Pathfinder Society Scenario # 10-20: "Countdown to Round Mountain" [RPG]

 

NO SPOILERS

I ran Countdown to Round Mountain at high subtier using the four-player adjustment.  It's one of the more complicated scenarios to run, with a lot to keep track of, so I'd suggest it's best for experienced GMs.  It's a skills-heavy scenario, but the encounters can be surprisingly difficult.  The setting is
interesting and there's a nice pay off for a long-running story arc.  This is a meaty scenario--one worth taking one's time with.

SPOILERS

Countdown to Round Mountain is one of the final scenarios in the long-running Hao Jin Tapestry story arc (and ties in to # 3-20 and # 3-22).  Round Mountain was a ysoki (ratfolk) occupied cavern deep in the Darklands under Tian Xia that was magically teleported by Hao Jin into the magical tapestry demiplane.  As part of the Season Ten story arc, the Pathfinder Society has located Hao Jin and arranged for locations in the fraying demiplane to be returned to Golarion.  But in the hundreds of years since Round Mountain was removed, ratfolk have turned the now-empty space it occupied into a new settlement (and major trading route) named Zhotan.  The Pathfinder Society only has a couple of weeks to document everything it can about the culture of Zhotan and persuade the inhabitants to evacuate before Round Mountain returns and destroys everything built in its place.  The PCs are part of a major expedition to Zhotan led by Venture-Captain Amara Li, but members of the Exchange faction will find plenty of profitable trading opportunities as well.

The core gameplay mechanic in the scenario is the accumulation of Exploration Points.  The PCs accomplish this by travelling to various parts of Zhotan--the settlement itself, its outlying mushroom farms, a subterranean lake, its garrison, etc--and observing and documenting local customs.  Each successful skill check (a PC can make one per day) results in an Exploration Point.  This sounds simple enough, but I found as a GM it was really hard to run in an organic way.  Most players aren't anthropologists or biologists, and they're not naturally going to think "I should collect shellfish for later study" or "I'm going to watch ratfolk mushroom farmers to see how they conduct local agriculture."  The alternative to letting the group flail is for the GM to just tell the players what checks are available in each location, but that can turn the whole thing into a dice-rolling exercise.  Although there's an entire settlement of ysokis the PCs are ostensibly interacting with, I think there's really only one named NPC (the governor).  Finally, it's very rare in Pathfinder Society for several days to pass in-session, but this scenario is built to last a couple of weeks--many groups start getting antsy and wondering where the drama is if encounters don't pop up quickly.  So while I like the idea, I don't think the whole thing works so well in practice.

There are some combat encounters in the scenario, and they have interesting and unusual foes.  A construct army comprised of the haunted clockworks of Pan Majang has been besieging Zhotan for some weeks, and the PCs are likely to find themselves fighting some clockwork hounds, soldiers, or mages.  There's also a surprise ambush by undead when PCs are exploring the subterranean lake area.  At high subtier, this is a "gashadokuro", a rare monster that has a nasty starvation aura and a "corpse consumption" special ability.  It killed one of the PCs in the game I ran.  The encounters could be even worse if the PCs split up to tackle skill checks in different locations, which might otherwise be a perfectly rational way to accomplish as much as possible before time runs out.  When the PCs convince the leadership of Zhotan to order an evacuation, there's another chance to battle the haunted clockwork army, but this is formally optional and I think my players decided it was too risky.  

I do have to give the scenario credit for an impressive integration of setting lore (involving a region and backstory that's off the Inner Sea beaten track) and Pathfinder Society background.  One definitely gets the sense that Zhotan is a "real" place, and in a way it's unfortunate that so much work went into a location that is effectively erased at the end of the scenario with the return of Round Mountain.  Come to think of it, Countdown to Round Mountain reminds me a lot of Starfinder Society Scenario # 2-04: Future's Fall.

Overall, I think this is a strong, solid scenario.  It's one to run when there's no real-life time-crunch, and where the GM has plenty of time to prepare notes on various skill checks (and how to present them), make a timeline of what happens on certain days, and perhaps to even invent a couple of NPCs to help flesh out different areas.  In other words, this not one I'd run with little prep in a four-hour convention slot. With those caveats, this should be a reasonably good experience.