Watery Soup's page

This is a semi-plotless battlefest, but it serves its function well. The combats are interesting and varied, and the teams have multiple, viable approaches to accomplish their goal (or to thwart the enemies).

If expectations are set carefully, it's fine.

I think my kids will love this. Just run around on the streets killing things.

Me? Not as much. The end result seems fairly insignificant, like you earned 4 XP but the world is no better off for it.

I rather enjoyed this, but I had the advantage of playing an author table, so perhaps some of the comments below stemmed from unintended gamemastering.

The roleplay is deep, and the fights are unremarkable. I like the sandbox aspect, but admit it's fairly GM-dependent (some GMs can make it miserable).

I guess I played the revised version? The final fight seems to be off, even after the revision, but not bad enough to warrant the worst comments others have left.

I'd rather not stack all the fights in the Swords section, and the "plop yourself in an arena and fight things that appear" doesn't appeal to me - though I think a lot of other people like it.

I agree with most of the reviews to date, but think they're being a little harsh with the star rating.

1. There are a lot of fights. Some people like that. My players did.

2. The fights were tough. Some people like that. My players were okay with it. There was only one fight that seemed unfair from a design standpoint, and that was the spectre fight.

3. The pregens seemed bad. I don't consider this a negative, because everybody I play with prefers to play with their own characters.

4. I wish there were more scheduled activities in Chapter 2. I felt like the PCs were very isolated, without any resources to draw from.

Overall, it was a decent Adventure that met a limited set of expectations.

I had a leg up on enjoying the scenario because I got to play at an author table, but it was well-organized, fun, and felt like something worthwhile was accomplished. The combat encounters were balanced and meaningful, and the NPCs were really well-rounded and entertaining.

My only minor gripe was that the PFS1 legacy boon referenced definitely seemed more negative in connotation when I got it; I was kind of hoping something bad would happen to my PFS2 character through absolutely zero fault of their own. I quickly concede I may be in the minority on this one.

This was a great scenario, and one that I'm going to turn around to GM immediately. The best part of it is that multiple choices seem to matter - there's a Viable Option A, and a Viable Option B, and there's a legitimate choice that leads to interesting outcomes either way.

The final fight is hard. It's supposed to be hard. I like that combination (more than a fight being easy or a fight being unexpectedly hard).

A minor point: I like the cover not spoiling any villains. I know the BBE usually gets the most effort put into the art, but it's just nice to have something that's light-hearted.

Minor criticism: I wish the plot had differed more from PFS1 #4-19 - several times. Granted, I just GMed #4-19 a few weeks ago, so it was fresh in my mind, but several times I found myself with metagame expectations because of the parallel and had to remind myself that my character wouldn't have those expectations.

I thought it was a very interesting scenario with fun roleplaying, a good mystery to uncover, and well-balanced combats.

GMs have to be prepared, though, because the investigation part can really make the scenario run long (we went 6.5 hours, probably could have shaved 1.5 hours off of that without feeling like we missed out on anything), and it's all in the front part (meaning delays will really crunch things at the end if players have deadlines to end).

A well-written scenario, with a good mix of interesting villains and interesting things to do.

My only gripe is that the final check is a single d20 roll, and that makes for really swingy outcomes at the very end. I realize those are the mechanics laid out in the rulebooks, but it just doesn't feel appropriate for a PFS scenario to be so dependent on a single roll.

Everything up to that point, though, was superb, and I immediately bought the scenario to GM.

As a player, my group didn't do very well on influencing Nigel, so part of this commentary may be colored by ... not discovering any deception in the Blakros Deception. I think some cohesion as to how Nigel behaves towards the Pathfinder Society (across multiple scenarios) would have made this scenario better - the most popular outcomes (e.g., from PFS1) should be canonized. I had assumed he was friendlier than he was, based on my PFS1 GMs and the times I have played Nigel as a GM for PFS1, it was a little jarring to have him roleplayed differently.

I think GMing the scenario may alter my perception of the scenario, especially if there's something interesting that my group just didn't find out. Barring that, it just seemed very linear - bail out Nigel, save the museum, have him continue to be weirdly antagonistic.

I haven't GMed so I don't know how this is repeatable, but it works well as a scenario. GMs should be well-prepared for adjudicating underwater rules, but underwater makes for some interesting combats and allows more water-themed characters to shine.

I like the mystery part, with characters noticing something affecting the actions of another character.

In a vacuum, the scenario is fine. I think the combat encounters felt unique and there were an interesting mix of things to fight.

