Pirate Rob's page

Certainty the best season intro in years. It thematically fits. It's got some nice replayable variety.

Unfortunately the weakest part is a fiery hazard that shows up every time you play rather than being able to skip.

Makes a good use of time as a resource as well.

Incorrectly described Chase, nonsensical hazards. Weird scaling. Incomplete stat blocks. A useless poorly described handout. In game benefits of questionable usefulness. A boon that's literally useless. (It duplicates an item on the sheet, but with a limit)

All the things that make me sad. Barely escapes 1 star due to being technically functional.

Scenario does a great job leaning into it's unfamiliar location.

Plays well into the metaplot and into part 2.

Accepts that characters can react differently when offered an opportunity to illegally snoop.

Encounters make sense, skill challenge is fun and interesting.

Fun concept, learning about the trains is neat but then there's a chase that doesn't matter that includes instructions that are impossible to follow.

The bit at the beginning with trains is really cool thematically but misuses the research subsystem and has some bonus checks needed before researching some individuals with no real instructions on repeating those checks and the like.

If I was solely reviewing from the player perspective it would be a solid 4 but too many issues drop it down to a 3.

Feels like 2 adventures smooshed together and cut down into 1.

Starts with a skill challenge with no Challenge Point Scaling, but with 6 player scaling. And it's weird scaling that requires 50% more success points. But with the way its set up multiple characters give you more opportunities to have the key skills but not more opportunities to make checks, meaning that if you say had 6 Valeros's you'd need 50% more successes, but you wouldn't actually get any more checks. So 4-5 higher level characters are going to have a much easier time than 6 lower level characters.

There's also weird overly wordy/misleading descriptions on how this challenge works.

After that is a combat with 9 stat blocks for each tier, (one shared).

Depending on Challenge Points you use the following combinations of stat blocks.

CFMRV
DGMSV
DFGMSV
DFGMRSV
DGGNSSV

With Hightier being

1234V
5634V
52634V
526348V
566788V

Ugh, such a pain to prep.

Also mechanics that care about the class of PCs. WTF. Nothing else in the game works like this and it shouldn't. Giant Frown here.

Of course even if you lose the combat it doesn't matter storywise even though it makes no narrative sense, it'd be sad to send everybody home early.

Followed by the Optional Encounter(s).
Do you have time? Roll a d6 and encounter something, maybe don't encounter something. Still have time? Do it again. Still have time? Well stop doing it now, we don't want too many encounters. Didn't have time at all? Well get the rewards anyway. So if you have time you have to win an encounter or get lucky, but if you're slow, get all the rewards anyway.

No map or guidance provided on tactics or motivation. Minimal scaling (Basically only at max CP, and it's just HP). Probably didn't want to commit too many words or maybe was a late addition after playtesting revealing that if you skipped any interesting RP with the first challenge you could complete it in about 15 minutes, and these extra encounters are to entertain/punish a table like that?

I don't know, the motives are inscrutable to me.

Why are there a bunch of different encounters here? Why are we rolling? It's an old school wandering monster table. They have their uses, like when you want to demonstrate an area's unsafe to limit time spent.

All that said, the adventure functions. There are no serious errors that make it unplayable. Should quite possibly be 3 stars but the class based mechanics and overly detailed/under detailed scaling, really make me unhappy.

Dangerous and varied encounters are good.

Custom exploration activities to represent a super dangerous location.

Related mechanics that mean you can't sit around indefinitely.

Cool bit of metaplot/story at the end.

It's basically everything I want out of a high level scenario.

Nice Dungeon Crawl. Almost too much content to fit into a 2 hour slot.

Nice follow-up to 4-15.

Scenario does a really good job feeling cinematic and engaging with larger interesting Golarion plots.

Investigation has good foreshadowing to what's going on, and the final battle feels appropriately cinematic, with just enough extras given to avoid the final boss from getting run over.

Scenario flows nicely, plot is appropriate for level 5-8 characters, with the plot unfolding into bigger things in a good way.

I'd really like to give this 5 stars, but some particularly poor editing (copy/pasting incorrect instructions from another scenario) reduce it to 4 stars.

Great scenario. A nice variety of different problem solving issues with benefits for not needlessly killing things.

This is really nice.

