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Oh dear...

1/5

I have experienced the first section of Incident at Absalom Station as a player. I haven’t read the scenario and I don’t yet know how it ends (although we plan to persevere with it, despite major reservations). If things improve I will happily edit this review and light some more stars. However, I have strong feelings about my first experience of an official Starfinder scenario and felt it would be appropriate to offer them as a contribution here. Full disclosure: my own RPG background as player and GM stretches back to D&D first edition (the white books) via Runequest, Traveller, Call of Cthulhu, Paranoia and others. I recently played my first game of Pathfinder and really enjoyed it.

This is the shorthand version of how events transpired during our play session. I’ll try and keep the description as non-specific as possible, but inevitably there will be SPOILERS. First of all, simple RNG and the poor writing denied us the opening battle. Nobody shot at us (rolled a 1) in the opening event and we had no basis upon which to pick sides. We simply ducked and walked out of the room and all the GM’s efforts in setting up the scene and drawing maps etc. were wasted. Then we were not able to investigate because none of our characters had the requisite Diplomacy skill and only one had poor Intimidate. The classes and specialisms we wanted to play (technomancer, engineer, soldier) would have had some of their own important skills gimped if we had specced into these areas. Of course we fudged this, by now the GM was annoyed (at the way the scenario was written) and she was fudging as fast as she could! After play had finished, the GM told us that the scenario requires these particular skills over and over again and also hides vital information behind the RNG wall of a very high roll that would be impossible (as far as I can work out with my limited experience of the rules) unless a level one character is specced unrealistically in order to make this even possible. Having indications of alternative routes to the same outcome (hacking the gang, surveillance etc.) would have been sensible. Fudging is fine, up to a point, and we managed to fudge because of long gaming experience, but a scenario for beginning players and GM should offer suggestions.

Then we discovered that the big mystery about responsibility for the crime is no mystery after one single dice roll and talking to one person. We had assumed the answer anyway, given SF clichés about capitalism (no doubt justified), and everything led predictably to the resolution of the “mystery” without any drama or interest whatsoever. The scene at the night club assumed we would either give up our guns and be helpless or blast our way in. Indeed, the scenario kept assuming all we wanted to do was shoot people and let that lazy assumption stand in place of proper tactics or motivation. When we finally did shoot somebody, the gameplay was uninvolving because the encounters didn’t require us to do anything other than stand still and shoot a pistol or swing a Vesk melee weapon. Oh, my technomancer healed a couple of times, but that was about it.

Of course, this is a level one scenario and it was being kept intentionally straightforward, but there is a difference between straightforward and boring. I have no problem with combat heavy RPGs (many happy years of D&D in my past) but the first major section of this scenario pretended to be about more than that and ended up not delivering on either engaging combat or storytelling. The problem, from my perspective as a player, was that it assumed its central mystery and investigation was involving and important and it separated it from the action in too many ways. Chatting afterwards we agreed that it would have been much more fun if we had been clearly aligned (however temporarily or contingently) with one side in the opening fight and had used that alliance for the purposes of exposition and to drive an action sequence. For example, what if we had met the contact and his protective gang members before he was shot? Then we would have been part of the battle and invested in its outcome for reasons other than simple self-preservation. The gang could have led us in a running fight through Absalom Station – sightseeing while shooting – down to their HQ in the dodgy part of town. In the middle of a gang war we would have scrabbled around for solutions and then launched a counter-raid on the enemy etc. etc. My point is not to offer a specific alternative, rather to suggest how the storytelling and the action might have been much more fun if the writers had been honest about the simplicity of their story. It wouldn't have taken more page space either. In short, even the most hackneyed space opera genre clichés are really fun when you are actually enjoying them!

In conclusion, this first session was a major disappointment. We will keep playing through Incident at Absalom Station, because we like the Starfinder system so far and we are learning through playing, but we hope things will improve as the story develops. Sadly, this was not an auspicious introduction to the adventure path.