Castamir's Flaxseed Station

Game Master Chris Marsh

With the recent blog post noting that the "cool fun factor" bit of the Rising Star boon is about to come to fruition... I've been thinking of running a couple of the higher level Second Seekers missions.

In particular Heat of the Foe (3-6) and Reclaiming the timelost tear(5-8).

Are there enough in tier (and not currently in game) characters who would want to play one or both of these?

Love to, but both of my 3+ characters are in games at the moment :(

"Hello there, Sentients!" The Pact World's most famous host strides forward and straightens his bow tie. "GM Hmm is a lovely gal who has never gotten to GM a specific scenario:

Yes, the scenario that stars all of you, working for ME." Zo! grins and points his finger guns first at the audience, and then at himself. "Awesome, right?!"

Zo! then thinks a moment. "Only one problem. GM Hmm is convinced that this scenario has been completely played out in the PBP region due to how often it's been offered, and how long it took to fill in Outpost." Zo! claps. "But I'm always up for a challenge. Are there nascent stars out there who haven't auditioned for me yet? Remember, my show knocks 'em DEAD!"

★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★

Seriously, are there folks who haven't played this yet? Things you should know about me: I really reward whimsy and over the top roleplay, especially for a scenario like this, and I'm a relatively fast GM. But I'm willing to wait until after Outpost if I can get a good enough crew for this one. I just want to know... Are there enough fun players who haven't played it yet?

memememememe!

I have a level 1 operative and solarian who could both be convinced to join this fine adventure. In fact, Kastien (the solarian) would be perfectly suitable for one of your games, as he is a little over the top himself

I've run it but not played it. If you're fine with that I'd be interested in playing it :-)

I haven't played it, either but I think I played a follow up scenario.

I'd be interested but would have to actually work up the character in online format and I'm going out of town over the weekend so...wait...what was my point?

Oh right...I'm interested but couldn't start before sometime mid to late next week.

That's okay. I might wait a couple weeks myself to get more people out of Outpost.

Hmm

"So... Four AWESOME explorers have expressed interest, which means that I can schedule a show sometime in the next two weeks!" Zo! claps his hands. "If we have any new Starfinders that show up in the Lodge, I'll also prioritize a chance for you to audition!"

I'll set up a campaign thread in a bit, and post back with it later! This will be registered under the Online Support Program.

With the recent blog post noting that the "cool fun factor" bit of the Rising Star boon is about to come to fruition... I've been thinking of running a couple of the higher level Second Seekers missions.

In particular Heat of the Foe (3-6) and Reclaiming the timelost tear(5-8).

Are there enough in tier (and not currently in game) characters who would want to play one or both of these?

I have a level 5 character who could play either of those. (And has some strong ties to the Scoured Stars, so I would quite like to.)

Message from IronHelixx (Please Read)

GM's on top of what Jesse just said please double check the data before you input it into the OSP. There have been several entries missing player info, scenario names, wrong player #'s. All of this greatly slows down the batching process.

Please compile all the reporting information a few days before you finish your scenario and have your players check that their information is correct to help clean up the process.

Anyone out there looking to run #1-30 Survivor's Salvation any time soon? I wasn't able to attend when it ran locally, and I'd love to play it before Origins.

********Official Reminder*********

I just wanted to make sure everyone is aware that OSP games have to be publicly recruited.

We're looking pretty public so far :) Great amount of games popped up in the last few days!

@Wolffauer: Sure, I'd be happy to run a table of 1-30 for you. Check the recruitment tab and get yourself signed up on my sheet.

@Wolffauer: Sure, I'd be happy to run a table of 1-30 for you. Check the recruitment tab and get yourself signed up on my sheet.

Thanks!

Blog Discussing Evaluation Process for 5 Nova Candidates

Hey all --

With every 5 nova candidate being required to seek out three evaluations from a Venture Captain, I think that the online region is going to get SLAMMED with requests a year from now as more GMs hit 4 nova.

I've been trying to advocate for Venture Lieutenants as well as Venture Captains to be able to evaluate, and I'd like to assemble a pool of willing evaluators for referrals if we start to get crushed with requests.

I'm not putting out a survey for this yet, as the evaluation rubric is not live yet. But it is coming soon. Tonya gave the go ahead for me to evaluate a 5 nova candidate at PaizoCon this year. I'm planning on putting a survey together where VO's could volunteer to be contacted for this. Basically, a referral sheet.

What information would you find helpful, if you were a 5 Nova candidate seeking folks to evaluate you?

I'm thinking the survey should include:

1) Venture Rank - RVC, VC, VL, VO that has been promoted but not yet gotten NDA from Tonya.
2) Systems VO / Evaluator GMs in.
3) Location of VO.
4) Contact Information
5) Preferred Online Formats that you Play in
6) ID on PFS Session Tracker -- to make setting up games easier.

