Pathfinder Society Scenario #7–98: Serpents' Ire (PFRPG) PDF

When running an adventure like this at a convention, I think that having "Experience Required:None (You've never played before - rules will be taught)" listed as the experience required might be disingenuous. These pregens are complicated, and not something to be attempted by new players.

Once you get going, you will love this scenario IF, and this is a BIG IF, you enjoy roleplaying. I mean truly enjoy roleplaying. I don't mean just putting a brogue on your hard drinking dwarf, or making LOTR jokes about the halflings or Gandalf's taking all of the XP for the Balrog. I mean the sort of roleplaying where you can be given an assigned role, with their motivations and truly run with it.

If you can't do that sort of willing suspension and getting out of your own box and getting into the box that the author of the scenario has offered you, then I recommend you find something else to play.

I won't even begin to talk about the scenario plot without spoiling it, because I'd fail. What I will do is state that the motivations and backgrounds of the characters were phenomenal. Even better than the prequel scenario (which I will write up next). The reoccurrence of a character from before was both cool and eerie, as that was the NPC I had played before. I highly recommend that people play the prequel first though, because the continuity will help, and where possible play the same character you did before (3 of the NPCs in this scenario were retreads from the prequel).

Being Aspis agents was a nice departure from the norm. As I said before though, do this one with role-players and a great GM!

The scenario experience from a play-through at PaizoCon, subject to change as I continue to mentally review this:

There was a *clear* effort and love spent on this scenario, as evidenced by the depth of material and complexity behind the encounters and interactions on a level that exceeded the 'feel' of RiseThe spiritual predecessor.

Pros:

There was a LOT of REALLY NEAT STUFF in this scenario, including a point where a previous NPC from Rise shows up and there's a collective burst of "OH, CRAP!" from the table.

Also kind of neat was to see a different direction and motivation and a for lack of a better term sanctioned 'death vagrancy'.

Group Synergy Bonus:

When the entire party was together and working as a unit, it was fairly impressive, even with lack of system mastery on the player side. That was refreshing.

Interesting Character Backgrounds:

After it became painfully obvious we were going to fail to complete the mission in the time constraints, we shared our personal briefing notes, and it was fun to see where the characters were coming from.

Cons:

LONG -- Sadly, because of the above REALLY NEAT STUFF our party did not get to the 'back' half of the scenario until eighty percent of the time slot (5 hours) was complete. At that point, it was an assured party failure and the party components began looking for means to try and at least complete *just their own secondary conditions*.

As a result, party cohesion went out the window and while not PvP it was a very uncomfortable and distasteful RP experience. The loss of both prestige was annoying, but there was no cure for it as written and run.

CHARACTER COMPLEXITY -- It is difficult to grab a pregen under optimal circumstances, and these circumstances were near sub-optimal.

Even with the helpful 'cheat sheets' that someone devised, it still took us the better part of an hour to get even a rough idea of what our characters were about.

A future recommendation to mitigate this is to make the characters available in whole to the players well before the scenario, so those who HAVEN'T played a given class combo have a chance to work out the mechanics rather than within the already straining constraints of time noted above.

SET UP TO FAIL -- Given the first comment in the above CON section, I was playing Rataji, an admittedly poor choice on my part as I am not familiar with prepared casters.

Given background, though, it felt like (especially after we engaged quasi-passive-aggressive PvP mode) like this was a scenario designed to kill the characters for their perceived failures, leaving me to wonder at least if perhaps that was an unspoken design intent. Pretty sure that wasn't the case, but it was hard to tell.

Perhaps if the 'personal briefings' were tightened up a little bit, that might mitigate some of that feeling?

AMBIGUOUS NPC -- There's a helpful NPC (for a limited definition of 'helpful') that has a communication barrier.

Unfortunately, our GM utilized the method in a way that left us confused and distracted rather than focused on the scenario, and he admitted that he probably would have used a different method if he'd seen how badly it was throwing us off our track.

BRIEFING NPC -- This could have easily have been chopped and replaced with a printed letter and an info-dump (and some block-text) to expedite the 'front half' of the scenario.

It might make things a bit more complex, but it'd stop the 'asking of dumb time-wasting questions' and 'players not making knowledge checks' for information they kind of need to know about the scenario. I realize it's counter-intuitive, but these ARE L8 characters.

If it could be safely assumed they got the briefing in Rise just fine, then it should be safely assumed that the method could work here, as well.

'POINTS' -- While this is a handy GM tool, it is a very quantitative measure for a qualitative rp environment. If this could be altered to 'general goals' rather than 'must have this hard number', it might help with the 'unit cohesion' issue mentioned above.

We didn't know about the points until wrap-up, but it was clear that when our characters did or did not perform actions notes were being made about that.

In Summary
For my play experience, this scenario desperately needs a tag on it along the lines of 'FOR EXPERIENCED PLAYERS ONLY' and 'Potentially Lengthy Scenario' to prevent it trying to be crammed into a four-hour slot.

Our GM had a hard time fitting it into a *five-hour* time slot. Given the way it ran, I can't imagine it fitting into four currently.

It shows a lot of promise.

It also needs some work to clean up to a level where it can be run in a large room with hundreds of fellow gamers talking at conversational levels or louder.

I want to give it a higher rating because of the clear work that was put INTO it, but I can't in honesty give it more given the experience I had playing it.

I had the pleasure of being a Serpents' Ire GM at PaizoCon. It is possible that it will see a small revision before GenCon, but it is an excellent adventure in its current state. I have two concerns that if met will make for a great time: 1) The GM must be exceptionally prepared & 2) the slot needs to be at least five hour (even then the prepared GM will have to hand-waive content).

Players will sit down to characters options they've likely never played before. Be prepared to ask questions, review PDFs and search other resources at the table. The story is a lot of fun though and you can be evil (sort of)! You'll have to work with your fellow players while pursuing your own goal. As you venture deeper you uncover more intrigue and must balance choices to complete your mission...and to survive.