Pathfinder Society Scenario #3-18: The God's Market Gamble (PFRPG) PDF

Just finished The God's Market Gamble (PFS 3-18) playing at low tier levels 1-2 with my Cleric 2. I gotta be honest with you guys. This took our table with 7 people a long time to do, mainly because of the large numbers of chase challenges that requires skills that no one character at 1st level would have. But .. the thing is. That chase scene was FUN. REALLY FUN. Two of us at the table had done The Disappeared together and the token that we got for that scenario was useful during the chase scene and we made full use of it, which made it even more fun.

We also did things in the wrong order which made things .. interesting for us to do. We also skipped over 1 interview, but at that point, we were running out of time for our slot, so we had to hurry things along. I'm afraid I'm going to have to give this one all 4 or 5 stars even though there were flaws in the scenario, just because the entire table was a laugh riot the entire time. Big props to the GM who ran the game as well, who was unflappable in the face of players who were mostly interested in the luls.

I played this on the lower tier in PFS.

There was a fair amount of rail-roading causing at least one transition to not work well. Basically the group came up with the same solution that the scenario presents later. That said, I did enjoy the investigation portion of the plot. It is the transitions that felt really clunky. It needed a better way of allowing multiple paths to reach the end.

The ending battle can be really tough, make sure you consider the terrain.

From a player's point of view, this was probably the scenario I have liked least of those I have played. We played 4 characters at tier 4-5, the arcane spellcaster that ran with us was only a level 3. I felt that the scenario encounters leading up to the final battle were fine if somewhat frustrating. However, the final showdown at the end was far more deadly than I have ever encountered -- so much so that it felt like a no-win situation. Granted, in retrospect we did not prepare as thoroughly as we might have and we did not have six characters to improve our mix, but it seemed that no matter what we could have done, someone was going to die. Based on the linear (railroad) tracks of the adventure, there was no way to work around it.

My suggestion to those who might still play this: bring a big party with a good mix of skills/spells to improve your individual PCs survivability and be prepared for the worst.

I'm relatively new to GMing, but this is a challenging (but very fun) scenario. BBEG can be very deadly, and lots of other fun settings.

Let me start by saying that I haven't run God's Market Gamble, this is coming from a player stand point, so take that for what it's worth, but but GDG was the worst pathfinder society scenario I have ever played.
I've never felt so railroaded into situations that work against the players so badly as in this scenario. And the worst part is that where most scenario's give players different moments to shine, GMG forced players to perform in situations that they were poorly suited to. At one point in our adventure there were mandatory checks for characters that were actually impossible to make, and by the time the final encounter rolled around and we were already into several rounds of inept combat, I looked around the table to see the GM was the only one having fun, everyone else had this dejected look on their faces that all seemed to say "Why are we even playing this stupid game?"
Now don't get me wrong, it's nice to be challenged once in a while, but it only ever feels like a challenge if there's something you can reasonably do to overcome it. This felt more like being kicked while you were down. Actually, this felt more like being told you were down, and then being kicked for it.
It seems a lot of GMs like this scenario quite a bit, because the villain is actually competent and has good tactics, but it's good to remember that more often than not it's more fun when the villains plans go sideways and you get the better of them. And trading fun for the players for fun for the GM is a poor way to get people to keep playing.
Now I know scenarios can differ with different GMs and different party composition, but I've had nights that were complete failures feel more like successes than this scenario that we did manage to succeed at.
Also, we did play at the low tier, so things could be different for a group of more experienced pathfinders, with a few more tricks up their sleeves.

UPDATE: So I thought it might be a little unfair to judge the scenario from just having played it, and having now read through the scenario twice, I've come to realize it was a number of bad GM calls and improper implementation of the written material that handcuffed our PCs more than the actual write up. As such it goes from 1 star to 3, still think some of the original complaints are still valid, but it was probably the GM interpretation that turned it into such an aggravating adventure. Just goes to show how much a bad night for a GM can affect a game.