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I just ran this and had a good time with friends, but I'm alo left slightly disappointed.

Good:
- Good story, engaging and with no facepalm stupidity moments
- No stupid "invisible walls" (some non-stupid ones)
- Encounters advance and tell the story to the players
- Lots of rarely-seen monsters to make your players go "whaaa..."
- Chronicle sheet is equally awesome for all tiers

Bad:
- Goons from the NPC Codex are sorely underpowered. I couldn't realistically challenge the PCs with them. To-hit was too low, AC too low.
- Too many encounters; to get a complete success all the tables need to complete LOTS of encounters, but there's not enough time for that in six hours let alone four.
- Final encounter has so very little to do with the story. The "boss" wasn't.
- Too many creatures with abilities that flourish in particular environments, locked up in rooms where they can't use them.

This was a great scenario. It's one of the first "social" scenarios, preceding the modern use of influence mechanics. Character skill isn't so important, player social skill much more. That worked very well for us. The structure of the encounter also allowed for natural "turns" to also give a chance to the more quiet players to get a few words in. The rather loose structure of this encounter helped to give it a lot more depth rather than following rigid rule-paths. Very nice.

The more fighty part of the scenario seems about right to me as well; there's a fight that wasn't all that easy for our four-player party. A 6-player party or one with different builds might find it much easier though. The dungeon and puzzles were easy but that was fine; we'd spent so much time on the dinner party that we had to hurry a bit anyway.

Let's first talk about ambiance. I think the scenario has a very good start; the setting description is flavorful and has the potential to be creepy. However, somehow it doesn't really cross over into being a proper horror scenario. I think the potential wasn't fully exploited. That's somewhat due to the rather simple map used; not enough twists and turns, too many big rooms. It's a bit sad; Shadow Absalom is looking very intrigueing, I wish this was exploited more. Perhaps an idea for a new scenario?

This is clearly an older scenario and it feels a bit dated and simple. That can also be an advantage though if used by a less experienced GM or to introduce new players; in that case it's nicely straightforward.

On the whole I think the scenario's difficulty is on the easy side, when the GM sticks to the rules and scenario as written. There are quite a few suggestions in the GM threads on how to oomph it up and/or interpret some vague rules in the scenario in a harsher way. On the one hand those might make the scenario more interesting/challenging; on the other hand you're on the slippery slope of altering scenarios which you're not supposed to do in PFS. Because some of the bad guys' advantages are rather trivially overcome by simple measures by the PCs, there may be the temptation to block that (going against the scenario). I think the best course might be to run this scenario with 4 players (the amount it was written for) rather than 6, and keep the difficulty as-is.

When I played this is it didn't go so well. I think part of that was end-of-Con fatigue or something. Later I got the impression that what we played resembled the published text only vaguely. On inspection of the scenario, that proved true. However, the most serious irritations during our play actually come from the scenario, and are due to it being a multi-parter.

For part II to happen, some stuff needs to happen in part I. This is stuff that most normal PCs will want to prevent, and anyone with a bit of genre savvy will see coming from a mile off, so you can bet players will be taking steps to prevent it. However, the scenario is dead-set on railroading these mishaps into happening anyway.

That said, it's not a bad scenario. The background story is interesting and you'll find out some of it in part I; and it does a good job of getting you interested in part II.

"The" fight is pretty spicy, and unfortunately actually nullifies a lot of the abilities of Occult classes, which is awkward because this scenario draws rather heavily on Occult Adventures. A conventional, balanced/diversified party should be able to handle it though.

UPDATE: I've since replayed this to fill out a table. I had a good time, but I stand by my earlier verdict. Too often the GM had to say stuff like "there's no IC reason why you would know this, but you can't fix this in part 1, that's for part 2".

As such, I would recommend running these back to back, not with a few weeks in between.

