Pathfinder Society Scenario #1-16: The Perennial Crown Part 1, Opal of Bhopan

Announced for March! Product image and description are not final and may be subject to change.

I am SO EXCITED to see how the fine players of PFS will react to my adventure - it is very different from most society scenarios!

If anyone has questions, let me know! :D

Endz!! Sweet!! I think this is your first PFS scenario??? Totally awesome, looking forward to checking out. Congrats, man! Well deserved.

Thanks Elorebaen!! :D

Yep, this my first PFS Scenario! I have written something that has never been done before in PFS, and in conjunction with Alexander Augunas' second part, this'll hopefully blow folks away! I've ran the final version of the two-part saga, and I had a blast!

Bhopan is very weird, and I hope people will like my interpretation of the place! I'm super-stoked to have the chance to contribute to Golarion's rich lore in this way!

Huh, Bhopan is piece of lore from 3.5 Burn Offerings that was never ever mentioned again? :D

@CorvusMask: You win the Obscure-Golarion-Lore prize! :D

Really great to see! The fact that there is a 2nd written by AA is icing on the cake!

@CorvusMask: You win the Obscure-Golarion-Lore prize! :D

It is fun to see super obscure lore being referred again :D

But yeah, do you feel pressure about yer first PFS scenario? ;D I mean now your readers can compare how you do writing to what you praise in your reviews!

On same topic, I've kinda wanted to try out writing scenario style adventure, but besides it being scary to try to send anything to companies in case I make bad first impression, its kinda scary how less good scenarios get torn down in some scenes :'D So uh, any tips on that front of "If you want to try freelance work how to get started?" style topic?

Awesome to hear Endzeitgeist is writing a PFS scenario! Been reading your reviews for years . :) Looking forward to it!

@CorvusMask: I have no delusions of grandeur; if anything, I'm a fanboy of the awesome writers and designers working on adventures. I don't really stress about how it holds up in *direct comparison*.

Why?
First of all, I feel genuinely honored to have been allowed to write this adventure and contribute to Golarion's canon. I didn't try to "beat" anyone, instead attempting to write something that represents my own style. I tried to write something different from what you usually get to see in PFS, and I'm super-excited and grateful that my dev and the Paizo-team was on board with that.

Secondly, I've read Alex' module (we obviously coordinated our efforts), and even if everyone ends up less than enthused about my weird little adventure, Alex' module is RIDICULOUSLY amazing. As in: Imho better than many campaign finales. And I stand by that. Alex has wrought pure gold.

That being said, while I don't stress about *comparisons*, I do stress about whether people will like what I did here, because it is pretty different, putting a strong emphasis on roleplaying and player skill.
I tried hard to do something unconventional here, and while tests were resounding successes, there is always that nagging fear, obviously.

So yeah, I am stressing out, just not for the obvious reasons. XD

@Jib916: I genuinely hope you'll have as much fun playing it, as I had writing it!

@CorvusMask: I have no delusions of grandeur; if anything, I'm a fanboy of the awesome writers and designers working on adventures. I don't really stress about how it holds up in *direct comparison*.

Why?
First of all, I feel genuinely honored to have been allowed to write this adventure and contribute to Golarion's canon. I didn't try to "beat" anyone, instead attempting to write something that represents my own style. I tried to write something different from what you usually get to see in PFS, and I'm super-excited and grateful that my dev and the Paizo-team was on board with that.

Secondly, I've read Alex' module (we obviously coordinated our efforts), and even if everyone ends up less than enthused about my weird little adventure, Alex' module is RIDICULOUSLY amazing. As in: Imho better than many campaign finales. And I stand by that. Alex has wrought pure gold.

That being said, while I don't stress about *comparisons*, I do stress about whether people will like what I did here, because it is pretty different, putting a strong emphasis on roleplaying and player skill.
I tried hard to do something unconventional here, and while tests were resounding successes, there is always that nagging fear, obviously.

So yeah, I am stressing out, just not for the obvious reasons. XD

@Jib916: I genuinely hope you'll have as much fun playing it, as I had writing it!

That is great attitude to have :D

That’s very kind of you, Thilo, but I hope that fans will look at our story as a whole rather than two parts. My half doesn’t really make sense without the hard work Thilo did building Bhopan’s lore.

While this is true of all multi-parters, I STRONGLY recommend playing both of our scenarios on the same character, back to back if you can manage.

Yeah, I hope that people will consider it to be a story in and of itself; I certainly wrote it that way...

Anyways, I wanted to echo Alex' sentiments - if possible, play the two parts back to back. The story, type of challenges, themes, etc. are explicitly written as complimentary parts of a bigger whole, and I think running them back to back makes them even better. :D

I'm really looking forward to this. Any excuse for me to wear a sequin evening gown while I run is in the running for one of my favorite adventures!