However, I was - and actually still am - confused about the metaplot. The characters don't really discover reasons to go from one location to another, they get told. It would have been nice if that were more organic, and it fed into the metaplot more than "you see this, and then move on."

This seemed like a fine scenario, and I didn't think the boss fight was too difficult. But I did feel like the different parts were kind of independent of one another, and wish they had tied together more.

I kind of like that the scenario was challenging. Against the background of me thinking too many scenarios are too easy, this is a good reminder that players should stay on their toes.

That being said, it's not a great introduction to the season, and a lot of new players at conventions probably got introduced to PF2 with a TPK.

It would have been better as the 2nd scenario of the season, and softer scaling at the low end.

Mechanically, the scenario seemed fine. But I was confused throughout the scenario because I was unfamiliar with all the backstory and I could not tell who was on what side and whether we were interacting with the same groups of people or not.

The village is fun roleplaying, and we had a hoot (crit succeeding more than our fair share helped the fun along, too). The first combat was fine, but we ended up talking our way out of the others, which felt too easy. I was convinced we were about to get attacked at the end because I couldn't believe that was all it took to not get double-teamed by both sides.

In a vacuum, the scenario is fine. I just finished another scenario with a Chase mechanic, so getting another one seemed repetitive, but that's probably just an artifact of my experience.

My biggest gripe, not reflected in the star rating, is that this is at least the second time Org Play has passed on an opportunity to flesh out the orc ancestry and give a little depth to their culture. I mean, they're playable PCs now. Compare the treatment of goblins in #1-07 or #1-14, or the iruxi in #1-09/#1-23, or the kobolds in Q10 or #2-05.

With the caveat that, based on reviews of #1-18, I must have a higher tolerance for resource management subroutines than other players, I think this scenario was superb.

1. At the end, it feels like the characters accomplished something besides kill the BBE.
2. The tie-in with the other scenarios feels natural and unforced.
3. Combat was perfectly balanced - challenging, but doable.

I had the advantage of playing it with Dennis as the GM, but the disadvantage of bringing the completely wrong character. Still had a blast, and mentally committed to GMing it even before the scenario ended.

I concur with the other reviews that mention the GM has to be really prepared.

I probably would have given this more stars when I first played it in 2019. Having played most of Season 1, it's pretty clear this isn't even one of the better repeatables.

There are too many proper names for an introduction to Pathfinder. While most players are rolling over from First Edition and know many of the characters, it's just unnecessarily burdensome to learn about the Faction leaders' personalities when new players won't even know what factions are. As the 1-01, a lot of people are going to look to this as their first PFS scenario, and it's just not appropriate.

Individually, the quests are fine. As a matter of fact, I think the easiest revision is to run it as a bundle of 4 quests, like PFS1 #10-16.

A very solid scenario that I have on my list to GM. A good mix of combat and skills, and a little roleplay.

I was confused for most of the scenario. At first, I thought it was the GM, but I think it was just the scenario. It just felt like we were on a conveyor belt - things appeared and we fought them, I guess.

I wish the orcs had a little more personality - it would have been nice as a jumping point to playable orc PCs. Admittedly, this scenario was early enough in Season 1 so that it may not have been possible, but most of the other playable races got an "introduction" in a scenario, and it would have been nice for this to be the orcs'.

Other than that, it was a really well-written scenario and a good mix of everything that makes a scenario great.

This is my favorite repeatable of Season 1. Most importantly, it feels like it was designed to be repeatable, so nothing feels forced about the interchangable elements, and the interchangable elements actually matter.

I've played it once and GMed it twice. This is the one that I carry around in my Pathfinder bag in case I need to GM a game on short notice.

A very nice scenario with some elements that weren't in any other scenarios I've played. The final encounter can be a little complicated, but if the GM provides some guiderails, it can be very rewarding.

I liked this scenario a lot better as a player than I did as a GM. The story seemed cool and coherent when I played, but when I GMed, I realized that it's an awful lot of work to make it that way. The sandbox-style exploration could benefit from a stronger explanation of the timeline and what happens as the PCs start intervening.

That being said, if the story arc can be wrangled, it's a very nice scenario, with a lot of interesting encounters and setups.

Each part of this scenario works in isolation, but it just doesn't form an interesting story. I played this at a convention and had a hard time hearing the GM over all the noise; I thought I was missing something that made the whole thing feel disjointed.

It's an unmemorable but fine scenario, I plan to GM it as a two-parter with #1-23 and try to tie everything together (as much as a Society GM is allowed to).