I would also recommend playing this with a well-rounded party, perhaps leaning a bit to the combat side. You get challenged on arcane knowledge, social skill and/or stealth, but the combat is particularly deadly. I'm glad I picked pregen Kyra and Seelah to fill out the table. With a swashbuckler and a hard-hitting UnMonk/UnRogue that gave us quite a frontline and we needed it, because this scenario puts most of the hurt in one combat.

I really enjoyed playing this. We played the high tier with a bit of a scattershot party that just barely made high tier but the GM told us we'd be fine - and we were. The scenario can be a bit on the easy side, but I think that's been a good choice of writing here. The focus is on telling a personality story, not blood-curdling danger. Although I gather that if you're more into picking fights, some of the enemies are dangerous enough. We were nice people though.

The NPCs were likeable and an interesting showcase of the Occult Adventures content. The whole "this stuff is rare and poorly understood" angle worked out very well.

The story is good; it makes sense and has surprising revelations, especially for this tier. Callbacks to older storylines that PFS veterans will enjoy, too.

You get to make some (moral) choices, and for once it doesn't feel contrived that it's you making them, and the choices feel like they matter.

The boons are sweet too.

I played this in a party of 7,8,10,10,10 I think, so high tier with 4-player adjustment. We had a party of pretty highly tuned PCs and players who cooperated well, and that worked out well. It was pretty tense here and there but we made it through without fatalities.

I think the balance was quite well-done actually. The monsters didn't go down too easily even to the L10 assault, but my L8 and the L7 guy could land some hits too if we put in effort, so everyone got to contribute.

There is at least one major tactical challenge here, where just trying to rush in would be very bad. Between casting, a roc mount and a cacodaemon familiar we had good scouting and mobility options and that saved us a lot of grief.

In many scenarios you can't really do that much tactics; dungeons often have a linear path and you don't know what room you're gonna encounter until you're in front of it. In this case you have the opportunity to look ahead and really make a difference. I like!

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Apart from the combat part, the scenario has a nice flavor to it. The whole rough and tumble giant island thing works for me. And even so, you don't actually have to fight everything, although that also works. Good job!

I GM'ed this for Kurald Galain and a few others last weekend, and I'm rather disappointed myself.

I personally do like good puzzles, but this one wasn't written like that. There's no way for character skill to really help you. There's no feedback mechanism to let you know if you're on the right track. Although you can get more clues, those are pre-set clues. In this case my players were trying very hard to reason their way through but got stuck with a few false assumptions and I couldn't really help them away from those with the stuff the scenario gives you.

I wasn't so impressed with the combats either. In the case of the first combat (high tier), the 4-player adjustment ruined it.

What I really didn't like: one of my players knew the solution to the puzzle because her boyfriend was prepping it for running the scenario later in the weekend. So she bowed out of that scene to take a break. But the puzzle took so long that eventually she just went to bed.

I was dismayed at how bad the puzzle went. I was aware it wasn't great but my players at first showed good spirit working on it, so I didn't want to start giving clues out too fast or anything. But I really wish I could've skipped it.

Was anything good? Well, the premise of the scenario. The town is nice, the backstory and the fey there are cool. I liked the tactical possibilities of the portals, but that just didn't really materialize.

Well, I died in the final fight, as a L3 slayer playing down. But I got better, and had a good time all afternoon.

It's an investigation, and those are tough to write. You want actual difficulty, so finding clues shouldn't be guaranteed; but if the players miss a clue you don't want the scenario to quietly grind to a halt. I think this scenario handles that fairly well; there are some backups but also rewards for doing things right the first time.

At first things don't make much sense, but as your investigation proceeds, you get a relatively full picture of the story behind the scenario. As it should be.

This scenario is rather demanding on skills, particularly at low tier (no scaling). Do not expect a perfect score like in many other scenarios; this one is harder. In the notorious chase, this can be an issue. Hopefully your GM has read the (several!) threads in the GM forum where some remedies are offered to keep everyone in the game.

