A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 1st- through 4th-level characters.
It's time to explore! With the Society coming off of their recent victory in finally defeating an old enemy, they choose to turn to refocus on the goals of the Pathfinder Society: Explore! Report! Cooperate! As a celebration for such a successful year, there's a party being hosted with all sorts of friends both new and old in attendance. However, when one of Fola Barun's dear friends needs to be entertained in order to prepare a surprise, it's up to the Pathfinders to show him around the famous Maze of the Open Road. When he starts to encourage exploration, new doors appear and new adventures await!
Intro: Year of Unfettered Exploration is the introduction to the plot of the Year of Unfettered Exploration. This scenario presents characters and themes that will feature in Year 5's metaplot, and so it is is a natural starting point for players looking to jump into the action.
You'd think an intro scenario would be a great place to jump in for a new GM. Nope! There were SO MANY characters in this and I knew exactly none of them. Thus, I started off this adventure feeling very confused, and kept feeling that way until I'd finished running it.
The pacing is also... weird? It seems like the greatest, most intense danger happens at the beginning, and then it's kind of just goofing off from there? The module also goes out of its way to have the party pick up new friends as they adventure, and then very obviously finds ways to have those friends not participate in encounters. It felt very artificial.
I'm glad my players had fun, but this just wasn't for me.
Confusing (in multiple ways), overloaded with NPCs encounters in a way that doesn't make a lot of sense & a somewhat questionable premise (for low-tier).
I ran this adventure in the high tier first, and we had a memorable session!
There's a huge cast of characters in this adventure, some new and some familiar ones sneaked in for folks who have been paying attention for the last few seasons! The adventure brings us back to the Maze of the Open road and gives us an eventful tour as the elemental planes are shifting and adjusting suddenly.
This an excellent little romp for players who enjoy exploration and making some friends!
We had one player playing up who almost died but the heroes pulled them out before it was too late!
Ring Side Report- RPG review of Pathfinder Society Intro: Year of Unfettered Exp
TL; DR- Too much money for a too short adventure. 77%
Basics- And we’re walking! This Pathfinder Society adventure features you as a tour guide to a multidimensional maze where you guide a new venture captain to a lodge, then help round up some little elementals all while trying to be on time for his party.
Mechanics or Crunch- Paizo understands its mechanics. The game itself works well here, but the adventure is a bit short. What is in this adventure is about two fights and several skill checks to help multiple different players feel involved with a bit of exploration thrown in. Solid work overall, but a bit short for my players as no players felt too challenged and a few checks cleared the adventure with no problem. 4.5/5
Theme or Fluff- The adventure works, but it feels off. We have a new guy who wants to see a place. Cool, but there is a random fight, some random elemental stuff, a kind of random handout, and a random place that doesn’t feel all that connected. It works, but my players and I felt that it was a bit disjointed. Furthermore, it didn't really introduce any major metaplot or content. It was a decent distraction and having more pure noncombat adventures would be fun, but this wasn't that nor was it pure combat adventure. It felt like too much of a mix. 3.5/5
Execution- I was the most disappointed here. The adventure works with classic Paizo layout and text doing their good job as always, but there is too much text and not enough guidance with some things being tried but not really working. First, there are random things that happen. Good! But use the random event charts that we had in previous chapters rather than just have three options for the GM to pick. Same goes with where the main NPC wants to go. Add in a chart where he says where to go, describe the location, and have a random dice roll. The main bulk of the adventure is in a maze. Which is fun, but doesn't have a massive location, but maybe just set pieces. There are places that I don’t feel were all that connected nor did the riddle handout really help me or my players with it. The price of the adventure is high, but they are now including all the information I need to run it. However, the map they give is too big and can't work on Roll20. It also has a grid, so I have to fight with Roll20 to line it up. PDFs can remove the grids, so I appreciate those. But, here I am paying for a product that isn’t quite getting me what I want. Honestly, if these were just set piece locations as they wander the maze, I feel that would make this run easier and make the maps small enough to upload to Roll20. I appreciate what they gave me, but for almost 1/3 the price of their regular adventures, this costs a bit too much. 3.5/5
Summary- Overall, this works. It's a fine enough adventure, but it's short, a little disjointed, and the add-ons are a bit wonky. I don’t hate this, but I feel some aspects hold this back. Some small changes in organization and flow could help this be a top notch adventure. You can easily run this, and you and your party will have fun. But, don’t expect this to run for the full five hours. 77%
This is a very frustrating module to run, especially if you rely on prewritten adventures to lighten the GM's workload. I will not be running it again.
There is a LOT of GM prep to turn this scenario into something fun for the players, and memorable. The kitchen sink approach for an introductory scenario was nearly overwhelming to prep.
Some changes I made:
- built 3 additional maps (maps in the foundry module are...not great)
- essentially made the NPCs into dolts so the players could shine
- handwaved the importance/impact of the followers and minions in section 5 and just focused on Gedun
- ran the whole thing like a scoobydoo mystery to inject some fun into an otherwise incoherent starting session
I would run this again, with other major modifications/rewrites for the purpose of cohesion.
