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Hello everyone! I am Giuseppe, but you can call me Joe. I have been the translator for Pathfinder in Italian for the last 13 years, and I have played 20+ Adventure Paths between first and second edition. I have also read them ALL!
In this post I want to share with you an in-depth analysis of Pathfinder's adventure design by focusing on a specific case study: Secrets of the Unlit Star, the adventure included in the new Beginner Box.
I have a YouTube channel where this same analysis has been presented in the form of a video. You can check it out there if you prefer: Youtube Video
Before we start, let me clarify that I know that this is an introductory adventure and that most of the things I will point out are solved in Adventure Paths. But let me tell you that most of the adventures from APs I read usually include some form of the same philosophy I will deal with her. On top of that, I believe that it is especially important for an introductory adventure to show the strengths of an RPG system, because that is the way many many players will learn the game and of the strongest candidates for new group that come from other RPGs and want to give Pathfinder a go. An introductory adventure, I believe, tells us much about how the game is perceived and received, and also about how the authors see their game. And so I think it is very important that it delivers what the game has to offer.
With that said, let's jump straight into the review.
Okay, let’s begin our in-depth analysis of the adventure from the start, which I think is a strong one. The characters are thrown straight into the action, with the floor collapsing beneath their feet and a simple combat ready to put them to the test. I think beginning in medias res is always a good idea, and for a game like Pathfinder, where combat is one of its strongest pillars, this is very appropriate and helps establish the focus of the game experience. A slower start, I think, would have been detrimental to the overall quality of the adventure, so nicely done.
The whole narrative tool holding the adventure together is that the characters are stuck in an old temple deep underground and are unable to get back to the surface. They quickly realize that the only way to return to civilization is to restore a lift, but in order to do so, they need to use a magic item, the Unlit Star, which has unfortunately been broken into pieces. The characters now need to find those pieces by exploring the complex. Simple, but it works very well. When you have an introductory adventure such as this one, you don’t need anything more complex than that, and quite frankly, many Adventure Paths that I’ve played have tried to do something more original but ended up making things more confusing. So I think straightforward adventure hooks such as this one should be welcome regardless.
The rooms on the first level of the temple are simple and full of straightforward encounters designed to teach the various parts of the game, especially combat. If you are playing with a group of experienced players, even if they are new to Pathfinder, you may want to remove this didactic approach and make the encounters more challenging and less direct. Sometimes I feel that the level of guidance is a bit too much throughout the adventure. You have a total of 15 possible combat encounters in the whole dungeon, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM is presented in exactly the same way: the fight is triggered simply by entering the room where the creatures are, with no alternative approach whatsoever. You enter the room; the creatures attack. I have compiled a full list of encounters that follow this script, just to make sure there were no exceptions: the giant centipedes in the crashed lift, the umbral gnome scouts in the shadowed balcony, the magnetic skinks in the south hallway, the skeleton guards in the temple, the ferrous butterflies in the ruined rooms, the ghouls in the crypt, the shadow bat fight at the end of the first floor, giant flies in the dormitories, water scamps in the washroom, giant spiders in the meeting room, string slimes in the refectory, twigjacks in the garden (although there is some Stealth involved beforehand), undead in the priest’s quarters, the shadow gargoyle in the vault, and the final boss fight with Lukahn.
There’s not even one combat encounter where the players have the option to tackle it in a different way. The creatures are immediately hostile and attack. I understand why this was done: to make life easier for the GM and to establish expectations for the players. But doing this so extensively comes across to me as a little lazy. I expected at least two or three encounters to play out differently, even if only to give players more agency and teach them that the system allows for a variety of ways to deal with enemies and encounters in general. Playing an OSR game will teach you this: when you play Old School Essentials, Dragonbane, Shadowdark, Cairn, Into the Odd, or any good OSR game, fighting the monsters is usually the last resort because it is risky and drains your resources. Maybe you can bargain with them, or maybe they are otherwise occupied and you can sneak up on them or even avoid them entirely. Maybe you can use some feature of the environment to change the way the combat starts, and sometimes you can pit two factions against one another. In Secrets of the Unlit Star, you don’t have this. And I get it: you don’t generally see this kind of approach in Pathfinder adventure design. But I think that a game such as Pathfinder, especially when it comes to dungeon crawling, could benefit greatly from a more open approach to combat encounters and the way they are triggered. Some recent Adventure Paths have tried this, and I think they did well. Again, I understand why they didn’t want to complicate things in a beginner adventure, but I believe there’s a risk of delivering the wrong message: that Pathfinder is a game where you open doors and fight monsters. Which is true, but only part of the truth. There are so many different things you can do with a system as deep as Pathfinder, and teaching new players that this is all the game has to offer is simply a bad idea. This is bad for absolute beginners, but it is doubly bad for players using this adventure to see whether Pathfinder is a better fit than D&D for their group. So much potential left unexpressed is a shame. I would have liked to see a bit more courage here, because I think even beginner players can handle finding creative ways to deal with encounters rather than simply having the monsters attack on sight and having no other option than to fight them to the death. I know, sometimes for a player who loves combat, this is exactly what saves them from an entire evening spent roleplaying, but there are middle grounds. Maybe you put five encounters like this in an adventure, just to ensure that some combat is unavoidable, but the rest… please! Let the players be the active side, not the passive side, having to react to monsters attacking them. I think the players can be trusted to do that.
