aboyd's page

When I played through this, it seemed obvious that the GM had merely skimmed the product. I could sense that this scenario was trying to be much more fun than the GM was allowing. The chase scene and social challenges? It was all boiled down to 5 minutes of quick die rolls. Very anti-climatic. But enough of that, let's review this!

Your PCs are going to the abandoned village of Boali, in the Mwangi Expanse. It's the jungle, baby! Here's the basic quest/idea. The Aspis guys are digging up Boali, looking for relics, but probably without permission. The nearby town of Senghor would likely frown on that. So go find evidence that the Aspis dudes are trashing the place and get Senghor worked up about it. Then the Pathfinder Society can swoop in and say, "Well WE would do things legally, so you should kick out the Aspis Consortium and let us in!"

There are a lot of mini-games in this product, which is partly why I felt like it was supposed to be a 4-star module, even if I wasn't getting that experience. There is a skill check thing at the beginning, and there are the usual chase rules, another diplomatic schmoozing mini-game, and a sort-of "rescue" mini-game. Oh, and some combat stuff, which I found to be far more exciting when I read the product. There are cool terrain issues that could materially affect the encounters -- I didn't really see much of that on my play-through, but reading it I can see it could make for some good challenges.

A note for GMs: one encounter in particular was bugging me even before I bought & read the product. Just playing it I knew something was off. It turns out, I was right. So if you are GMing this, please read this:

Overall, I enjoyed this game -- more from reading it than playing it, but still. I'm dying to run it. I think the chase scene could be spectacular. I think the social scene could be hilarious. I think the fights could be very dynamic, with lots of terrain issues to explore (both for the monsters and for the PCs -- lots of fun options listed in the product). If your local Pathfinder Society branch is offering this game and you know the GM is good at all the Paizo mini-games, then go for it and have a great time. If you hate these mini-games then maybe stay away from this product (although to be fair, you could play this product just for the fights -- if your GM does it right, the fights are enjoyable regardless of whatever happens with the rest of the adventure).

When I played through this, I found this scenario/module to be tough, but unremarkable. I never reviewed it, as it was neither very good, nor very bad. However, this product is known to cause TPKs. Some people are very upset about this, and they've flooded the GM forum discussion of this product with complaints. In addition, there are a handful of 1 & 2 star reviews here that are all from the same group of people, lumped within a few days of each other. With all this anger directed toward the product, I went back to look over it, and see if I missed something.

After all, my group played through this just fine. My PC went unconscious once, so it's not like it was a cakewalk, and I certainly was nervous that my character would die. However, I didn't feel like it was unfair. So I looked into it. It turns out, some of the complaining isn't valid; some "problems" are mostly manufactured drama. However, it also turns out that some of the complaining is dead-on accurate. Let's see what the module actually did right & wrong.

1. It tricks the players with deceptive text

2. The final fight broadly damages PCs for even doing simple things like drinking non-magical alchemical brews such as antitoxin or antiplague.

3. The final fight is a TPK, the opening fight is a TPK, the module is brutally hard.

Overall, I didn't have a problem with this module. However, it appears that was partly due to luck or just-right performance in certain areas. I also have no characters in the Scarab Sages faction, so much of my game was a ho-hum "wait and see what the Scarab Sages people do" affair. Nothing stood out. Others clearly had vastly different experiences, but for me this was middle-of-the-road, so I'm giving it 3 stars.

After playing through this, I purchased it. It's 91 pages long. For a 4 hour time slot, 91 pages. Except, here's the trick: you only use about 12 pages. Not only are there multiple maps to choose from, but there are also 3 major story lines with little extra variations, and a slew of monster encounters that are (usually) randomly rolled for and then arranged in a dungeon by a GM. So you winnow it down to just the few things you select, and use only that.

This can be overwhelming, if you try to have all 91 pages ready to go! A GM would really, truly do well to pre-select some random arrangements, and then get very familiar with that pre-selected setup. If you try to learn all 91 pages and monsters and then pick them on the fly, it's going to be a nightmare. If you don't bother to learn any of it beforehand and then try to manage it all spontaneously as the random rolls dictate the encounters, it's going to be a sloppy mess.

For my particular play through, this is what I enjoyed about this module: it was hard. Some of the fights in the high tier were taking down PCs left & right. Nobody died, but we had PCs going unconscious at various points. After the game, I looked up the monster's stat block, and realized it could have been worse. We got off easy because the GM didn't have a perfect grasp of how to play the monster optimally. (And that may again be due to the module being 91 pages and waaaaayyy too much for a GM to sift through in a 4 hour time slot.)

The map is, frankly, beautiful. At least, the "Bigger Cavern" map with the crystals on it is great to look at and to try to maneuver through. (There is a flip side to the Bigger Cavern product, and it's not as pretty, and it's used for 1 of the story lines here.) There are tight spaces, open spaces, water, the crystals, height changes, and so on. People can leap off ledges, swim, get bullrushed off of bridges (or bullrush the enemies!), can get higher ground (+1 to melee attacks!), and finally, as mentioned, there are fun challenges to deal with like the squeezing rules. There are little corners to hide in, too. It's a great map.

