Pathfinder Society Scenario #7–07: Trouble in Tamran (PFRPG) PDF

(I played this under TheDegraded.)

This is a great scenario. The story is fun, understandable, and falls together greatly. My main issue with the PFS narratives so far has been that story either drips to the player in very small bits (or not at all), or all at once in the wrap-up. Here you get a premise and you gradually piece things together. The players can see what happened by using logic, rather than having the evil plot explained to them by the villain.

I also really appreciate the variety in combats. They all felt pretty lethal, and they used different tactics each time. And finally Paizo seems to understand that final encounters need to go wide, rather than big. One big bad gets beaten down easily due to action economy, but here the last fight had several moderately tough enemies, which made the fight much more exciting and tense.

One compaint, though: the encounter with the instigators felt quite clunky. Maybe it was just our fault for not understanding we'd already convinced the audience but we needed to go after the instigators, but our GM pretty much had to start combat himself in order to get the scenario going again. Again, maybe that's just our fault for not picking up the cues, but I felt it's a shame we couldn't really talk it out.

In the end, a fun scenario for everyone. Some social encounters, some interesting fights, and a good storyline. Recommended.

I GM'ed this scenario this week for a low tier party. As the GM, I loved it. I like scenarios where you have to investigate areas in order to progress, but also are free to do so in a random order. You get a bunch of random places, a bunch of different NPC's and a whole lot of information that at first glance is very confusing to the players. They will look at it and wonder why it is all relevant. Some players literally asked out of character 'why would we even need that information, how could that possible be relevant?' only to have all of it make sense at the end. That last part is a testament to the story of this scenario and how well everything comes together.

The investigation part is simply put solid. More importantly, compared to Out of Anarchy which shares a similar setup, it is far more friendly when it comes to time-management. You can take your time to role-play at every location without having to worry you'll be able to finish the scenario in your timeslot. This scenario does an amazing job at balancing investigation with fights in a timeslot. The only negative thing I can point out when it comes to this part, is a lack of the map of Tamran itself to give the players a better sense of direction.

The combats can all be challenging, but are nicely spread out. I think the arcanists could be a handful given the right circumstances, yet my players managed to simply charge them down in a single round. I guess that's always a thread when there's a mounted, charging cavalier around. Having the map be a little bit bigger would have made it a bit more interesting though! The rest of the combats have a distinct flavour to them as well. They're not just encounters, but they have a certain atmosphere or character to them that makes them stand out. The final boss is just thematically excellent in my opinion.

All in all, I had a blast of a time. There was a bunch of laughing, lots of exploration and some rather nice combats. It's a great example of an investigation-themed scenario that's well executed. I'd easily recommend this scenario, even more so when compared to Out of Anarchy. It feels polished and satisfying, but a little bit more information on Tamran and the various locations would have made it even better. Right now, it's still a more than solid four-star scenario in my book; one that I'd happily run again and again.

I ran this today at high tier with a party of 6. We had:

Wizard 3
Swashbuckler 4
Alchemist 4
Skald 3/Gunslinger 1
Sorcerer 5
Investigator 5

Overall I was impressed and thoroughly enjoyed running the game. The players seemed to as well.

On the plus side:

There are lots of things to do which will appeal to social characters, knowledge monkeys and murder hobos.

The mechanics are simply, easy to follow and make use of. It feels rather like Out of Anarchy but done right.

The combats look like they can provide a decent level of challenge. The set up nearly claimed one unlucky PC's life while the ambush and ruins encounters were largely turned around on the enemy through clever use of diplomacy and invisibility.

The final combat looks like a potential to be a bit of a beast. It nearly resulted in a TPK, largely because the groups primary two handed damage dealer was nearly taken out early on. It did see the PC sorcerer choosing to fail the save when prone next to his own pit rather than stay where he was surrounded b enemies.

On the negative side:

I would have liked to see a map of Tamran so I could relate where the different areas were in the City and give the PC's something to look at.

The ruins encounter is really unlikely to go off as suggested. A lot of time is spent setting it up in the text but given the enemy perception skills it feels like a lot of wasted space.

I would have liked to see a bit more solid information provided at each location. I got the sense my players were floundering a little with the rather limited info you get. Something which gave them a stronger sense of progress would have helped.

The length of the investigation seemed way longer than necessary. Three days to investigate four locations isn't needed. My group finished in one and I short circuited the return of Guaril.

They are all relatively minor complaints. Overall I thoroughly enjoyed this one and hope my players did to. They survived, completed all of their missions and no-one died. We did run way over at 6 hours but partly that was a run of bad luck in the final fight which took much longer than expected. Even so you need to keep your players on track to complete in 4.