<Played through this one at low-tier in a Play by Post, then reviewed the PDF from the perspective of a GM>
The PCs are hired to infiltrate a big Corporate research station, exploit and manipulate a foolish (and heavily drugged) scion of the company, secure critical data, and get out without getting their cover identities blown. Or at least, that's the idea based on the blurb and the briefing, given in authoritarian fashion by the frosty Historia-7. The fantasy being explored here is almost a futuristic space-heist, but the scenario fails utterly at fulfilling it, delivering a humdrum railroad of forced and contrived encounters. Players are not only given no agency in resolving the heist, but the specified sequence of events doesn't hit on any of the tense scenarios that one would expect out of a heist/infiltration.
A memorable NPC and some cool window dressing at the unique location redeem the scenario a little, providing some interesting things to look at as the players are shunted from encounter to encounter. Nevertheless, I have a hard time recommending this one. Any player interested in skullduggery and infiltration will likely be disappointed by the lack of depth here. While any other player looking for good social encounters will probably find this lacking as well.
The Good (spoilers):
Envar is a well-realized mix of narcissistic rich kid and incredibly deranged drug addict (a little reminiscent of the NPC you escort in PFS#13 Prince of Augustana) and it doesn't take long for him to become intolerable. That's a success in my mind. The scenario made me hate the dude in something like half a dozen lines of dialogue.
The Brilliance's unique location and internal features (Ilia Tamm corporate holograms were awesome to get you in the mode to smash some corp faces :>) were certainly both unusual and interesting. I got some Shadowrun vibes from portions of the scenario.
The Bad (spoilers):
The entire structure of the scenario is tremendously unsatisfying. You're hired to infiltrate a corp base, trick Envar into leaking corporate secrets, then stealing data and getting home without busting your cover. But the scenario doesn't really involve that kind of espionage at all. Instead, you escort around an intolerable man-child as he goes on a drug-fueled trip until he eventually leads you directly to his mom's office and tells you the password to her computer with no prompting what so ever. The players have no agency in the events here. They get to make no choices, not even fake choices where there's only one reasonable option. No, the scenario assumes that they will placidly follow around Envar until the railroad of encounters is exhausted and deus ex machina puts them exactly where they needed to get to.
The illustrate the high degree of railroading: Whether or not the party succeed at impressing Envar in the arena encounter, and whether or not they successfully win in the arena, Envar suggests they join him for a tour. If they fail the other options to impress him, he still takes them with him on the tour. Once on the tour, if they mention NOTHING about Ilia Tamm's office, the adventure tells the GM to have Envar bring it up and offer to take them there out of nowhere! OTOH, If the party wants to go to Ilia's office early (and honestly, what PC wants to hang out with this guy if they don't have to), well, tough luck, the office is only unoccupied for a set amount of time. And until that time the party *must* entertain Envar, no other choices or options are possible.
The encounters are all unrelated to the mission at hand. A gladiatorial fight should not be the only way to get Envar's attention, nor even the best way. Plus it stands out as bizarre that an orbital research station has a deathmatch arena. The elementals make no sense ('whoops clumsy Envar lowered the shield that stops deadly elementals from infiltrating the station!!!'), and the drug dealer is 'defeated' by having fun with them.
On that topic: A drug-dealer shows up to rough up Envar for money and you're tasked with helping Envar get out of a tight spot. So how do you do that? Well, you can fight them of course. But the story assumes that instead of fighting, or tricking, or escaping, or anything normal, you'll want to play a game with them. Indeed, the drug dealer is satisfied regarding the debts if you beat them at a video game. This felt like nonsense.
But perhaps the most unsatisfying element here is the token 'infiltration' aspect. The PCs set up secret identities by rolling Disguise or Computers checks at the beginning, but there's no other scene where they benefit from taking actions to conceal their identities. Barring GM circumstance bonuses, they can RP exactly like their normal character with no impact to the scenario. Furthermore, it seems statistically almost impossible to ensure that every character has a good enough disguise to avoid being pierced by one of the security staff on the station. Even if every PC has a +9 on their disguise or computers check (and they generally will not), every single PC's disguise must beat a DC of 13 on the first security checkpoint and DC 15 at the second. Even with this degree of optimization, the chance that every PC's disguise will be good enough to pass inspection is only 18% in Tier 1-2. And that's a party OPTIMIZED around these checks.
Plus, the impact of the infiltration failing is practically non-existent. You still get access to the office, still get the data, and then only afterward do you have to deal with an easy space combat.
EDIT: Updated to include GMing impressions.