Okay, rant’s over. Another thing I want to talk about is the way this adventure handles the relationship between players and characters. Pathfinder generally presents you with character-facing hazards during exploration and mostly player-facing decision-making in combat. By that I mean that when you are exploring, it’s not a matter of what you, the player, are noticing or focusing on, but what the character is doing. Want an example? The falling shelves trap in the storage rooms. Here, right upon entering the room, the players are immediately asked to make a Perception check to see if they notice that the shelves are in danger of toppling over. This is the definition of mechanics-first design: it doesn’t matter if you, the player, wanted your characters to take a look at the shelves; first you roll, and only if you succeed do you notice something. The players are not even given the opportunity to investigate the danger. This leads to a reduction in player agency and discourages creative thinking and active problem-solving, both of which are strong elements of why dungeon crawls are fun and why they were fun in early D&D and recent old-school games. I would have let the players decide whether their characters wanted to inspect the shelves and given them an automatic success in locating the trap as a reward for creative thinking. Then, if no one actually spots the danger, it is okay to call for a Perception check to locate it. Again, maybe new players won’t even think about checking a room for traps, but they will never learn if you don’t teach them, and what better place to do it than an introductory adventure? This kind of design is a missed opportunity, I think, because players are not allowed to use their characters creatively to solve problems and anticipate dangers. They just roll the dice and see whether their characters notice something. This encourages them to take a passive stance, just like the combats triggered simply by entering a room. And I believe this could have been done much better.
In addition to traps and monsters, there are two simple puzzles in the dungeon, and those address the players directly rather than their characters. They both allow players to use a character’s skills to deduce an important clue, and the puzzle in the Music Room can be bypassed to avoid frustration by taking 10 minutes and forcing the solution. One thing I find unconvincing about this kind of design is that there is no consequence for spending more or less time solving the puzzle, so it doesn’t really reward the players for solving it themselves, nor does it introduce any complication for forcing the solution. I think some consequence here, such as a small bonus treasure if the problem is solved, could make the puzzles more interesting and consequential. For this reason, I find that the puzzle in the library is better because it actually forces players to do some problem-solving. One might say, however, that this kind of player-facing design, as opposed to the character-facing design of the rest of the dungeon, may end up creating some confusion for players when it comes to determining the relationship between the player’s skills and the character’s skills.
The encounters are designed to highlight the rules of the game, especially when it comes to combat tactics. The ghoul encounter in the crypt, for example, teaches players about flanking by having monsters actually use that strategy. The shadow twigjacks use Stealth and initiative rules to their advantage, while the undead fight in the head priest’s quarters introduces the concept of using different stat blocks in a single encounter, with various enemies doing different things and playing different roles.
I appreciate the occasional rejection of illusionism in the design of certain areas. For example, upon completing the first floor, the characters will certainly need to heal. However, they might have missed the rooms where the healing items were placed. Instead of suggesting that the GM move them to a place where the characters may find such objects, the adventure suggests that the GM directly tell the players that healing supplies may be hidden somewhere on the floor. It is still a cue, but for a new player it is not that bad. Avoid it if you are playing with experienced players, however, as that may feel too much like hand-holding and could even make you look as though you are disregarding their choice not to explore all the rooms in the complex for the sake of moving faster. Again, using time as a resource and making it matter would have solved this issue.