I would advise against playing at level 1. A stray max damage or crit might kill you. Also don't recklessly play up. Your opponents have a lot of vicious tactics. Standing to the back of the party and hoping you don't get targeted doesn't cut it here. You need to have some clever tactics of your own.

Quentin ran this for TheDegraded and me (and others; you'll probably see a Damanta review too eventually).

I'd been looking forward to playing this one with my roc-riding inquisitor alongside Damanta's mammoth rider for a while now. He was level 11, I was level 7. Since we played high tier, I was a bit on edge, since I'm very melee oriented and chronically low on HP.

I was both pleased and a bit disappointed by the scenario. It does a good job with awesome, weird and just icky monsters. You really don't want to give them any opportunity to do their thing, because that's gonna be nasty, or painful, or both.

While we brought fairly little control, it was still rather easy to gain control of the situation. Due to having eyes in the sky, a healthy dose of paranoia and good Perception (who doesn't?) we didn't suffer surprises and were able to start every fight pre-buffed to some degree. We got to choose who the monster engaged in melee, the monsters didn't get any choices.

After dying while playing Storval Stairs the week before, maybe my difficulty sense is just a bit askew.

The story was fairly simple but if you don't have too much time but do have nice scenery, that still works. I did however see Quentin struggle just to find the information for each scene. The RP could've gone more smoothly if the GM information was better presented, I think. But on the whole the RP was fairly intelligent, with some room for arguing your case and not just bashing someone over the head with your high Diplomacy score. (Although we had that too, of course. We're not stupid.)

The good:
- Setting is nice
- Opportunity for RP
- Big, loud, nasty monsters

The bad:
- Tactically easy (big numbers but not brilliant tactics)
- Messy to GM
- Thin story

It might go up to four stars if I like it when I run it.

This one is all about the expectation management. I think many of the horror stories from other groups are from people who had no idea what they were going into. When you've been working towards this scenario with enough of an inkling, it's really nice.

So I'm going to be a bit more forward with information on what happens in this scenario, but I'll avoid thing I'd consider actual spoilers. In fact, I think the scenario is more fun if players do know these things ahead of time.

The cat is out of the bag: you're leading armies, using the mass combat rules, originally from Kingmaker and reissued in Ultimate Campaign. The scenario uses slightly simplified rules because you're not running a kingdom, too. Even so, if players have read through the Ultimate Campaign rules once, they'll be on their feet sooner.

There are some default armies to use, but if you've played the right S5 scenarios, there are several boons that come into play in this scenario. There are quite a few scenarios in S5 that revolve around gathering allies for the PFS excusion into the Wound, and now is when you use them. The way it works is that you get the benefits if any of your characters have the boon, not necessarily the one you're playing in this game. The allies you got in a tier 10-11 adventure will also help you out.

Taldor's storyline in S5 is about gathering an army to prove that Taldor is still great. Now is your time to show off. If you have played most of the "relevant to Taldor" adventures of S5, it's a very kickass army. Another reviewer complained that you get hosed if more than one player uses the Taldor army; that's not quite true. Any additional Taldor armies are weaker than the first, but still relatively strong, and they work well together.

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So you're going to do some army gaming. You're all going to lead an army and together you're going to beat the bad guys. The mechanics work like a fairly simple tactical boardgame (compared to say, Warhammer). Another thing that makes it different is having your friends at your side; when one of you is facing off against multiple demon armies pouncing on him, you all cheer if he beats them. It's kind of like the fun of working together in PC combat, but with armies. I quite liked it.

I imagine if I ran into this at a con, with no preparation, I'd hate it. But if you've been building up your Taldan generalissimo for a while now, it's a nice L7 mid-career climax. (The guy leading the mammoth lords wasn't disappointed either.) And I was pleasantly surprised at how well the mass combat rules actually work.

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Apart from leading armies there's also some regular murdering going on. See that guy on the front cover? He's not going to have a good day. But he's gonna try to make you have a bad day too. The scenario isn't only leading armies, although that's the biggest chunk of it.