<Played and GM'd this one at low-tier in PbP>
The First Mandate revolves around a gala event celebrating the successes of the Starfinder Society in the wake of the Scoured Stars event. The PCs are invited to take part and help impress the visitors, and of course, things at the gala take a turn for the worse. All in all its a tight concept with some fun interlinking parts, such as the way the people you manage to influence in turn have an effect on later parts of the scenario. This is very cute, and satisfying from a player angle.
On the other hand, this scenario really is a test for the GM. If the GM is either not into roleplaying their NPCs, or not capable of handling 5+ different unique personalities simultaneously, a large portion of this scenario can come off as hollow and unimpressive. The write-up provides a lot of useful detail to help the GM, but it really comes down to their RP chops.
Furthermore, the latter parts of the scenario are... wonky at best. The events as described don't make much sense and require the group to accept some illogical stuff in order for (cool and dramatic) things to happen as written. Its awkward to execute from the GM's side, and can feel weird and nonsensical from the players' side.
The Good (spoilers):
Well fleshed out NPC dignitaries for the PCs to interact with. Enough depth to really get some tasty RP going. Each of the NPCs feel distinct and interesting. There's a couple pages *just* devoted to these NPCs in the pdf.
Cool concept of finding and unraveling a plot to assassinate the First Seeker. There are a couple of moments that really feel like you're uncovering things yourself rather than being on rails (unlocking the computer and making sense of both the scale shine and hair styling products was the part that really stood out as fun).
The "Cinematic" approach can lead to some memorable scenes, with PCs defusing bombs against what feels like a time-limit, or unmasking the culprit! Or even the Obsidian Spider's sweeping Luwazi off an exploding stage if things go wrong!
The Bad (spoilers):
One of my pet-peeves in PFS and SFS is what I call "skill-spam" encounters. The kinds of encounters where what you choose to do almost doesn't matter, but rather you're expected to execute some arbitrary number of skill checks to succeed. There's something soulless in that experience, no matter what kind of narrative glue ties it together. Unfortunately, this scenario has skill-spam in spades, as you have multiple rounds of roleplay and then skill checks by every single player. The roleplay is fun, rolling skills for an arbitrary number of rounds is not.
There is precious little context to the gala other than "people are here to celebrate the Starfinder Society's return". The players get blurbs that help them guess how to suck up to each of the guests, but there's no larger goal in sight other than the suck up to them. It makes the whole thing feel kind of pointless. This is reinforced later by the First Seeker's announcement being almost nothing of importance. (GMs who have read or experienced 1-11, 1-13, 1-17, or 1-99 will be able to adlib some additional teasers about future content in the wrap-up to this scenario!)
Risking the First Seeker's life in order to show off to some dignitaries makes little sense (especially ironic when considering the Scoured Stars), and full boons for the scenario rely on doing the flashy and stupid tactic rather than the safe one. Well meaning players may not realize what they're missing out on by taking the safe option!
This is the big problem: As written, simultaneously finding the bombs and uncovering Triloteya makes no sense. As written, there are no mechanics for actually finding Triloteya. If they know she looks like Sanivvi, do they just automatically spot her in round 1 if they head to the AV room? How would they know to head to the AV room, over, say, the kitchens? Can they ask around to identify her? Why would they even assume she's still nearby? There's no guidance on any of this.
Furthermore, if the PCs don't identify her as taking on Sanivvi's appearance (by failing the earlier hacking challenge), there's no guidance in the pdf on how things are different. On top of that, what's the time scale for Luwazi's appearance? If the PCs decide not to touch the bombs at all and search for Triloteya first, there's no tension. Being certain there are only 5 bombs requires OOC information.
The whole disarming the bombs scenario makes little sense and assumes the PCs reach conclusions that they have little reason to reach. They have no way to know (in character) that distracting Triloteya is necessary unless they've already found her. And most of what counts as a distraction makes little to no sense... why would Triloteya spend any time paying attention to Zo! for example? All of these elements feel super arbitrary! In my run most of them had to be conveyed to us out of character.
Both when I played this and when I ran this, this scene involved a lot of fudging, a lot of OOC "It's just this way because that's how it's written", and a lot of GM improvising to guide PCs back on track.
The combats are very plain, with open, unobstructed rooms and few targets. You can have a scenario that minimizes combat but still have fun encounters. These were very basic and pretty dull.