What else can I tell you? Well, you are going to reconnect with some old friends/enemies in Kaer Maga, that's for sure. If you've played the older products (like The City of Strangers, part 1 & 2), then you'll be familiar with many areas here. If not, you can hope you get a GM who is in love with this giant city on a cliff, and hope he/she introduces you to some of the interesting locales on the city.

Final word: this is a trainwreck or a wonderful time, mostly depending upon how your GM assembles this product. It has great potential, and you could play and re-play this a handful of times before you felt like you had exhausted most of the variations and story details. And the gameplay is great, if done well. So look for a good GM and hope that he/she is well prepared!

There are light spoilers here. I talk in general about various activities in the game -- nothing big, but you might be able to surmise some things after reading my review. So, you've been warned.

Our team consisted of oracle, cleric, ninja, wizard, barbarian, monk. High tier. The oracle was our only Diplomacy character. The ninja was our only Disable Device character. The wizard was our only Knowledge character (mostly). In all 3 cases, there was a point where getting information depended upon someone doing well with Diplomacy, Knowledge, or Disable Device -- and in each case, we had a "single point of failure" that... failed. Because of this, we missed out on information, back story, lore, and in some cases even missed out on how to solve things properly.

So for me, I had a couple of places where I wanted to understand what was happening but just couldn't. My character couldn't, and I couldn't in real life either.

Having said that, the wild start of the game is fun and action-packed. It begins with alarms blaring and it's very clear that you're rushing to fix some emergency. I liked how my GM ran the first encounter with so many terrain conditions. In fact, that seems to be the hallmark of this module. In multiple encounters, the terrain isn't just "you're at the door to a room, go fight." I really appreciated this. It was cool to have the environment be an important factor.

I also enjoyed the mystery and weirdness of things. Something has triggered all this chaos and the PCs have to figure it out, but it isn't just "who's the bad guy?" There are talking encounters where your questions and answers don't necessarily make sense, but you're obviously getting accurate information -- it's just beyond comprehension. It's like staring into infinity and trying to explain it to a 2 year-old.

The big encounter was, in my opinion, very well done. Here's why. My character failed everything. Things went badly. Yet, I didn't die. It was scary and I was tense as I rolled die after die and failed again & again. I could see my character heading toward death, but also feeling like "I have a couple rounds to avert disaster. It's still possible to survive and win." While that was happening to me, there was SO MUCH for others to do. There were a lot of issues to tackle. People struggled to overcome obstacles, just as I did (but they overcame issues while I didn't). When they did overcome things, they raced around trying to accomplish anything before the situation got too dire. So it overall felt like a difficult challenge, relentless, but also didn't murder us. It's rare to find something so balanced.

This was a good time. It felt like it might be leading to bigger things, like during the season finale or something. If you play this, remember to have a good team with lots of diverse abilities. This module rewards "boy scout" types -- those who are prepared for anything.

You should know that there is a lot of talking in this module. In fact, the module text suggests that the characters should get bonuses based upon how well the players can act out scenes or role play their characters. In other words, this is a possibly unfair but precisely old-school style of real roleplay that we all used to engage in before Pathfinder and D&D became all about combat. It unashamedly relies upon the player's skill with role play to propel the character's skills.

You really, really want to play this with a GM who will not penalize shy players. You also want a GM who can distinguish between "shy" and "just doesn't care and would prefer to play Candy Crush while everyone else does the boring parts." This module is all about punishing that 2nd kind of player. You have to participate well to succeed in this module.

Note: the very first "encounter" or "test" of the PCs is easily trivialized with a 5 second interaction. If your players know of this, they might pursue this very obvious and easy solution, and then possibly lose out of some story. So watch out. Here's the explanation:

As others have mentioned, this is an investigation module. For our game (low tier), we spent about 4 hours talking and using skills, and about 20 minutes total to get through 2 quick fights. Our path was unusual. I've bought the module and I suspect that most groups will experience 3 or 4 fights, and in the high tier they look to be tougher.

Also note that this module has a very kind and potentially saddening discussion of religion. Without giving away any in-game terms or religions, I will just say that the discussion has parallels to real-world nihilism and how aimless or pointless that can make some people feel. And while some might hate even the prospect of exploring that (either for religious reasons, or just a hate of philosophy and nihilism itself), I found the module actually made me feel huge empathy for anyone religious -- game world or real world. It was powerful to consider that groups of people were spiritually starving and it manifested as literal starvation and lethargy. Having to talk to those suffering NPCs with compassion could make for interesting role play. In fact, I think even real-world atheists and agnostics might enjoy exploring this and just trying to suss out a belief system that is plausible for what you experience.

In the end, expect to interview a few NPCs, expect to do a fetch mini-quest or two, and expect to eventually "head to the source" and interact directly with the prime movers. Expect to be asked open-ended questions that require you to interpret philosophy, visions, etc. If your GM manages to turn this module into mostly combat, you should know that he or she had to work hard to do that. On its own, The Cost of Enlightenment is all about faith, or the lack thereof, or gods, or the lack thereof, and what you do with that.

Further discussion:

Wow, this product has some problems. It's also super-simple.

