Richard Redmane's page

It's hard to write a good review about a playtest document that is technically incomplete. Especially when you didn't really have it in you to learn a whole new system for a game that no one in your area wants to play anyway...

Even not knowing the core mechanics of Pathfinder 2nd Edition when I read through this, there were still a lot of changes that I liked the sound of. Small quality of life improvements such as the Soldier finally getting a fighting style that focuses on assault rifles and and other changes like feats becoming better organized and more closely tied to the skill system look intriguing. There are tiny bits of fluff that make it sound like greater care is going into world building this time and more care is being put into what the characters do instead of who they are. Which is encouraging as things felt directionless in the original edition.

But at the same time... the Mechanic and Technomancer are still under wraps which is not so much intriguing as it is concerning. The decision to include the Witchwarper instead of the Biohacker in the CRB line-up is a "bold" choice and one I would not have made as a med/sci character would make more sense given how the game was "supposed" to be focused on exploration according to the developers. And reading through, I realize I still haven't answered my most important question. Does the new edition change enough to make it worth coming back?

And the answer is no. But then I think it always was going to be no. The community is more toxic then a superfund site. And no amount of improvements or rule changes will make it worth putting up with that again. Not when players have other options.

You would think I would have learned by now to only expect the worst from these adventure paths but nooooo, I still held out hope for this one. Managed to find a copy of We're No Heroes in my local book store so I sat down and had a read... and even speedreading through it, I had to fight to get through it before putting it back on the shelf in disgust.

Speaking as someone with a decade in logistics and clerical data entry: It was so blindingly obvious that no one working on this adventure ever worked for a logistics company that it hurt my soul. Act One is so contrived that I have to ask how anyone stays in business in the Pact Worlds. The entire thing can and SHOULD be easily resolved by five words: "let me get our lawyer." Seriously, Act One is so unbelievably stupid that it makes the bureaucratic snafu in Act Two hurt even more. Because THAT is something that actually does happen in the business world.

Speaking as a writer: It's clear that the writers started with the third act of the adventure and worked backwards. Because the actual heist where you steal the ship is the most coherent and well-written part of the adventure. It's also quite clear that authors do not even remotely comprehend how much of an impact the magical technology of the Pact Worlds should have on pretty much everything including the lives of the average worker. Tools ALWAYS come before toys.
While I already stated my issues with Act One, I'd be remiss if I didn't remark how dark Act Two got; particularly once the party got to the hobgoblin planet. Christ and I thought Grimmerspace was bleak. Just... why? Why do you pride yourselves on a setting that "isn't about war" and fill it with antagonists that practically beg for an Iomedae-approved thrashing? Seriously, what is wrong with you Paizo?

While I generally do not play published adventures, Incident at Absalom Station is exactly WHY I don't play published adventures.

Without spoiling too much of the plot, IaAS is a railroady, contrived adventure that tries to be a murder-mystery but was written by someone who clearly had no idea how to write a murder-mystery.

The book kicks off with the players being newly recruited Starfinder Society members that arrive only to see their Society contact get gunned down in front of them. What follows is a paint-by-numbers story of corporate intrigue that drags on for much longer then it needs to be. Five minutes of dice rolling and roleplaying, and most intelligent players will have found both the main suspect and the motive. But because the writing is contrived, the party still has to trudge through largely pointless filler and no, you cannot call on the Starfinder Society to help speed things up (remind me why we joined these guys again?)

After the initial mystery resolves itself with an unsatisfying bit of Deus Ex Machina, we get to the second half of the adventure, a fairly standard dungeon crawl. Other then the fact that the encounters as written are not balanced for a standard party of four level two adventurers, this actually isn't all that bad. And yes, there is errata available that makes the dungeon encounters more manageable. That one was on us.

I will not elaborate on the ending other then it is fittingly unsatisfying for an adventure that had little player agency and was horribly contrived almost from the get-go. For a company that had been writing adventures for 14 years before Dead Suns dropped, Paizo's first outing into the Pact Worlds should have been better then this.