Pathfinder Playtest: "Doomsday Dawn" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Doomsday Dawn is a 96-page softcover book designed to play-test the rules for the upcoming second edition of Pathfinder.  The adventure is divided into seven chapters, each of which is designed to take a couple of sessions to get through.  Although the chapters link to tell one overall story, each jumps forward a couple of years in Golarion-time and many require the creation of new PCs.

I was very excited by the idea of Doomsday Dawn when it was first announced, as it promised to involve a cool (and long-dangling) plot thread that has been part of Golarion lore for several years.  I'm one of those people who are more into story than mechanics, and I couldn't wait to see what kind of awesome adventure Paizo had in store as it transitioned Pathfinder from its first to its second edition.

Unfortunately, I was very disappointed by the experience.  I played through the first four chapters before dropping out (along with the rest of the group).  Although the product itself is high-quality, with some great artwork and layout, the storytelling is poor and the encounters forgettable.  There are few NPCs to interact with, few opportunities for good role-playing, few interesting choices to make, and very little player-facing information on what the heck is going on (behind the scenes) until very late in the book.  I think I was expecting a package of well-written Pathfinder Society scenarios that tied together into one awesome story, and instead I got a collection of encounters, poorly tied-together, that I would rather have just played in isolation as exercises in tactical combat without the expectation of role-playing and plot development.  To be fair, a really good GM could probably smooth over some of the rough patches and add some extra material to tie things together better, but that's a lot to ask someone who is trying to figure out a whole new rules-set alongside the players.

Now that the playtest is over and a lot of people have grumbled about the experience, there's been a counter-argument in the forums that "playtesting is work, and isn't supposed to be fun."  I can accept that, but that's not the view that was circulated and led to such excitement among the community.  I think, unfortunately, my participation in the playtest has led me further away from embracing second edition than I would have been if I just went in with my eyes closed and hoped for the best.  As for Doomsday Dawn, my recommendation would be for hardcore Golarion-lore fans to download the free PDF (something we have to give Paizo credit for) to see how it resolves that big story-thread, but for other Pathfinder fans to leave it alone.

SPOILERS

I'll start with the book's strength: it's really pretty.  The cover artwork (featuring Harsk and Seoni assaulted by mummies) is beautiful, and most of the interior artwork is of similarly-excellent quality (look at the Hidimbi on page 57 or the Ashen Man on page 90).  The art that starts each chapter is weaker, but still, on the whole, Paizo has a great thing going with its selection of artists.  The book itself is laid out well, with a sidebar on each right-side page indicating which chapter is being looked at, notes from the designers interspersed throughout to help the GM know what the goals of each chapter are, well-designed maps (even those not part of the printed flip-mats are good), and more.  The inside front cover is a map of Golarion indicating where each chapter takes place, while the inside back cover is a hex map (suitable for photocopying if the encounter locations are removed) that ties into the fourth chapter.  All in all, it's a high-quality production, especially when you realise this is just a playtest document and will be obsolete in a few months--it's of better physical and artistic quality that most publishers' premiere output!

The adventure itself concerns a set of mysterious artifacts (recovered from ancient pyramids in Osirion) known as the "countdown clocks."  The countdown clocks herald some sort of world-wide cataclysm, and first appear in a module from 2008 (!) called The Pact Stone Pyramid.  Doomsday Dawn reveals that the countdown clocks are ticking down to when the planet Aucturn will be in the right celestial conjunction with Golarion to allow for an invasion by the Dominion of the Black and the release of a Great Old One that will destroy the entire planet!  Even adventure paths only deal with the fate of a city or a country, and this is the first Paizo story I know about where the entire planet is at stake--it's pretty exciting stuff.  The backstory, explained in a two-page section, is pretty complicated stuff, involving a "mind-quaked" priest named Ramlock, his development of the Last Theorem (and the missing White Axiom), portals to Aucturn, the Dominion of the Black, the pharaohs of the Pact Stone Pyramid, cultists called the Night Heralds, and more.  I was fairly lost reading through it for the purposes of this review, but had far less of an idea of what was going on as a player.  Anyway, I'll go through each of the seven chapters in a separate paragraph below.