As others have mentioned, aside from the too-easy combat encounters, the fights are also redundant. Three fights with the same type of enemy each time.

As for the big final fight, I have this to say:

As far as the comment I made about the module being "super simple," the entire last half of the module is just a mini-dungeon crawl, and this is where you fight the same kind of monster 3 times in a row. Advance 1 room, fight monster A, advance 1 more room, fight monster A again, etc.

The module does mix it up with some other monsters, but not enough. The GM forum for this module has a walkthrough about how to make 1 of the combat encounters more difficult & interesting, but that isn't enough to save the module from itself.

In the end, this was so easy & simple that we finished it in 2.5 hours. And that was with 1 player taking a full page of notes and everyone rolling skill checks to get backstory. We tried to spend time on things, but there just wasn't enough to do.

So if I feel this way, why did I give it 3 stars, which seems to imply that it's at least an OK time? Well, because it's an OK time. I mean, nothing really stands out as broken or awful; it's just lazy and simple. If you want a simple fun time, this will do that. And that's not terrible -- it just also isn't amazing.

My favorite part about this module was dealing with the environment. And it's not necessarily even that hard -- I just really enjoyed the chance to hear what our problems would be (it's no spoiler -- right in the overview text at the top of this Web page it tells you that you're going to the plane of water) and then as a group we all started figuring out what we could do, what we could contribute. Apparently the module expects players to spend a chunk of time (and money) on shopping & planning, and so it even sets aside time for it. People were looking up spells, finding magic items, etc. It was nice to participate in teamwork in a no-pressure, no-combat situation.

Table Variation

One thing your GM should clarify right up front: how do monsters and polymorphed PCs (and companions, and summons) qualify to do full damage in water? The rules for water state that "land-based creatures" have to do half-damage, but what counts as land-based? It's not a creature type, and not officially defined. So for example, if you play a druid and you wildshape into a water elemental... the elemental form is a water type, but the original caster is probably land-based. So does that druid do full damage on a hit (due to being a water elemental), or half damage (due to the PC's land-based origin)? Does being the aquatic type confer full damage, or does living underwater your entire life confer full damage (even if you're not aquatic)? From what I can tell, this is not explored deeply in the GM forums, nor the Rules forum. So expect table variation.

Therefore, expect that you may have to change your game plan. Depending upon what your GM says, you may decide that you'll focus on wildshape, or focus on summons, or focus on your companion. So GMs & players both: get that resolved at the start, so nobody is surprised mid-combat.

And GMs: be careful how you rule on that, because I know of at least 1 way to rule in which all your monsters do half-damage, too. So when you come up with a ruling, make sure it's not so punitive that it wrecks everything across the board. If you're too harsh, the players may hold you to it when it bites you back.

Also, the official rules for many spells when cast underwater is that they "don't work as expected" and you may need to ask your GM. So that's another thing you may wish to clarify up front. Do my lightning spells remain in a line? Do they begin to take on a sphere shape? Is your GM deciding that since the rules don't explicitly say how the GMs may rule, that he/she won't rule at all and everything is exactly the same? Find out beforehand!

So what's good?

OK, so why is this fun? Aside from what is essentially a mini-game to defeat the limitations of water, the story actually furthers the season's plot. I got to hear a lot about the lords of the planes, and have an effect on the outcome (granted, any group that succeeds will "have an effect on the outcome" but at least we're rolling the plot forward). The combat encounters are decent -- they were hard enough to damage us, but not so hard that the team gave up or players got frustrated.

Well, wait a second. One fight was hard. Like really hard. However, advice for GMs: if your players are in high tier and there are only 3 or 4 players at your table, be sure you give them all the advantages listed. Our GM was like, "Wow the 4-player adjustment is really helping you." Then we had the fight. Let's just say that we needed the help.

This game is probably a planner's paradise. Not only can you plan out how to handle water, but in at least one case the PCs become aware of an enemy before combat is engaged, meaning that the PCs can calmly put together a game plan for handling the encounter. Or rush in without planning!

Also, there is a big choice/consequence check in the game. I can't detail much without posting spoilers, but the general idea is that how you approach things and the balance you have between speed and caution can affect a certain someone's impression of you. When we experienced this, some players wanted to take back certain decisions, or convince the GM that the group could still fix things after the fact. But that isn't how the adventure works, and honestly I was grateful for it. I like that you are making choices that you don't even know will have an effect, and you absolutely get an advantage either way, but you can't get both advantages. Here, I'll spoiler this just so that people who have played it can match up what I'm talking about:

Overall, very fun. Not perfect, not 5 stars, but very good. There is that 1 fight that I suspect will be too hard for a few groups, and as the previous review noted, the game can run long. Set aside 5 hours for this one, maybe even more if the players are exploring every little thing and the GM wishes to run all the optional stuff. So I think this adventure is pretty great and if we take 1 star off for the too-hard fight and a few other nitpicks, we still have a 4-star product. Not bad at all.