Or should I go simpler and just ask for venture rank and contact information? Thoughts?

Also, are there any Europeans here who would know off-hand if collecting something like this get us in trouble with any EU privacy laws? Are there precautions that I would need to take if I collected a referral list?

Hmm

Willing to evaluate. Let's test drive this bad boy!

Also, are there any Europeans here who would know off-hand if collecting something like this get us in trouble with any EU privacy laws? Are there precautions that I would need to take if I collected a referral list?
Hmm

I have no idea if this actually applies in this case, it's just what I remember about what companies need to do when they collect information.

Since you are collecting personal information which could in theory be traced back to identifying persons that will be stored somewhere it might be better if you include something along the lines of people giving consent for this to be used for reason X and stating that the information gathered will not be used for any other purpose or shared (or sold) with anyone outside [not sure how to define this part....Starfinder/Pathfinder Society members?]

I think you need to state somewhere how long you intend to keep the data...so maybe purge the list every year and re-new it (which also would help to keep it up to date)

And have a way for people to request to be removed from the list if they decide they don't want to be on it anymore.

There's also something about people having the right to request the information you have on them..but I don't think that's an issue in this case and if you find out that your list has been hacked you need to inform everyone on the list that their information has been accessed.

Again, I have no idea if any of this applies in this case since it's basically just a list of contact information you have of (y)our acquaintances which you share among (y)ourselves.

Even though I don't have any active characters here, I can still see this thread in my campaigns. Can someone try making this player inactive as well or something? I'm just trying to de-clutter my campaigns and I hardly ever play starfinder PbP.

Even though I don't have any active characters here, I can still see this thread in my campaigns. Can someone try making this player inactive as well or something? I'm just trying to de-clutter my campaigns and I hardly ever play starfinder PbP.

I'll try to contact Chris Marsh and see if he can help you out.

Hey everyone,

My friend Lucas Servideo is looking for a Dragonkin boon for his little boy. If anyone is willing to trade with him, he would love the opportunity. His public email is pfsnorthshorema@gmail.com.

Hmm

I've seen people mention trading boons a few times.

How does that work? Is it just a simple 'trade you A for B'? Can you trade between your own characters? How does it get reported for Society play?

There is a Starfinder Society Boon Trading thread, and here's the rules for it.

In that set of rules I distinguished between tradeable and untradeable Starfinder boons. Can you trade boons between your characters? In general, no. The boons would have to be tradeable in the first place. However if they are tradeable (like a player boon earned from an convention or RSP) you can assign them to whatever character you want.

In addition, some scenario boons (like the various linguist boons) once earned by one character are available to all. Those should state that in the text of the boon.

★ --- ★ --- ★ --- ★

UNTRADEABLE BOONS
Anything earned off a scenario chronicle.
RSP & OSP GM Boons (at least for the first 12 slots that must be 'earned' by you for one of your own characters.) You can likely trade off the 24 games reward that allows you to gift a friend.
The Alien Archive Player Boon, which must be earned for one of your own characters.
Roleplaying guild guide boons, purchased with your fame. This includes all faction boons.
Survey boons, again earned for you alone.

TRADEABLE BOONS
GM Race Boons from Conventions
Player Boons from Conventions, RSP, and OSP
GM Minor Faction Boons from Conventions -- aka 'Manifold Host' (and future boons like it)
The RSP & OSP GM reward for 24 slots that lets you share with a friend.

Thanks Hmm.

You're welcome. By the way, what are you looking for?

Hmm

Nothing at the moment. Was just curious how it was handled.

I just started a new campaign thread and all the text in it is in red instead of in black (all the other campaigns I'm in still look normal) ..has anyone had that happen to them? And does anyone know how to chance it back to black text? Red looks..pretty aggressive and it's giving me the idea I've done something wrong the entire time I'm looking at the posts.

There is some BB code that you can use to do this. GM Rutseg did this in his Shackled City AP for a while. I'm not sure exactly, but you could ask him.

You have Red in the title of your campaign somewhere. My guess? You are doing Fugitive on the Red Planet. Start a new campaign without the word Red -- or with Red spelled R.E.D. -- and your campaign will look normal. Or you can just embrace it, and go with the color diversity!

It's a known bug. The Red Arm of Absalom campaign is all Red, all the time.

Hmm

Thank you. Getting rid of the red in the title fixed it.

Do any other colors trigger that?

Yup Red in the title will do that. No other colors that I am aware of. The other oddity is if you type the word smurf in your text your photo will show up as a random smurf.

That is not a random smurf. Isn't that jokey?

Looks like it's that time of year again for the annual string of posts that pop up letting us know how smurfed the boards are! Mmmm... Smurf-i-licious!

