Pathfinder Module: Masks of the Living God by Paizo

I ran Masks of the Living God for my Savage Worlds Pathfinder campaign, adapting it for a mountainous city. While it was fun, the module itself is surprisingly rigid for an urban adventure. It required a lot of improvised story elements to run without railroading the group.

Play Time: Took about six 2-hour sessions. Storywise, Masks of the Living God is a sequel to Crypt of the Everflame, and is a prequel to City of Golden Death. It is possible to run as a standalone adventure, but I was using it as part of a trilogy of adventures.

General Thoughts: Poor to fair adventure, not good. Surprisingly railroaded for an investigation urban adventure. Required a lot of off-the-cuff modification to run smoothly. My group zig-zagged a bit, but eventually recovered the amulet shards they were after (a story element from Crypt of the Everflame).

Paizo has a tendency to push their RPG adventures in ways that D&D isn’t really built to flex. Urban investigation, chase scenes, etc. are all handled kind of badly with Paizo’s Pathfinder rules. This is compounded in Pathfinder Society, because Society rules require running an adventure as written, which hamstrings the GM’s ability to improv and fill in gaps – and Masks of the Living God had a ton of gaps.

Masks starts with a railroaded “get kidnapped by a cult” story element, which I threw right out the window. My players very quickly realized that they needed to get into the Temple of Razmir and steal the McGuffin (an amulet shard, one of three), and willingly signed up to join the cult. There was a bit of back and forth as the group jostled around trying to not be found out. None of this would happen in a straight run of Masks, not without GM adaptation.

The dungeon itself (temple, really) is a straight forward affair. There’s a giant snake room (smacks of Harry Potter’s basilisk chamber) that my group never even investigated. I think that Paizo does a good job with color maps, but overall the Masks maps were weak. It didn’t feel very temple-ish. I’ve grown disillusioned with fantasy RPG maps, they tend to be facsimiles, not actually logical places.

I really disliked the opening plot hook. I did like some of the NPCs, especially the big bruiser who runs the daily operations of the temple – my players quickly learned to hate his guts, and couldn’t wait to duke it out with him. The high priestess, strangely, was kind of a lightly scripted figure, which was disappointing.

Overall, Masks was a mixed bag for maps, NPCs, and storyline. I probably wouldn’t have run it except I wanted an urban adventure, and Masks sits in the middle of a trilogy of Pathfinder modules. I made it work, but be warned that Masks as written will be underwhelming.

Available on Paizo.com: https://paizo.com/products/btpy8bal