Played this with Damanta at Woran's table. I was playing the alchemist.
After the usual sort of roundup, where a VC scolds you for just hanging about the place, you're sent off into an ancient ruin on an obstacle course. And people wonder how the Shadow Lodge got anywhere.
The obstacle course was interesting; the ranger's player has really gone into handling traps and got to show off. I think the fact that the traps are meant to embarass, not kill, makes it even nicer; avoiding getting color paint all over you feels like besting the other team.
The Technologist feat tax is a bit silly I think; Golarion is full of exotic things. Why technology would be so much more incomprehensible than qlippoths, aboleths or Tian magic is beyond me. Getting constant "sorry, you need that feat" felt a bit stupid. Luckily succeeding at those checks wasn't actually needed; just handle hostile things with extreme violence and you're fine.
Handling the technology to get through the scenario felt slightly like information laundering; as players we quickly recognize what everything is supposed to be, and then we search for an IC reason to come to the right conclusion.
I thought the fights were fine; the monsters are new and different and look scary enough. Even though you can quickly guess at some of the mechanics at work, they put enough pressure on you at the beginning of the encounter to make it exciting.
I thought the NPCs were a bit boring; after we got what we needed from them, they didn't really do anything else anymore. Maybe if I had any clue about the Silver Crusade's interest in them that might have been different.
Something many other people complained about needs mention. At some point you've gotten the dingus that you came from, and you could just turn back and report. So why would you go on exploring? That question never occurred to us. We're pathfinders, we're naturally curious, and there's definitely interesting stuff going on here, so let's see what's over there. I think the complainers are playing the scenario too cynically, only focused on the hard official objectives. If you keep "Explore, Report, Cooperate" in mind I think there's no problem here with the scenario.
Combat: 4 interesting fights, not too hard but you do need to work together. If party members get hit with conditions, reading up on those conditions helps the PCs a lot. It also helps if you have heavy hitters.
Story: 3 I like it when the adventure takes place in an interesting location, so that's good. Competition with a hypothetical other team of pathfinders also sets a good tone. Other than that there's not all that much happening here.
RP: 2 After a short talk with the NPCs where they gave us the dingus we needed, that was pretty much it. Which makes this basically just a dungeon crawl in a really fancy dungeon. Okay by me; there was nothing actually unpleasant about the RP, just nothing special either.
Miscellaneous: 3 a half orc steals a flatscreen monitor. There's quite a few chances for nerdy humor in the scenario. On the other hand, the Technologist nonsense is a downer.
This scenario wasn't what I expected. Based on the description I thought I'd be playing some sort of epic finale in Mendev, where factions backstab each other in the middle of hordes of demons. This turned out quite differently.
It should be understood that we had a fairly strong party of mostly level 3-4 characters and my level 6 paladin, with a healthy spread of abilities. I played this with Damanta as a fellow player (see review below). We were told we'd gotten back to Absalom for some R&R after the business in Mendev was concluded, and as it happened there was a funeral/public festival, so that worked out quite nicely. As it turned out the missions weren't hard for us, so we treated the whole thing as a sort of holiday; kick some butt in the morning, go to a party in the afternoon. We felt like veterans dealing with some light issues at home after a season of heavy fighting abroad. So while the adventure as a whole wasn't all that challenging, everyone had a great time.
Basically what happens during this adventure is, you play 3-4 faction missions against a backdrop of a city councillor's funeral. We did Silver Crusade, Osirion and Cheliax missions.
Silver Crusade:
This one was the one we had the most fun with. There's a slave auction with a strange bidding mechanic, and we really went into trying to figure out the "game theory" to win it. And then there was a moral choice; there was a young slave girl that we didn't "need", but it looked like she might end up with a pervy buyer dude. So do we use part of our scarce funds to try to save her? We did, and succeeded at enough of the auction as well, so we finished this with a clean conscience, but it was tight.
Afterwards some of us trailed our opponent while the rest of us moved to bring the "merchandise" to the security of the Grand Lodge. So when the bad guys tried to ambush our main party, we ended up catching them from both sides. It was a nice fight.
