Jelatinator's page

Overall, this scenario was pretty enjoyable. A good mix of combat, exploration, and social encounters.

The Izalguuns were pretty interesting, and it was fun interacting with them and the bootleg drugmaker. While I'm not a fan of some Big Pharma practices, I have to hold back a couple eyerolls since this is pointedly saying they are being slow to react. While, yes, there could be nefarious greed associated with it, its more likely that there are soooo many regulations in order to bring a drug to production. The purpose of that is to ensure that it is as safe as possible to the population. Its ok, this is a fantasy setting, but when you bring in real-world issues in a non-nuanced manner, its a little grating.

It was neat to see some old enemies resurface, but I think where this one fell just a bit short was the combats were very easy. The final couple fights looked interesting when they first come up, but then you quickly realize that there are several CR1 creatures that go down in 1 hit usually. The PCs clear out almost everything in one round while the 'leader' goes down shortly thereafter. That's ok for one fight, but having two of those back to back was a bit of a letdown.

Also, Its hilarious reading a prior review because it is almost exactly what happened in my game with a vanguard with a shield rarely getting hit.

I played this scenario live at Gen Con and I have to say, this may be one of the best yet.

While it retains most of the hallmarks of a Paizo multi-table special, this one just upped everything to 11! I enjoyed that there was a little 'intro' one at the start of each part that set the stage, and then you could choose which one to do after that. Every mini-mission you go on felt integral to the success of the scenario, and the buffs you get as you go seemed to tie in well to that.

The other players at the table I was at tended to focus on the combat missions, but we did do a couple puzzle ones. Those two types seem to be better suited to the specials anyways, since social encounters tend to take a bit more time, and you really want to try to crank out as many as possible in the short time you have.

The build-up to the final boss and the final boss itself was great. My character specifically had two standout moments disarming the boss of his cool toys, not attacking him, then getting wailed on anyways and killing him by electrostatic field. High fives were had all around the table. I wont forget this one any time soon.

I also dug that there was something to do after the big bad to keep the quicker tables entertained while everyone else finished up. Kudos to the Starfinder team on this one.

I thought that this scenario wasn't too bad. Contrary to a previous review, our group didn't find this one a slog at all. We actually finished in in 2 hours. It went very VERY fast.

It does involve starship combat, and I know that its not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't mind it usually as long as the group knows what they are doing or has a GM that is moving stuff along. I didn't think much of the starship combat at first, but after the scenario was over, we discussed it as a group and they made me realize it was actually a pretty good gimmick to shake things up a bit. I do feel like starship combat is more interesting when there are other things going on. This is a minor one, but I think it does improve the whole ordeal.

RP and social interactions were plentiful with it being a new place not overly familiar to the pact worlds. Skill checks were pretty varied as well. No regular combat in this one. I think this scenario may have actually benefitted from a fight because of the short runtime, but maybe it takes longer for other groups who aren't as familiar with starship combat.

I'm interested in the new development with the drift, and I hope that SFS does something interesting with this if they bring it back. Hopefully its not just a one-and-done idea.

Social: 5
Exploration: 4
Combat: 2

This scenario was pretty good. It is pretty short, and moves very quickly.

Combats were very fun. There was a bit of opportunity for RP and social interactions. I'm knocking it down just one star because of the lack of variety in skill checks. It was mainly engineering and computers checks. That wasn't a problem for our 3x mechanics team, but some of the other characters didn't get to participate near as much.

Overall, good start to the Fleeting Truth story-line, hopefully the next two will be as good.

This one was a very good scenario. There seemed to be a bit of something for everyone.

The combats were plentiful, but simple, which is good because it doesn't really bog things down too much. There were varied skill checks allowing some different things to come into play. There were also plenty of RP and social opportunities.

Overall, it was very well written, and was pretty unique as far as SFS modules go. Definitely a recommendation to play/run.

Overall, this was a decent scenario. We played it over two sessions, and like others have said, it does run on the long side. It could have been tightened up a bit by cutting some sections. In fact, our GM even cut the vehicle chase and it still ran long.

