#4-9 The Blakros Matrimony (Mega Spoilers Inside)


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1/5

Walter Sheppard wrote:
Stuff...

Geood read Walter. One of these days I hope to play at your table.

Thought I'd offer some feedback for the author.

1. Easily the best scenario I've played (small sample size of about 18 or so scenarios and one module). I say this as I am not a hardcore RP'er and played with an Andoran Ranger with CHR of 10 and no Diplo or Bluff ranks.

2. My table was my level 3 Ranger and five Pre-gens: Hayato, Kyra, Merisiel, Reiko, and Lirianne.

3. Bedard, imo, was well written. I immediately knew what was going on and knew what he was going to do. My only issue is whether it was possible to stop him from speaking at all i.e. distract him from going to the wedding, convince him to say nothing. I did get the feeling that there was no option other than physical restraint to keep Bedard from speaking. Hopefully I was wrong about that.

4. The Shadow Lodge faction mission was surprising. I have to wonder how that does not turn into a PvP situation once a fight breaks out? We had no one who wanted to switch the brides, but I can't see my Andoran character agreeing to letting a woman get tied up and carted off..on her wedding day, no less. Not sure how we would have resolved that.

5. Question came up as to whether the tent battle could be considered Urban terrain for Favored Terrain feat. It would be great if all battles listed which categories of Favored Terrain they occurred under.

6. One subtle thing I liked was the fact that, at least at Tier 3-4, the fact that characters had left their heavy armor behind was of little consequence. I thought that did a nice job of making everyone antsy, but ultimately not truly being a cheap way to make the fight harder.

7. Poor Hayato got no benefit from his mount. Feel bad for characters with Large mounts. But it's not like I want a horse at wedding either.

Highlights:

-using Speak with Animals, convinced a pelican to carry my wands over to the boat after it set sail so I wouldn't have use up charges to show the guards they were harmless.

-Bluffed Alexander with a natural 20 to get his support.

-Convinced Reiko and Merisiel to fawn over him after I realized his predicament.

-Nailed Olaf for 42 points in one round.

-Successful Spellcraft on Shadow Evocation and avoided massive damage.

-Convinced Alexander to return to the wedding after we pretended his outburst was a prank and a family tradition at weddings.

In any event, I thoroughly enjoyed the scenario.

Silver Crusade 4/5

N N 959 wrote:


4. The Shadow Lodge faction mission was surprising. I have to wonder how that does not turn into a PvP situation once a fight breaks out? We had no one who wanted to switch the brides, but I can't see my Andoran character agreeing to letting a woman get tied up and carted off..on her wedding day, no less. Not sure how we would have resolved that.

Ironically, when I played it, my table did that faction mission without anyone from Shadow Lodge in the group. The point is that you're supposed to talk the bride into going along with it.

Once we realized what was going on (after fighting Olaf and capturing him), we talked the bride into going along with it instead of marrying into a loveless wedding, since her sister really wanted to take her place. My Taldor faction PC just wanted to cause chaos and have some blackmail material on the Blackros family for later, so I was vocal about trying to convince her. :D

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, West Virginia—Charleston

Getting ready to run this for the fourth time, and I have an interesting problem to ask about.

At two of my tables, characters have had problems with letting the bride and sister switch, claiming that it is against their moral codes. I've pointed out that the act is lawful, but they are generally unmoved. I feel like both players walked away from the encounter unsatisfied. First, can someone please help me explain why a PC would have a problem with letting the bride and sister switch, assuming that the bride wasn't held in captivity? Second, how would you, as a GM handle that? What if the PC insisted on telling everybody what happened?

4/5 *

I can understand a PC objecting on the basis that it was Michellia who entered into the contract, so she has to stay. I can also see objecting on the basis that lying to everyone in the family about who they are is just plain wrong.

As a GM, I would just let the players talk it out; if they can't agree on a plan, you could let them make opposed diplomacy checks to see who is more convincing to Michellia, and have her make her decision based on that.

1/5

Fromper wrote:
The point is that you're supposed to talk the bride into going along with it.

Since none of us was in the Shadow Lodge, none of us were going to talk the bride into anything. From an RP perspective, I would have had a hard time standing there while someone else tried to persuade her to do something my character felt was morally bankrupt.

I guess part my question on PvP is based on the idea that a SL agent would have tried to stop the party before the fight with Olaf. If the party kills all of Olaf's team, who is the bride going to run away with?

