Pathfinder Society Scenario #5-12: Mischief in the Maze

This is one of the silly ones, so give it a skip if you don't vibe with more light-hearted adventures. That said, it's a VERY GOOD silly one, and makes for a nice little collection of puzzles and combats that my PaizoCon table seemed to enjoy. The adventure has a ton of mechanical variety, with each self-contained scene offering something new to the table, and the NPCs are a fun bunch of rascals that were a joy to roleplay.

One thing I didn't like was the amount of prep time it took to run this thing physically. If you don't own the tiles, you have to draw A TON of maps, and that feels bad if you're not sure which scenes your party will actually pursue. Luckily, since this was for a convention, my local society members were able to help everyone prepare their physical materials together, so I saved myself hours of work via community help.

All in all, this was the highlight of my first convention run, and I think it makes a great introduction for kids especially.

Overall, there were a few fun parts, but it was weighed down with somewhat forced mechanics. It seems every scenario has a chase mechanic in it now, and honestly there's just too much going on here even for a repeatable. The options within the chase are fairly long and having directional choices isn't really a good mechanic within this system.

However, I will say the options at the very end are enjoyable and interesting. That being said, it'd be nice if it followed one of the existing subsystems.

Story gets a 4/5 as it was interesting and it seemed to mostly get the plot across.
Mechanics get a 1/5 for adding complexity that didn't need to exist.

This scenario has an interesting structure, giving players the opportunity to pick their preferred tasks. Each group feels interesting to run it for and play it with. My one major issue is the required chase. It's also interesting, since there are some forks in the path. But when each obstacle requires chase points equal to the number of players, it pretty much inevitably bogs down into a death march of just begging the dice for decent rolls. (A player pointed out that with a party of 6, the chase requires a whopping 48 successes. There's really no way for that to not become a quagmire.) I would prefer more dynamic chases with fewer chase points per obstacle. It's also worth noting that this scenario "feels" better doing only three of the tasks rather than four. Four tasks plus all the required bits and pieces seems to drag a little bit.

You can pick which challenges to take on based on what your party happens to be good at, minimizing the frustration of dealing with challenges that no one happens to have the means to overcome. This is a godsend if you don't have a say in what the party composition ultimately turns out to be come the day you play this adventure.

I like this one: It has fun(ny) encounters without falling into the slapstick trap, as has been the case with too many recent scenarios. I have a few question marks with regards to the actual replayability since the choice of encounters is largely dictated by player choice, but in general it's a well thought-out and developed scenario.

Note that I especially like the "alternative" final encounter a lot, even though the scaling within the tiers seems to heavily favour being in the higher Challenge Point regions of the said tier. The main inconvenience of the setup is that you have to make it clear to the players that it is a skill challenge that uses very varied skills (instead of only the obvious one). Even then, I think most people will veer towards the combat option, despite the alternative being really well set-up.

Good marks again for Mikko!