Any word on what maps these scenarios may use?

Thanks a bunch!

Heja Thes Hunter!

The scenario will use Paizo Flip Mat Forbidden Jungle, river side for one of its encounters; the rest will be provided in the module.

And evening gown? Heck yeah, that's the spirit - and perfectly suitable here!

Decadent ole' me actually wrote one of the core challenges so it can be danced IRL in proper volant dress/swallow tail/etc., venue and participants permitting, of course! (And yes, I tested that!)

Didnt get this as part of my monthly subscription?

Didnt get this as part of my monthly subscription?

In my orders it shows this was ordered and cancelled twice?

I just wanted to thank, form the bottom of my heart, Diodotus and Pauljathome, for their amazing reviews. The Paizo-crew took a chance with my weird vision and structure (shout out to Michael Sayre for letting me run with the concepts and combat-lite approach), particularly considering that this was my first official Paizo-outing, and first full-length scenario. I am humbled and extremely happy.

Thank you. so much. *takes a deep bow*

I'd also like to thank Andreww for his review! I'm very happy you had an enjoyable time!!

To explain some of my design decisions: I intentionally kept the combats on the easier side of things, since I knew what Alex would be doing in Part II. I also wanted to keep the two-parter solvable as regular PFS scenarios, and as something that can be solved if run as one massive (brutally hard) module - I tested both, in case you were wondering. :)

As for your question: Have you seen something like the dance puzzle before in PFS or another module? I thought I had found something that hasn't been done before. I have read a ton of adventures, but if it's been done before, I'd love to know which adventure had a similar angle.

If you've got suggestions beyond the review that can help me improve, I'd love to hear them! I'm always open to feedback! This is my first "big" published adventure (I usually write crunch, since I'm not a native speaker and worry about descriptions and the like a lot), and I certainly want to improve further!

Cheers and all the best!!

Its difficult to provide feedback as I havent bought the scenario yet to run. I will check back in after I have. You are right that I havent seen anything like the dance off (which I thoroughly enjoyed), I was more thinking about it in terms of being a skill challenge which we see a lot of in PFS. It always amuses me that one of the things that 4e got so much flak for was skill challenges and yet we see them now as entirely normal both in 1E and 2E.

Thank you so much for your reply! :D

And yeah, I am not a big fan of 4e (13th Age imho does the playstyle much better - but, just to make that clear: If you like 4e, I understand why - it's just not for me), but I considered skill challenges as a good idea back then, and still do - using them in PF1, SFRPG, and they're hardcoded in PF2. I guess it's also no coincidence that Alex, who wrote the big and fantastic skill challenge books for PF1 and SFRPG, got to do the epic second part. :)

I cannot reply to Schattensterns review on the review bit so I am going to reply to it here.

Having prepped this now I cannot agee at all about the dance challenge. This is one of the better examples of skill challenge set ups in a PFS scenario. It offers a boad range of different options characters can try meaning there will rarely be something you cannot at least have a moderately good chance of passing on.

For the first encounter, the enemy does not have an at wil stal spell. They have at will wall of thorns which takes a minute to grow the wall. This is not useable in combat.

Overall I suspect that your GM ran this wrong. It is a fairly complex scenario and definately benefits from proper preparation.

OK, I ran this tonight and overall I think I still agree with what I wrote in my review. The author asked for some feedback so here goes. However, I am british and an academic, so gushing about things I loved is alien to me. This focuses on things I would have liked to see done differently:

1. I liked the jungle travel bit a lot, the damage from failing is largely irrelevant but the addition of longer duration status effects works very well. I might have liked to see more relevance for survival here and, one of my common issues with PFS2 scenarios, some direct refence to potentially relevant skill feats. Lots of skill feats are written as very niche abilities, I would really like to see them get some more substantial use by being specifically called out as having even a minor impact in these sorts of situations.

2. The first encounter is a potentially interesting one but the layout is pretty awful if you assume the starting position is north of the ravine for the PCs. If you split them up like this it eaither ends up as a drawn out "can we get to you yet" or ranged characters murder it. When I played it we had two level 5/6 characters with fireball with perdictable results. When I ran it tonight I started the group across the ravine and it was much more interesting.

3. Having said that, there is basically no risk resulting from this encounter. A tier3-6 really doesnt need this level of hand holding however, if you are going to use it, there should be some detriment tied to the save. There is a very small chance the group might lose a treasure bundle but it is very small.

