A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for 7th- through 10th-level characters.
The Pathfinder Society secured friendly relations with the dragon Valashinaz over a year ago, and now seek to call upon that connection. They’ve recovered several warshards large and small, and their powers seem varied and unpredictable. The latest warshard recovered, the largest yet, seems even stranger. The Society has brokered another agreement with Valashinaz to use her not-inconsiderable skill honed over centuries of appraising fantastic items to appraise these shards. Among the tribute required, though, is a task.
An upstart dragon set up his lair near Valashinaz’s territory. He has avoided her wrath mainly because she’s been preoccupied with the literal fallout from the god slaying. This is the perfect opportunity for her to get someone else to take care of him, though, and so she has tasked the Pathfinders with getting this upstart out of her territory “by any means necessary.”
Content note: Some of this adventure takes place in a traditional spa and public bath, though all adventure content is limited to non-bathing common areas where attendants wear bathrobes. Before you begin, understand that player consent (including that of the Game Master) is vital to a safe and fun play experience for everyone. You should talk with your players before beginning the adventure and modify descriptions of the narrative as appropriate.
Written by James Case
Scenario tags: Godsrain
[Scenario Maps spoiler - click to reveal]
The following maps used in this scenario are also available for purchase here on paizo.com:
So, to start, coming into this review I fully planned to give the adventure 5 stars. And the game I played at Gamehole Con deserved 5 stars! But reading other reviews here encouraged me to read the scenario myself, and having done that, I do have to give some criticism. I do not feel this adventure does a good job of presenting working for Valashinaz as an unpleasant task the society needs to do to placate a vital ally whilr at the same time encouraging the players to look for ways to ensure both dragons get what they want. That's a tricky line to walk, but if the GM doesn't pull it off this scenario will fall flat, and I don't think the adventure does a good job of setting the GM up for success here.
Still, a prepared GM can run a wonderful adventure woth this, so I can't rate it that low.
Dragon is a heavy narrative and influence system scenario with potentially no combat, that basically made us into hired thugs.
I believe the narrative aspect of the scenario was describing Korean culture. No one was Korean or could explain it well, there was no art, so it did not resonate with us, and just made the scenario start slowly.
For a “creative” sandbox scenario, we were heavily railroaded using pseudo logic to speak to a fan of the dragon and his tax collector first.
The influence system just kills roleplay and it devolves into just rolling dice.
The scenario wanted to make the tax collector the bad guy, but I think WE were the bad guys. Street thugs. Neutral at best. I’m not entirely sure why we didn’t get arrested, or hated by the community. If I had known the Imugi's full story, this is a mission I would want to fail.
Although the scenario had guides for many creative solutions, because the scenario railroads you in such an obvious manner, everyone picks the same solution. My GM ran this 3 other times and every table solved the problem in the exact same way. If this scenario was intending to be a sandbox, it failed very badly because good sandbox scenarios have different stories and solutions for every table.
The Imugi lore itself was good.
I have to mention the content notes. They are not needed. My children started playing Pathfinder at age 7 and they could handle the horror and nasty parts of Pathfinder. Are you telling me ADULTS can’t handle it? Why do you feel the need to put a content note about a bath house?? Do you guys watch modern movies and TV?? There is a lot more than a bathhouse! In the scenario, I barely even knew we were in a bathhouse, it was like we were talking to Auntie in her home. Are people so fragile now that you need content notes like this? Really? I met people at 11 different tables at Origins and we just laughed at all of them.
My group just feels apathy after playing season 6, and we considered quitting RPGs, until we realized that it’s the scenarios that are the problem, not Pathfinder or RPGs in general.
Overall: This isn’t what I want from Pathfinder. (2/10)
I agree with the reviewers who said their characters wanted to fail the mission to align with the Imugi/town prosperity, and would like to highlight their arguments.
The adventure itself was okay, and one of the rarest-of-the-rare in that we went through it with 0 combat at all (okay we rolled initiative for the one thing but broke that amulet before any NPCs took a turn and so combat ended almost before it started), but the whole thing felt like it didn't have enough player agency.
Overall though, a fun game, and highly recommended if you play a pacifist character or want a low-combat adventure!
One of the best Pathfinder Society Scenarios published! Wish more scenarios allowed for different ways to tackle problems/rewarded the players for making clever decisions and didn’t just devolve into random filler fights.