There's also a "monster" using another set of unusual rules. We didn't fight it, and later when I read the stats, I'm glad we didn't. I think those rules have some wrinkles, and it hits quite hard.

But side effect of having these high-Cha commander commando types is that we were able to disguise and bluff our way trough that.

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There's been a tendency in S5 to show off new rules (mythic, performance combat, piecemeal armor...) that hasn't always worked well. In this case it works well, but you have to know what's coming, rules-wise.

I might use these mass combat rules in my own campaign as well, they're crunchy enough to give you options but simple enough that things keep moving.

Going in to this one I was rather nervous, because of its reputation. A well-deserved reputation. At first it looked like we could handle this, but then I flew into an ambush and got killed quite suddenly. Another PC died the next round. Fortunately we both got back to life before the final fight.

This is one of the best brutal adventures I've seen. There were no rule shenanigans; no monsters with obviously illegal builds or tactics; no manipulation of the CR system to shoe in an encounter that's much harder than its CR makes it look. All the challenge is fair and above-board. The author is quite honest about how hard stuff is.

That's not to say enemies fight fair of course. Like I said, I flew into an ambush and paid the price. I should've seen it coming.

The location is beautiful. The monsters are both epic and funny.

When in doubt, play down, and still be on your toes. But I had great fun.

Disclaimer: I played this up as a level 7. I went down quickly (tough not dying) in the final combat so I might have liked it better if I'd gotten the chance to do stuff there.

The premise of the adventure is fine. The leadup story makes sense, but make sure to have a notepad ready at the briefing because Oh God The Namedropping. Showing a map of Tian Xia helps to put places to place names, helps a lot to give you an idea of where you're going.

The journey feels poorly implemented, as others have mentioned; why can't we heal on the way instead of waiting until the end? We just drew a wand of Lesser Restoration and life went on.

I wasn't too impressed with the first fight; the enemies got their tactics a bit tangled up and in general weren't very impressive. The builds seemed awkward and clunky.

After that came an interesting bit of RP. While you can screw this up for yourself, it should be doable if you actually play at being diplomatic instead of just trying to roll through it.

The next fight was flavorful and not too hard or easy. The fight after that was rather dumb, with monsters that use tactics to gimp themselves.

The final fight has a really cool setup. Cool boss, nasty environment. Sadly I didn't get to do anything. But that's the risk you take playing up.

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My gripes are these:
- For a Sovereign Court mission, there really wasn't enough politicking in here. Like, any at all. This is just "the person whose dirty work we're doing happens to be a noble", but you're basically shock troops.
- You're allowed to take some treasure, but not other treasure. But there's no way to know that, and the distinction feels totally arbitrary to me. And it also doesn't matter what reasons you have for it.
- Most of the monsters seemed "just punks" to me. Not ones you see a lot, but still just things whose destiny it is to die a stupid death. The boss makes up for a lot of this though.

We played this on the low tier with a 4-PC party due to some no-show players. We brought a L8 artillery alchemist, L8 support cleric, L7 archer and L7 paladin pregen. This turned out to be a reasonably good party for it.

This adventure has some environmental effects in it which can be really brutal. Next time I'm going into the worldwound, I'm bringing a wilderness survival expert. It's good the fights were number-wise not too tough because the adverse environmental effects had the potential to really nerf anything other than melee beatsticks into the ground.

The adventure is straightforward; chase down bad guys, beat them, chase down more bad guys, beat them. Sadly, the second target escaped because his tactics say he'll do so if sufficiently wounded. Irritatingly, this cost us quite a few of the rewards.

I didn't find this adventure to be the massive pileup that other people complain about. Part of that is group size I think; with three players and a pregen, and the 4-player scaling removing some enemies, the whole thing is much easier to oversee.

I did find it to be a bit heavy on the denial side of tactics, especially the (apparently optional) environmental effects. I'm not a fan of fights where all half the party can do is trudge through 2 squares of super-difficult terrain per round.