GM Aerondor loves it when you call him Big Papa. Put your Smurfs in the air if you a true player.

Given its 1st of May or May day had me thinking of the classic (slightly garbled) sci fi message

This is Star Finder Beowulf,
calling anyone . . .
Mayday, Mayday . . . we are under attack . . .
Drift drive is gone . . .
turret number one not responding
Mayday . . . losing cabin pressure fast
calling anyone . . . please help . . .
This is Star Finder Beowulf . . .
Mayday . . .

Trying to think of a Starfinder scenario of the recovery / rescue that could use the above as an alternative intro

Into the unknown is as far as I got but would prefer a rescue if possible

The Beacon Code Dilemma could easily be reskinned to use that opening.

Ahhh hello fellow Traveller.

Ah, Traveller. One of the few games where you can die in chargen from old age...

How does one become an SFS GM? Considering running events here and locally, but curious what goes into each (in the organized play arena).

Just jump in. Decide to run a game and create a game thread for it. There are some helpful notes in the lodge header.

How does one become an SFS GM? Considering running events here and locally, but curious what goes into each (in the organized play arena).

If you have not already I would suggest playing in a game or two. See how the GM's for these boards run their games. Most maps are through Google slides.

If you have any questions don't e afraid to ask. We can definitely help you with the technical aspect. As far as this being PbP medium it gives us the rare opportunity for all that additional and fun roleplay. Play off of your players responses and have fun.

P.S. Also give the Starfinder Society Guide a good read as it will deal with distribution of chronicles and everything concerning bookkeeping for Starfinder Society.

Has anyone played a Mechanic with a combat drone?

I've made one up but it seems like everyone goes for the Exocortex and I'm wondering if there's some obvious advantage that way that I'm missing.

This character uses a drone, but he is only 1.2. Having read both types of mechanic options, I'm pretty sure exocortex is almost entirely better, but I think the drone can be more fun since it gives more actions to do in combat.

Currently, this character spends his first turn building a barricade in his space as a move action, then drops prone and pulls out his drone controller. His little hover drone then pops out of his pet carrier and gets into a good spot to full attack from later. Next turn, the mechanic gives his actions to the drone (which doesn't fly after turn 1 since it wouldn't be able to full attack) and then the drone fires its two laser pistols with multi-weapon fighting.

I'm thinking of eventually using longarms once its gets another mod for proficiency and then heavy weapons with a gunner harness once it gets proficiency there too.

I figured that was the case, but I have an affinity for characters with companions so it drew my attention when I was looking through characters.

Interesting. I was thinking of setting up the Combat Drone as mobile gun platform and taking the Skyfire Centurion Archetype. Then my mechanic would just do harrying fire with a cheap pistol as a set up for the Drone to lay down some damage with a longarm.

I hadn't considered using harrying fire to buff the attack scores of the drones, although I did consider just using a drone with suppressive fire to give everyone extra AC, eventually you'll hit AC 15 right?

My wife plays a ysoki mechanic with a stealth drone. For it's first upgrade she gave it the riding harness and rides it everywhere. With 3 actions a round you have lots of flexibility.

On the other end of that spectrum is my friend with a combat drone and a longarm. He sits back as far as possible and slowly marches the drone into the fray, all guns blazing.

The last mechanic in my local group is an exocortex mechanic.

The nice thing is if all 3 of those characters were in a party together, I think there would be enough strategic differences between them that they wouldn't be stepping on each others toes.

I like the idea of making a mechanic/envoy that just stands on top of his drone and yells at people, but I already have enough other character concepts to build.

One of the challenges I've found playing a combat drone is its low HP. A typical Starfinder character would have significantly higher SP+HP than a combat drone's HP alone. Also, a character could have combat "healing" of SP (from envoys) or HP (from medics, serums). Combat drones' DR help somewhat but not against energy attacks. Pumping up AC is difficult as well. Out of combat healing is also relatively limited. The good thing though is that even if your drone is completely destroyed (happened once for me), you can rebuild it completely within 24h. In a multi-day adventure, that is great, but even if not, that it is not costly to replace is nice.

I definitely think there are more downsides to a drone over an exocortex than upsides. Honestly I think its always going to be the less "optimal" choice unless they add some new drone stuff in future books, but I definitely find it more fun than: Move action study, standard to fire, gameplay.

I may be mistaken, but aren't there limitations on how much you can use Mending to repair a drone? Like you can only do it once/day or something? It's been quite a while since I played my drone mechanic, but that was the impression I got.

Essentially, a mechanic get one free repair (10% of max HP, 25% with repair drone trick) per day. Additional repairs per day will cost 1RP.

Yeah, it is not optimal but it is fun. And gives you more tactical options in combat.