Silver Crusade 4/5

N N 959 wrote:
Fromper wrote:
The point is that you're supposed to talk the bride into going along with it.

Since none of us was in the Shadow Lodge, none of us were going to talk the bride into anything. From an RP perspective, I would have had a hard time standing there while someone else tried to persuade her to do something my character felt was morally bankrupt.

I guess part my question on PvP is based on the idea that a SL agent would have tried to stop the party before the fight with Olaf. If the party kills all of Olaf's team, who is the bride going to run away with?

My group beat the snot out of Olaf and his crew before we knew what was going on, but we took Olaf alive. Once we pieced together what was happening, and the bride admitted she didn't love the groom, it turned into a "You should follow your heart and do what you think will bring the most happiness" conversation.

Like I said, we didn't even have a Shadow Lodger with us, but we ended up doing their faction mission by accident. My CN Taldor PC was mostly motivated by loving the idea of secrets and intrigue, so wanting to cause more, while also knowing that having some blackmail material on a member of the Blackros family might come in handy later. But he's not exactly a normal Taldan. He's also spent the walk back to the party giving the substitute bride all the details she'd need of the days events, so she could successfully pull off the bluff.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, West Virginia—Charleston

Funny thing there. When I played this, I was Shadow Lodge, and it had sort of a humorous ending. I had OOC deduced that the switch was occurring, but my character completely failed his sense motive, and he truly believed that the sister had shown up to cause a ruckus. He further believed that Olaf and company were just good friends of hers who would quietly take care of it for her own good. So, everybody walked away happy and we didn't fight. I completed my faction mission because I failed a Sense Motive roll.

1/5

Our group, aided by our T10=20 Sense Motive checks figured it out before we fought Olaf. It was at that point, I would have expected a SL member to say, "Hey, let's talk about this," to the party. How is that conversation going to go down without some acrimony? What if half the party or more is SL and imposes this outcome on the rest by refusing to fight Olaf...after a fight has broken out?

We tried to talk Olaf down, but he ended up attacking once he realized we were on to him. We killed him even though we wanted to take him alive.

Fromper wrote:
...it turned into a "You should follow your heart and do what you think will bring the most happiness" conversation. Like I said, we didn't even have a Shadow Lodger with us, but we ended up doing their faction mission by accident.

Same with ours and Olaf is not someone she's in love with, so running away with him is never going to be her choice. We even presented her with the option of choosing Bedard and in the end she decided to fulfill her duty and stay with her husband.

Without being able to read the scenario, I don't know how Michi would choose Olaf if it was about choosing "happiness." And if Michi doesn't choose Olaf, I don't know why her sister would agree to take Michi's place as I was under the impression Elanir was only doing it because she bought into Olaf's nonsense (unless PFS is really going to destroy the world).

5/5 5/55/5

So, I really curious how this scenario is going to be followed up on next year or so. It seems about half the groups let the switch happen and half did not.

So the dilema is if you run into either of the sisters again are they switched or not, maybe it doesn't matter, they just took each others names, but if a PC was there at the time switch then in reality they would know that person knows they are acting as each other.

Maybe they can have the sister running wild get killed and the PC's can go off and collect her body as an adventure. Then it wouldn't matter anymore who the actual bride is. Or the groom can die and the sisters can go back to their original identies if they actually switched.

Silver Crusade 4/5

1 person marked this as a favorite.
roysier wrote:

So, I really curious how this scenario is going to be followed up on next year or so. It seems about half the groups let the switch happen and half did not.

So the dilema is if you run into either of the sisters again are they switched or not, maybe it doesn't matter, they just took each others names, but if a PC was there at the time switch then in reality they would know that person knows they are acting as each other.

Maybe they can have the sister running wild get killed and the PC's can go off and collect her body as an adventure. Then it wouldn't matter anymore who the actual bride is. Or the groom can die and the sisters can go back to their original identies if they actually switched.

Maybe they'll do a followup 9 months later called "The Blackros Progeny".

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ***

Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
roysier wrote:
So, I really curious how this scenario is going to be followed up on next year or so.

Well, it looks like we're going to revisit them in a couple months.

Paizo Employee 5/5 Managing Creative Director (Starfinder)

Some notes where appropriate...

N N 959 wrote:


1. Easily the best scenario I've played (small sample size of about 18 or so scenarios and one module). I say this as I am not a hardcore RP'er and played with an Andoran Ranger with CHR of 10 and no Diplo or Bluff ranks.