Note: Apparently my review has caused such concern that people are messaging me about it. I thank those users for the feedback, which I would like to address here in some spoiler text:

This is basically 1 long race. You'll have choices to speed up (but possibly starve or take damage), or slow down (and really make use of the land). The path you choose is also open. It appears that these choices do affect gameplay. My GM noted that his play-through was vastly different from mine -- whereas he was bored by the constant endless skill checks, we were nearly killed from constant combat encounters. In fact, we certainly should have been all killed, but the GM pulled punches. For example:

So... what are the redeeming qualities of this module? If you like an open-ended chase/race, that's kinda cool. If you ever thought, "Pathfinder Society doesn't reward crafting very much," then you might like this. (By the way, in a previous review from someone else, he/she stated that it's totally unfair to rely on crafting for some parts of the game when Pathfinder Society has banned crafting. However, they're 2 different crafting "things." Society bans crafting like Scribe Scroll, Brew Potion, and so on. Basically the magic item feats. Pathfinder Society does not ban the crafting skill, and in fact it's one of the few ways your character can make money during down time. Those skills are what come into play here, and in a very generous fashion. So it's not a bad implementation, and it's wrong to think that nobody would or should have those skills -- anybody who makes money during down time might have a crafting skill that qualifies.)

Also, I really like the idea that players can ask about terrain and possibly find good/bad aspects for whatever they need. I also enjoyed watching a fellow player interact with the rival teams. The tension around what can or cannot be brought on the journey and whether to cheat (and for some that's a moral issue, and for others it's a "we're worried about getting caught" issue) also made for fun discussion around the table. As a GM, I'll enjoy prepping for that stuff, maybe making little table tents with data about each option.

So then why give it 1 star?!? Unfortunately, one encounter should be deadly pretty much 90% of the time. The fact that teams are getting through it suggests to me that GMs are being overly nice (as mine was, in the previously spoiler'd text). I love that GMs are showing mercy, essentially. However, in Pathfinder Society, you're supposed to run the module as-is. So, let's look at it:

Whew! THAT is insane. That's 1 star.

...I'm going to screw up his nice 4-star rating.

The other reviews are right -- the "verbal combat encounter" rules are too much (about 8 pages of player handouts if I remember correctly). I got my "rule packet," started reading, and then... stopped. I thought, there is no chance of me reading through 8 pages in a timely fashion, and little chance of decent reading comprehension in a noisy game store, AND we still have to fit the game into a 4 hour window. No way.

Unlike the other reviewers, I feel that alone is enough to knock the module down to 3 stars. "But wait!" you might say. "You gave it 2 stars!" Yeah, well, that's because there is more bad.

The 3 wayang ceremony aspects were not fun (for me). Granted, the first (a fake combat) was a bit silly, and I enjoyed that. I took the role of the tactician know-it-all, and was leaping on objects to get higher ground, and spouting info about the enemy's stat blocks. It was cheesy acting amusement. But the actual fight itself wasn't much of anything, and nobody else at the table was bothering to portray the roles they were given. So most of the fun was just me amusing me.

The second ceremony "thing" was to do the verbal combat. This would be very fun with players who geek out on reading the system and knowing it well, and if you had a 6 hour time slot with a private/quiet place to play. I didn't want to geek out on the reading, and we didn't have a quiet place. So it just... was a thing that happened. Not much else to say about it.

The third ceremony was meh. Here's why:

I think if you are interested in wayang culture, you might like this. I think if you hear things like "you're going to put on a play with puppets" and you feel happy about that, then you might like this. I think if you could get the verbal combat rules beforehand, have them memorized, and just whip through that mini-game because you know what you're doing, then you might like this.

Unfortunately, none of that applied to me.

The two reviews prior to this one are correct & incorrect at the same time (just in my opinion). That is, there are some exciting parts, and some bad parts. However, I don't feel that this module is defined by only the good or bad -- 1 star rating or 5 star rating, either way feels too extreme. It's a sum of all parts, and the sum is, well, okay.

First, I agree that the names in this product are garbage. They're great if you think jokey names are funny and enjoyable. For me, they took me right out of the story. I wanted to explore the plane of air with all its unique civilization and interesting otherworldly creatures, and instead we get a generic ice troll named Bitterbite. We may as well not even be on another plane. The module keeps hitting me over the head with reminders that this is just a silly game and I shouldn't expect to experience anything unique or new.

(EDIT: There is a review more recent than my own, in which the author seems to have misunderstood this complaint. The problem is not that the names are weird. The problem is the opposite: they're generic. They're boring, stupid, dull, and lazy. They indicate that the author or powers-that-be did no thinking about how otherworldly this plane should have been. Instead, we get the same cheesy names that we get when we play generic fantasy module #100 on the world of Golarion.)

Second, this trilogy has a pretty major flaw, which I already was worried about in my review of part 2: part 1 tells us to go find Jamila and return the abacus and codex that she stole, and yet those items aren't even mentioned in part 2 (though it mentions some other codex, just to confuse things), and the same is true of part 3, almost. It's easy to miss. There is a handout with a throwaway line about "We've been compensated for our loss" and that's it. Players invested in helping out may miss that, and even if they see it they may be disappointed to realize that they really had no hand in the recovery of items.

