Pathfinder Society Scenario #5-05: The Island of the Vibrant Dead

Vibrant is an investigation and combat scenario.

This is another scenario trying to make yet another monster, this time ghouls, into something “good” and cute. Honestly, I found the ghouls all evil and if this was a campaign, I’d hunt the entire village down and destroy them all. I regret letting Macron live. This makes me want to stop PFS and run campaigns.

Evil is not cute.

One of the final encounters was meant to be a certain way, so my GM ended up taking away my player agency, ignored my actions, so that the encounter could be run as scripted. Not sure if that was the fault of the scenario or the GM, but it's wrong.

Having said that, this was one of the better written scenarios, was interesting, and the combats were decent.

This scenario uses the same map as "Flooded King's Court", where we met Macron. This alone should be enough to give this scenario 1 star. Is the editor or author even following the campaign? I'm not sure how they would make this mistake. In practice, most casual players won't notice.

Overall: An interesting scenario even if it tries to make another monster cute and "good". (7/10)

The character of Marcon Tinol was originally introduced in PFS 1-07 The Flooded King's Court, which remains of my favorite early modules to cut players' teeth on. It's got roleplay and silliness, some grim serious notes, combat in varying circumstances, exploration, and even ethical considerations! It also awards a boon depending on your players' choices, which supposedly will come in handy in a future module.

Now, Marcon has reappeared as the star of PFS 5-05 The Island of the Vibrant Dead; a follow-up, finally! Except it's not a follow-up. In fact, if Marcon wasn't present in the module, it would hold absolutely no relationship to PFS 1-07 at all. It actually feels like a weaker module for his inclusion- not because there is something inherently wrong with the character, but because the disconnect between modules is so extreme that the two are hardly related.

It tells us that any players that completed PFS 1-07 would have been involved with getting Marcon settled on this island, which is swell... but why wasn't THAT the module instead? Aside from hand-waving what could have been a very engaging sequel story to Marcon, it inherently assumes an ending to PFS 1-07.

The most galling thing of all, though, is the map. Mythos Dungeon has been used in a whopping two (2) modules: this one... and PFS 1-07 The Flooded King's Court. The ONLY other place that Marcon Tinol has appeared.

There's another side to the flip-map! There's so many other underground dungeon maps! How in the WORLD did this end up reusing the literal same one?

If you're looking at this module as a follow-up to the story of Marcon Tinol, it's not. Marcon being included is a disservice to the module and a disservice to Marcon Tinol as a conceptual character. This module reads like Marcon was included because somebody said "oh hey didn't we introduce a not-evil undead character before? let's just use him again", without actually going back and reading the source material. If he wasn't included, the map snafu wouldn't be a problem at all- and in fact, could be a fun call back, as both tombs and crypt were Aroden-related, which could be reflected by similar architecture choices.

As for the actual content? Well, let's cut over to the Ruins of Azlant (which, we're told, we can learn more about in Pathfinder Adventure Path #122, though there's no reason to as it's never made relevant), in the middle of nowhere, though luckily and conveniently connected via the Maze of the Open Road. The story is a little too straightforward to be a proper mystery, but otherwise it's a fine tale with some minor (and likely expected) twists. Removing Marcon Tinol from the story actually improves it, as he drops out of actively assisting the party less than halfway through the module and it allows you to ignore any relationship the module has to PFS 1-07.

I'm so very disappointed in this module. I was really excited to follow up on the story of Marcon Tinol. Instead, I got a half-assed inclusion to justify showcasing this random island that just so happens to be directly connected to the Maze despite never having been mentioned before. It's a fun idea that I'd like to explore properly, but in the meantime I'm just going to have to retool this whole module, either to make Marcon relevant (which is going to require replacing the map!), or to just rip Marcon out entirely. Two stars because it's salvageable.

Its... Extremely awkward for me to review scenario based on what is a wider PFS trend and tone/lore thing rather than scenario in vacuum or mechanics of the scenario. Especially when its something that doesn't bother me personally because I have extremely high suspension of disbelief. But its starting to gnaw on me ever since I've heard few players who don't tend to give feedback on paizo.com comment on it.

But yeah, there really is trend where increasingly every scenario tends to attempt include a npc that is clearly meant to be either memorable, endearing or silly through methods that kinda... Feels blatantly trying to be funny and kinda feels out of tone with rest of setting?

On bit of tangent, I do also kinda wish there was more examination of what society composed of non evil undead would be like. I kinda see non evil undead as something like BG3's Dark Urge, they have these invasive thoughts urging them to murder or otherwise showing antipathy towards living creatures, I think adventure kinda glosses over that interesting aspect by just providing solution on their need to feed(at least until crypt runs out I guess) and not discussing it further than that. I also can't help but wonder "so... Wait... Do all of these friendly ghouls lack the most uncanny valley traits of ghouls in the art? Where is the overly long tongues? Weirdly long tongues were cool!" Even besides none of ghouls demonstrating most ghoulish traits, the wider PFS has thing with them doing things in art that don't really make sense (like cute round eyeglasses on a reptilian snout) for sake of trying to make them look amusing or appealing?

Its... Yeah. Like whenever new kobold/goblin/leshy characters shows up in scenario nowadays, they always have that mascot like funny/cute quality going for them. They aren't really allowed to have gremlin or cool qualities in PFS anymore it feels like. And its not just mascot ancestries, last season introduced a comedy sketch duo. Then that scenario with linnorm children felt like it was downplaying gravitas of linnorms for a funny bit. This one has silly pirate. What I'm asking is "What is Pathfinder Society's tone supposed to be?" Are we supposed to take the world and npcs seriously or not? I don't think people complaining about more humorous stuff would complain if it was more funny* or if it was more seldom(frostfur captives was brilliant because it stood out from other scenarios) thing, but it feels like writers believe those kind of things are popular, so we are getting too much on tone trying to be "comedic" and its kinda watering down the whole mystery exploration and darker or serious themes of the setting. The npc in particular feels like he would fit much better in Battlezoo's Indigo Isles, wacky pirate tone is perfect fit for that setting.

*(as in, starfinder setting and SFS does delivering comedy and balancing it with seriousness much better. Its different to be silly and to be funny, you can be both, its accidentally easy to be just silly. It helps that its hard to feel anachronistic in scifi setting and that starfinder setting has more inbuilt silliness to it leading to that guardians of the galaxy like feeling, meaning suspension is disbelief is easier and tone is more consistent.)