The epilogue conversation with the faction leader is important here. Using the mini-adventure as an example, it tells you what the focus of the Silver Crusade will be now. I've seen some other reviewers write that they thought this adventure would've made more sense as a Liberty's Edge scenario, because it's about slaves.
I disagree with that: this path is about the SC taking responsibility for things in peacetime. They promised criminals a pardon if they fought in the Worldwound, and now they have a debt to settle. Because some of those criminals are still getting bounty-hunted and sold into slavery, after they went on the crusade. I think this is actually an important message about the Silver Crusade: it's not just about smacking down demons, it's about making the PFS a force for good in the whole world, in peacetime as well.
For the GM, I think he/she should make sure to think about the auction mechanics, and figure out some sort of justification for them. Because they are kind of weird, and you should have answers for that, instead of the lame "that's just what the scenario says".
Personally I think it works if you call it conspicuous consumption; the focus of the customers isn't to get the best possible deal, it's to have a nice evening with some light competition and possibly a souvenir.
Osirion:
This one was a bit trivial, although it ended up entertaining as well. Bad guy comes in, surprises two PCs. I move closer and draw a weapon. He casts Sound Burst, stunning only the previously surprised PCs. Monk manages to Stunning Fist him. I move up again, demanding he surrender. He doesn't answer (stun), so I hit him, crit, and he's dead. His minions run away at that point. And then the surprised PCs went "whaaaa? what happen?"
Afterwards we had fun talking about how we were going to send in the level 1 pathfinder "interns" to nicely seal up and hide the now-cleared tomb. Because that's how level 1 adventures start: a routine job to mop up the remains on a cleared tomb, that of course isn't cleared anymore. We felt we had a "responsibility" to ensure there'd be another such adventure :P
The epilogue however, where Amenopheus decides to formally secede from Osirion, was short but effective. We literally got to see the moment the faction changed, and see why. That was nice.
Cheliax:
One of the Cheliax tieflings in our party went with Zarta to a wild party at her villa and was kinda doing the walk of shame in her wake when we met her the next day to hear about a little problem she wanted us to help. Here's were I make mention of how relatively easy the missions were so far; it was basically 15 minute adventuring days, because we had about 4 days to do 3 jobs, and they all showed up nicely spaced apart. So for our wizard to miss morning spell prep wasn't even such a problem. It's a nice change of pace, but from my experience with 6-01/02/03 I can safely say this will be the exception (also good; a break now and then is nice but I also like real challenge).
So basically, we need to go into a vault where something's gotten loose. So we do so, find a strange monster that's escaped from a mirror. We learn that the shards of the mirror might help stop it's fast healing, but by the time someone's gotten the shards next to the melee, we've already beating the thing to death. Remember, our party was on the powerful side for the tier.
What made it nice is that the creature isn't one of the standard evil outsiders, so it's a good break from the "cold iron or silver?" routine. This was still the heftiest fight, but not terrifying. Afterwards, we all agreed that Zarta was right to say that it's about time someone starts real work on dealing with the stuff the society keeps locked inside these vaults. After all, this creature could've been dealt with ages ago, but instead now there's some dead interns. So this mission does a good job of justifying the existence of the Dark Archive.
So, although there's quite a bit of combat in this scenario, it's not particularly hard. There's some RP in it, but you can keep that either minimal or expand on it according to taste; most of it isn't mission-critical but it's available if you want it. I think the strong point of this scenario is that it actually does what it promises: it shows you the new directions for the factions in a way that makes sense.
Combats: 4 Not too hard, but both SC and DA were interesting. All the fights were entertaining.
Story: 4 The scenario does what it's supposed to do. The backdrop adds some flavor but doesn't distract.
RP: 3 It's got possibilities, but not a whole lot of RP is required.
Miscellaneous: 4 We went on to play the first S6 scenarios with roughly the same party, and this was an enjoyable teambuilding exercise. And feeling like a bunch of badass veterans showing the people at home how it's done was enjoyable.
I'll probably GM this at some point as well, it looks like a nice bag of things to work with as a GM.
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