Why thanks! I'm really impressed by the feedback I'm getting from this one. It's all awesome, and makes me a bit nervous for future projects ;)

N N 959 wrote:
3. Bedard, imo, was well written. I immediately knew what was going on and knew what he was going to do. My only issue is whether it was possible to stop him from speaking at all i.e. distract him from going to the wedding, convince him to say nothing. I did get the feeling that there was no option other than physical restraint to keep Bedard from speaking. Hopefully I was wrong about that.

Bwahaha, he's loosely based on a friend of mine that exhibits some similar social quirks. It gave me a great way to create an identifiable NPC off the hop.

N N 959 wrote:
4. The Shadow Lodge faction mission was surprising. I have to wonder how that does not turn into a PvP situation once a fight breaks out? We had no one who wanted to switch the brides, but I can't see my Andoran character agreeing to letting a woman get tied up and carted off..on her wedding day, no less. Not sure how we would have resolved that.

Mark and I had some discussions regarding this mission in particular. We agreed that it was 'dicey', but in the end, certain faction missions should be hard. Yes, it will make some people mad... but if people can pull through, who knows what might make it into canon!

N N 959 wrote:
6. One subtle thing I liked was the fact that, at least at Tier 3-4, the fact that characters had left their heavy armor behind was of little consequence. I thought that did a nice job of making everyone antsy, but ultimately not truly being a cheap way to make the fight harder.

I'm glad that people caught onto this. It was an unintentional side effect of creature choice, but also worked out because it negated some of the armor worries.

Thanks again for all the feedback! :D

1/5

You're welcome. Congrats on penning one of the best received scenarios for this season (based on my unscientific observations).

One correction, there was someone who did want to switch the brides. He just happened to be playing Reiko so I don't know if his Machiavellian position was based on IC or OOC mindset. But he was not a SL member.

I think the DM loved the Shadow Lodge mission. From a literary perspective, the SL faction mission is edgy and sparks controversy and adds some dark grit to PFS. These are all huge positives, imo.

From a game-play perspective, I didn't like it. In my experience, faction missions are a big deal and it would seem unfair to SL members to require them to complete a mission which may be opposed by everyone else at the table. Roleplaying can be a big deal to some players (I saw a guy quit his level 2 Paladin mid-game because he thought her code was incompatible with being PFS member). I don't like the idea of fomenting player vs player conflict and strife.

From a plausibility perspective, I would expect that there would be lots of opposed factions missions throughout a character's life. But this is the first one I've seen where people were opposed to it. So as I said, from a story-telling perspective, I loved it. But the last thing I want is some IC plot device to compel my character to oppose another character's faction mission. Not fun and very happy nobody needed that done.

I am glad to see that most tables seemed to not have any problems with this.

Shadow Lodge 1/5

I didn't get the switch until the GM told us afterwords, but approved, even though Taraclus had spoken out in favor of the wedding. When the Ulfen showed up, I completely believed her that they were not invited, having played Shades of Ice with the bar brawl. Funny thing, after The switch up, my tiefling magus cast Darkness on himself and trailed the party back, and ended up entering the main tent from another angle, leading me to ignore the summons and just slowly make my way to the boss.

Sovereign Court 4/5 5/5 ** Venture-Lieutenant, West Virginia—Charleston

N N 959 wrote:

You're welcome. Congrats on penning one of the best received scenarios for this season (based on my unscientific observations).

One correction, there was someone who did want to switch the brides. He just happened to be playing Reiko so I don't know if his Machiavellian position was based on IC or OOC mindset. But he was not a SL member.

I think the DM loved the Shadow Lodge mission. From a literary perspective, the SL faction mission is edgy and sparks controversy and adds some dark grit to PFS. These are all huge positives, imo.

From a game-play perspective, I didn't like it. In my experience, faction missions are a big deal and it would seem unfair to SL members to require them to complete a mission which may be opposed by everyone else at the table. Roleplaying can be a big deal to some players (I saw a guy quit his level 2 Paladin mid-game because he thought her code was incompatible with being PFS member). I don't like the idea of fomenting player vs player conflict and strife.

From a plausibility perspective, I would expect that there would be lots of opposed factions missions throughout a character's life. But this is the first one I've seen where people were opposed to it. So as I said, from a story-telling perspective, I loved it. But the last thing I want is some IC plot device to compel my character to oppose another character's faction mission. Not fun and very happy nobody needed that done.