<Played through this scenario at low tier in a Play by Post.>
What a cool scenario! After a mission briefing that can essentially be summarized as 'go explore this place and report back' the PCs really do get to explore a very odd and frankly unnerving location. They get free reign to check things in whichever order they like, and the revelations come directly from their investigation rather than being fed to them. This is so refreshing in comparison to most of the speedy on-rails scenarios out there. And unlike other more sandboxy adventures, there is something relevant and interesting around most every corner.
Some spoilers for the scenario ahead...
The Good:
Piecing together the state of the temple and its devotees is incredibly organic. You come across people behaving oddly and can't help but want to figure out why. The hints are doled out room-by-room, and the more explicit ones are deeper within the temple, so there's still some narrative progression to things. And wow can a GM make the worshipers really creepy with little effort.
The infiltration & corruption of the temple make proper sense. Players for once get a clear picture of the backstory and tragedy, as opposed to most scenarios where most of the story stays stuck with the GM.
The ambiance is awesome, with the pure white marble of the map contrasting the corruption.
The Bad:
My GM for this one fumbled on some of the NPCs, in part because they aren't given enough background and GM guidance. The RP interactions with them can come off as unsatisfying unless the GM really brings them to life on their own. This is a roleplay heavy scenario, so this could be a problem.
Most of the combat encounters feel like token inclusions.
Recently played through this scenario on low tier as a Play by Post, and then went back with my GM glasses to look at the PDF. Fugitive on the Red Planet is decent, with the story and setting as its strongest elements and a number of minor weaknesses in the actual content. No critical problems in my eyes, but enough to keep it out of the group of truly excellent scenarios.
It's biggest weaknesses: Its just too straightforward, and awfully short. Furthermore:
Negatives (spoilers within):
The city of Maro is totally glossed over after a quick intro. Gathering information there is a matter of a single skill check and then you're off to Tasch. Think 1-2 minutes of table time. Very disappointing!
Gathering info in Tasch is also nigh-immediate. Information about Talbot flows so freely that it feels like the adventure is on rails (especially after the easy time you had at Maro). If not for the forced encounters in the bar (social vs. Philt and combat vs. Maarbadvae) players would be able to zip straight to the mine. Both of these encounters feel like distractions from the goal anyway, like they should be something you could skip (even though the scenario makes it clear you should force players into both of them).
Encounters in the bar seem way too trigger happy, it makes little sense that both Philt and Maarbadvae would resort to killing a group of armed strangers before trying other tactics. Philt's actions are particularly odd ('Because I suspect you might make the job of my law abiding corporation more difficult, I'll kill you right now.')
The mine feels sparse and generic. There's not much to see or do there other than go right to Talbot.
There is a total of 1 quickly resolved social encounter (typically), and two combat encounters, making this an extremely short scenario. It doesn't help that there isn't much exploration and the ready flow of information limits the amount of RP a typical group might end up doing.
This is another adventure where the macguffin has no mechanical role. This is a PHILOSOPHERS STONE (fake), the final encounter could have been incredibly memorable, with Talbot using the stone to transmute walls to acid, ceilings to mud, and more. Instead, it plays no role. Very disappointing!
The short length of this scenario and the lack of memorable mechanical elements means that this scenario lives and dies by how well the GM can present the story and setting and entice players to engage with the roleplay. The themes here are evocative, and there's a bit of a moral quandary as well to get players engaged. Whether your group of players sinks their teeth into this quandary is probably the biggest factor in whether this scenario will seem like a cool one, or a forgettable one.
Recently played through this scenario (by PbP on the forums, for what its worth) and then went back with my GM glasses on to take a look at the scenario write up. This scenario is great fun and more than a little bit silly & lighthearted. The stakes are low (for the most part) and there are colorful and ridiculous NPCs wherever you turn. As an introduction to Starfinder Society it falls a bit flat, only providing the vaguest of outlines about each of the factions. It also has some issues for tone, perhaps an over-reliance on skill checks, and a lack of unifying narrative. As a result, I don't think this is the best scenario to introduce a new player to Starfinder Organized Play, though its certainly a very fun scenario on its own merits.
The Good:
There are some great and varied mini-quests here. The junk race is a subsystem done incredibly right. Its well tuned to provide a decent chance of success if the players prep well, while also allowing for plenty of suspense as the dice can spell doom for the PCs efforts. The scenario write-up manages to provide a lot of hooks and advice for the GM in a fairly small space, covering most of the approaches the PCs might attempt: social, skills, trickery, and more.
The Exo-guardians pit players against a very bizarre alien, and while its unlikely to down any players, it can feel pretty threatening at first level! At the same time the PCs get a juxtaposition against buying an album for a diehard fan. This scenario does an amazing job of characterizing Ziggy as an eccentric to match some of the colorful VCs we met back in Pathfinder.
