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I ran another session of True Dragons of Absalom this past Sunday. This has become my favorite scenario! I've now run it eight times and played it once. I feel like I could run and/or play it a bunch more and it would not "get old" for me.

For those who might run it and saw the comments about the "middle part" from others: I used a timer to keep the length under control. (Else all your players are likely to over-prepare.) I felt like it helped give a sense of urgency to the table. (We have to hurry and do X before Y happens!)

I just played this scenario yesterday. I am prepping to run it next week. I really enjoy this one! (And I'm one of those players who tends to eschew tech in fantasy.)

There's something for everyone in this scenario: skill checks, role playing, combat. You name it. Anthony Li also does a great job of exposing players to more Golarion lore. For me, this was the best part.

More like this, please! :-D

Ran this scenario for the fifth time last night. Despite the number of times I've run it in the last month or so, I still have a ton of fun with it! Universally, the role-playing part at the beginning always goes over well. Maybe it's a local thing, but my players seem to love "giving it" to a certain NPC as much as he "gives it" to them. This is one NPC that I can get away with doing soooo over-the-top. :-)

Unlike others, I've not had a problem making the encounters interesting/challenging. My players loved the novelty of some of the rarer creatures.

I first ran this scenario in Oct at my FLGS. Then I played it in Nov at another local venue. At both games, I was very surprised that the party had an overly aggressive attitude towards almost all the NPCs.

When I ran it, I had a table with a lot of new-ish players. So I wrote off that experience as "murderhobos being murderhobos." But, I played with experienced players and an experienced GM, and the table (as a whole) was still very aggressive and distrusting. (And I like the GM who ran it. They're good--really good. They're always prepared. They don't let tables get out of control.)

I can understand PCs disliking some of the NPCs; the very idea of slavery is disdainful. But to have such mistrust for all the NPCs... It seemed so arbitrary that I simply can't wrap my head around it.

I like the story, and I like what the author presented. But, given how it ran at two different tables at two different venues with two very different sets of players, I was... disappointed... I wanted to like this scenario more than I did. But I didn't enjoy the pervasive mistrust.

The combats were a bit on the easy side. (I ran and played it at tier 4-5.) Trying to present the flavor of the NPCs was challenging since the parties conducted their investigations with "extreme prejudice."

I'm pretty sure I'm going to run this scenario again; I may change/update my rating based on how those future games go. For now I give it: 3 out of 5 stars.

I have played this scenario (Aug 2014), and I have GMed it twice (Nov 2013 and Feb 2014). It's a lot more fun to play than to GM. It's certainly not much of a challenge to the party in terms of combat. It's a good scenario for a group of wandering muderhobos. :-)

Since I had run this some months before I played it, I had (thankfully) forgotten some of the details. Even so, I purposefully played my Nagaji Paladin with an Int of 5 so that I could "play dumb" and have fun with it.

My favorite part of GMing this scenario: A particularly clever party was able to finish the final encounter in very short order with a bit of magic and a poor saving throw from an NPC.

My favorite part of playing this scenario: My giant chameleon mount (yes, I have that boon from a convention) got to use his tongue's touch attack to pull a bad guy towards the ceiling and hang him there like a piñata while the others knocked him unconscious. (Sigh. I love this game!)

But, I don't love the scenario. The fun I had was because I got to play with really good groups. The plot is a bit wonky and way too predictable. From the start, all three parties that I played with were able to easily anticipate the final encounter. It wasn't a surprise, and there was no tension getting there.

Also, now that there's no Sczarni faction anymore, that part of the scenario felt a little hollow.

Stars based on GMing the scenario: **
Stars based on playing the scenario: ***

Your mileage may vary. This one was not one of my favorites, but it's not bad.

I had a lot more fun playing this scenario than I did running it.

I played it at high tier at PaizoCon 2014 with a full table. Most of us didn't know the others. So we were more like a bunch of talented individuals rather than a cohesive group. That actually made for better tension. I mean, the Pathfinders are at war, a bunch of high-level agents are cobbled together in an ad hoc strike team to take down the enemy before the clock runs out. The GM (Walter Sheppard, VC for Eastern Washington state) did a great job of running it. Our cleric went down a couple of times (never turn down an offer of help, sir!), and we steamrollered the final encounter--which is fun for murderhobos.

I ran it yesterday, August 10, at my FLGS. Again: full table, high tier. This time, though, the party knew each other and worked well together. They had a life oracle, a sorceress, a bard, a ranger, and three barbarians. I've never seen so many confirmed crits rolled at a table. (Locally, we tend to roll in the open so everyone can see the dice. There was definitely no fudging.) If my group at PaizoCon steamrollered the combats, then this group annihilated them with nukes. Each of the barbarians crit multiple times.

