Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012
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I ran this at a PFS table with an APL hovering around 9.5 and they mopped the floor with most of the encounters. So, anecdotally speaking, you might be able to run this for a group of 8th level characters as a reasonably challenging adventure.
At any rate, as designed, the module provides enough experience to gain one level.
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Nice job on this, Mike! I finally got a chance to read through this this past weekend. I really like the open/sandbox nature of the adventure- a good mix of investigation and dungeon crawling.
Shameless plug, but if you want to add even more weird to the adventure, I recommend checking out Zombie Sky's "It Came from the Stars" Campaign book- chock full of player and GM material to add a little bit of the weirdness from space to any campaign. Mike was also one of the many talented designers on that project.
Two quick questions ...
If I was going to be running this for a party of 6, would people suggest dropping the starting level or two? (People are already commenting that encounters are under-powered.)
And as designed, how many levels are the players expected to advance?
Answered my own questions after talking to my players and reading through the PDF. We've decided to run this with a group of 5 players at 6th level. They're looking forward to the challenge.
I've gone ahead and stat'ed up a party of rather nasty Hobgoblins to drop into one of the other mines in case the players decide to head off a'wandering.
I'll post a review after we've finished running this in a few weeks. I'm guessing it's only going to take us two or three Wednesday evenings to finish this up.
wow again an picture that amazines me where do people get this stuff :D
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I want to run this for a local group.
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And I think it might tie nicely with another product I know of.
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And I think it might tie nicely with another product I know of.
That is full of awesome exciting things—as is this item!
And I think it might tie nicely with another product I know of.
Malhavoc Press's stuff was always genius.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012
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That is full of awesome exciting things—as is this item!And I think it might tie nicely with another product I know of.
Hey, I contributed to that! :D
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It took 8 hours for me to run this, so you should be able to finish it in a couple of evenings.
I look forward to your review, and I'm especially interested to see how it works with your changes.
The players had a great time with the beginning of the adventure. I think the decision has already been made the we might end up stretching this module into some kind of story arc with these same characters.
Always surprising me with something, they decided to rent a boat to get to the location in Part Two of the module. That figured out, the four of them made quick work of the encounter at B1 with only one of the characters taking significant damage. There was minimal bloodshed at B3 and the party returned to Dustpawn a bit more encumbered than when they left. Alyssia Turpin was not pleased to be awoken in the middle of the night and told the 'obviously' drunken adventurers to come back by the light of day after they'd slept it off.
And that's where we left it for the evening, we'll pick up playing again next week. The party has picked up enough clues that they'll likely be heading straight to Part Three or trying to check out A10.
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This was the fourth anything I've DM'd, and it was the first time I really had a blast doing it, despite the couple of dozen hours of preptime. It took me quite a while to prepare because I'm somewhat of a perfectionist, and there was a lot of rules to cover that were new to me on the DM side! I ran this for a party of 6 players of levels 9-10. It took about 12 hours of playtime divided to 2 sessions.
Several interesting encounters and a few really fun-to-roleplay NPCs. Lots of scenes where to use ambient space music (or Lustmord). Nicely detailed areas. Disregarding the small mistakes and causes of confusion in the module text (further explained below), I give it a 5/5!
- Priestess Alyssia's roll for the rumor table given on page 31 is wrong.
- It would have been better to give this ^ info on page 10.
- 'Glibness' cannot be made into a potion, because it's a spell with a range of 'personal'.
- It would have cleared some confusion if it had been mentioned that 'before combat' buffs of enemies are added to their stats already. However this could be figured out from the AC bonuses.
- The 'meteorite' is often referred to as 'meteor' in the text. (nitpick)
The plot hook of the module was quite shortly explained, so I wrote a personal letter for the players from Dalviss Crenn, inviting them to research the meteorite. The evening the players arrived, they already went and found Leeara, but couldn't save her right away. I secretly gave her 1d4 days (2). They saved her two days later.
The next day they cleared almost everything there was to do. They went for Part 3 and cleaned the place up, except for cutting a deal with the cult leader to clean up Part 4. They cleaned up Part 4 and returned to finish up Part 3.
On the third day, they assembled the minor artifact and got the terrifying visions. This was my favourite part. On fourth day, they fought the BBEG and the party cleric was only a few HP away from disintegration, which would have been bad news for a PFS character.
None of the players got infected by the lake water because of high saves. But confusion gave them some trouble here and there!
I've added .pdf and .ods documents of monster stat blocks to GM Shared Prep. Feel free to make corrections. :)
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Thanks, Skiedragon! I'm glad you enjoyed the module. As far as one of your concerns (mea culpa!), consider the potion an oil.
I really appreciate seeing how the module worked for PFS play.
No problem! A bit on the easy side for that level range of characters, but really fun to run because of the setting. A very well written module, Mike. I hope you make more in the future.
Played this in a PFS group yesterday in a 10 hour marathon session. Excellent module, tons of fun to be had. I'd love to see more content from Mike in the future.
A couple of the encounters seemed like throw-ins that didn't really contribute much to the plot. Overall, we had some incredible melee synergy with reach that negated a number of issues and trivialized those encounters. Most combat bent towards Good-aligned resolutions, which was highly satisfying.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012
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Played this in a PFS group yesterday in a 10 hour marathon session. Excellent module, tons of fun to be had. I'd love to see more content from Mike in the future.
A couple of the encounters seemed like throw-ins that didn't really contribute much to the plot. Overall, we had some incredible melee synergy with reach that negated a number of issues and trivialized those encounters. Most combat bent towards Good-aligned resolutions, which was highly satisfying.
Thanks, Serisan!
I'm glad you found good-aligned resolutions to encounters. My goal was to allow for non-muderous resolutions, and James Jacobs developed the module to reinforce that.
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I have a couple of questions:
Also, would a PC be allowed to take 20 on Perception to locate traps if they fail their Fort save? What if they make their save?
Thanks!
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Thanks, Skiedragon! I'm glad you enjoyed the module. As far as one of your concerns (mea culpa!), consider the potion an oil.
I really appreciate seeing how the module worked for PFS play.
Wait, sorry for the necro, but I'm finally errata-hunting for this product. How does changing it to an oil circumvent the personal-target rule? Oils use the same rules as potions for their creation process, and so an oil of glibness couldn't exist either. You'd essentially have to create a new magic item in the form of an elixir of glibness and treat it as a wondrous item.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2012
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Wait, sorry for the necro, but I'm finally errata-hunting for this product. How does changing it to an oil circumvent the personal-target rule? Oils use the same rules as potions for their creation process, and so an oil of glibness couldn't exist either. You'd essentially have to create a new magic item in the form of an elixir of glibness and treat it as a wondrous item.Thanks, Skiedragon! I'm glad you enjoyed the module. As far as one of your concerns (mea culpa!), consider the potion an oil.
I really appreciate seeing how the module worked for PFS play.
You are absolutely correct!