The Bad:
The Wayfinders mission feels like it was crunched for page space. There is almost nothing to subduing the alien. Not enough detail about the creature and environment is provided to allow for RP-ing a solution that makes sense. Instead, skill-checks stand in for narrative development in a terribly awkward way. This is one of my pet peeves in PFS scenarios (when what could be interesting encounters/tasks are reduced to a series of skill checks), so I'm sad to see it here.
The worst is probably the Dataphiles mission though. Some of my issues with it:
The mission requires you to steal previously stolen data, and then rather than returning it to its rightful owner, you need to hand it over for the personal enrichment of the Dataphiles faction leader. Lawfully aligned characters will likely have an issue with such an act, and even chaotic characters may balk (as it seems suicidal to go up against a giant corp for such a vague benefit).
While the briefing prioritizes recovery of the data, with recruitment of the hacker as a secondary objective, the write-up focuses almost entirely on helping the hacker. There isn't even any information on where the data (the contents of which is never explained) might reside for players that want to prioritize the stated objective! This mission presupposes that the players will follow a very narrow track and provides little to no detail on alternative solutions (literally the only alternative suggested is what happens if the PCs kill Ceren, even though there should be plenty of other options).
Furthermore managing to fool a giant corporation and all its resources is thematically out of line with what a 1st level character should be able to accomplish. If the players (seemingly rightly) assume they don't stand a chance of forging Ceren's death and new identity, they are likely to try a different strategy. There is simply not enough structure or information here for the GM to resolve alternative solutions without creating things entirely from scratch. On top of that, a PC group that invents their own method of helping Ceren and/or retrieving the data is explicitly rewarded with 0 bonus rewards (the scenario only grants the bonus if the death certificate / new identity are well prepared).
This is another mission where things boil down to out-of-character GM prodding and skill checks (especially if you want to do your players a solid and not let them miss out on rewards). Ugh!
Despite a few issues, there is a lot room here for both fun RP and interesting encounters. With the junk race as a highlight, I can absolutely recommend this scenario to existing PFS/SFS players!
Recently finished going through this one as a player in a PbP (Play by Post).
When I think about what makes for a good PFS session, I think:
- Varied encounters (this one has them)
- Enough information for the players to both speculate and investigate the plot (6-10 has just enough to be interesting)
- Needs to have a satisfying narrative arc for the players (yep! The newbie party goes from errand boys to recovering something important on their own initiative)
- A mix of combat, non-combat and RP (check on all three counts!)
- Memorable NPCs (Janira is back!)
- Cool twists (yeah, quite a bit of intrigue to be had here!)
Wounded Wisp succeeds on all these fronts, delivering an interesting and well-rounded adventure that is likely to be memorable for some time. Top it off with handy boons and chronicle purchases and its no wonder that people like it as well as they do.
There are still a couple of areas that feel weak:
Spoilers for the scenario:
The encounter under the Wounded Wisp is really out of place, so close to a safe area. Also, law abiding characters don't have a good excuse to break into Fimbrik's house, potentially stalling the scenario.
Other than those two, everything else worked well.
This scenario also stands out as one of the few that gives a good sense of accomplishment and meaning at the end. This is reinforced by the handout recieved after the completion of the scenario, that details the impact of your actions. Its really satisfying to have something like this!
Played in a PbP game, coming at it from the perspective of a first "real PFS" experience (PFS rules, random group of players).
I loved this scenario from the perspective of introducing us to being a Pathfinder. There were ample reminders to take notes and be prepared for anything, and the bonus free consumables gave us a toolbag of tricks to use when we needed them. Janira is a fun character. The guidance from her is likely invaluable to players new to Pathfinder, and her enthusiasm is written so strongly that you can't help but RP along with her.
The concept behind the adventure seems interesting. Not only are you becoming confirmed Pathfinders, but there are mysterious gillmen hiding out in caves and conducting rituals.
Unfortunately, the meat of the adventure inside the cave is ruined because...
Adventure spoilers:
The plot pans out into nothing much.
The gillman you locate can be RP'd with, but doesn't reveal anything exciting. The cave is just a place some gillmen come to chill. Heck, the source of the recent safety problems has been dealt with before the party even gets there. Plus, along the way you deal with bland and unmotivating threats that reveal next to nothing about the cave or the story behind the necromancer. Its like the internal part of the cave is one big handwave to say: "I guess you had an adventure in there?"