I do like the way this adventure is set up to give some closure on long-term opponents of the society. Even if one got away, grumble grumble.

Another point in favor is the choice of monsters; there were some original ones in there with some tactics I hadn't run into before.

I just played this with a party of Inqusitor 6 (me, and my pet Roc), Conjurer Wizard 7, Occultist pregen 7, Barbarian 4. We played high tier.

I do like the story in this one. It wraps up the previous parts nicely, and for once the derros actually have a scheme going that's scary.

The fights are badly done though. It starts out embarrassingly easy and then goes way up in deadliness, and then the finale is very easy again.

Part of the deadliness is from a monster that's technically illegal except that Josh Frost says "yeah, but this time I'll allow it". It squeezes the absolute maximum of danger possible out of the system for calculating a CR. And this fight takes place in an area basically set up to make the PCs fail (and cause maximum irritation.) Another fight is basically fair but very dangerous. That was just difficult but a lot of fun because it turned into a "how do we get past this" puzzle/combat.

It is a fun scenario, but you have to bring some serious tanks. And don't be afraid to step back and reconsider your tactics for a fight.

I played this today and we did have fun together, but this isn't measuring up to the generally high standards of season six. The plotting is awkward and feels more like a season one adventure.

The big problem is that the scenario is a bunch of scenes that individually are flavorful and evocative, but they have only the most tenuous relation to each other. The only reason you go to the next place is because it's the only clue given, so even if it doesn't really make much sense, you do it anyway.

Another thing: don't play this if you haven't played The Darkest Vengeance. All the other players today had, I hadn't. They'd all played it with different characters, so couldn't really share. So all the time the bad guy is throwing accusations and I'm like "I have no idea what he's actually upset about". The scenario doesn't really manage to carry that story across if you haven't played the previous part.

It's not an ideal scenario for good guys either. You meet a lot of people who really need a spanking which you can't give them. You actually get punished for being a good guy instead of a murderhobo. And the person you're supposed to rescue is so irritating my paladin wished we could burn her at the stake as an unbeliever.

Combat-wise, it's an okay scenario. Most of the fights weren't very original, although the end fight has some stuff you don't see too often. But if you're playing at this tier, presumably you know to take steps against an irritating effect that the scenario's title has already spoilered to you.

We played with a paladin 9, barbarian 9, cleric 10, bard 10 party on the high tier, and found the difficulty of the fights to be fine, not too easy and not too hard.

I liked the premise of this adventure. The BBEG is really cool. However, the maze exploration was a big disappointment.

Exploring the maze just felt like a stupid grind; there weren't really meaningful choices to be made or puzzles to be solved.

The fights were fun and apart from the repeat encounters, interesting. Not too hard.

The scenario has a few nice ideas to it - particularly the start, where you specifically have to lose a fight. It's quite hard to convincingly lose a fight without actually suffering losses, and not accidentally wipe out the enemy. This goes against a lot of players' instincts.

After that, it was over way too soon.

Even if we hadn't done that, it wouldn't have been challenging, the encounters are rather easy with ineffectual opponents.

My main complaint is that this adventure really isn't exotic enough for Jalmeray. It could've happened anywhere.

For a new adventure set in Jalmeray that actually does justice to the exotic locale, see The Segang Expedition.

Played this at low tier. After we entered the dungeon we realized we had no healer, a +5 UMD rogue and 1 CLW wand was all we had. And then the rogue went down...

After that things went pretty easy. Some monsters here and there but nothing really tough. No really interesting skill challenges or puzzles either. After a few hours (we were going slow because we were all hung over) we got to the end and went "was that it?"

All this scenario really does is establish that "the trouble from part I isn't over yet - stay tuned".

Played this at high tier. The scenario had one scary fight in the middle, somewhat because of what it was, somewhat because our party was split across the location at the start. Otherwise the fights were all rather easy.

