Product– Pathfinder Society Intro: Year of Unfettered Exploration

System- Pathfinder 2nd Ed

Producer– Paizo

Price– $ 8.99 here https://paizo.com/products/btq02eqo?Pathfinder-Society-Intro-Year-of-Unfettered-Exploration   

TL; DR– Too much money for a too short adventure.  77%

Basics– And we’re walking!  This Pathfinder Society adventure features you as a tour guide to a multidimensional maze where you guide a new venture captain to a lodge, then help round up some little elementals all while trying to be on time for his party.

Mechanics or Crunch– Paizo understands its mechanics.  The game itself works well here, but the adventure is a bit short.  What is in this adventure is about two fights and several skill checks to help multiple different players feel involved with a bit of exploration thrown in.  Solid work overall, but a bit short for my players as no players felt too challenged and a few checks cleared the adventure with no problem. 4.5/5

Theme or Fluff– The adventure works, but it feels off. We have a new guy who wants to see a place.  Cool, but there is a random fight, some random elemental stuff, a kind of random handout, and a random place that doesn’t feel all that connected.  It works, but my players and I felt that it was a bit disjointed.  Furthermore, it didn’t really introduce any major metaplot or content.  It was a decent distraction and having more pure noncombat adventures would be fun, but this wasn’t that nor was it pure combat adventure.  It felt like too much of a mix.  3.5/5

Execution– I was the most disappointed here.  The adventure works with classic Paizo layout and text doing their good job as always, but there is too much text and not enough guidance with some things being tried but not really working.  First, there are random things that happen.  Good!  But use the random event charts that we had in previous chapters rather than just have three options for the GM to pick.  Same goes with where the main NPC wants to go.  Add in a chart where he says where to go, describe the location, and have a random dice roll.  The main bulk of the adventure is in a maze.  Which is fun, but doesn’t have a massive location, but maybe just set pieces.  There are places that I don’t feel were all that connected nor did the riddle handout really help me or my players with it.  The price of the adventure is high, but they are now including all the information I need to run it.  However, the map they give is too big and can’t work on Roll20.  It also has a grid, so I have to fight with Roll20 to line it up.  PDFs can remove the grids, so I appreciate those.  But, here I am paying for a product that isn’t quite getting me what I want.  Honestly, if these were just set piece locations as they wander the maze, I feel that would make this run easier and make the maps small enough to upload to Roll20.  I appreciate what they gave me, but for almost 1/3 the price of their regular adventures, this costs a bit too much.   3.5/5

Summary–  Overall, this works.  It’s a fine enough adventure, but it’s short, a little disjointed, and the add-ons are a bit wonky.  I don’t hate this, but I feel some aspects hold this back.  Some small changes in organization and flow could help this be a top notch adventure.  You can easily run this, and you and your party will have fun.  But, don’t expect this to run for the full five hours.  77%