The Aroden bit went over most of our heads and didn't really feel like a revelation or important in any way. Just another piece of vaguely notable scenery that we dutifully took notes on and had no reason to spare any more thoughts on.
Of course, the encounter after leaving the cave was awesome. Swingy, but with just enough opportunities to play tactically (at least in our group that lacked a 2-hander wielder). Our Janira went down early and we had a bit of nailbiting with if she had managed to stabilize. That the writing manages to draw you in to care about her in such a short time is a testament to the author. :>
I played this in a home game with an APL5 party playing low tier. We threw the faction missions back in for fun.
The Jester's Fraud is surprisingly excellent. Coming off of the back of a bunch of very linear and restricted scenarios in season one, we really enjoyed being able to stretch our wings in this more sandboxy environment. Chatting with NPCs, pursuing faction missions, and holding party strategy meetings to determine our plan of action was really fun, but also really time consuming. Our approach to PFS scenarios generally requires us to take 4-6 hours per scenario, but this one took much closer to 9 or 10. Since it was a home game we did not have a strict time limit (our DM didn't need to prod us along) but I can imagine that would have a hard time fitting in a fixed time-slot.
Some spoilers for the story and encounters are below.
The Good:
The auction at the end of the scenario was a delight, with different factions balanced against each other and plenty of ways for the PCs to gain the item they seek. After some back and forth we settled on ambushing the auction's winner after they left the town, which apparently allowed us to skip a lot of potential combat encounters including one against the titular Jester himself. The terrain and situation is rich enough to allow for tons of different strategies.
Finding the name of Bourtze's heir turned into a mini-adventure of its own as we uncovered secret affairs and intimidated household servants.
The Taldor flavor is strong here, with warring houses and enough intrigue to serve as a solid (and relevant) backdrop. The plot is also solid with only a couple of loose ends and plenty of actors with their own fleshed out parts.
The scenario supports a partially nonlethal approach if desired. Only one combat encounter is truly mandatory.
The entire thing is very RP friendly with tons of non-hostile (or potentially non-hostile) NPCs to interact with.
The Bad:
The combat encounters are a bit all over the place. Multiple encounters with CR1 bandits are too easy by this point, but low tier also has some pretty deadly ones like the first against the hags and the third against the slug. The hags generally get the ambush, have tools to deal with dangerous PCs (grab and fog cloud) and have solid defenses. The average damage of a hag that lands all three of its natural attacks is also really high: 48! This is enough to knock most level 5 PCs down from full to unconscious in one go and their reach in such an enclosed environment means that spellcasters can easily be at risk. We only survived by blowing tons of resources and still did it by the skin of our teeth (and perhaps with some DM favor).
The leads coming out of Evondemor are pretty loose. Picking up the trail with survival is almost impossible (DC40) and there's little reason to believe any of the townsfolk would know where the thief is going (The written scenario offers this as the only other option for finding the trail... but its night and all the guards other than Bourtze himself were killed so who would have spotted him?). After struggling for a bit we proceeded via DM mercy, and this continued as we followed the trail after encounter 2. This was pretty unsatisfying.
For lack of a better term, the scenario isn't "tight". By opening up the possibilities it also opens up parties to decision paralysis and feeling lost. We largely enjoyed this aspect, but I can see other parties having a problem.
Overall, we had a lot of fun! I hope we'll see more scenarios like this one as we continue through season 1.
Played in a home game in low tier with an APL 5 party. We added the faction missions back in for flavor. After playing, I reviewed the scenario pdf with my GM glasses on.
Sniper of the Deep serves as a great example of some of the mediocre, awkward scenario design in season 1. Its story is uninteresting, its flow and pacing uneven, it has the potential to stall out without leads for the players to pursue, its difficulty is unusually out of line, and ultimately it culminates without much fanfare.
Its positive aspects are probably its varied encounters and the unusually testing environments. The players really are challenged to be prepared or face the consequences.
Barring the other issues with this scenario, I think this is one of the most badly presented stories in season 1:
Spoiler:
At its core, its the old "missing pathfinder + get the macguffin" worn out trope. The scenario only provides the barest bones of motivation for anything happening. The beginning provides no interesting lore or background, no reason to believe that the pathfinder or the macguffin are actually important, or any indication of what may have happened. The VC is specifically designed to tell you nothing. If the party is smart enough to interrogate the antagonists at the Lusty Mermaid, they get very little else to go on: just that Airk is dead and he had some notes to the location of the macguffin.
