Pathfinder Society Scenario #5–22: Scars of the Third Crusade (PFRPG) PDF

This scenario is very complex to GM, and requires a ton of prep to do so properly. Even so, you need a few recommendations that my first table made to me to make that WORK.

After following the changes I recommended above people enjoyed my tables at paizocon, but my first table had people telling me they hated it, which really stung because I tried my best to prepare this very complex scenario.

From a player perspective it is really satisfying if they can drive the story and figure things out, but if certain things happen it really becomes out of their control, and they feel like they can't figure anything out.

Edit, a lot of recent reviews are favorable. I have to say that calling a scenario much better with prep when that prep involves what community GMs have made up to fill in the gaps of a scenario, is really just saying that the scenario could have been improved by including those things.

The players can't drive the story. The best the players can do is to roll to find information, and hope they fail enough rolls to trigger the ending. The information can't lead them to the enemy, and the situation can't be resolved until they confront the enemy, so a spate of good rolls results in the players learning every rumor but not triggering the final encounters.

The module itself is poorly edited, with several typos.

While skill-based modules are sorely lacking -- there are plenty of modules where you lose unless you can defeat the BBEG in combat, there aren't enough modules where you lose unless you can make a DC X skill check in skill Y -- this is a poor attempt at it.

That is, if you hate combat and love high skill check rp/investigation, this is for you. If not. . .

I had pretty high hopes for this, (finally an actual Mendev Crusade sort of scenario), but really it's none of that. It could basically take place anywhere, and actually kind of seems more like anywhere but Mendev.

From a DM's perspective, it's needlessly complicated. It tries to capture something from Before the Dawn part 1 in the Town Sentiment track and mesh that with The Stolen Heir and other almost exclusively investigation scenario it leaves a lot of things unanswered.

It really needs something to spice it up, and probably 4 or 5 random combat encounters (Season 5, you are failing me).

It's a pretty big Red Flag to me when a Scenario has a GM sidebar noting that they have gone out of their way to make a lot of class features and character abilities not work or purposefully not give info just so the precious story can. That's just bad storytelling, and not only does it not equal fun, it usually just leads to frustration.

Another issue I have is that it suggests that the party split up, (sort of) and gives penalties for them not doing so. However, that's like Rule 1 in PFS, (you don't split the party). That this aspect was even included is beyond me, and what's worse, why would any players even think to do this, ever.

I'm really not sure what the goal for this one was either. While it offers a few different locations to find clues and evidence, for the most part a single character with a decent Diplomacy can solo this (and might actually do a better job without anyone else honestly with the penalty for others tagging along). Each gives suggested skill checks (with a lot of them being Diplomacy) but also suggests to let players use other skills with a good reasoning, and well Diplomacy kind of goes hand in hand with talking to folks, so that's really the only skill check you need to make in this one. Maybe Perception.

It also talks about how you can redeem <someone> at the end, but they are still listed as LG throughout and still have all their abilities to the max, so how exactly do they need to be "redeemed"? A smack on the head, sure. Shown that it's not ok to just murder those you hate. Certainly. Seems pretty hard to pin down what her actual alignment should be (you know outside of PLOT). There is one alignment that uses the law to enforce their will and harm others. There is also this one alignment that doesn't really care about what's real or right or ethical as log as you get what you want. Neither of them are LG, though.

I found this module to be disappointing as a player. It was all investigative, but we seemed to be chasing all over town for a finite number of rumors that were not that useful in solving the mystery. It seemed cumbersome for the GM to navigate. And our party did not have much fun in this mod. Maybe with certain character classes this would be more successful I prefer mods that let me have more combat and less investigating. If you love role playing and skill checks, you would enjoy it more. But I want to kill monsters....