in Denmark, dedicated entirely to roleplaying: http://osterskov.dk/ (the webpage is in danish, but if you want to contact them, just write them in english). I know they'll be happy to tell about their experiences. There are other initiatives a bit like it in the other nordic countries.

If you don't mind the larp-centric view, there is also ELIN; Educational-Larp'ers International Network: http://www.edu-larp.org/

There even was an american kickstarter for educational larping recently: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/160286787/creating-educational-live-ac tion-role-playing-game

Anyways - I hope your class and the games you play are a huge success! :)

Shadow Lodge *

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Second on Veteran's Vault. I've run it a couple of times for newbies, who have had a good time with it.

3/5

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I'd actually not recommend running thornkeep pt. one. To say it's extreme is almost an understatement.

I'd say the confirmation and crypt of the everflame are fantastic for low level characters.

Sovereign Court 2/5

Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber

Lot's of great suggestions, thank yo all so much. First spring break game tomorrow... I'm going to go with the Blakros Museum cycle - Mists of Mwangi, then Voices in the Void, then The Penumbral Accords. Maybe Blakros Matrimony at some point for those who can handle a lot of role playing. I like the idea of the adventures being tied together by some meta-plot. It also means we only need multiple versions of the Balkros Museum map :) . I'll let you know how it goes.

4/5

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I think you've made the right choice with the Blakros Museum adventures (especially Voice in the Void and Penumbral Accords.) They're nice, simple, site based encounters that don't take too long to run through.

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