Chapter 1, "The Lost Star", starts things off poorly.  It's set in Magnimar just before the events of Rise of the Runelords, but doesn't really have a link apart from the fact that the giver of the adventure hook, Keleri Deverin, is cousin to Sandpoint's mayor and plans to travel there for the Swallowtail Festival.  The chapter dumps the PCs into Keleri's house as friends/allies summoned to help retrieve a family heirloom stolen by a bunch of goblins from her basement vault.  The goblins belong to the Mudchewer tribe and can be tracked through the vault to a sewer complex called the Ashen Ossuary, where their "hobgoblin" leader, Drakus, is revealed as a faceless stalker.  It's essentially a very, very basic dungeon crawl, with goblins, skeletons, a giant caterpillar, and some traps.  Really, it's about as generic as a D&D-style adventure can get, at least until the very end where (potentially) Keleri reveals that she is a member of an organisation called the Esoteric Order of the Palantine Eye which looks after mystical secrets and tries to stop dangerous cults like the Night Heralds from using them to cause harm.  There's some backstory here, but the PCs can't engage with it even if they find out about it.

Chapter 2, "In Pale Mountain's Shadow", has players create a new set of fourth level PCs for an adventure set in Katapesh.  There's a race between the Esoteric Order of the Palantine Eye and the Night Heralds to penetrate the Tomb of Sular Seft and get a countdown clock so they know when the apocalypse is coming (as Buffy says, "If the apocalypse comes, beep me.").  One of the criticisms I have of the entire adventure is that there's very little background provided on the Esoteric Order of the Palantine Eye, which results in the PCs being members of the group just because they're supposed to be.  Anyway, this chapter tests out the wilderness travel rules and some wilderness-themed hazards and monsters (such as a manticore and gnolls) before the PCs reach the tomb.  Inside, there are elementals, a poorly-described puzzle, and a dude who has been trapped for millennia named Mabar who is the key to the PCs getting any background information about what's been going on so far.  Reading the chapter after having played through it, I can recognise that there are some good story elements that just didn't come up during the actual session--I'm not sure if that was the GM's or the adventure's fault.

Chapter 3, "Affair at Sombrefell Hall," is set in Ustalav and has PCs creating a new set of 7th level characters.  One of the reasons I found the playtest such a chore was that it was a real pain to create or level up increasingly high-level characters in a new rules system while still sticking to the "one chapter every two weeks" schedule that was necessary in order to keep up with the surveys.  Some pre-gens for those of us with limited time would have made a big difference.  Anyway, the PCs are asked to travel to a manor on the shores of Lantern Lake to ask a scholar, Verid Oscilar, to return with them and share his knowledge about the Dominion of the Black.  (I really wish that the chapter had tied in Dr. Quolorum, a fellow academic at the Sincomakti School of Sciences from The Phantom Phenomena into this adventure, as his travels are centered in the same area!).  What actually happens is that the PCs arrive at the manor, Oscilar refuses to leave until he finishes a project, and the manor is assaulted by wave after wave of undead in a test to see how long the PCs can hold out.  The adventure has some flaws in it, particularly with failing to address what happens if the PCs try to intimidate or charm Oscilar into leaving right away (as my group did), expecting the PCs to spend a game-day or more poking around the manor before anything interesting happens (a lot of PCs aren't going to be the type to rummage around someone else's house), and having a location site that's pretty big and complicated to draw and not either using an existing flip-mat (Haunted House or Pathfinder Lodge, for example) or having it be one of the ones specifically released for the playtest.  All in all, there's a lot of combat in a very lethal adventure with very little story development from the players' perspective.

