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I'm looking at this as a break adventure whilst one of my players is on holilday for three weeks. How'd it go? Did you get it done in 6-hours? (Which seems tight to me!)

Is it possible to get non-annotated maps for the adventure with Book of the Dead?

Good god, who's idea was it to put giant silverfish and swarms in this????? Vile!

Is there any mention of what the state of Freedom Town or Trunau is with the latest events?

Name: Entire Party
Race: Tiefling x 2, Human, Dwarf, Half-Elf
Classes/levels: Bard, Rogue, Fighter, Wizard, Druid, all Level 3
Adventure: Half-Dead City

All characters from this point on were reincarnated after dying. I run a no-Raise Dead, Reincarnate only house-rule to make death more interesting. This adventure path has really put a strain on that rule!

Name: Jemima
Race: Oread (F)
Class/Level: Warpriest, Level 9
Adventure: Shifting Sands

Name: Tarn + Safia
Race: Human (M) + Sylph (F)
Class/Level: Brawler + Sorceress, Level 11
Adventure: Secrets of the Sphinx

Name: Woody
Race: Half-Orc (M)
Class/Level: Barbarian, LEvel 12
Adventure: Secrets of the Sphinx

Name: Safia
Race: Gnoll (F)
Class/Level: Sorceress, Level 12
Adventure: Secrets of the Sphinx

Name: Tarn
Race: Half-Elf (F)
Class/Level: Brawler, Level 12
Adventure: Secrets of the Sphinx

BONUS!
Name: Urah
Race: Ifrit
Class/Level: Bloodrager, Level 13
Adventure: Slave Trenches of Hakotep

Very quick one - Sensuret the Tribe-eater, being a spinosaurus, should it have grab on it's bite attack? Noticed it was missing, figured it was an error, but curious if it was deliberately excluded.

We're currently playing through Mummy's Mask, and are on Adventure #3, and the party have been researching through the libraries. Last session, they got 2/3 of the way through the Dark Depository, ending the session by getting the transcript of the interrogations of the creators of the Mask, and finding out the Heart was taken to Sothis.

... so naturally they ended the session wanting to go to Sothis to look for the heart, unaware the heart has possessed the now-leader of the Cult of the Forgotten Pharoah, and thus in the Parched Dunes.

This has left me wondering where to go next session, but there's a complication: one of our players is leaving next session, and two new players are joining the session after next, so either things need to wrap up for that player next session and a good jumping point needs to be available in two sessions time, or I ask if the old player minds holding on for a bit and the others join a little later.

So with that in mind, plans for the next session could be:

GO OFF BOOK: I simply encourage the players to head to Sothis; next session gives leaving player the chance to stay behind, and new players join either in Sothis or on the way to Sothis. I have to create my own sub-quest in Sothis, as the players learn what exactly happened to the heart and how it is in the Parched Dunes (possibly working out a way to let them seek out the tomb at the end of Book 3, possibly for different reasons).

Downside of this is I know absolutely nothing about Sothis! But I suppose there's a whole book on the city, so I might just have to pick it up.

2. SOFT RAILROAD: I inform the players through plot that the heart is with the Cult of the Forgotten Pharoah. Probably the best way to do this is to have cultists enter the Dark Depository start of next session, and have them openly talk about reuniting the ka and the ib for their mistress. They could even talk about Chisisek's tomb and their operations there, giving the players further direction to head into the desert and seek out the end of Book 3. Would mean realistically I'd want to ask to delay old player leaving and new players joining, since it'll take a few more sessions to finish up events in Tephu (but the players would get to find all the gritty things there like the live mummifications, and the fourth library).

3. HARD RAILROAD: Someone - probably from the Temple of Nethys in Sothis - mysteriously arrives in town, tells the party they've found out about their investigation, actively informs them of events in Sothis and that the Cult of the Forgotten Pharoah, and tells them they know the cult have made camp in the desert. A bit agency removing (I'm literally telling the party to go to the desert), but would pretty directly point the party into the Dunes for the whole strech before Book 5; and the out-of-game schedule still works fine (old player leaves when we agreed, new players come in when I said they could).

Thoughts?

Naturally going off book sounds best in principle, would just need to think of something interesting to happen in the capital. Had we not had the player switcheroo, I'd probably be include to go with the soft railroad, just so the players could see the rest of that section of the book, but I guess none of it is strictly necessary for the story and what is can be replaced with a stronger mystery sounding the heart.