The investigation part was fine, although a bit simple. The scenario doesn't seem to provide for you not killing goons and interrogating them instead.

The end was, sadly,

I recently played and ran this and had fun.

The fights are a bit old-fashioned, with relatively simple monsters with a couple of potentially nasty abilities. They don't stand up well to modern classes like gunslingers.

The plot is a bit thin, in the "those crazy cultists again" category. But the location has a lot of funny potential. This is season 0, where Taldor is always the butt of the jokes. The nobles are foppish and ineffectual. They need the PCs to save them, but can't resist making snooty comments all the while. I had them applaud and boo the PCs in the middle of a huge brawl.

A note about the map: the map is very big. I used the opera flipmat instead, which was a mistake. You need that huge map to justify the encounters not all bumping into each other.

I too was one of the Dutch players who played this yesterday. I'd read the previous reviews and brought my "moral vacuum" investigator; in fact, our party was morally questionable. (Inquisitor of Gorum, Gorumite barbarian, Urgathoa cleric, Urgathoa investigator, "I can't believe you're lawful" LN bard that thought he followed Sarenrae.)

So, at first I was surprised at the amount of RP included; that's a tall order for a Special due to all the time constraints. In our case we'd planned for this to run in a much longer slot so that actually wasn't a problem. There was enough time to talk to NPCs but not to talk about everything; the adventure gives plausible reasons why you need to move on.

Then we come to the first mission, and we were all a bit surprised at just how ruthless this adventure is set up. Despite the party I just mentioned, we're not used to being quite this murderous, but we were on a "no witnesses" mission.

Afterwards, there were a variety of missions to choose from. We did several and had fun with them; many of them allowed us to pick an approach that suited us. A huge difference from the video-gamey way Blood Under Absalom was written. In many cases, you didn't actually be as evil here as some other reviews suggest.

Then we come to the auction. It was entertainingly acted out between the NPCs, but the mechanics were obscure and we didn't feel like we had any real way to influence the outcome. Besides;

The fight that came after was rather weird;

The chase was over quickly because we could trivially overcome the obstacles and the GM was being sensible about them; but that's what you get with level 7-8 characters with haste and flight available. Fruitcarts aren't going to stop them. Then we came to the final fight and that was quite interesting too.

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All in all it was fun, but with some flaws. What is missing most is a bit of exposition on why this key is so important. We're being told to set aside all morality to get it; why is it worth that? A halfway decent explanation would go a long way towards compensating for the forced "evilness" of this adventure.

I wouldn't say this scenario is truly bad - I had fun - but it wasn't really good either. I don't think it makes very good use out of this being a special; there's fights happening in 10x10 square rooms where all the tables are fighting at the same time, and presumably throwing blasts. But you're only dealing with your own encounters. That just strains my suspension of disbelief.

Newer specials do a much better job at this, especially Legacy of the Stonelords, which has its group battles happening in way bigger rooms, with each table handling a part of the room. Such an easy fix.

I guess this scenario was more impressive around S2, when the whole Shadow Lodge story was new and mysterious; nowadays it's hard to figure out what all the fuss is about. Crazy dude attacks the city that nobody's managed to conquer in like 4000 years, level 1-5 party stops him? Wut?

I played this yesterday and had a good time. The puzzles and crazy artist were a lot of fun. However, you have to avoid a few obvious questions;

The combats were so-so. I think this series suffers from enemies that can best be summed up as

The same tactic gets spammed in episodes 1-3 and I presume also in the final part. Either you have one of the obvious solutions, or you get the same annoying effect used on you every time.

Finallly, the map of the last encounter is seriously bad design. It's basically a boss fight in an elaborate 5ft corridor, meaning that only one PC gets to actually do stuff in melee, and the enemy gets cover from everyone else.

It's a flavorful location, but terrible design for an encounter.