One thing I loved & hated: the module starts right out by explaining who Jamila really is and why she did what she did. So chasing her for the 2 prior modules, and trying to solve the mystery of her behavior, is instantly resolved as you start this module. That's good if you really cared about the story and wanted to know. It's bad because... well, just like a movie or book that resolves huge plot points with plain exposition, the disappointment here is that we don't get to see the main characters (our PCs) actually solve anything. We're just told.

That builds on the frustration I expressed in my review of part 2 in this series. That is, I wanted to catch Jamila and uncover why she turned traitor, but part 2 shot us in a completely different direction -- she doesn't even feature in the story! And so here in part 3, I still want to solve that, but it doesn't even need action from us. It's just solved for us, and we're sent on a revised mission instead.

But enough complaining. This adventure does many things right. The main thing, and GMs would do well to remind players of this throughout the module: in the plane of air, gravity is subjective. Anyone at any time can decide that gravity is pulling them into the air in a particular direction. It's scary and dangerous if you don't have a good wisdom score (since wisdom DCs are how you do it) but if you have even 1 character in the group with a great wisdom score, it can be very useful and fun.

The best moment? Standing on a ship, middle of a confrontation, and suddenly a player declares, "Wait. I don't have to stand on this ship, do I? I can just... float away, right?" And then he did. Our GM was a little sad, because a bigger map was needed to show characters "falling" away at hundreds of feet per round. But other than that, it was great.

What else is good? The final fight. It's going to be a swingy fight where some players complain it's too hard and others complain it's a cakewalk (yep, one of those kinds of fights). Expect table variation. However, the map is visually intriguing, and the concept of:

I enjoyed playing that final fight, and I expect I will enjoy running it, too.

Overall, my fears about this trilogy were confirmed: it's serviceable, it's competent (well, mostly), but it never made it to any higher level of quality. If you want to run a trilogy in PFS, this will do, but it won't be the best choice or even close. If you wanted to run a single module from this trilogy, it will be OK, but it will never compare to any of the truly memorable/wonderful modules we've seen in the past. On a scale of 1 to 10, I'd rate this a 6 or 7.

Now, some tips for GMs:

EDIT, for Le Petite Mort: You didn't like the final "cool" magic item? Brace yourself; it's even worse than you imagined:

For those of you who do not know this, around the time this module was conceived, a movie came out called Unbroken. It tells the story of a prisoner who is subjected to very harsh treatment, but somehow perseveres. You'll notice that the title of this module calls back to that movie. And my hint to GMs is that if you mention this to your players before the game starts, it may soften the blow.

You will see in other reviews that some people said things such as, "I do not find being yelled at and degraded to be a fun way to spend a game night." However, if players are aware of the homage to the movie, they may find the obnoxious captain bearable, knowing that this is the module's "shtick" or angle, and that like the movie, there may be some justice in the end.

Having said that, I personally found the module to be another un-word: unrelenting. Part of this was not the module's fault. If you're a GM, read this:

I wrote all that spoiler text so there would be a basis for this plea to GMs: follow the module. Don't extrapolate more than what is written there. The module is already getting bad ratings, and if you make an already harsh module even harsher, your players are not going to enjoy your game. Having said that, some blame does lie with the module. Some things are simply impossible if you don't have the one single thing needed. Example:

OK, finally, let me talk about the good part. Dell is interesting! Check out this bit of backstory for one encounter with him:

If you are doing more of a role-play kind of game, this character is fun & difficult to act out. He has 3 conflicting goals going at once! He could make decisions in any direction, or refuse, and there's a great justification for all of it. His 3 goals are:

And that can make for some good social interactions! Overall, this module rates as "meh" or "OK" to me. It might be better, but I think my GM's presentation of the module sorta corrupted my view of it. Maybe after running the module I'll boost the star rating. We'll see.

EDIT (June 5, 2017): I've now run the module multiple times, and I have to confess that even with great effort to make it enjoyable, players just don't enjoy this. Here is what one player emailed to me after the module: "As for your GM style, I enjoyed it immensely. The NPCs had life and the module moved along and you told a good story. As for the module itself, it was crap - certainly in the bottom few. There was an overwhelming dependency on skills. So much of our final success depended on diplomacy, which is stupid for a module all about martial tests. Also, it handicapped non fighters throughout the previous parts."

For one group, I was unable to convince them to do that 1 bad thing, that 1 taboo thing, that is so important. If you've run it, you know what I'm talking about -- the thing that reveals all the plot, but which no person with military background would ever do. The group had military people in it, and they just simply refused to take the hint. They talked it over, but just rejected the notion at every point. And so in the end their Chronicle sheets were not ideal and they felt the whole thing was rather stupid.

Because of these issues, I'm finally giving up on the module, and lowering my rating to 2 stars. Note that in a home game, you could fix this easily and it'd be fine. There ARE fun encounters. I really enjoyed running it because if you take your time it can be a 6 or even 7 hour game with lots to do. Some of the combat encounters have fun tactical options. However, I just cannot get over the fact that the game run as-is for PFS will often upset players. That's the bottom line. Some will find it unfair, some will find it stupid, and some will call it crap, even if you ran it to the best of your ability.

