This was an adventure that started out with an abstracted dungeon crawl, a mechanic that I always prefer to slowly going through room after room with nothing in them. The chase scene through the dungeon was one that I hadn't done before, with a mechanism that I was unfamiliar with, but still worked fairly well. Encounters were done well, but with 7 people playing up, the early ones gave us a taste of combat, but were left wanting.
Now, what gave me my first taste of real fear in a PFS module. The trap room. This was a trap that could have gone very very badly with everyone in the party dead. I fear that this trap will remain with me forever and will cause me to spend unnecessary gold on items that will either negate or mitigate its effects.
The final encounter? Challenging! I wasn't sure that we would actually be able to pull off the final fight without at least one character unconscious, but with tenacity and teamwork we all made it through.
There were scary moments which kept us all on our toes. All in all, this was a fantastic module that could have used a little more party interaction, but was entertaining and left an emotional scar in me. Four stars!
Just finished The God's Market Gamble (PFS 3-18) playing at low tier levels 1-2 with my Cleric 2. I gotta be honest with you guys. This took our table with 7 people a long time to do, mainly because of the large numbers of chase challenges that requires skills that no one character at 1st level would have. But .. the thing is. That chase scene was FUN. REALLY FUN. Two of us at the table had done The Disappeared together and the token that we got for that scenario was useful during the chase scene and we made full use of it, which made it even more fun.
We also did things in the wrong order which made things .. interesting for us to do. We also skipped over 1 interview, but at that point, we were running out of time for our slot, so we had to hurry things along. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give this one all 4 or 5 stars even though there were flaws in the scenario, just because the entire table was a laugh riot the entire time. Big props to the GM who ran the game as well, who was unflappable in the face of players who were mostly interested in the luls.
There were some different concepts used in the storyline for this scenario that I hadn't seen before, which made for a great way to go through the different challenges and a way out of some of the typical murder hobo antics that many groups get into. Setting, pacing and interesting content gives this one 5 stars.
I played this scenario a few weeks ago at my local Lodge in San Diego, CA. I'll say it straight out, even though I personally could not have done some of the tasks manually, this remains one of my favorite scenarios. Although there were only a few combat encounters, the ones that were there were enough to challenge the party and made it a memorable scenario. Escaping by the skin of our teeth was terrifying experience, one that I remember with fondness. Kudos to Paizo for this scenario and I hope they make more like it.
Just got done playing this at my local Lodge. This was a hugely fun module, with unexpected twists, turns, some nasty surprises with a good ol' fashioned dungeon crawl. I liked how some of the dungeon crawling was abstracted out as well as the implementation of chase mechanics.