Chapter 4, "The Mirrored Moon," has the problem that, no matter what happens in previous chapters (whether the PCs succeeded or failed), events play out exactly the same.  The premise is that the Eye have learned about the Night Heralds' attempts to contact the slumbering wizard Ramlock, and that both the Eye and the Night Heralds are racing to find Ramlock's lost tower in the River Kingdoms.  This chapter uses a wilderness hex grid and tests overland movement and a "one encounter per day" paradigm (a.k.a., "hexploration").  Our GM gave us (presumably by mistake) a photocopy of the marked hex map in the back of the book, so we knew exactly where encounters would be, even if we didn't know what type they would be.  The premise of the adventure is very different than the others, as it uses "ally points," "treasure points," and "research points" to track how well the PCs are doing in gathering resources to help with what I guess is presumed to be a big battle with the Night Heralds at Ramlock's tower.  Most of this is explained pretty poorly, as abstract trackers and mechanics need to be carefully integrated into an adventure to seem justified to players.  What basically happens is the PCs wander around, meet creatures (a dragon, some cyclops, a lake monster, etc.), do some simple fetch/messenger quests to gain allies, and then have a big battle at the tower.  It all seemed very simplistic and cheesy when I played it (like a bad board game with a little role-playing tacked on and every single skill check DC seemingly pegged at the magical number of "26").  This is where I dropped out, so the rest of the review is based purely on reading the subsequent chapters.

Chapter 5, “The Heroes of Undarin,” is designed to result in a TPK, though the players won’t be told this!  The premise is that the PCs are grizzled crusaders from the Worldwound (new 12^th level characters), and they’re tasked with escorting the (off-screen) PCs from the previous chapters as they undertake an important mission in the demon-haunted wastelands.  In order to decipher the true meaning of Ramlock’s text, The Last Theorem, the Esoteric Order of the Palantine Eye needs to recover the fabled White Axiom—which exists scrawled on a cave underneath the ruins of the city of Undarin.  (I’m not exactly sure why the Eye needs this info, and suspect it might be better left there, but that’s neither here nor there.)  The plot stuff is only in the background, because how this chapter plays out from beginning to end is 100% pure combat: the PCs have to defend a ruined temple for as long as they can, against wave after wave after wave of demons and undead.  These are some amazing, earth-shaking battles, and the temple flip-mat is given some cool terrain and features to spice things up.  There’s no role-playing and little story, but I have to admit it sounds like a blast to play (as long as you weren’t expecting anything with more depth).

Chapter 6, “Red Flags”, looks to be the best adventure of the bunch.  The PCs are sent to infiltrate a gala in the Shackles at a mansion where the last known copy of The Last Theorem is kept securely in the vault.  The way the PCs proceed in the gala is handled in a free-form manner, with lots of opportunity for role-playing, information gathering, deception, stealth, and more.  There’s a really interesting story here, and the chapter reads like a good PFS scenario as the PCs realize they have to race to retrieve the book before a rival “party guest” from the Night Heralds gets into the vault first.  I think if an adventure like this had occurred earlier in the book, it would have left a better taste in my mouth about the whole playtest.

Chapter 7, “When the Stars Go Dark”, is a suitably epic climax to the storyline.  Using The Last Theorem and the White Axiom, the PCs can enter a demiplane called Ramlock’s Hollow and disrupt something that’s kind of like a giant countdown clock, the Veinstone Pyramid, to stop the conjunction of Golarion and Aucturn.  But of course, they have all manner of cosmic-level threats to overcome, including Ramlock himself who attacks during the lengthy ritual needed to disrupt the Veinstone Pyramid.  Earlier in the chapter, the PCs have the opportunity to undergo some visions to learn about the backstory to the entire adventure, but I think it’s probably too little, too late.  Anyway, the chapter would be a great opportunity to test out the playtest rules in some high-CR confrontations.

 I *almost* regret not sticking with the playtest longer in order to experience the last chapters of Doomsday Dawn, as they seem better written and more interesting than the earlier ones.  Further, I think if I had gone in with lower expectations and if there had been more time allotted in the schedule so that creating new PCs and finishing chapters didn’t have to be done in such a hectic manner, I would have enjoyed the whole thing more.  But all of that is in hindsight, and I suppose what matters now is the legacy of this book going forward now that the playtest is finished: it wraps up the “Aucturn Enigma” plot thread and offers some more insight (though not much) into the Esoteric Order of the Palantine Eye, the Night Heralds, the Dominion of the Black, and more.  As I said in the introduction, however, there’s not enough of interest to make this anything more than a curiosity unless you really need to learn some additional lore on these topics.