Pathfinder Society Scenarios Season 2 Part 1

Wow, I've not touched this topic in a long time. But, I still have many of these scenarios; I just never read/reviewed them in my quick and dirty analysis of them, so let's start it back up! Season 2 has 26 normal scenarios, and then a "special" unnumbered scenario as well, so let's see about getting it done! While I noticed looking back at my old ones that season 1 did not reset the numbering following the season 0, season 2 seems to have done so. On the Pathfinder wiki, at least, they number the "special' episode as number 0, so I'll follow that convention too.

If you did this in live play, it ran from summer 2010 to summer 2011. Of course, I have no interest in live play and I don't even know if they still do it or not. It's just adventure module fodder to me. I'll reiterate that in general I find these modules to be a little light; they often try to encompass an idea too big for a smallish one-shot adventure. But that doesn't mean that they aren't useable ideas in your own campaigns, either intermingled with other stuff, or fleshed out with more details.

0. Year of the Shadow Lodge: The theme of many of the adventures this year is the "Shadow Lodge", a conspiracy within the Pathfinder Society that wants to overthrow the current leadership and change the direction of the society in various ways. At some kind of big "Pathfinder Faire", one of these Shadow Lodge radicals attempts to literally attack the main Lodge and steal secrets of the Decemvirate from it. This means that a potentially cool political intrigue module is turned into a more standard simple "stop the terrorist attack while it's happening" type of thing. The most interesting thing about it is that it was meant to be run as a big ole event with an overseer GM "managing" several table GMs, who all are running the event for different groups at the same time. The Overseer GM does certain things and the table GMs do different things. Each table is supposed to have a "tier" (level, basically, or close to) of player at it, so the encounters are modified somewhat by tier. In all, the idea of a big event like this is more interesting, in my opinion, than the actual module itself, but the module is serviceable enough. As usual, it's a little thin, but I promise; I won't keep beating on that particular dead horse; it's common for almost all of these scenarios.
1. Before the Dawn Part I: The Bloodcove Disguise. The PCs are to attempt a rescue mission of a Pathfinder Society mission that's under attack by fiendish intelligent gorillas in the fantasy "Africa" of the setting. But mostly that comes in the next one; here, they have to sneak into Bloodcove, a pirate haven of the Pathfinder Society's bitter enemies, the Aspis Consortium, and sneak around in disguise trying to get their expedition set up. It's meant to be a tense intrigue kind of scenario, and... well, it's reasonably well done for what it is. It bills itself as an urban intrigue sandbox, and that's a close enough approximation of what it really is. I recommend this one to loot, even if I don't necessarily care for the Golarion-specific details. I do dislike, I admit, Pathfinder's growing reliance on minigames, though, like the accumulation of "Awareness points" to see if your enemies see through your attempt to disguise your intentions. The faction goals appear again too, for whatever that's worth. Most of them aren't worth noting; they're just minor side quests.
2. Before the Dawn Part II: Rescue at Azlant Ridge. While a great idea, the rescue operation through the jungle with your rivals in hot pursuit, this is a disappointing module. The actual travel is handwaved; it happens between the modules, and you start off now already almost there. There's a tiny little mini-dungeon to explore, and through DMus ex machina, you are supposed to have the PCs utilize an old iron golem to fight a big King Kong-like thing, while the PCs are... spectators, I guess. Not recommended.
3. The Rebel's Ransom. This module is set in Osirion, the Pathfinder "Ancient Egypt" analog. While it attempts to do many things; some overland desert travel, negotiating with a tough bandit action-grrl, etc. in reality all it really is is a dumb little dungeon focused on puzzles and traps. I hate these kinds of modules, so I can't really comment on how good it is; to me, they're all terrible.
4. Shadows Fall on Absolom. As the title kind of alludes to, we're back to Shadow Lodge stuff, for the first time since the weird season kick-off group party thing-a-ma-jig. This was clearly inspired by the Mission Impossible movies (and show) complete with a doppleganger in a staged room giving the PCs their mission, just like Tom Cruise with a mask on trying to get a confession from the bad guy. This would be a great one to stretch out and make a bigger part of a campaign.
5. Eyes of the Ten, Part III: Red Revolution. This is part three of a four part arc, and they need to be played in order. However, they aren't released in order; or rather, their release is widely scattered. The first two were not contiguous and were back in the prior season. Despite that, they clearly were a sneak peak into the Shadow Lodge issues, which many of these modules, including the last one, pretend like the PCs are just now discovering—oddly. I really liked the first of the Eyes of the Ten series, but not so much the second one. This third one is an exceptionally complex adventure, with a lot of backstory, and oddly, takes place on the Golarion version of Barsoom. In general, I'm a fan of Barsoom and any module that attempts to (more or less) faithfully mimic the conventions of the Barsoom stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, but I feel like in this case the whole scenario is too rushed and too forced—and seriously railroady. Not only that, cool as it is, it probably doesn't really fit in almost anyone's campaign normally. The whole thing comes across as a reasonably cool experiment, but one that probably shouldn't have been tried.