Jonathanheimer's page

So much fun. Probably one of the funniest scenarios I have played in a long time. It is a really great roleplay scenario. Combat was so-so but combat wasn't the focus of this adventure. Really love seeing scenarios like this. If you get a GM who really invests into joro! then it is a great time.

Really like the chase scene in this adventure.
Thought that the overall story was done really well. I really like the Frozen ambitions story arc.

So I like to break my reviews sometimes down into the classic: good, bad, & ugly.

So lets jump in.

The good.
-The concept was good. A mission to try and get the society better starships. Awesome love it.

The bad.
-The above concept was not executed well. I don't feel like anything we did in this mission ultimately made an impact on the overall story, or meta-game of Starfinder Society.
-The Eco-terrorists. I don't understand why they were brought in. I just feel like it killed the entire mood and feel of what this adventure was going to be and ulitmately, the reason they are protesting doesn't make a lot of sense. We are polluting space? What?
-I felt like the plot was all over the place on this one. I thought we came in with a really cool coprate espinage thing, and then it just goes off the rails.
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The Ugly.
-The Chase Scene. I am going to break down this into multiple sections here.
1. Effectively only 1 player did anything in the entire chase. The rest of us kinda just waited around for it to end.
2. It isn't clear how the chase scene actually impacted the rest of the scenario. Like what happened exactly? And I worry what is suppose to happen in general in future scenarios with this.
3. Its not fun. It just feels like a skill check challenge to say you have a skill check challenge. In traditional skill check challenges you are allowed to utilize you abilities and creativity to overcome the obstacle. For example earlier in this exact scenario, I schmooze with the guests at the galla, I talk with the vesk, with Prof Lawyer/Law, about legal jargon to get away with more knock-offs. That was neat, other players found it funny. But unless you were our pilot in the chase, you didn't do much of anything at all.
4. This is really a piggy-back on the last thing: but chases in the car chase work better because they reward choice and creativity. WHen I did the starship chase, you are affectively given a sheet with what you are allowed to do and told, have fun. But with the vehicle chase, because you can just utilize your normal skills and abilities in interesting ways a lot of fun things happen. I saw in a vehicle chase, a person cast Hold Person on the enemy driver. I saw someone cast grease to create an oil slick. I have seen gunners shoot down trees to create obstacles.
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My suggestions:
-Create a multi-series story arc where characters go out and test ships and vote on which ones they liked. Like each scenario you use two different ships. So maybe 6 prototypes in all. Then with the 4th adventure you bring in the two most popular, and there is some big space battle and the only ship avialable to the PCs is the 1 of hte 2 prototypes. Then 1 if not both of the final two get added to the list of legal starships.
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Post-Edit suggestion:
-I would also not have starship chases again. Let starship chases be unique to vehicle's. Where everyone is involved everyone is doing something fun and cool. Where it isn't just a pilot who does 95% of the work. And the rest of the party doesn't actually do anything.

I really liked the market thing. IF you like roleplaying for the role and not just blasting, it was a great time trying to think of way to not catch the market police's hate.

In one encounter there was this car sitting there. And my character drivers it right into the first encounter running people over while the rest of the party is trying to think of ways to do stuff lol, it was lot of fun, everyone enjoyed it. Then i left a note say, "hey me and these guys had an agreement and so i paid them 1 credit for all the artificats. and then forged their signatures. so its was just ton of fun if you allow yourself to be in teh moment, and not focused on combat.

The starship combat was fun.

I have to agree with Flites assessment. This scenario's swarm was insane. Way too hard. We had no way to deal with it as a 1st level characters. We barely survived and by barely I mean, we had to use all our potions, the 1 grenade our party had. EVERY SINGLE PLAYER dropped at least once in that encounter. It was way way way too hard.

Honestly, I didn't like the story myself. It was boring. Like oh hey go check out this thing. Then its oh by the way youre trapped now... at level 1 this is insane. If you don't have proper preperation, a character will die becuase their armor looses energy to keep them alive.so its just crazy hard.

Let me start by saying great cover art. I think there were interesting encounters. I think the medusa fight was fun, and unexpected. I like the final fight. But the Hyrda fight is not good. Most parties kill it in like 2 rounds.

I feel like if your gunna make a hyra fight it really needs to feel like a life-death struggle. And for me the hyrda fight was boring. Give it more health, have it have the oppurtunity to do something interesting where maybe it burrows from under ground and gets a full turn to attack.

Honestly a lot of fun to run as a GM. Even as an older scenario this still holds up well actually.

I had a lot of fun so did my party :)

What I like about this scenario is that it gives you a lot of ways to shine. So sometimes a scenario is built really around one type of class, but this one does a good job of mixing it up.
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spoilers below
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I also really enjoyed the final chase scene a lot. I thought it was done really well.