ZomB's page

Its exactly what you would expect from an intro dungeon crawl with a pathfinder society twist. A bit of everything for flavor but nothing that makes it stand out memorable.

I found this a good introductory town based scenario to GM with a nice selection of different styles of encounters.

The main issue for GMs to plan for is if the final encounter goes against the PCs which appears to be a very common occurrence, and for which there is no guidance in the scenario.

Great background story, well thought out scenario, with fun, role play and challenge.

As others have said just too much to fit in and all the encounters make sense such that you don't want to miss any out.

I would make a general request that next season scenarios have two official optional encounters rather than one.

Point of view: GM 3 times.

A great scenario choice to start the season. A solid role play experience and meaningful combats.

Takes a little more prep and is worth it to give the goblins some personality.

Runs great with 5 players though it can fill 5 hours (without the optional encounter) so you will need to streamline it in a short slot (there are a couple of not-core encounters).

I would make a general request that next season scenarios have two official optional encounters rather than one.

Note the encounters are well spaced out so you need to be on top of it to make it challenging, though the encounters lend themselves to this.

Point of view: GM twice.

Old school combat oriented scenario with strong foes but a weak introduction that could leave your players frustrated and considering "degenerate" solutions. The players have to go with the flow to get the scenario moving in the direction intended. Though the weak setup and player motivation issues are fixable with extra GM prep there remain a number of issues with the scenario.

There are three sub missions two of which have 2 encounters and one of which has 1 encounter. This makes 5 core encounters which at this power level - where encounters take longer - is too many. Three of these encounters can fill a 4 hour slot. There is also a further optional encounter which will rarely if ever be played except in home games.

Role play opportunities are only really partially limited to one of the encounters as written so make the most of what you are given.

I have run this twice and both times have run out of time with the number of encounters in anearly five hour session. If I run it again I think will have to cut both pre-encounters to make it fit in a 4 hour slot. This would also reduce the large prep overhead of this module.

The encounters are however strong and memorable being mostly iconic and potentially deadly with most of them having some sort of "nova" capability that could kill a PC if they are unlucky.

I found that compared to other scenarios, even tier 5-9 scenarios, I had a long list of things to look up before I could run this scenario. Partly this is the price of running high level scenarios, partly the choice of creatures and powers and partly the number of combat encounters.

As mentioned in other reviews a combat character light party or just an unlucky party will struggle with this so be prepared.

This is the scenario to roll out when you have a couple of slots to run it in, you want a hard fight with iconic monsters and you are comfortable with the possibility of PC death - though you need a strong GM who will spend the above average prep time and comfortably handle the issues to do it justice.