PDF arrived this morning; all the crazy aliens is all kinds of awesome. I can't wait to play out the space station stuff.

One question: will rules for Glimmshar's be released? They seem far too interesting a race with the redundant speech patterns + unique names to not be playable or even be used as enemies.

How are people going about presenting Aibretta's missions in Part 2?

During our game on Wednesday (which, thanks to moving home, was not especially well prepared for but somehow I muddled through!), I had her present the Hobgar Escape and Cemetary attack as jobs for the players to do. The cemetary attack triggered the robot patrol to attack them during Hogbar Escape, and that's given them enough XP to hit Level 2. I'm now wondering if any of the other jobs need to be presented to the players... would it really add much to the adventure or will it feel like busy work before attacking the garrison (which they are very much experienced enough to do). I also feel like if I present all of Aibretta's missions to them... they'll go into completist mode and just try and do them despite the fact they can just storm the garrison without too much fuss.

Do the Azlanti soldiers speak Common? It seems they speak only Azlanti so trying to figure out how they communicate with the colonists. Do the colonists know Azlanti or is there some form of translator that the soldiers have?

The named Azlanti both have Common listed as a language, the cadets don't. I intend to run them as basically just shoving guns in people's faces and yelling, with the leaders doing any talking required. The occupation isn't exactly intricate, it amounts to not much more than a training exercise for most of them. I don't think the long term goal of the occupation is expressed beyond retrieving the rune drive and taking a few interesting prisoners?

I described it as a ferret-sized mix between a fox and a squirrel because that's what the name sounds like!

If it's not this, it *should* be this.

Received my copy today; mostly a quick scan, a more thorough read of part 1 as I'll be running it next week. Initial thoughts is the difficulty compared to Dead Suns seems to have been toned down, encounters seem less brutal. Which might be a good thing, my players had a hard time with the Fusion Queen in Dead Suns in our warm up games.

Looking forward to this, I like the sound of the second part a lot. We talked about running a french resistance style game a few years ago and I think this will have some of that feeling.

Love the artwork for the cadets.

Are maps without text overlays available?

EDIT: Also, I assume that is Cedona on the cover of the second book?

Now I just feel like I'm playing the waiting game, waiting for it to become available to subscribers....

KarmaKollapse wrote:

Jason Keeley wrote:

As for juicy tidbits, what do you want to know (that isn't too spoilery of course).

Is there more, less or the same amount of ship combat in AtAT than in Dead Suns?

There is at least one starship encounter in each volume. I believe the first and last volume both begin and end with starship combat encounters, in fact.

Ah good to know!

As for juicy tidbits, what do you want to know (that isn't too spoilery of course).

Is there more, less or the same amount of ship combat in AtAT than in Dead Suns?

KarmaKollapse wrote:

I'm hoping to run this with a some friends who haven't played SF before. We're making characters in July, and running the first act of Dead Suns first. Will it be an issue if they don't have specific ties to 'old friend'? Will there be issues if they are set up as a group of Stewards (starting off just doing stuff around Absalom before being sent to the colony).

Well!

** spoiler omitted **

Exactly the answer I was looking for :) Thanks!

At Level 5 you get to increase four stats; if the stat is already 17 or over, it is a +1, if it is 16 or under, it is a +2. Arguably makes starting with an 18 from day one less a no-brainer.

I'm hoping to run this with a some friends who haven't played SF before. We're making characters in July, and running the first act of Dead Suns first. Will it be an issue if they don't have specific ties to 'old friend'? Will there be issues if they are set up as a group of Stewards (starting off just doing stuff around Absalom before being sent to the colony).

I've tried most places and are showing out of stock, its quite frustrating as getting good miniatures isn't as easy as a fantasy game, so the pawns are a god send.

https://www.dicesaloon.com/products/starfinder-rpg-alien-archive-pawn-box?t axon_id=2242

I was there on Thursday and they definitely have at least one copy in stock.

I've definitely seen a few copies on sale around. Dice Saloon in Brighton definitely has a copy (and is available on their website for mail order but I don't know how much they charge for P&P or how quick they are!). I'm sure I saw a copy in Orc's Nest in London; they definitely had a copy of Core Rulebook pawns.

