Pathfinder Society Scenario #8-00: The Cosmic Captive (PFRPG) PDF

(I GMed this.)

I'm seeing a tendency in specials lately where the author throws more and more stuff at the players, but this is probably its extreme form. I had to prep 20+ combat encounters, some social encounters, and several important skill checks/puzzles, along with certain events that trigger randomly, and almost every combat having certain rules of its own occupied more headspace than I could handle, and I feel my performance suffered because of it. And I'm not alone in this, I've heard from other GMs and some players that the specials lately have been too exhausting. Please, Paizo, make your specials less... well, special. All of this is fine if we had the chance to play at our own pace, so we could dive deeper into the combats and roleplay more properly, but right now I was rushing to the next encounter even before this one was over. Also, please consider your players. I don't have a lot of money to spend on Pathfinder, and I prefer to spend it on books rather than flipmats. Having to draw 16 maps for one special was just exhausting. Legacy of the Stonelords also had a lot of maps, but many of them got reused and they were a lot smaller, so less time to draw.

Now that my whining's out of the way, an actual review of the scenario.

The adventure certainly feels like a good start of the new season, being sent in space and dealing with elementally-themed threats. Combats also were cool and interesting, so no complaints there. But where I find this scenario most lacking is in its narrative aspect. There's a cool backstory here, but it's almost impossible to impart it onto the players, especially with the time pressure. Some of our GMs made special handouts you could give for actual clues, which were nicely dramatic and fit the clue-givers really well, that really helped. If we hadn't had that, I guess most of my players would've been lost.

In the end, it's a good scenario, but in my opinion, it's bogged down by too many rules to be properly enjoyed. I really hope Society staff see these low rankings and do something about it for their next specials. I'm not sure if I want to keep GMing if this keeps up.

Played this adventure with the author at my table at Gencon. The adventure concept felt chaotic but not in a good way. The experience kept getting interrupted. They were trying to go for a multi-faceted interactive, and it just blew up in their face. The party kept getting interrupted by the table co-operation dynamic that went on, the awards ceremony and the constant hand signaling.

Additionally, the author sat at my table. I wondered why the player did not do anything useful. It just seemed that the party carried his character while he just sat and observed. When they announced that he was the author, it all made sense. Way to be dead weight during a battle interactive.

This was by far my worst experience at Gencon. I still had a blast at Gencon, and I anticipate going next year. Please veer away from doing modules like this and stay away from this author.

In case you are thinking that I post on here trolling authors or bad modules, think again please. This was my first time posting anything on here. I also do not usually go on the internet and do this as well. The experience was that bad.

This product has a problem. It's too much of a good thing, crammed in too tightly. In the end, it fails because of its own eagerness to rush you through all the stuff provided.

I played in the high tier (10-11) and with a great GM. We are some of the more experienced players in our area. So when the game kicked off, we were swiftly coordinating on solutions to each problem. However, as one of the previous reviewers noted, sometimes we would barely finish a round or two of combat before it was called. Because we kept track of initiative on 3" x 5" cards (crossing out each prior initiative number and writing in a new one), it quickly became apparent why we were being rushed through the encounters: we had thirteen initiative-tracked encounters in our 5 hour game, plus a handful of non-combat encounters that didn't have initiative rolls.

You might imagine that a person would get encounter fatigue after having crammed 9 or 10 encounters into 4 hours and then the GM says, "Hang on, we still have multiple encounters to go. Roll for initiative. Again." It was just wave after wave of elementals. I cannot imagine how tough (and how "wow we are in a meat grinder") this must have felt for the less experienced players.

Here is what's scary about this. Three months ago, when season 8 was announced, I posted a story about it on Reddit. You'll notice one of the comments there was, "I don't look forward to an entire season where Ambrus Valsin sends us into plane x to retrieve some artifact, we kill a bunch of elementals of that type and some sort of genie as the boss and then finish the mission." Full of hope, I countered that we were about to get a season full of weird Planescape-like stuff.

And yet here we are. The season kicked off by doing almost exactly what that negative comment predicted. How could it have been so pessimistic and prescient? I'm going to steadfastly cling to hope about the rest of the season, but man, Paizo, you're shaking me. Please don't let that negative comment on Reddit turn out to be an accurate prediction of how the rest of the season plays out!

So, I've had the opportunity to GM this special but have yet to play it. I've spent a long time considering what I would rate it, and trying to separate my rating from the single table I had. (The people were great, the overall table from my perspective not so much)

First, this things a bear to prepare. There are something on the order of 40 separate possible encounters - most tables won't even see 1/3 of them. Furthermore it takes something like 20 maps. It's just too much. The overall page length is massive - 110 pages, which is significantly shortened by the bestiaries being split up by tier. Except, then you find out that you may also need the tier above and below the one you're running depending on path and table speed.

Second, the ability to reveal story. To be honest of the three possible paths 1 pretty much has no opportunity to reveal story line, and the other 2 have their best opportunity for story hidden in the second area that unlocks on that path. My players had absolutely no way of ever getting to that encounter since by the time it opened that was also the trigger to move onto the next phase.

Third, there was almost no interaction between tables, basically it's 6+ tables running the same scenario at the same time, and there are a couple of effects that happen based on others but nothing overtly obvious. Take Stonelords as an example, the low tier table fires off their ballista (IIRC) and it stuns the monster in the high tier, this really makes it feel more interactive as tables help each other. This scenario completely lacked that feel IMO.

Fourth, there are a couple of encounters that get highly repetitive, one section repeats the same combat over and over until you succeed and/or move on (due to others succeeding), also the first and final combats in every tier are the same.

Supposedly, the three tracks are supposed to be set up for different ability groups however one track is all combat, the other 2 have the exact same number of combat/non-combat encounters.

Overall, I have to say it's my least favorite of the recent specials possibly all of them.

I played the scenario at a slot 0 and prepared to run it at our yearly convention:

It has a very interesting setting with memorable and interesting Encounters. It was fun to play and to prepare. The only problems are an overuse of certain monsters

All in all, I like the scenario and especially the setting with its unique opportunities. It has the right feeling for a multi table-special but I hope we will get to see the ramifications of this scenario early in season 8. The difficulty feels right and I love the two special bosses with their ability to give even power gamers an adequate challenge.