This scenario wasn't a challenge. It wasn't even a speed bump. Fine for a "normal" scenario--players like to feel powerful every once in a while, after all. But, one expects more from an event that's supposed to be a season capstone. The fights could have been more well-rounded.

Ran this scenario "Assault on the Wound" today (Aug 3, 2014). Love the storyline behind it; it ties a lot of scenarios together. But, after reading many posts about it and hearing all kinds of opinions, I found myself nervous about the mass combat mechanic.

I decided to put on a happy face and approach it at the table with an excited, eager demeanor. That seemed to work out, and the players responded well. (They're a great group anyway, so it may not have been me.) It really helped that there were two Silver Crusade players who loved the extra bit they had to do at the end.

We did have one new player at my table, so trying to accommodate his newness, the new rules for all the players, and avoid running seriously over time was a challenge.

Good game last night. Tough couple of fights for the party. They triumphed, of course. But there was much clenching.

We had six players. The party had an oracle, a sorcerer, a fighter, a ranger, a bard/gunslinger, and a paladin.

We started off with a little light role playing. But things got real serious real quick and a solid half of our time was spent in combat. The paladin was so useful in damage output for two of the combats, and the gunslinger rolled a clutch critical on the BBEG. The sorcerer had a consistently high damage output, and the oracle made sure that nobody died. The fighter and the ranger split damage from once particularly nasty combat. Had any of the other party members been hit, there might have been a PC death. Thankfully, everyone worked well together to earn 1 XP and 2 PP--and it was hard fought and well earned!!

I like this scenario!

I played this scenario at PaizoCon and ran this scenario yesterday (7/13/2014). As others have said, this is not a scenario you want to run with little or no preparation. For that matter, this is not a scenario for a large group, new players, or players who can't get along with each other.

At PaizoCon I had a really well-prepared GM who knew what he was doing, and most of the players were comfortable with open-ended RP. We did have a difficult player. Despite that, we enjoyed a positive experience, on par. From a player perspective: 3 stars.

However, with the right group, this one is role-playing gold!

I ran this with a small group of very experience players all of whom were eager to RP. They managed their time efficiently, agreed on how to approach the NPCs, and responded to setbacks creatively and with positive attitudes.

We finished the scenario in 3.5 hours, and we were laughing for a solid 2.5 to 3 hours of it. From a GM perspective: 5 stars.

The players really enjoyed

Overall: 4 stars.

I just ran this yesterday (Sunday, June 29, 2014). We had a ton of fun; the scenario has some role-playing gold in it!!! I ran it for 7 players at tier 5-6: 2 Sczarni, 2 Osirion, 1 Cheliax, and 2 Silver Crusade.

The final encounter was tough. But with 7 players and a cleverly placed spell, they prevailed.

I think we laughed for more than half the scenario. Call me naive, but I think we all really enjoyed ourselves. ;-) This scenario is going into my list of favorites!

R

There's nothing wrong with this scenario, per se. But my table wasn't wowed by it either. I ran it this past Sunday. We had a 5 players, two of whom had negatives to their social skills. Because those players pretty much had nothing to do but sit around for the first part of the scenario, I let the party sabotage a certain item in a unique way. This led to a certain NPC projectile vomiting. Good times...

Out of character, they all felt like they could see the plot points coming. Nobody was surprised when the "evil mastermind" was revealed. The general sense I got from the table was essentially: "Meh."

The first combat encounter was interesting, and it's probably the reason that the table upgraded their collective feeling to "Meh." from "Bleh." Again, this is because half of the table had nothing to do for much of the scenario. (In their defense, that half of the table is new to PFS. It's not their fault that they neither had well-rounded characters nor more appropriate backup characters.)

Clearly, it would run a lot better with experienced players who specifically wanted an RP heavy afternoon. I personally enjoyed the NPC Jakti al'Awar. Playing him was fun!

I really enjoyed running this scenario in Hard Mode for my group. We have a lot of optimized builds in our lodge, and finding combat challenges for them is tough. Sure, there's the comical aspect of having them constantly roflstomp encounters. Going into this, I had a bit of a pause; there were 7 knowledgeable, experienced, optimized players at my table!

But several party members were reduced to single-digit hit points multiple times throughout the scenario. I was happy to see them buckle down and rise to the challenge.

During the year of the diplomat, it was nice to have a combat-heavy scenario to break up the pace, too.