So... I wrote in my review of part 1 of this trilogy that it didn't merit 4 or 5 stars like a really outstanding, talked-about module. However, I also wrote that it worked, that it was serviceable, that a pretty good time was had at the table.

And now part 2... sorta just does the same. I don't know what I expected. I guess I thought it would pick up steam as the trilogy moved on. It doesn't.

Here's the thing. If you could take part 2 as a standalone module, it works. It's fun. But as part of a trilogy, and part of an ongoing chase, it sure didn't feel very chasey. In fact, the entire original intention of the 1st module seems to have vanished. Are we still chasing a person? No? So what are we doing?

Here is what we are doing:

I'm starting to get worried that this trilogy is becoming mired in its own aspirations. I worry that it's doing too much. I didn't understand half of what I wrote in the spoiler text until I bought the module. We shift goals so quickly that it's difficult to even track what the point is or why Pathfinder Society leadership is giving us missions.

My advice. While part 3 may turn this around and tie up everything with a pretty bow, for now my suggestion if you are running part 1 & 2 is to be really blunt with the players at the start: this is a trilogy in name only. People will have much, much more fun if they are not hung up on trying to continue the chase from part 1. Just tear the band-aid off, so to speak.

There is good reason to do that. If you can let go of expectations, there is a fun module in here. There is another one of those "interview people at a social event" mini-games here, just like in the older Bid for Alabastrine module. I know some people hate those, but I don't. I find them fun. Most encounters can be dealt with peacefully or with combat. This module even has a riddle -- although I'm upset that it's 100% player skill instead of any character skill. For example, we asked if our wizard with an INT of 20 was smart enough to get a hint about the riddle. Answer? Nope.

There is another riddle/puzzle with some gems & doors, and that was enjoyable too, although it also had no options for character skill. It was all down to what the players could divine at the table.

Bottom line: the game is enjoyable, but when I run it I intend to almost run them as stand-alone modules. The connections between part 1 & 2 are tenuous at best, and some things might make the players ask, "Hey, Pathfinder Venture Captains, are you sure you know what you're doing?" Boy, I really hope part 3 can bring this all together.

I think 4 & 5 stars should be reserved for the obviously great games. So there isn't anything wrong with this product. It worked out fine for us! It just isn't going to be as loved as some of the most talked-about modules in PFS.

Non-spoiler review

Overall, the game is a chase, but it covers 3 modules so don't expect a resolution here in part 1. Instead, you're going to ask questions, gear up, and make decisions about your pursuit. Then, you'll start the adventure and quickly stumble onto some groups that will aid you or hinder you. How you handle them and the challenges they put before you will determine how your characters head into part 2.

The adventure is fun. It seems like you can negotiate or fight your way through some obstacles, so both styles of play are to be recommended. The NPCs don't just blurt out all their secrets, so there are different factions you can side with, or be fooled into siding with. We had 2 tables of this game running at the same time (low tier & high tier) and each table picked a different side but each table also felt that their decision was "right." Granted, one group was able to find a lot more info than the other group was, so there may in fact be an objective "good" side to uncover, but for the most part it was fuzzy and down to debate. I think the module author should be proud to have created a scenario where various groups feel like they've done the best option, and yet they are completely different choices.

I played a paladin, and there are some gray/difficult areas here. At one point, two factions were butting heads, and black & white ideas like "Detect Evil!" are not useful. There are issues with desecration of sacred ground, racism, non-violence, and diplomacy. (In some cases, even if you want a certain solution, you simply won't get it unless your character was built to be good at that. Some people may hate that their role play must be backed up with good die rolls, but I liked it. We wanted a peaceful solution, but even with huge diplomacy bonuses, we were really struggling, and kind of nervous about the outcome. To me, it felt like our character builds were important. You are only going to unlock the options that you are actually good at.)

In conclusion, I'd say it was a fun, simple romp. There are some elemental challenges as you'd expect from season 8, and some good fights or negotiations, depending upon your skill. I don't yet see the bigger plot for season 8 here, but there is a trickle of information. Finally, I'd like to give you a tip. It's hardly a spoiler, and I've already hinted at it, but I'll spoiler this tip just in case. This is my suggestion about what types of characters to bring to this session:

Meta-talk

This meta-info isn't much of a spoiler, but it does reveal one tiny bit of info in the introduction, so if you're hard core, take a pass on reading this. However, I include this because multiple people in my group said loudly "Are you kidding me?!?" at the start of the adventure, and yet I'm fairly sure the module was not intending to be unfair (I haven't read it). So, protect yourself. Get informed:

Spoiler discussion

Here are a few things that appear to be difficult or broken in the module. This is probably mostly useful for GMs.

So... I agree with the review by Zahir ibn Mahmoud ibn Jothan. In my game, I was playing the fighter with 20 feet of movement speed. During the final crowd scene, I could not get to the enemy before the entire encounter ended. Our GM did not offer us any crowd control options. I believed I had an amazing item to deal with the problem: flashbombs. They cause no damage but can daze or blind for a few rounds. I thought hurling those into the crowd might at least get them running from the source of the flashes. Instead, the GM simply shrugged and said "now they are a bunch of blind people standing around." He wouldn't change the terrain obstacle the matter what creative ideas we had. In the end, I mapped out exactly how many turns it would take me to reach the enemy, and then I pulled out my cell phone, and surfed the Internet for 30 minutes while I waited for my character to reach the fight. The GM seemed fine with this. I was not.

