Hmm's page

All in all, I liked this one. Mike Bramnik captured the personalities of the Pathfinder Leadership as more fully themselves than we have seen in ages. The lab was appropriately creepy, and the story is great.

As a bonus, it runs fast. My party of five got through in four hours. Not bad at all! Plus, I loved all the PF1 callbacks. It was so lovely having a previous plot from First Edition get this sort of callback for dedicated players, and my PF2-only players enjoyed it as well.

Mechanics-wise, a previous reviewer was correct that the pangolin battle drags a bit, but otherwise I had no complaints. This one was a pleasure to run.

Hmm

Now, let's talk about this adventure. It was pretty good at what it was supposed to be, a big bug hunt.

Pregens

I rather liked the five pregens. Although they came with some of the usual pregen errors (notably when it came to grenade reflex saves), all five characters were colorful, entertaining and functional. The pregens skewed towards combat, which was appropriate because this adventure was very combat-focused.

Some nice touches included the mission letters in the navy blue sidebars. It was a little weird having a Free RPG Adventure where the pregens did not know each other, but that gave us a chance to have them all meet up together.

I created one-page cheat sheets for Pregen abilities that you can print. We laminated them back-to-back with the pregen character sheets to make an easy reference guide for our players.

Operation Seaside Pregen Cheat Sheets

Adventure Flow

The adventure flow was a little weird to me, in that the party was not sure why they should play games in the carnival when they had an adventure to do, but I encouraged them to play the games and they had a fun time with it. The Tunnel of Love was especially entertaining, as I gave the party no instruction of what to do while in the Tunnel of Love, but did ask my players what they were doing. The two who went in, Valimina the human solarian and the Jasacus the envoy, explained that they were using the time to get to know each other better as buddies and comrades. Valmina complimented the envoy's interview style, and the Jasacus complimented the cool solar weapon, and so I described the tunnel raining down holographic hearts, playing "Can you feel the love tonight", and giving them a fabulous light show as the waters took them faster and faster through the ride, ending with their very welcome prize.

We started on the Midway, went on to the ship, and then I had their contacts urge them to search the Maintenance tunnels to finish clearing swarm out of the areas.

My run time for the whole adventure was 3.5 hours, with plenty of time for roleplay and sound effects.

Combats

All the combats were fairly straightforward with some fun monster abilities, but were fairly short. My party had a good time squashing their bugs. I was glad that some of the swarm creatures could be one-shotted, and that some were considerably scarier. I had to ask my party for trigger warnings before describing some of the swarm creatures and making nasty bug noises while playing them. The fight in the engine room was pretty epic. The solarian loved going Supernova in the middle of all those swarm eggs.

Gear Drops

There were some nice gear drops in this one, so you'll want item cards, but I will note that the party that I had made their way through the adventure using almost none of the items.

Maps

My main complaint with this adventure were maps. Why did we have that huge map for Maintenance Tunnels when there was only one encounter that happened there? I wound up drawing a single circle for the encounter space with some short tunnels leading off it, and labeling it 'Ye Olde Maintenance Tunnel'.

The map for the midway wasn't bad, but I wound up subbing in the Starfinder Flip-Mat: Amusement Park instead of drawing the map. The flip mat was a pretty good substitute, especially since there is a ride off to the side that looks a bit like a toppled ferris wheel.

I did draw the starship, but it offered nothing special that could not be duplicated by one of our pre-existing starship maps. If you are short on prep time and looking for a map substitution, I suggest Starfinder Flip-Mat: Sunrise Maiden as a substitute.

Minis

Looking for minis for this adventure? Here are some printable cartoon minis.

Operation Seaside Minis

This scenario had a delightful social influence encounter with intriguing priests, each of which had their own unique twist on their faith. It also had a fun investigative sequence, a plot twist and two fairly challenging fights. My favorite character by far was Shadowbringer Nevis, the best Kuthite I have ever seen in either Pathfinder or Starfinder lore. However, we also really enjoyed visiting with the Damaritosh representative.

One of the PCs I GMed for was so moved by the description of Iomedae and fighting the good fight that they converted on the spot. I always like it when scenarios help PCs make self-discoveries and character growth.

Yes, this one runs a little short (about 3.5 hours if you luxuriate in the roleplay, which we totally did) but I considered that a bonus since our venue closes early. I did ding this scenario for poor editing and for not having more mechanical effects for the party also influencing some of the the non-featured delegates, but all-in-all I found this scenario quite enjoyable.

Bring back Shadowbringer Nevis in future scenarios!

As a starship fan I really loved what this scenario did. It gave us a chance to play with starship toys from the Starship Operations Manual, plus two separate starship combats. This does require that GMs feel comfortable about starship combat, and do a lot of advanced prep so that they have copies of the starship sheet with all the goodies pulled out, plus present some information about the various SOM toys so that players can make informed decisions. My players chose to go without shields, give their ship DR, do the ramming prow... and it made for a lively and fun combat.

If you are looking to run this as a GM, please note that Pirate Rob put together some lovely ship sheets on PFS Prep, which saved me a ton of time as a GM. I should also note that I'm a starship combat geek. A GM should not run this scenario unless they've run starship combat a few times elsewhere. The scenario lost a star from me for requiring above normal prep and expertise. But I still loved the chance to dive deep into the Starship Operations Manual and have a pretty good story too.

Kudos to the author for putting together something fun and challenging, and for coming up with a way to quickly build a prototype ship without dithering about build points. I'm a fan!

Hmm

Occult Mysteries has been great as a PFS GM understanding a bit more of the ongoing mysteries / controversies in Golarian's history. Does it answer the mysteries? No. And as a GM I'm glad. The mysteries of the setting are meant to be that. What it does is provide GMs with the tools and details to build upon these mysteries and intrigue your players into investigating them.

As far as I'm concerned, this book has exactly one usable piece of player crunch: the lucky number spell. On the other hand, it's a great spell that can be gotten in a wand and be used by most casters in PFS.

As a PFS GM (and a frequent player of Dark Archives characters), this book has provided material for me make several recent scenarios come alive for my players. It talks about the death of Aroden, the Harbinger of Fate cult and the Book of 1000 Whispers. It discusses the mysterious disappearance of the Number 5 issue of the Pathfinder Chronicles. It even has a chapter that compiles the theories of why gnomes left the first world -- a place perfect for creatures of caprice and chaos -- to come to the material plane with its order and mortality.

If you're looking for crunch, look elsewhere. If you're looking for real answers, look elsewhere. But... If you're seeking more information on the great questions of the Golarian setting, this is the book for you.