Played this with 4 healthy PCs, 1 slightly sick PC, 1 very sick PC + Clara. A few players went unconscious during the fight (including the vesk soldier who went down very early on), but mostly it felt tough + dangerous, but not to the extent that it had to be nerfed. The system of SP / HP / RP meant it was pretty difficult to have an outright TPK unless things were really, really going wrong.

I think a Level 3 group would shred it with all the extra damage from weapon specialisation.

I was skeptical about the university stuff. I was worried the stuff with the journalists would grind the game to a bit of a halt... so I had some angry formian terrorists break into the uni wanting to get reprisal for the xenophobic rant Ailabeins made. It eased the scene a bit, got a police officer in the building, gave the journalists some reason to interact with the players, and introduced a new sub-plot I can bring in later. When they ended up talking to Nuhali, I still made her uneager to interact with the players (I played her as an overworked, jaded woman with more important things on her mind, like the terrorist attack in her foyer), but she happily agrees to give the players access to Solstarni's office. Whilst she was looking for the keycard.... the players went to Ailabein's to talk to him about what he had said anyways. Ailabein's attitude is much harder to defend when there has already been consequences to his actions. Everything in the book ultimately played out, just there was an added combat (the players were really happy about the roleplay/combat balance in that session, which also included the smugglers, who recognised the players from news reports of the terrorist incident and were alerted very early that they were being investigated).

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I had a question about the Yaruk encounter at the start of Act 2: do other GMS run it as purely narrative, or do you treat it as a mini-game and set out the actions for players before hand? I feel the encounter is necessary (the players are massively excited about Ukulem, to the point of singing the Jurassic Park theme at the mere mention of creatures like the Yaruks), but I've never had great luck with running encounters like this where it is expected that the players do actions from a particular list, whilst randomly receiving damage. I wonder what approach everyone else takes?

Also, is Oatian culture described in more detail anywhere but here? After this adventure we'll be doing more homebrew stuff, so I was thinking of making the 'piece of Drift Rock' less a superweapon and more a broken relic of the ancient Oatian culture. Was curious if maybe their history is dealt with in one of the already released books, so I don't end up writing stuff that contradicts what is already in a sourcebook!

Question as above: do you think there are any free-willed Formians living in Qabarat, and if so how many and under what circumstances?

I was thinking of having a small ghetto in the outskirts of the city, not exactly good conditions where 'bad feelings' might end up brewing, especially if some high and mighty academic said something about killing lots of Formians in the main city.

Thanks for making these, going to use them in the game tomorrow night :)

Is the Hostile Witness encounter really necessary? It's great to open the book with a big starship battle, but the motivation of the Corpse Fleet just feels really out of place (of course, I'm projecting to a degree here given no motivation for Eoskalar reaching Nor is actually given).

What do people think about either moving the fight to a later part of the book (and thus changing the Corpse Fleet's motives) or removing it completely?

The main point I think of the encounter is to give players an immediate opportunity to try out their new spaceship. Playing with new toys is waaaaay more important than narrative sometimes :)

A secondary point is to show the Corpse Fleet, especially if the players weren't daring enough to open up Nor's package. When my group played this, this encounter was the first time the Corpse fleet got mentioned. Having them show up now means that when they reappear in Splintered Worlds, it'll mean something to the players.

Finally, how your players feel about spaceship combat at the end of this encounter might influence whether to keep later spaceship combat. If at the end of this encounter everyone is feeling down about spaceship combat... y'know to nix later encounters in the AP.

Hi all,

I've been reading up on this AP and have put it on the top of my 'to play next' list of adventures as I rather like the theme, the twists later on, and the general narrative.

One of the things I've picked up on though is that a lot of people have found the AP difficult. I'd probably be running the AP with 5-6 players, most of whom are not the type to make 'optimized' characters. What have you found to be the difficult aspects of the adventure path? Envrionmental conditions? The opponents themselves?

Thanks!

I know it isn't quite a full divine caster, but why not Witch? I feel like this AP is a prime place to play a Witch, aesthetically at least.

Question as above... obviously Jabaxa is an Ysoki, but what rodent is he based on? He doesn't appear to be a regular rat like most of the other Ysoki, and I was wondering if someone with a better knowledge of rodentia could identify the reference.