On that note, there is a lot of hand-holding throughout the whole adventure. For example, if the players don’t think about reattaching the star shards to the Unlit Star, the text tells the GM to suggest it in the form of a feeling conveyed to a character by the shards themselves. If you are playing with more experienced players, you probably won’t have to worry about this, though, because they’ll figure it out themselves and spare you a GM intervention. Just give them time and resort to the suggestion when strictly necessary. You will find another example of this in the refectory, where there is a shard that might be missed. In that case, the adventure straight-up tells you that it “wants” to be found and grows bright. This could have been handled better. If finding the shard is mandatory and failure is not interesting, why not just have the Unlit Star magnetically attract the shards once you reach the appropriate room?
I like how the freedom to explore given to the players increases on the second level. The first floor was more guided and more or less had an established path. The second level leaves more room to explore the rooms in whatever order the players prefer, thus giving them more agency. But to make that really matter, the adventure should present the players with plenty of information or clues about what they might find in the rooms before entering them, so that the order of exploration becomes a tactically meaningful and informed decision.
There are no time constraints even on level two, and this negatively impacts many game mechanics. For example, the footlocker in area B2b requires two successes to pick its lock, but what happens if a check fails? The character can simply try again, without any consequence. That does not respect the fail-forward design included in the Game Master’s Guide and is simply bad RPG design. Just tell the players that they open all the lockers with a bit of work: there is no point in making them roll if a failure has no consequences and they can simply try again.
Another thing this adventure does that I don’t like is that it occasionally rewards players for searching the rooms more thoroughly. Take the scroll of force barrage in area B2d, for example: it is found only with a successful DC 16 Perception check while searching the room, but the adventure doesn’t say whether the players must declare that their characters are searching the room or whether it is up to the GM to call for such a check. Technically, this kind of check should be activated by the players, as there is no passive Perception in Pathfinder and Search is a specific exploration action. You have something similar in the ruined dormitories as well.
But since we are talking about exploration, let us also address another big elephant in the dungeon. Pathfinder 2E has an exploration mode, with specific exploration actions to be taken while exploring. This Beginner Box doesn’t teach it to the players. Worse, it gives them the impression that dungeon exploration in Pathfinder is free-form, like in D&D. I believe that the exploration procedures are a fun and interesting part of Pathfinder, and disregarding them for the sake of simplicity is a bizarre move because it makes Pathfinder look similar to its direct rival without even trying to highlight the strengths of its own design choices.
The washroom is an interesting room. It presents a mandatory fight, but allows the monsters to flee and hide, ready to attack again if found. This makes things a little more dynamic than a straight-up fight to the death, and I appreciated it. There is even a chance to return the water elemental scamps to their original plane by repairing the magic of the basin and tub. I really liked the design of this room and the effort to go beyond a simple combat by giving players what might very well end up being a moral choice about what to do with their foes. Oh, and failing a check while repairing the water’s magic deals damage, so there is a consequence!
In the refectory, after a fight, the characters meet the ghost of one of the temple’s dead priests. This moment is very much needed to break the dungeon-crawling sequence of opening doors and fighting everything that moves inside them. This is not considered an encounter, however, and I think it’s a shame that it was not handled as a social encounter. Pathfinder surely has a system for doing this, and I believe it is integral to the experience. I understand why it was not implemented, mostly for simplicity’s sake, but I think this was another point when a bit more courage would have been needed to stand out and show how Pathfinder does have mechanics for social interaction, rather than simply leaving you to wing it with free play and a few social skills as D&D does. The free back-and-forth with the ghost is not bad: it requires a single skill check, with no consequences for failure, and provides a useful pause from the incessant fighting. But to me, this is another lost opportunity to highlight Pathfinder’s strong points. To someone who is new to RPGs in general, this probably won’t matter. But for the many people who have played D&D before and are playing this adventure to try Pathfinder out, I believe that showing how Pathfinder can handle social encounters in an interesting way was a huge opportunity. I would’ve taken it.
Another thing I have to say about the social scene in the refectory is that the question-and-answer format has grown old. It dates back to the first Adventure Path, but we can do better today. Since those answers are not meant to be read aloud as written anyway, but rather used as a reference for the Game Master, I think clearer bullet points containing all the relevant information would be much better. They would free up space for more content and also leave room to give the GM a few tips on how to roleplay this specific ghost, its language, and everything else. I feel like the question-and-answer format is outdated, and I would like Paizo to move forward and present information in a more efficient and GM-friendly way because bullet points are much easier to reference at the table. The same can be said about the chat with the friendly leshy in the garden.
There is a lot of information to process here, most of it crucial to the adventure. If you are a prospective GM reading this, take my advice and don’t info-dump on the players. The adventure doesn’t help you much in doing that, so you should improvise. Make the conversation feel alive and give the basic information in small chunks so that it is easier to process. Pay particular attention to the foreshadowing of the final encounter, which gives players a way to know what to expect and prepare accordingly. This is very important in a game such as Pathfinder, where players may decide to conserve some resources for the final boss if they get a sense that a specific ability might come in handy during the last confrontation.