4. The whole getting to the city, introduction to its customs and meeting the king is well done and nicely sets the scene for the next part. The garden party works fine and you get to learn a bit about what has gone before. Given you are explicitly going there in part to learn what happened I found the references to concealing your identity a little odd. In my experience Pathfinders can never help blabbing about who they are, even when they shouldnt.

5. The dance is well constructed but the edge points really make things far too easy. I had a group of five tonight, they generated 14 edge points. Nothing was failed. They chose infiltration and ended with 0 awareness. I dont mind the edge mechanic but again it felt a bit like hand holding to make sure no-one failed. I would much rather the group got far fewer and could perhaps only use them for a critical fail to turn it into a regular fail.

6. On that, the existence of the edge points also means it is almost impossible to have a dance mishap. They are a really interesting part of the dance and help to strongly reinforce the nature of the place. I would not apply the chicken wing effect to a PC, that is simply too crippling to too many players.

7. The puzzle/trap was interesting but confusing. I wasnt at all clear if the bypass effects were permanent. When I played this our GM had the trap destroy decoys made with crafting. I did not and let them disable it at range. Once detected as long as someone can eventually hit the DC it seems like it will be disabled. A critical failure triggers it but it doesnt look like you need to be in the area to attempt it. Certainly that was generally the case with 1E traps. I am still a little unfamiliar with the hazard rules so I am not 100% certain I ran this right.

8. The last fight with the boss is both interesting and danngerous. When we played this we thought his offer was utter madness and refused to go along with it. When I ran it my group were almost jumping at the chance. Tonight his fun was rather spoiled by a combination of command to drop his weapon and a readied action to pick it up. One small peeve I have is that when enemies are given useable magic weapons please put special effects (such as crit effects) into the stat block.

Overall I really recommend this scenario. It does need a lot of prep, it has spellcasting enemies with spells at higher than usual levels and a faily complex skill challenge in the middle of it.

First of all, I'd like to thank all the reviewers for their insights - including the one by Schattenstern, which admittedly stung, but any time spent on writing a review is ultimately helpful to me! I'm very sorry you didn't have a good time, Schattenstern.

Furthermore, I'd like to thank andreww for the more detailed feedback here! From one academic to another, I really appreciate the helpful and constructive feedback!

1.-3.: This is partially due to constraints and the need to write for a general audience where one can't assume fixed ranged competence. As mentioned before, the lack of consequence here was actually by design, but clearly should be communicated more clearly or otehrwise tweaked. Thank you for pointing this out more explicitly for me.

5.-6.: The low difficulty was intended. Puzzles, particularly unconventional ones that require some GM-mojo to pull off, should have caveats that prevent getting stuck. One must design for more roleplaying and mechanically-inclined groups both, and account for different skill-levels of players.

As a whole, I learned a lot from your feedback, so once more, thank you so much for going the extra mile and posting these!!

*takes a bow*

Thank you, Slothsy, for another fine review. I'm glad you enjoyed my first PF2-module! :D

14 edge points seems impossible. Unless I ran/read it wrong, each phase they got 3 chances to bypass obstacles, but the activities at the front weren't a phase; it was its own thing, to generate edge points. "Each PC can participate in one of the following activities." I took that to mean each PC got one go at one game. My group of 5 only got 2 edge points which was plenty. Ended up having a single person end up getting a dance mishap which was fun.

Anyways, I loved the scenario.

I'd like to thank Will Huston for his review!

Also: Thank you, GM Ultra Plus, for your kind words regarding my first PF2-scenario! :D

It's an excellent adventure, EZG. Why did you get into writing PF stuff so late? ;-)

Wait a sec, are you replying to all reviews? :D

First of all: HUGE kudos to my developers!! The module only exists in its current iteration due to their talent, and devs are often the unsung heroes of the RPG-industry! As far as I know, Michael Sayre, James Case and Mark Seifter really polished this one.

Also: Kudos to Alexander Augunas, the author of Pt.II: His module has gotten some flack, but it's really the second side of the coin to this one - they were written to form a whole, and my RP-focused module was written this way as a build towards Alex' action-romp.

@Grobacz: Coming from a PF-veteran like you, this is a huge badge of honor. *takes a bow*
I've written material for other systems (PF1, 5e, OSR, etc.) before, but I never had the chance to write an adventure before...plus, given that English's not my native language, I always shied away from modules.

I can't thank Paizo enough for giving me a shot with a) metaplot and b), an adventure for a relatively new system, where I'm not yet as familiar with the mechanics as in e.g. 5e etc..

@CorvusMask: I'm trying. Reviewer's habit. ;) Also: Thank you VERY MUCH for your kind review.