Without getting into too many spoilers, the first part of this has you trying to make connections to get into a gang. I thought the setup was ok and the writing was good.

The gang compound was the best part. I liked how the stealthy characters could snoop around, while the charisma characters could chat up the NPCs. The NPCs were pretty interesting to deal while in the compound. There was even some combat for the combat classes.

After the compound is where the wheels start to come off. The sting happens and through incompetence from Starfinder Society leadership, your cover is blown and you are outed immediately. Some NPCs you don't have to fight, but then others no matter how much you improved your relations in the prior section will still fight. You then have a vehicle chase which doesn't really matter, then track down the gang leader and another NPC and deal with them.

Not a bad scenario, but could've used a bit more time to tighten things up.

I'll start by saying I agree with most of the reviews on here.

The first half of this scenario was pretty monotonous with mostly social-skill checks. I was playing an Envoy, so it was open season for me, but the other folks at the table who were playing less skill-based characters were pretty out of it, and maybe even a little frustrated. SFS has done so well in past scenarios with building skill-heavy sections to give each style of character a place to shine with varied skill checks! We're in season 6, and I'm not sure why those lessons from past seasons have not carried through more recent scenarios.

The second half of this scenario was mostly combat oriented. Maybe pacing would have been better to throw one of these in the middle of the first half. Regardless, there were two back to back combats with an extremely unfair trap in the middle. Our GM specifically prepped ahead of time and threw this out, which really shouldn't be on him to make that decision. This is supposed to be an introductory scenario and any new GM/group who lets this go through may have a sour taste in their mouth and not want to continue.
Minus the trap, even the two combats back to back were fairly difficult, but I tend to like that, hence the extra star. We were also playing all level 1, so it would likely have been a little easier with a mix of 1's and 2's or in the higher tier.
*Note that it seems they have toned-down the trap after I wrote this, so that is an improvement.

Writing, I thought, was fine, even if a little monologue-y at times. Where this scenario really seemed to lack was in playtesting. Many of these issues seem obvious and should have been caught well ahead of time.

I may seem down on this, but recently I've felt a dip in quality in later season 5 and early season 6. This is hopefully just a rough patch, and I'm hoping paizo can get back on track and give us more stellar seasons like 1, 2, and 3. They've done it before, and I'm confident with some re-focusing, they can do it again.

Since logsig specifically called out my review, and gave this scenario 5 stars despite pointing out flaws leads me to believe they are just trying to counteract my review. But anyways, here's a short explanation why I didn't like this scenario at all.

1. The theme really didn't click with me as a high tier scenario. The VR video game has been done by Paizo quite a few times already and every iteration has been better than this. This seems like well-tread territory at this point, and for a high-tier adventure, I was hoping for something more original and unique. At this point, your character should be a high-ranking Starfinder solving big society problems, not playtesting a new video game because they got a random invite.

2. If you are a video gamer or have a good computers skill, you can do just about everything better than everyone else. Doesn't matter what the problem is, you can just hack away all day. There are even parts of this scenario you can just skip if you do a computers check.

3. Once the game switches (not a very big surprise), it throws some severe penalties at you that stack more and more if you fail. We had some characters who could not make it past the first obstacle even by rolling a 20 because of the first penalties. There is also no way around the obstacles, you either make it or you don't and you're stuck, slowly adding more and more penalties and damage. If a PC doesn't pass, there are less PC's attempting the subsequent obstacles. You'd better hope you have an operative or a vidgamer to pass the all the various obstacle skill checks singlehandedly, because otherwise there's a very good chance you'll get stuck at one. This is just flat out bad scenario design. Several different things could be manipulated here to make it better: no first initial penalty; passing an obstacle on success or failure but taking penalties or damage on a failure; having just one PC succeed in order to move everyone past; etc. Though they shouldn't have to do this, I'd encourage GMs to alter this section heavily.

4. Combats were not particularly difficult or interesting, but that may work in this scenario's favor due to the abundance of penalties from the skill-section.

Maybe this adventure will strike a chord with others and they will enjoy it, but unfortunately for myself and my group, we did not have fun with this one.

Social: 1
Exploration: 1
Combat: 2