Let’s move forward to the garden. Here, I really dig Gorkie, the friendly leshy the characters can interact and trade with. It’s a sort of cozy and whimsical relief in an otherwise quite dark dungeon crawl. This is an elegant way of introducing players to the trading aspect of Pathfinder, which is more important than you might think and is part of the game’s experience, unlike some modern games such as Daggerheart that abstract it away. This was clever design, and I think this part deserves to be praised.
To balance that, I think the vault puzzle at the end of level two is poorly designed, for the same reasons we have already seen in other puzzles. It asks the players to make a lot of skill rolls, but the only consequence of failure is that they lose more time. Losing time, however, does not in itself have any significant consequence, so basically, failing results in simply trying again with no changes to the story. This, again, contradicts a fail-forward design that Pathfinder theoretically embraces and that I think benefits any kind of TTRPG adventure.
The fight with the shadow gargoyle that marks the end of level two is another huge missed opportunity to design something different from a straight-up, inevitable fight in a static area. Imagine fighting the gargoyle on the lift while it is moving. Instead, the adventure explicitly tells you that the gargoyle attacks before the heroes use the lift. I do like, however, how the characters can use the Unlit Star to interact with this encounter in an interesting way.
The final boss fight is quite good. It is yet another scripted combat with no chance to tackle it otherwise, but it allows the characters to interact with the environment to make the fight easier. There’s also this concept of shadow walls ready to grab the characters, which makes the battlefield feel alive and interesting. This also serves as an introduction to complex hazards for players and Game Masters alike, and really shows what Pathfinder can do to make combat more enticing and fresh. There are several ways to overcome this hazard, and this will get the players thinking—another thing I really like.
At the end of the adventure, the Unlit Star is finally made whole again. This is a nice way of using a MacGuffin to give cohesion to the exploration, and I quite frankly like it.
When all is said and done, I really dig the idea that Pathfinder gives you more and doesn’t make you shoulder all the work. If the characters return to Grayce, you can follow this up with Troubles in Grayce, which is a collection of adventures that will lead the PCs from level two to five, and Bastion of Blasphemies, an Adventure Path set in the same region and conveniently starting at level 5!
Creative Director
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Thanks for the in-depth review! It's always great to get timely reviews and feedback on adventures. I'd love to see more like this for Troubles in Grayce and Bastion of Blasphemies, ESPECIALLY because those adventures are kind of different beasts than this one, which is very much built to be an onboarding teaching adventure to new GMs, whereas the two follow ups spend less time on the teaching and more time on the story. (In particular, they do have a more open approach to encounters that don't always have to star the same way).
Thanks again for the feedback!
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Joe, thanks for the analysis, it's a very interesting read.
One of your points in particular really resonated with me:
I feel like the question-and-answer format is outdated, and I would like Paizo to move forward and present information in a more efficient and GM-friendly way because bullet points are much easier to reference at the table.
I too would prefer these sections to be bullet points and roleplay guidelines rather than the question-and-answer format!
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Very sharp and insightful review!
I agree as well that the Q&A style NPC interactions have never been very useful to me and would prefer a bulleted list + a short description of the behavioral flavor of the NPC would be a lot more usable. One of my challenges with the Q&A style is that they often suppose very specific lines of inquiry that my players are never consistent with, rather than a bulleted list that could cover broader info.
Thanks for the in-depth review! It's always great to get timely reviews and feedback on adventures. I'd love to see more like this for Troubles in Grayce and Bastion of Blasphemies, ESPECIALLY because those adventures are kind of different beasts than this one, which is very much built to be an onboarding teaching adventure to new GMs, whereas the two follow ups spend less time on the teaching and more time on the story. (In particular, they do have a more open approach to encounters that don't always have to star the same way).
Thanks again for the feedback!
My plan is to do it, since I am going to be reading and playing them anyway! I'm glad they can be useful as feedbacks, so I'll keep them coming!
EDIT: Thanks everyone, given the length of the post I assumed that no one would really read it!
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It does seem like you might have an OSR-inspired preference in gaming at the moment with some of your complaints, and I think that's important to notice. Nothing wrong with that, but if you're currently in the mindspace of liking OSR, PF2e will suffer in comparison.
