I was a little unsure about posting feedback on this, since I wasn't sure ifthe feedback the designers were looking for should have to do with how modules are written, or if we were trying to focus on the mechanical end of things--but I had a few things to say and it's easy enough for folks to ignore them, so here goes.
Encounters in Lost Star do some things really well. You get a good sense of the monsters as living creatures, all of them doing different things with relationships between one another and all the elements of the dungeon seem to tie together. The gory goblin bodies are set out as examples. The fungus is, at least in theory, a tool used by the boss to keep his minions in line. The centipede cave is the collapsed section that once connected to the front entrance of the ossuary, and why people believed it was completely inaccessible until the robberies. The fountain was once for anointing bodies but as a morale boost for the Lamashtu worshipping goblins and to make sure it wasn't used to break his control, he corrupted it. The skeletons are restless undead from the family driven to protect their burial niche. I like that the story is cooked into the encounter design.
There's also weird stuff though, mostly with the scripting. The centipedes are mindless bugs that eat whatever they can. They're in the rubble room and never leave, even if they're alerted to food out in the main chamber. If they are engaged in hunting the PCs in the room and they withdraw to the main chamber, the centipedes apparently don't follow. If the PCs somehow manage to maneuver the enemy goblins into the rubble room, it specifically says the centipedes won't attack them. Why?
I accidentally hadn't read any of this when I read the module over previous to play so things went really differently. The alchemist was sneaking around at the entrance and the centipedes became aware of him and came pouring out. Panicked he hucked an alchemist'f fire hoping to bottleneck them, but missed the throw only catching them in the splash damage. They boiled out into the chamber and all the PCs ran in. Lighting was poor, a single torch thrown on the floor. Because we had six players instead of four, I had a couple of goblins wake up in the commotion and ambush the PCs as well. One of them ended up between the PCs and the surge of bugs and so got run over by them like in the Mummy, bitten and poisoned to death in a round. Big yikes moment. The PCs rid themselves of the centipedes that had crawled on them and the remaining goblin and were able to finish off the centipedes at range. Very effective, engaging encounter.
I think part of what made it engaging was that (wrongly) I had let what was supposed to be a contained encounter spread out into another part of the dungeon. There were a variety of different opponents--centipedes and goblins, both of whom act differently. There was an implicit fear that if some noise had awoken two goblins, that more noise would wake more--so the PCs were wary of making noise. There was concern that it was pretty dark and if the torch goes out, all the PCs except one goblin would be blinded. There was a lot to think about.
But that's just not how a lot of the dungeon is set up. There's usually one kind of enemy, and usually not very many of them. They fight with a specific routine and don't leave the room they're in. As clever as the set ups are, finding them in the middle of doing things like making statues or fighting over food, no roleplaying opportunities or interesting tactical twists ever come of any of it. They're all fanatics. They all fight to the death. None of the terrain is different enough to be useful. None of them really interact with each other in interesting ways.
Mostly I guess if I had a wish it would be that we could set things up so that we could have fights where there could be more enemies, where there could be more combinations of enemies, or of enemies and traps (the rock trap the goblins set is a fun one) and encounters that can rove around between rooms allowing PCs more opportunity to choose where they want to stage their defense--or for them to get pushed into situations they don't expect and have to react to.
I guess the encounters just felt a little anemic, too few creatures per encounter and not enough interesting stuff going on with tactics and staging--and not enough permission given to GMs to shake things up.
You all make good points, Grimcleaver.
But remember, the first scenario is only supposed to introduce players to the basics of the new rules. ;-)
Adungeon with a real ecology is pretty cool, though.
No yeah, and sure that's why I say up front--I'm not sure we're supposed to be looking at this yet, but there were things I figured I'd point out and let the developers decide for themselves if it was important.
Likewise I found it odd that the mindfog fungus was supposed to be used by Drakkus to control the goblins when it only does the mind control effect on a critical--otherwise causing confusion, If you want a bunch of zoned-out slaves this seems terrible. Likewise it means the goblins should probably be all blissed out rather than terrified and on the verge of mutiny, which is kind of the justification for the whole adventure?
So yeah, issues. But again, not sure if any of this matters at this stage.