I sincerely hope the module is not actually written to cause this kind of boring game play.

I'm going to go into spoilers in a moment, but first: the gist of this for anyone who wants to avoid spoilers is that Fred Jervis wrote a review right before this one in which he calls the final fight "undoable" and that's pretty much right. If your GM is playing by the rules, this module should end in failure. If it didn't, your GM fudged things in your favor. In a home game that's awesome, but in Pathfinder Society modules are supposed to be run as-is, and evaluated as-is. So there's a problem here.

Also, if you are reading this review, you are probably seeing it under the "Product Reviews" tab on the product's page. You can also click into the "Product Discussion" tab to read one person's spoiler-tagged comments, headed "This Adventure is BS." He does in fact make good points, which I will go into here in my spoilers:

I gave this 3 stars because I can run this in a home game and fix these issues in about 5 seconds. Also, it's a follow-up to some older modules that were fun, and this has enough callbacks to win on nostalgia a little bit. Thanks.

After writing a nicely formatted 8 or 9 paragraph review, Paizo's system ate the entire thing when I tried to preview it, and it wouldn't let me backtrack. So, here's a terse summary.

This review has tons of spoilers. Watch out!

I had the weird opportunity of being able to play this twice, and mostly not even remembering the first play-through. So I have two different impressions of the module, and both are terrible.

My first play through happened maybe 3 years ago. The trilogy was my very first experience with Pathfinder, at KublaCon. In the first module of the trilogy, I had my brand new level 1 bard, and I was playing with level 3 & 4 characters, and they wanted to "play up." I had no idea what that meant at the time, but they assured me that they would keep me alive.

In the very first round of the very first combat of my very first game, I died. Even worse, the players blamed me. They said I didn't know how to build a good character, and therefore it was my fault. I really wanted to quit. I left, didn't stay for the rest of that game.

However, I had signed up for the entire trilogy and was stuck at the hotel, so I played part 2 with a new character. I lived. So, I got to part 3, this module. I remember nothing about the module, except the end.

A year after that, I found a local group doing PFS and began playing regularly. And a year after that, I had a chance to use my GM star to replay a module. All I remembered about the Huscarl King was that I died, and I intended for that to NOT happen again.

This time, what a difference.

Next month, I'm slated to run this trilogy. I have for the first time begun to read it. And it's disappointing to see that some of the railroaded garbage actually IS in the module. However, much of it is not. A lot of the problems with this module appear to come from swingy fights and GMs who don't read. So I have hope that the module CAN be a good game. I intend for that to happen.

EDIT (June 5, 2017): I've run this multiple times now. I'm not changing my review rating, but I do wish to make a few notes. First, the module isn't that railroaded. That was bad GMs. The module has plenty of text to accommodate players who wish to go around things, try other options, etc. Also, the final fight really IS weak. I found a way to sorta "rules lawyer" the mechanics of the final fight so that it could at least try to present a challenge (mechanically, you should almost always be able to survive long enough to get the villain's super-strike into action). However, if the players enjoyed the role play with the tribe at ALL, they will have help and cakewalk the BBEG. It bothers me that even a rules expert cannot salvage what should be an epic conclusion. It almost always ends in a whimper.

So, module text is better & more open-ended than my initial impressions. Final fight is much weaker than my initial impressions (unless you crit, in which case the players will howl about how unfair it is, as I did).

I wanted to address some comments from prior reviews, but then I realized that most are for the older versions (1 through 5) of the document. So, yeah, I guess maybe the older versions were not printer friendly, but I just printed the new season 6 document on a black & white laser printer and it seems fine, and readable. The PDF displays on my tablet OK, too, though my tablet is new and fast. I guess older ones might struggle with it.

Regarding the removal of tieflings as a playable race, I believe that's just fallout from season 5. That is, we just played through a huge story arc about a demon invasion, and I believe that all outsiders and otherworldly/extraplanar types are now on "the outs" with Pathfinder Society. That will change for story reasons I'm sure in another season or two, but for now at least it makes thematic sense.

As for the quality of the modules for season 6, that probably needs to go into the reviews of each individual module, but I have to admit that I really like it so far. The fights in 6-01 were much harder than I expected, and a PC died. I thought that was cool for it to be so dangerous, though I understand some will hate that. In 6-02 I loved the social interactions with previously-unknown Technic League. And the big boss fight was very scary and had a secondary fight that really surprised us. I again found it fun, though I understand a table full of players who have zero adamantine weapons will find it too hard and probably all die. Also, regarding 6-02, we had a hugely fun time with our skills, but see the next paragraph for why it was fun for us and not for others.