To answer your question, well, the reason for the redcap angle is partially due to the fey influence, partially found in the sidebar, pg. 10 of the module - trying to avoid spoilers here. Also, the Bhopanese think of seasons/courts as a wheel, and this also, consequently, blurs the traditional alignment boundaries. "Evil" and "good" are seen more as facets, and less like monolithic forces.

And yes, the combats being not that hard was a deliberate decision, since I knew what Alex would throw at the PCs. I wrote this to potentially allow for the option to play Pt. I and II back to back.

Cheers!

I am looking forward to running second part and giving it fair review too, mostly because I'm... Confused by some things reviews say. Like to me it reads like GM misunderstood something(for example, one of reviews complains about final boss being able to fascinate players, but uh, they don't have that ability. Unless I remember conditions wrong). And another one underestimates the seeming power of the "gimmick"(unless I'm the one overestimating it)

Have to say it is fascinating to hear little bit of insight (I don't really know what is the writer -> developer -> editor -> release process works, or if it even works like that) on how scenario release works :O

In general, this being your first adventure ever and on top of that in new system ye haven't written for kinda inspires me to want to trying write adventure as well (but I probably won't do that since I see that ending badly xD I have zero experience in any kind of professional writing)

First of all: HUGE kudos to my developers!! The module only exists in its current iteration due to their talent, and devs are often the unsung heroes of the RPG-industry! As far as I know, Michael Sayre, James Case and Mark Seifter really polished this one.

I really need to give the development credit for this one to my team. While I outlined the adventure and handled things up through the milestone, the final work was done by Linda, James, and Mark while I was up in Alaska helping out with a family emergency. Everyone, you included Thilo, really did an awesome job of making the story I'd envisioned come to life and I'm super grateful to all of you.

@Grobacz: Coming from a PF-veteran like you, this is a huge badge of honor. *takes a bow*
I've written material for other systems (PF1, 5e, OSR, etc.) before, but I never had the chance to write an adventure before...plus, given that English's not my native language, I always shied away from modules.

I can't thank Paizo enough for giving me a shot with a) metaplot and b), an adventure for a relatively new system, where I'm not yet as familiar with the mechanics as in e.g. 5e etc.

I mean, at the end of the day the system hasn't even been out for a year yet (and was even newer when your assignment was sent), so it's not like there was a huge pool of writers with more PF2 experience :)

Notorious forum personalities?

Notorious forum personalities?

I have a sticky note reminder to contact you as a subject matter expert if my pitch for a courtroom adventure dealing with troll barristers in Kaer Maga ever gets green-lit.

:D

… do I have a sticky note?

Gorbacz wrote:

Notorious forum personalities?

I have a sticky note reminder to contact you as a subject matter expert if my pitch for a courtroom adventure dealing with troll barristers in Kaer Maga ever gets green-lit.

:D

Congratulations, you've played right into my hand, phase 1 complete.

Phase 2: get Todd Stewart drunk and have him pitch the idea of an adventure about an interplanar Court of Trolls that meets once in 5555 years in caverns beneath Kaer Maga.

Okay, I'll hereby also extend my HUGE thanks to Linda Zayas-Palmer! I didn't list here as she wasn't listed in that capacity - so thank you, Linda!! :D

Congratulations, EZG, on your first official release published by Paizo!
This step was long overdue. I've long been an admirer of your work and unique perspective when it comes to tabletop RPGs. I can't wait to read this one.

I really enjoyed this scenario, even though our GM completely screwed up the puzzle/trap mechanic at the end. I looked at it after the scenario and it seemed pretty clear to me; I'm not sure how he got it so horribly wrong.

Still, really fun, colorful scenario!

Thank you, Tom! I'm glad you had fun with my little scenario, in spite of the GM-troubles. We're all human, and sometimes, a bad day can mess up one's concentration.

I'd also like to thank MrNastyButler and Kaushal Avan Spellfire for their reviews!! Glad you enjoyed my first published module for PF2e! :)

Can we stop with the neverending skill gauntlets!

It's skills or combat.

Question as I am running this on Sunday.

In the final battle the BBEG has a specific magic weapon, this weapon has a critical effect. The critical effect is not listed in the stat block.

Do I add the critical effect that is in the CRB if the BBEG scores a critical, even though it isn't in the stat block?

I would do so, stat blocks pretty much never list crit effects and often miss off even weapon traits.

Please note that with the release of Pathfinder Lost Omens: Impossible Lands, a second boon has been added to this scenario: Danced the Grand Dance. This can be obtained in the Boon Store for any character who has credit for this scenario.

Updating the scenario PDF and Chronicle Sheet to reflect this change is on our backlog to-do list if and when we have time to do so.