Even the DM background information provides no interesting motivations for any of the action. Dargo seems to want the macguffin just to sell it (it is solid gold after all), and all the other antagonists seem to be motivated by gold. The titular Sniper may as well be a stash of gold bricks for all it matters.
All this lack of story makes the whole scenario dry and flavorless.
The combats also leave a lot to be desired:
Spoiler:
The underwater environment of the second half, as well as the defenses of the swarm and incorporeal encounters, make everything drag on forever. By today's standards, none of the encounters are extremely deadly in low tier, but they do take a lot of rounds to resolve as the players do half damage or less due to the crippling environment. And those rounds lack any dynamic element, as the movement difficulties make every fight a stand-in-place slugfest. As a result, some encounters went on for half a dozen rounds or more. I wasn't the only player that got fatigued (or even bored) by the proceedings.
And finally, the entire scenario is written in a very adversarial way:
Spoiler:
There's a clear preoccupation in the writeup on penalizing the players for their mistakes rather than rewarding them for their successes. NPCs are written to be uncommunicative at best, but actively adversarial if players misstep. For example: mentioning Airk or Dargo at the Lusty Mermaid immediately gives a -4 penalty on diplomacy checks, despite it being the first thing a party is likely to do. Even if players are successful on negotiating with or diplomacy-ing Larro, he attacks them anyway. The entire side-branch involving retrieving Airk's body is pointless, providing additional peril to the players while giving them nothing in terms of story, hints on how to proceed, or even loot.
The fights on the ship are in a light fog + the slanted deck is difficult terrain + half the fights are underwater + the enemies mostly ignore these penalties. Players that are smart enough to enter the ship from the outside and underwater are rewarded with the Skum fight and the undead fight combining with each other.
It just sums up into a general feeling that the whole adventure is needlessly grueling. This feeling is inconsistent with the importance of the scenario. I'd understand a grueling scenario if it was an infiltration of Geb, or a back-and-forth campaign at the Worldwound, but these are just some common thugs and thieves trying to get their hands on a hunk of gold. It's just not narratively "worth it".
As a GM, I likely will not want to run this scenario and I will likely recommend players stay away from it. Its a very poor example of what PFS is capable of and generally just isn't much fun.
I recently had a chance to play through this scenario in a home game. We had an APL4 party in the 3-4 tier. We also added the faction missions in for fun.
The Infernal Vault is a surprisingly solid scenario, held together by varied encounters, a little bit of puzzling, some well built enemies (with surprisingly competent selection of feats/spells), and interesting faction missions that promote non-smash-and-grab gameplay. Sure its totally and unashamedly linear. The great design along the way makes up for the railroading.
The Good:
Spoiler:
- There are two interesting "think before you act" encounters, and while neither of them are difficult, they give you the satisfaction of having correctly read the situation. The disk puzzle was a bit contrived, and the prestacked disks matching the correct combination was anticlimactic. The trapped hallway with a single enemy as a lure was great though. The enemy's tactics made sense and the players could read into the enemy's actions along with the layout of the environment to draw logical conclusions. This kind of design is way above the typical level of quality in season 1.
- There are multiple encounters (Imps, Skeletons, Dretch) that reward good knowledge checks and being prepared for a variety of DR.
- Half the encounters are in challenging terrain situations, with narrow corridors and elevation changes. Very rewarding for good tactical play.
- Other half of the encounters include some diplomacy element to them, or at least allow for diplomatic solutions. This is pretty out of the ordinary for season 1.
- Faction missions all seemed to include some kind of nonlethal element, letting all players get into the right frame of mind for an adventure with multiple valid tactics.
- Enemies have much more solid builds than is typical in season 1. Celeena in particular is very solid, with choices on par with an average player character build (but with reduced wealth). She made for a pretty dangerous final encounter, though her relatively mediocre damage output and the tight quarters mean that she can't absolutely dominate.
The Bad:
Spoiler:
- The concept of the scenario was rather unexciting. While the individual elements were thematically good and logical (Chelaxian family has devils and traps guarding their wealth), the overall goal of the scenario was pretty dull. Mysterious plans to Absalom have been left around and the bad lady wants to get them. Feels like so many other scenarios.
- Very linear. Every room has one door in and one out and exactly one encounter. It doesn't even attempt to obscure the linearity of it all.
Overall, our group really enjoyed it. The writer clearly put a lot of care into making a solid adventure under the constraints of PFS, both from a thematic and gameplay standpoint.
I played through Cassomir's Locker in tier 3-4 as part of an APL 4 group.