For instance in your relationship between players and character paragraph. I feel Paizo has intentionally moved away, in general, from players (rather than characters) solving problems. That's why there would be an unprompted perception check (or in a non BB setting, a unprompted check for anyone Scouting/Searching in exploration mode). There's still a lot of room for player/role-playing expression, but avoiding some of the OSR "gotcha" style play of "you didn't say you checked the roof for traps, hahahaha" is I think one of the philosophies of Paizo style adventures.
The previous rant on combat as last resort in OSR is similar, but I still agree with the problem of "instant initiative/fight to the death" is used too often. Likely mostly due to page count limitation, adding more complexity does add a lot of words. I know posters over on reddit were discussing a drinking game based on "fight to death" in Paizo APs and decided it was probably too dangerous to attempt.
And I actually love the Q&A format, I find the authors (this is in general not in regards to unlit star in particular) do a pheromonal job of capturing dialect, accents, expressions in their answers that I find it much, much easier to continue improvising in the same vein. Simpler, bullet point style presentation (even if they include a phrase or two in the character's voice) have never been as effect for me.
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Lovely Review Joe!
I think every one of your comments and critiques struck the nail on the head for me. Pathfinder has such interesting mechanics and interesting adventures and settings to play in but it is a bit of a shame that so many player's don't even consider playing with them in a more free-form and engaged way and I can't help but wonder how much legacy adventure design has to do with it.
I love the adventure path line a lot and especially the clear labor of love that goes into from all the Paizo folks and freelancers that work on it, but I definitely do think streamlining things like the QnA dialogue and making room to give encounters more flexibility in approach. Sometimes less definitely is more, especially when it allows the game at the table to flow more smoothly.
Every time I run an AP, or especially a society one-shot, I think about how much nicer it would be to have more general descriptions and bullet points to help run NPC encounters. The best and most memorable NPC interactions I've had in society play have hands down been the handful of Influence Encounters that are scattered around, where every bit of QnA dialogue has been pretty forgettable at best,or at worst completely killed the session pace so badly that the GM has had to skip other encounters to make up for lost time as everyone shuffles around awkwardly trying to come up with the exact questions needed to be useful.
Looking forward to your next reviews, and really liking the more osr/nsr perspectives you're bringing to the table and how you balanced it with a genuine appreciation for what pathfinder is trying to go for mechanically and thematically. It's always good to get hobby and tabletop perspectives from outside of our hobby bubbles and usual comfort zones. There's a lot to be learned from the rest of the hobby that shouldn't just be written off as differing styles.
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One of the things the OP touches on several times is the divide between "player knowledge and direction" and "PC knowledge and actions." There's a lot that can be (and has been) written about this.
It's been one of my biggest adjustments to PF2E for sure (for two reasons, especially: my 46-year background in RPGs and that I simultaneously GM and play PF1E and PF2E). I think I've finally turned the corner by realizing:
PF1E (and many older and OSR games) expects players to look for hazards with descriptions of what they do and where they look, but for the PCs to disarm the hazards, usually with a single roll of Disable Device, or bypass them with (usually) another skill.
PF2E fully expects the PCs to find the hazards (by means of automatic checks for PCs using Search in Exploration mode (or occasionally Seek in Encounter mode), but seeks to give the players the means of using creativity to disarm or bypass the hazards. (That's why hazards have Disable suggestions ... which, of course, can simply be shared with newer or more hapless players).
After I finally grokked this, I came down on PF2E's way as "more fun." Mileage can differ.
I don't remember if the collapsing shelves in the BB are handled this way, beyond the automatic roll to notice them. Even in the absence of a lengthy explanation of Exploration and Encounter modes, it would be best if it did.
As an aside, I haven't been able to entirely get rid of my old-gamer prefs: on searches in areas, I only allow automatic Perception checks during 10-minute periods, and even then only of things a PC could conceivably find by "poking around." If a PC wants to search a desk (or whatever) for secret compartments (or whatever), I still want the player to tell me that. (I am willing to list contents of areas multiple times, as a prod to do this, though, 'cause I'm a softie. And because it's more fun.)
I also noticed the "unavoidable combat syndrome," but I was a lot gentler on it. Honestly, I have never -- literally never, in 46 years of gaming -- encountered a beginning RPGer who doesn't like combat, to lesser or greater extent. I'm not saying it's everyone's favorite, and I'm not saying those players don't exist. But ...
As a "Beginner Box" (and it really is!), I think SotUS leaned heavily into the idea of "hook them with action, and get more nuanced as they learn." And that's a fair bet to make in your "Beginner Box" product.