It's a chill low stakes diplomatic mission with NPCs who have enough description that they are a delight to roleplay. The mission makes sense, the challenges are largely fun and flavorful. (The poetry slam is a bit of a weak spot)

6 different challenges make it a pleasure to replay and allowing players to pick the challenges ensure they are picking something they can have a good time with.

The defense mini-game is really nice. Super happy to see that instead of the overused influence system.

Battles feel epic and glorious. A suitable adventure for high level characters with cool callbacks and use of existing locations and NPC. Unfortunately the fights are repetitive with only basically 2 sets of enemies (zombies or wights) reused over 4 encounters.
(Here's the zombie encounter with a friend. Here's the wight encounter. Here's the zombie encounter, here's the wight encounter with a friend) Although escalating environmental encounters in the final encounter help redeem it by upping the danger and providing a sense of urgency.

Interesting background that is completely inaccessible to PCs is also a ding against.

All that said suitably epic and enjoyable, but the encounters lack variety and the backstory doesn't come out.

Well done influence system. Flavorful NPCS.

Multiple development/editing issues, references to nonexistent conditions, unclear reward conditions.

Weird railroad in the middle of the adventure to a weak encounter that's hours away from the important location you really should be staying at.

Cool encounters at the beginning and end but final one has some issues. Also really need some notes on the terrain to keep from being a giant featureless wasteland.

Very close to 4 stars but can't quite get there.

Introduction to Rain is nice.

Happy to have variable foes.

Putting 3 of the deadliest low level trap in a row seems cruel (although later errata has fixed this)

Transitions from getting to town to heading off blindly into the swamp is awkward too.

Also having "Second" in part 1 of a 2 parter drives me nuts.

Really good use of limited time in a hostile location.

Cool location, memorable NPCs. Great custom exploration activity, although would have preferred if whole party didn't have to do it so that characters that relied on exploration activities weren't just completely locked out.

Also too much content, scenario is going to run long.

Still really good. 4.5 stars if I could.

Creative obstacles.

Good/proper use use of low DCs when many checks are required.

Really nice variety in encounters/challenges which is needed when their are 8 pieces to collect.

Complete lack of time pressure in what feels like should be a tense race against a foe with a significant lead limits it to 4 stars.

Still lots of fun.

Great use of a notable and dangerous location.

Supplies provide a good backstop to where failing isn't horrible death, but instead costs resources/potential treasure.

Good use of making outdoor skills valuable and a couple reasonable encounters.

Final encounter is a letdown and some oddities in mechanics for a hazard and such limit it to 4 stars.

Repeatable Scenarios need variable content. There's virtually none here.

I do really appreciate time limitations, gives value.

NPCs are fun, although the distract the projected NPC pseudo encounter has bizarre mechanics. The rest is fun. Probably the best of the repeatable without variable content.

Funniest scenario ever.

Great challenges, great problems, all around amazing.

Reasonable Dungeon Crawl. You don't get to fight the cool creature they hint at the whole scenario and all the pay off feels like it's "outside of scope"

Map and instructions for which way you choose to go are also quite confusing.

Is generally a cool location though with good flavor. Better payoff or better connections could have gotten it to 4 stars.

Swap meet is generally great fun.

Memorable pirate encounter and great fun overall.

Some bits could use a little more clarity though dropping it to 4 stars.

Replayable scenarios need variable content.

The opening is cute with helping Rain but learning about distant lodges being under attack never had any sort of emotional payoff for me.

There's an overuse of concealment in the fights but otherwise creative encounter design heightens it a bit.

Barely ekes out a 3rd star.

Well executed plot.

Compelling Encounters.

Meaningful Choices.

Memorable NPCs.

Makes really good use of Exploration System, letting PCs who have wilderness skills really shine in a way they rarely get to do.

Compelling/Challenging combats.

Great scenario.

Great Orcish flavor

Well executed chase

Really good scenario.

Needs more variability as a replayable instead of a 3/pick 2 middle section with the beginning and ends being identical.

The 3 middle encounters:

1 is an epic fight

1 has terrain that doesn't make sense and creatures that fail to work as written.

1 has a variable bad guy investigation at least but the party's motivations here need some work.

Opening encounter and final encounter are at least interesting fights which gets us up to 3 stars from 2.