I found this scenario's prequel, Shipyard Rats, to be a fairly unexciting scenario with a relatively weak story, but had high hopes for the sequel to develop into an interesting tale of Derro, mysterious cultists, and unusual kidnappings. This followup squanders everything that was built up in part 1 and delivers a dull and unsurprising adventure.
Scenario Plot Spoilers:
We end up rehashing part 1 almost in full. Some people are kidnapped, we find that a rat-based cult seems to be behind things, we get to their base and find everything, Derro show up and its implied that they're the masterminds behind the scenes. Been there, done that. What's next?
We get nothing new here that we haven't already done. The scenery certainly doesn't help things either. The sewer is incredibly generic and underutilized as an area. Both fights in it happen in places where it is unlikely the sewer will serve as a tool or obstacle. Cassomir Below has to be one of the least exciting places yet, with the entire town in the middle of an indistinct "underground space" and almost all of the houses devoid of anything interesting to fight or investigate. There is so little flavor in this ancient town that I can't really even describe it after the fact. This was a big opportunity to make something cool! Why was it squandered to badly?
The cult also continues to evade any sense of a larger objective or purpose. None of the members here have any indication of a grander plan or any subtlety to them that comes through to the player. The twin brother to boss-man in Shipyard Rats is an unremarkable encounter with no clear ties to the larger story. Even the derro just seems to be "there" rather than having a clear goal. In the end it comes through that there is an insane rat-loving cult that is kidnapping people for "reasons". Bleh! What a lame story.
The encounters all seemed to be critically undertuned on the tier we played at. We routinely seemed to engage enemies that died to the smallest gust of wind and had no possibility of endangering us. We accidentally fought the second and third fights of the scenario in rapid succession and found it to be completely unthreatening. The elevation changes in that fight provided the only tactically interesting part of the scenario.
I found this scenario to be one of the most disappointing thus far, and my first to get a 2/5 rating.
Recently played through this one in a home game, playing through the 3-4 tier as a group with APL 4.
The good: A solid introduction and clear breadcrumbs led us from location to location without too much of a problem. Faction missions (we added them in) were a highlight, with some good RP opportunities. I also enjoyed how it managed to condense what felt like a longer adventure into the essentials that could fit in a scenario time-frame. The party gets to traipse over the city quite a bit before they're done.
The so-so: The thematic elements were all over the place. At the end I couldn't tell if things were supposed to be frightening, or laughable, or if any of the foes were meant to represent a threat larger than the few the party fought. We were informed afterwards by our DM that we missed some background due to not questioning the NPCs, but it neither seemed necessary nor beneficial to do so during the scenario (they seemed like typical madmen).
The bad: The tier we played in just seemed to be a cakewalk. There were a LOT of fights, but most seemed to be nothing but filler, ending in the first or second round even if we had started on the wrong foot. Many enemies seemed like they just didn't pose a realistic chance of facing PCs of the appropriate level. It led to a lot of "the only credible reason these guys would fight us is because they are insane"
The encounters:
After the session I took a peek at the stat blocks for our tier and my suspicions were absolutely confirmed. Most mook encounters were vs. CR 1/2s, usually the same enemies as low tier but with an additional member or two on their team. Compare this to the vastly more dangerous (and more appropriately CR'd) opponents in the other two tiers, and I start to wonder if maybe they were running out of space for additional stat blocks. Particularly trivial were the 4 1st level monks in the ship and the five 1st level fighters not long afterward. Both encounters seem to have no tricks to aid them against a higher level opponent and instead just crumple under the slightest offense. I'd forgive these encounters if either of them added anything to the story of the scenario, but neither seemed to matter in the least. The boss was also hilarious as a 2nd level cleric in tier 3-4 vs. an 8th level one in tier 6-7.
I recently played this scenario in a home game (playing down to low tier at the recommendation of our DM). This made most of the combats quite easy, but didn't detract too much from the overall feel of the scenario.
To discuss the elephant in the room:
The Final Encounter:
We were lucky that our group had a way to deal with this encounter, and I expect things would have gone pretty hard south if we didn't. After the not-too-unexpected surprise of deeper darkness we moseyed on out of the room and our cleric summoned up a beastie with tremorsense to deal with the boss more effectively.
I'm not a big fan of this kind of very binary encounter (you have a solution or you don't) and I can imagine it being way worse for lower leveled players.
The story felt quite solid, with a good amount of mystery packed into a short time. Sure it was more "told" than shown to the players, but the parts you got to interact with (the machine and the last couple of encounters) worked well to reinforce everything.