I am glad to see that most tables seemed to not have any problems with this.

I still don't get why it would make some people angry.

It's not unlawful, at least not obviously so.

It's not an evil act - people end up happier by the end of it.

It's good for the Blakros Family, because they have a happier bride and save face.

It's good for Cheliax, because they have a happier bride and save face.

It's good for Damian, as I imagine that they'll have a closer bond afterwards.

It's good for Bidard, as the wedding is no longer about politics [even if he doesn't know it].

Really, I fail to see who is hurt here.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
Netopalis wrote:

I still don't get why it would make some people angry.

It's not unlawful, at least not obviously so.

It's a lie. A deception of everyone who is attending. A woman is impersonating another to take her husband. Regardless of it causing no harm (and I doubt her being exposed would cause no harm) in the eyes of Law is is wrong, period.

Sovereign Court 3/5

TriOmegaZero wrote:
Netopalis wrote:

I still don't get why it would make some people angry.

It's not unlawful, at least not obviously so.

It's a lie. A deception of everyone who is attending. A woman is impersonating another to take her husband. Regardless of it causing no harm (and I doubt her being exposed would cause no harm) in the eyes of Law is is wrong, period.

Were there a SL character trying to do their mission with my Abadaran cleric, I'd horribly object to the job. She signed into this marriage willingly (probably multiple times, if House Thune is involved.) Switching the brides would be a violation of that contract, which one can safely assume has been ordained by one of the highest Absalom-based Abadarans around (since he's giving the sermon.) Not to say she's not easily knocked out, with her 10 Con and 14 AC after all...

1/5

TriOmegaZero wrote:
It's a lie. A deception of everyone who is attending. A woman is impersonating another to take her husband. Regardless of it causing no harm (and I doubt her being exposed would cause no harm) in the eyes of Law is is wrong, period.

Thank you for pointing out the exceedingly obvious.

My objection would have been most strenuous if an SL agent had advocated her being "kidnapped." Once she was free from her captives, my character had no issue with her making her own choice. But I certainly could not have supported another character convincing her to break her marriage vows. Had that character aided my own faction mission earlier, then I'm faced with choosing between hurt feelings OOC or RPing in a manner that would have been contrary to my character's code. That isn't fun imo.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber
N N 959 wrote:
Thank you for pointing out the exceedingly obvious.

Not sure if I need to apologize. :) I do agree that it is a quandary, but I don't find that a bad thing.

1/5

TriOmegaZero wrote:
N N 959 wrote:
Thank you for pointing out the exceedingly obvious.
Not sure if I need to apologize. :) I do agree that it is a quandary, but I don't find that a bad thing.

ha. No, I was actually thanking you for pointing out something that should not need pointing out (but apparently does). It's disappointing to see people take the vows of marriage with such a cavalier attitude. Grant it, it's a game, but at least acknowledge the immorality of ditching one's spouse on your wedding day.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Well, people of Chaotic alignment have always taken contracts as just guidelines anyway... :)

Silver Crusade 4/5

TriOmegaZero wrote:
Well, people of Chaotic alignment have always taken contracts as just guidelines anyway... :)

Thus, my CN gnome encouraging the chaos, just because he thought it would be funny.

Grand Lodge 4/5

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

I'm looking forward to running this over the weekend. Only got three players, so it may be a little difficult, but should still be fun.


Pathfinder Maps Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

Out of curiosity, is the scenario where the influence plays a role come out yet?

It isn't linked to the Hellknight Feast to my knowledge.

Grand Lodge 1/5

Mark Moreland wrote:
Regarding headshots, everyone who has an influence line on the Chronicle sheet will get a headshot sometime in the first half (I hope) of Season 5. I would have illustrated all of them in this scenario, but didn't have the budget for that many headshots.

Hi Mark, any updates on this?

Dark Archive 1/5

Played this last night, I really enjoyed it. This is the kind of role play scenario that I hope to see more of in the future.

5/5 stars

Sovereign Court 2/5 Venture-Lieutenant, Alaska—Anchorage

Jean-Marc Comeau wrote:

Out of curiosity, is the scenario where the influence plays a role come out yet?

It isn't linked to the Hellknight Feast to my knowledge.

I was wondering on this as well. I am running thia tomorrow ans want to plan ahead. So what is/are the linked scenario(s)?

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