I GM'ed this last weekend and it seems TheDegraded was one of my players. I'd been looking forward to running this one for a few months, due to various scheduling mishaps, but it finally happened. And I wasn't disappointed.

This scenario has a story to it that has to be pulled off in order to really drive the scenario home. That wasn't easy but the scenario does give you some good material for it. And when you use that, the story makes sense to the players at the end.

It really helps if the players are of a mind to engage with the primary NPC. The faction missions help with this, and good knowledge/gather info checks can also help. But other than that, at the beginning the guy is a bit uninviting. I had to nudge a little to get the players over their initial "oh, if he doesn't wanna play ball, then we're not gonna play ball". After that things went easier.

I think what this scenario really needed is one or two small scenes designed for conversation with the NPC. If you really look at it the text closely, you kinda get zapped from encounter to encounter, but it's supposed to be the time between encounters that you do the talking.

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Okay, so much for the gooey stuff. On to the gore.

This scenario doesn't have a lot of fights, but they count for a lot. The party had to play up with 4 player adjustment, just barely. The jump in difficulty is quite steep here.

The barbarian that TheDegraded mentioned was played by a friend of mine. This was one of his first games at higher tier, and he suddenly discovered that he was no longer able to solo/oneshot encounters. Instead, he found himself 1-2 turns of movement ahead of the rest of the party, facing multiple casters with extreme synergies, standing just beyond his reach. Well, it turns out Superstition only goes so far in protecting you. But I was cheering just as hard as the rest of the party when he survived that pileup with a natural 20. After that, it was still a bitter fight, but the party triumphed.

I didn't have time for the optional encounter, and I don't mind in the least. That one is really the weakest part of the scenario, but it could've done in the party.

The final encounter was also quite epic. I don't want to spoil anything. However, it's one of those cool fights where there's much more on the table than "can we kill them before they kill us". My players were searching through all their chronicles to scrape up boons to find some +2 to this or that to make it. When they won, it was a true triumph.

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Story and setting: this adventure is built into the S5 metaplot and into Golarion quite nicely. It showcases an exciting area. I think that if you have a longer timeslot you can have a lot of fun embellishing the scenery some more. If you're comfortable adding some more background to the main NPC, it'll also be easier to set him up for RP.

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Factions: this is one of the first "new style" faction missions, from season 5. That is to say, not every faction gets a mission, but you get actual special rewards for them rather than prestige. Clearly at this point they were still working out the kinks of the system.

The faction rewards for the relevant factions are pretty cool. However, for some of the factions you basically have to guess what your faction mission might be. They're mentioned in a faction letter distributed over the internet some time ago and preserved on the forum. However, you have to know which half year's faction mission to get. This is quite awkward.

My advice to GMs: get the relevant faction letters and make the players of those factions read them before the session. They contain sufficient hints to get players going.

So let's be clear: this one isn't high-brow literature. But the plot is coherent and has a certain kind of style. For the whole thing, think of it as a kind of 90s video game/martial arts tournament kind of atmosphere. Roll with the silliness and then it's pretty fun.

That also illustrates the problem with this scenario. It's a series of fights (not a bad thing in itself) with some awkward RP interludes that much resemble cut scenes in a video game. There's not much flexibility here.

There are also some moments in fights where you're given an objective, like "get to that person". But the way it's written, you're supposed to fight some monsters first, and so should the other tables. Only when all the tables have killed X monsters can you get to that person. But this kind of falls apart when you start using fly spells or dimension door etcetera. You basically run into an invisible wall of "scenario says no". Again, a lot like a video game.

It also shows how clumsy the early multi-table specials were. This one relies a lot on synchronizations between all tables, making it feel rather forces. I recently played Legacy of the Stonelords which had much better synchronization mechanics. RPG technology advances, it seems.

Despite these flaws, I had fun playing this. The fights are flavourful and occasionally quite challenging, especially if you play with a 4-person party, like this one is meant to be played. Having a head GM with a flair for drama also helps.