Pathfinder Society Scenario #1-21: Mistress of the Maze

We've been running PFS in our store since season 1 but we didn't have any players high enough to play this at the tme of release.

I've now been going back through all the scenerios we've missed and this was always on my radar and the reviews have to say put me off offering it.

However after sitting down and reading it, this is a great fun litte scenerio and you can see what they were trying to go for, but they didn't land it perfectly.

This was the era of "The Tile Maps" which had just come out so was really being pushed in season 1 which as a player / gm isn't exciting.
(This is why this is not a 5 star)

But I really love the planes and how they were changing / altering the maze. It gave me a lot of creativity to how to describe it to players and I just used different ink markers on play mats instead.

I love all the litte clues / red herring in here as well. The players were kicking themselves by the end and one major clue they wish had clue them up were

Fights were very fun and I can imagine when only having the core rulebook / understanding of the rules in Season 1 it would of been deadly. But now it wasn't as much.

This is a great little linear scenerio if you got players who like no frill story and lots of combats.

A recommend for GM's who are creative and my player loved it.

Disjointed locations with hard to understand skill checks to move. The sudden but inevitable betrayal, a narrow largely useless boon.

Confusing and punishing mechanics for doing what the scenario tells you to.

Weird planar creatures are at least thematic with their encounters but the maps are not used well.

The scenario really felt like a "hey look at these monsters!", and the map choice was definitely odd, but overall I found the scenario to be a fun yet mindless romp.

It did not deliver on the maze. It did not deliver on its twist. It was a fun series of disconnected fights. And for once, after all of 2e's intricacies and complicated plots, it was nice to have a simple: "Go here, do thing. There will be enemies in the way."

I played at the same table as Ascalpus. Before I prepped it I might have been similarly scathing. Having prepped it now to run tomorrow I am slightly less harsh. This scenario has a number of issues:

1. There is very little flavour of the Maze. Admittedly we didnt know much about it in 1E except for its appearance in Eyes but it doesnt really come across.

2. The progression through the gates is not terribly well explained and was vey confusing when I played it.

3. The potential encounter in the gate area is far too small, given you may well have multiple large opponents. This whole scenario smacks of an attempt to get us to buy the awful map packs. Please stop doing this. I dont know if your data is showing an uptick in their purchase but from personal experience I can say it is not inducing me or anyone I know to buy them. Mostly I run online so it is less of an issue, apart from having to stitch together way too many very annoying single tiles. If I ever ran this in person you can be sure I would be drawing something basic or picking a flip mat that was "close enough".

4. It haas a variety of editing errors, most noticeably in the note section which cannot make up its mind how may there should be.

5. It is missing key information on Eliza. Sure she isnt supposed to be involved as an active combatant but lots of creatures in this have area effect abilities which she will be caught by.

6. It has way too much combat, potentially 5 different combat encounters. You can technically avoid two of them but its not very liktley, at least for the first set of guardians. I wouldnt ever want to run this in a con slot.

The locations were exotic . . . or so we were told. But, apart from rolling a single skill-check here or there to see if one could act, there was nothing persistent or clearly unique.

There were a lot of fights, none challenging. Giving the environments of those fights some character - felt character, rather than words - would have gone a long way.

This is the sort of scenario in which having different mechanics for mundane things might capture tone -- from air so think in one area that fighting there follows "underwater combat" rules, or negative consequences (damage) for standing in one place during a fight, or having to fight while climbing.

The main NPC was obtuse. And the character had not been in 1st edition scenarios. Maybe this is a hint that the NPC is under mind control or something, but it seems to have more to do with the adventure being poorly put together.