EDIT 3/24
I GM'd it: I love it. This is one of my new favorites, if not my favorite scenario. I ran this for my lodge for a martial heavy party: A Monk, a Gunslinger, a Bard, and TWO Kineticists and they were still able to play it smart and not try to pick senseless fights.
Interesting aspects, hindered by a BAD main mission
Preface: I played this at the high end of low tier (6 players, 16 CP) and read parts of it afterwards since they felt odd while playing
I would like to give this scenario 2 ratings, but I can not. If I only look at the adventure on its own, the scenes it presents, etc., I would give it three stars. But if I take into account what the main mission actually is, I would give it 1 star. That averaged out to 2 stars in the end.
TL;DR: Nice setting, some fun scenes, variable number of combats, all hidden behind a main mission where we should ask ourselves: AITA? Why are we doing this?
The Good:
- The scene in the bathhouse, besides using the influence subsystem, is really fun. The Auntie has enough personality and the different rooms add a lot of flair to the scene.
- Most of the adventure can be done without violence. There is only one unavoidable fight, with a maximum of three. Of course you need to make some rolls to prevent the other two (if you even want to), but that seems to be the norm nowadays
- The city overall, as well as the setting, are pretty well done. Using an Imugi and other things more based upon Korean mythology instead of the more regularly seen Chinese or Japanese elements was nice to see
The bad:
- The one obligatoy fight feels a bit off. Why does it need to happen at all? We are not really threatening the guy, so him and his good resorting to violence felt weird. Yes, he is a minister in the city - but he was not attacked, etc. - wouldn't it be a legal problem for him to just attack us?
- The possible encounter in the mountains - so, everyone, who doesn't know about the statues (and how to disable them) and uses that road will be killed? What for? How many children have perrished by randomly exploring the mountains?
The ugly:
- WTH are we even doing this mission? Xalreonshin, by all accounts, seems to be GOOD for the city. Valashinaz doesn't care about it. Yet we have to side with him? I understand that the society wants her help, but come on - we are NOT the henchmen of a dragon that doesn't want to lose ground to a dragon that is better suited to actually be there. That is a classic "AITA" situation, and the answer is: Yes!
- In the end, there CAN be an amicable resolution. But not only is that quite hard to achieve, but the rest of the adventure doesn't even assume the characters are TRYING to find something like that. The Influence Thresholds include something that shows, we are making the Imugi's allys doubt them. Why would we do that?
This was honestly the first mission, where right until the end I was contemplating to intentionally fail it (after seeking consent from the rest of the group of course). I know that the society sometimes has to do shady things. But those should probably NOT be normal scenarios / missions. We should do better!
Please note that the following content note has been added to this adventure.
Quote:
Content note: Some of this adventure takes place in a traditional spa and public bath, though all adventure content is limited to non-bathing common areas where attendants wear bathrobes. Before you begin, understand that player consent (including that of the Game Master) is vital to a safe and fun play experience for everyone. You should talk with your players before beginning the adventure and modify descriptions of the narrative as appropriate.
Oh I fully expect that there is an insane race for all the powers of Golarion great and small to collect the Godshards of Gorum's corpse. However we still don't know the Decemvirate's overall goals nor do we know why those ten masked individuals occasionally purge their most talented venture-captains. The Pathfinder Society has acquired a colossal (and some might even say a dangerous) amount of knowledge, treasure, and magical items (and artifacts) and we're still not sure of the ultimate purpose for doing so.
Also Abrogail Thrune the II with MYTHIC POWER? Now that's a terrifying concept! Considering we'll be getting a war between the infernal empire of Cheliax and freedom-loving Andoran, I'm fully expecting the Godshards to come into play sooner or later.
Am I the only one who is a tiny bit nervous about the Pathfinder Society collecting the broken pieces of a dead God? o_o
I personally would be more nervous if it was the Aspis Consortiums, or Abrogail Thrune II...
Ah! Only a foolish one wouldn't expect them to... >_>
Unfortunate to say, but
War of Immortals/Organized Play:
Abrogail’s already stated to be collecting a bunch of warshards and seizing them from citizens who found them, which is also apparently being used as a pretense for general raids for artifacts on houses. I think The Devil in the Details scenario is meant to build on that plot thread.
Organized Play Coordinator