The only thing I don't like about season 6 is the introduction of a new feat, without which you cannot use your skills to interact with technology. It's basically a "feat tax" to be good at all the season 6 modules. Nobody in PFS near me is following that rule, even though it's mandatory and even though anyone not following it is in danger of being ousted. Doesn't seem to matter; everyone from top to bottom hates it, so it's completely gone. If any official employee from Paizo were to ask, we'd nod and say it's there. At the table? We don't even *ask* if a player has the feat. Does that upset management? Oh well, they introduced something bad, and the community rejected it while they weren't looking.

So overall season 6 has been great and the season 6 guide seems fine. But we killed the bad stuff, and we like brutally hard fights, so your mileage may vary.

Note: this is only 3 stars to play. I gave it 4 stars from the perspective of a GM in Pathfinder Society. One of the PFS rules is that you must play what is in the module exactly as-is, but if maps or other things are omitted, you have leeway to create that stuff. The missing data is the *only* way a PFS GM has to tailor encounters -- for example if an encounter has no map, the GM has leeway to put down advantageous terrain, or something really difficult to navigate, which can have a material effect on the outcome of encounters. This module happens to be missing a whole lot of stuff, making it one of the modules that is "most modifiable" in PFS-legal ways. I like that, so that's why I gave it 4 stars.

Having said that, my review is actually simply here to respond to a bunch of earlier reviews that complained that the module uses outdated D&D 3.5 edition stat blocks, and needs to be re-done for Pathfinder. I wanted to mention this for those reviewers: you *can* redo the stat blocks for the spider swarm, allip, and ghouls. The PFS rules state that you must run the monsters as-is *unless* the CR for the monster is the same in D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder. If so, you are allowed to drop the D&D 3.5 stat block and use the Pathfinder stat block. Well, guess what? The swarm, allip, and ghouls have CRs in D&D that match the CRs in Pathfinder, so the new stat blocks can be used.

The sorcerer, water bug, bugbear zombie, and ghast each have a CR in D&D that is different from Pathfinder, so they have to remain as-is. But that's good! The bugbear zombie is weaker in Pathfinder, and that fight is already too easy, so keep the harder original! And the water bug is way, way, WAY harder in Pathfinder and would TPK the party if you used the Pathfinder version, so totally keep the older D&D 3.5 stat block.

Overall, this is still a great module to run, as it gives the GM lots of room to maneuver. If you don't like the talky ballroom stuff at the beginning, you can deliver the paltry amount of details that the module provides and be done with it, but if you love that stuff, you can flesh out all the details that are necessary to do it justice. That should be fine according to the PFS season 6 rules. So have fun fleshing it out!

I'm going to address a few concerns of previous reviewers, which means this review has light spoilers. I will try to write carefully, but I'm addressing problems with the module, so I need to be clear about how those problems are fixed.

Weapon kills PCs
CireJack hints in his review that the weapon detonation killed a PC. I would note that it's impossible for that to happen. The spell associated with the weapon is not meant to be run as normal -- there is text right in the module on page 19 that states that the weapon only operates at half power versus neutral-aligned characters, and no effect on good characters. Since PFS doesn't allow evil PCs, that means no killing effect is possible vs. PCs. If your PC died, either the GM didn't read up on the weapon modifications, or your PC somehow registered as evil.

Broken puzzle
Many reviewers including Erick Wilson and Peter nielson have noted that the module's main puzzle is broken. While there isn't any official errata, the author corrects the buggy module text in the GM discussion. That's a link to the corrected answers. With the correction, the puzzle becomes 100% more sensible and solvable. Use it.

No puzzle alternative
Jiggy complains that if you cannot solve the main puzzle, the module ends. I would note that not only does the module provide stats for the door so that it can be broken down to bypass the puzzle, but it also notes that if the PCs fail 3 times in a row, the crystal trap runs out of charges and the door freely opens on the 4th try. That's on page 9.

Suits not noticed and/or not enough time
Finally, people have hinted that the suits are hardly mentioned even though they're very important, and many players never see them. First, I think it's fine that PCs might miss a boring suit, and it's good to explore what happens next. But second, something everyone is missing is this text on page 14: "Once the PCs destroy the allip, there is a brief respite before a calm and peaceful ghost of Ghalcor rises from his corpse and bows to the Pathfinders." In other words, the players should have a few rounds to explore the room (the "brief respite") before the good ghost rises, and it isn't until the good ghost is done answering questions and fades that the final breach of the fortress happens! So yes, the two encounters are tightly packed, but not so tight that the PCs cannot explore the room and find the suits! The module states there is downtime, so don't trigger the final fight too quickly.

Climbing to device
The only bug that actually still is a problem is that there are no climb DCs and no description of the walls to help GMs guess what the DC might be. We know that the floor is made of cut stone, since the module says so. The map also uses graphics that imply stonework. So I would be inclined to suggest that everyone use a climb DC that is appropriate for hewn stone.

Good luck with the module everyone! It's pretty fun.

The Pathfinder book embraces munchkinism. Everything is powered-up. For example, races all get +2 to TWO stats now. Why? I don't see that as a big issue on the various 3.5 edition forums.

Could we just fix the broken mechanics, like grapple, turning, tripping, etc?

Causing the DM/GM to have to revise all the NPCs in a game is a little much. Perhaps quick changes would be OK, but some of this looks like it will be a real pain for early adopters.