Story:
The handouts seem to spell out Skeldon as the bad guy in the scenario, stealing from the Dark folk and sacrificing Pathfinders. I approached the final encounter with the impression that it might be possible to negotiate with any dark folk and/or let them extract their vengeance (...like the title of the scenario... y'know). That impression what swiftly dispersed when my PC got shanked for serious damage in the first round of the deeper darkness effect despite taking no actions to help Skeldon.
Also, the journal hypes up his work in the darklands, only for the area under the lodge to be a large cavern and one more room... what a letdown.
So overall: Spotty but decent combats, great flavor, while the end soured me a little, I had a lot of fun with this one.
I recently played through Citadel of Flame in a home game with a 3-man group of lvl4 PCs, vs a mix of the upper and lower tier encounters. As a result, I'm not really in a good place to say how balanced things were.
The flavor here was really entertaining. A few bits stand out as particularly memorable (listed in the spoiler below) but overall it managed to fill me with incredible paranoia about what lied in wait for us. It manages to take your out-of-character thoughts and expectations and plays with them in order to make you overly concerned about what is coming.
Spoiler:
The initial discovery of the Sarenite corpses, the Holy arrows, and the inscription at the entrance tripped our "incoming demon" alarms. From then on we snuck about expecting trouble at every turn. The rooms do a great job of playing up how Moloch-centric the scenery is, never letting you forget what might be around the next corner.
We correctly skipped participating in the trials in the tower, but that didn't stop me from wondering what awful thing would happens from flaunting the "rules" of the tower. My DM played up the sounds of fire from above so we kept expecting more fire elementals to rush down at any moment. Also, I was convinced the sentinel statue would come to life to pursue us for not kneeling. It all made for good in-character opportunities for RP.
The post final boss seal was suitably eerie, and left me second-guessing our decision on what to do with it. On the way out with the smith we had chosen to kidnap, I was incredibly convinced that he was possessed and that there would be one last encounter. I was surprised and a bit disappointed that that didn't turn out the be the case!
The first encounter was very clever, though my own reasoning for what was happening had me barking up the wrong tree before we worked it out. Second encounter ended up being a pushover due to our character builds.
Unfortunately, the final boss ended up being a bit disappointing as the pets were easily dealt with and our Ranger handled the boss before she got to do much.
Overall, I had a lot of fun with this scenario, though the resolution was a bit disappointing after how much the environment and atmosphere hype things up.
Recently played in a home game (high tier) that has been working through the old PFS scenarios. The setting and overall ambiance worked really well for me, though the details of the plot (beyond "here's a macguffin to recover and a princess to rescue") were not only hard to decipher but also seemingly meaningless to the resolution of the story. I had a lot of fun with the idea that a minotaur could be a damsel in distress, though...
Spoiler:
it seemed that the scenario was written such that the minotaur chooses not to aid the party against its captor? As soon as I spotted it in the final encounter I figured we'd need its help, but our DM left him too dazed to help even after we spent time healing him mid-combat
The beginning and end were both fun (I particularly found the boss chamber to be brilliant), but the mechanics of the middle sections were very frustrating.
Spoiler:
My instinct when reaching the maze was to immediately investigate and make sense of how the maze worked to solve the puzzle. Pretty quickly I got cut off with a mention that there would be no puzzle solving. The maze had prescribed methods for traversal. So we were stuck applying skill checks (and mostly failing them) until the scenario decided we had had enough. It felt very frustrating and ultimately like the scenario was playing itself with our characters merely along for the ride.
This was compounded by the water room, where despite wanting to solve some kind of puzzle and work out a solution, we were again stuck making checks until the scenario was satisfied. I was pretty sour on the overly rigid mechanics by the time we resolved everything.
"Heroes able to communicate with the boar might be able to change her attitude from hostile, but Nature checks aren’t sufficient to persuade the boar to halt her attacks."
This is a more thematic way of saying "if you have Wild Empathy you can make Diplomacy checks to Make an Impression on the boar, but merely being trained in Nature isn't sufficient."
This is the entry for Wild Empathy:
"You have a connection to the creatures of the natural world that allows you to communicate with them on a rudimentary level. You can use Diplomacy to Make an Impression on animals and to make very simple Requests of them. In most cases, wild animals will give you time to make your case."
So yes I agree that using a class ability should give a PC a good chance to resolve an encounter peacefully. In this case that would mean setting a low DC for the Diplomacy check to calm down the boar.
If a Druid PC isn't trained in Diplomacy they need to rectify that ASAP.
Starfinder Society GM. 1,112 posts (17,800 including aliases). 40 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 12 Organized Play characters. 30 aliases. 
