RPG Superstar 7 Season Star Voter, 8 Season Star Voter. Organized Play Member. 5,884 posts (11,094 including aliases). 2 reviews. No lists. No wishlists. 8 Organized Play characters. 33 aliases.
I would urge any Starfinder player to get a copy of this issue of Wayfinder for the adventure "The Wandering Water Bear" by Hilary Moon Murphy (aka "GM Hmm" on the boards). I had the pleasure of playing this adventure at PaizoCon Online 2020, run by the author herself. To be honest, I had thought that we were playtesting a to-be-published Starfinder Society scenario, and I thought it was one of the better examples I'd played through! The word count may be short, but the author packs a whole lot of adventure into 9 pages: 7 pages of adventure, plus a two-page "Weal or Woe" detailed description of NPCs. One thing I particularly liked is that there are challenges for any Starfinder character, meaning that there aren't going to be many, if any, scenes where a player will be twiddling their thumbs because a specialized character has nothing to do. Highly recommended.
This 159-page book is chock-full of ideas to bring your descriptions of wilderness locations to life. The book is organized by location type (e.g. campsites, roads, farmlands, woodlands, deserts). Each section has a set of random descriptive tables for descriptions, odd events, and other things that may happen to the PCs to make thier journey more interesting.
Other sections include NPC stats for bandits they may encounter, generic area-based random encounters, haunts, ship name generators, and other tools to help the GM answer the question, "What does it look like?" or "What happens?"
Additionally, these descriptions can help spawn ideas for GMs who wish to prepare such encounters ahead of time. Still, having tables with pre-cooked descriptions can be a real time-saver if the creative juices aren't flowing, but you want to say more than, "Your journey through the forest was uneventful."
Five stars!
[Note: In the name of full disclosure, the publisher provided me a copy of this PDF for free in exchange for writing a review.]
For the sake of full disclosure: I received a free copy of this product in exchange for promising to write a review.
Dread Captian Miraxa: Queen of the Slumbering Sea
This is an 18-page black-and-white supplement. It presents the title NPC at three different challenge ratings: CR 21, CR 14, and CR 7. It also includes several additional items in support of the character: A new race (the Draken), complete with full alternate favored class options; 5 character archetypes; 9 feats (most of which are "horrifically overpowered" feats, which are essentially monster templates); and 4 magic items (one of which is presented in standard, lesser, and greater versions).
I chose this character as a potential additional NPC for my Skull and Shackles game. I did not realize that the character was going to be built around the "horrifically overpowered feats," which kind of rub me the wrong way. As monster templates, I can see their value, but I usually prefer my NPCs to be built around normal class options. I was also not that big a fan of the new Draken race.
Those complaints aside, the character's background and personality are very interesting. I can very much envision how to run this character if I chose to introduce her in my campaign. However, there's enough about the design philosophy of this character that doesn't sit well with me that I'd end up redesigning her significantly-- and if I'm going to do that, I might as well design my own character.
Overall-- interesting character that relies on some new rules I'm not fully on board with. This character would not easily plug into my game, but would do well in a game whose GM has more of an "anything goes" attitude that I do.
Overall: If you're looking for a very unusual pirate captain for your game, you're not going find one that's much more unusual.
