Goblin Squad Member. Venture-Agent, Australia—ACT—Canberra 41 posts (42 including aliases). 3 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 63 Organized Play characters.
Most of this scenario is fine. I would rate it as a 3. We had fun role-playing, the plot was interesting and the fights not too hard. But the scenario really falls down at the end at I would rate the ending a 0 out of 5.
I haven't read the scenario but our GM couldn't get our PC's actions at the end to fit the module. The author seems to expect only 1 course of action - a course the I believe to be an evil act and as a GM (of over 100 Pathfinder tables) I would be giving an alignment warning to any PC of Good or Lawful alignment who did as the author expected. A Paladin would need an Atonement if they did what the author expects. What is worse is that the author does not seem to give the GM any sort of direction on what to do if the players don't follow the expected path. None of the players at my table even considered the path the author expects. The GM had to invent a conclusion and all of us were penalized, leaving us all (including the GM) feeling let down by the author.
This whole story line seems dubious. The PCs are encouraged to break the law in part 1, they are expected to do worse at the end of part 2, and the blurb for part 3 says the module involves breaking and entering (with presumably a side order of murder/mayhem). I know the Pathfinder society is not all squeaky clean, but neither are we supposed to all be murder hobos.
I played and then ran this module last weekend. It has major problems for your average pathfinder table for both players, their characters and the GM.
1. Most classes will not have the skills to succeed at the scenario and certain obvious skills are not credited with being of any use (like perception when looking for things). This is partially corrected by the GM being given a bit of lee-way to adjust the skills required but as it stands many parties will fail the primary and secondary goals.
2. Many players will not have the out-of-game skills required to solve all the puzzles. This is particularly critical with one faction goal where the answer to the puzzle is not provided in the module and neither is there guidance on how the puzzle should be solved. Apparently even the GM struggled with the puzzle as the answer provided elsewhere on the forums indicates that there is a spelling error, which would lead players (and the GM) to think they have the wrong answer.
3. The GM is not given enough information to run or score the module. In most modules there are skill checks to provide background info on the task. This module does not have those skill checks detailed, nor provide the info to the GM on what the characters might be searching for so they could answer players questions. The stack of answers provided is unsorted (as far as I could see) and the ones that are required to meet the success conditions of the module are not listed.
The module is not a complete debacle - it has some interesting flavor and nice ideas - but it is certainly not a module for the vast majority of player characters and the GM needs to research well outside the info provided in the module.
I liked the idea of this scenario but found it incredibly frustrating in its execution and the players found it extremely frustrating when I ran it. This is supposed to be a party with lots of social interaction. The NPCs and the environment are nicely detailed and the combats not overly deadly. But the author has thrown out the rule book and substituted their own ideas without explanation There are skills in Pathfinder for social interaction – diplomacy, intimidate, bluff and sense motive being the main ones. For the skill challenges the author has effectively said that those skills are useless and instead they substituted another extremely limited set of skills. This would be fine if the skills listed were provided as an alternative but they are not. As written, a PC that can hit 50 on diplomacy and sense motive is not only going to fail to influence people, they are not going to know why they failed. This scenario needs an errata to include the possibility for people with good social interaction skills to succeed. If run as written most groups will fail both the primary and secondary goals.
