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Starfinder Adventure Path #1: Incident at Absalom Station (Dead Suns 1 of 6)

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Starfinder Adventure Path #1: Incident at Absalom Station (Dead Suns 1 of 6)
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A Ship Without a Crew

When a brutal gang war breaks out on a docking bay in Absalom Station, the player characters are recruited by the Starfinder Society to investigate the unexpected bloodshed. Delving into the station’s seedy Spike neighborhoods, the heroes confront the gangs and discover that both were paid to start the riot and that the true conflict is between two rival mining companies battling over a new arrival in orbit around the station: a mysteriously deserted ship and the strange asteroid it recovered from the Drift. To head off further violence, the heroes are asked to investigate the ship and discover what happened to its crew, as well as the nature of the asteroid it tows. But what the players find there will set in motion events that could threaten the entirety of the Pact Worlds and change the face of the galaxy forever...

This volume of Starfinder Adventure Path launches the Dead Suns Adventure Path and includes:

  • "Incident at Absalom Station," a Starfinder adventure for 1st-level characters, by Robert G. McCreary.
  • A gazetteer of Absalom Station, by James L. Sutter.
  • Magical relics inspired by the lost planet Golarion, by Owen K.C. Stephens.
  • An archive of new alien creatures, by Jason Keeley and Robert G. McCreary.
  • Statistics and deck plans for a new starship designed just for the player characters, plus details on a new planet in the Codex of Worlds, by Robert G. McCreary.

ISBN-13: 978-1-60125-961-5

The Dead Suns Adventure Path is sanctioned for use in Starfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle sheet are available as a free download (1.7 MB PDF).

Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:

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5/5 —

A serviceable start

3/5 —

There's been a lot of words written about the Dead Suns AP as a whole. I don't want to rehash what other people have written, but here are my thoughts:

1. Requires buy-in from the players, no players guide - As it starts out almost as abruptly as Abomination Vaults for PF2. You're here to meet a dwarf about joining the SF Society, he gets murked, you get drawn into a conspiracy. If the players are disinterested, then no amount of begging by the Shirren SF Society contact is going to make them care.

2. Red Herrings - There's several red herrings floating around involving corporate bureaucratic infighting between a mining guild and a corporation over who gets to claim the Drift Rock that's never really elaborated upon and is honestly just a time-waster as there's no payoff for the group at all. I think it's better to excise this part entirely.

3. Another Red Herring - There's a character that you meet who basically disappears and is never mentioned again, except that your choice to complete the job or not complete the job may affect whether you get somebody's away message in the third AP. Was kind of disappointed.

4. The Ship Is A Deathtrap - Part 2 takes place on a derelict. Really cool, really spooky, except the players are marooned on this ship with no choice but to go forward. Good to chase the players up a tree, bad in that they probably were not prepared for this. My suggestion? Have an unethical space goblin/Wytchwyrd merchant dock with the derelict and offer medical services or consumables to the group. They will need them, if most peoples accounts of playing this AP are to be believed.

Disappointing

2/5 —

NO SPOILERS

Ok, here we go! The first adventure path for Starfinder, Dead Suns. I got to play it in a campaign that took a couple of years of biweekly sessions. My starting PC was a hyper-caffienated energy drink loving barathu envoy, B'rll'blub. He was great fun to play, but proved startlingly ineffective in combat and died later in the campaign--but it was through his eyes I first experienced what I'm reviewing today, Chapter 1: Incident at Absalom Station. In the flagged section below, I discuss the adventure in detail. My general thoughts might be summed up as: it's okay, but nothing spectacular, and with some encounters that aren't really fair to the PCs. Here in the "No Spoilers" section, however, I'm going to discuss everything in volume one that's not part of the adventure--the front and back matter.

[Cut for space: my hatred of the cover, and my description of the inside front and back covers and the author's foreword.]

The first piece of proper back matter is a twelve-page gazetteer of Absalom Station, the center for humanity in the Pact Worlds solar system (the main campaign setting for Starfinder). An interesting history is provided for the station, and I like how it cleverly integrates some concepts from Pathfinder (like the Starstone, some neighborhood names) while making it its own thing. Absalom Station is perhaps the most important location in the setting, as it holds the headquarters for the Pact Worlds government, the Starfinder Society, the Stalwarts (intergalactic peacekeepers), and more. It also serves as a natural starting location for adventures, and a probable home for PCs since it's a pretty multicultural place--a bit like Babylon 5. Although much of this information is probably replicated in the Pact Worlds hardcover, the gazetteer does a good job describing the different areas of the station and leaves a lot of room for GMs to customise as necessary for the adventure they want to tell. There are some "feel and flavour" elements that I think are missing--how do people get around (elevators? trams? vehicles?); what's it like for newcomers when they arrive (visas? security inspections? customs taxes?); and what laws are in place regarding weapons (frowned upon? side-arms only? everyone's got a rocket launcher?). This last issue in particular has proven problematic for a lot of gamers as it goes to varying real-world conceptions of what's normal for urban communities. As a complete aside, I can't help but note that the artwork of the dude on page 43 is *clearly* an intentional likeness of Jon Bernthal from Netflix's The Punisher!

Next up is "Relics of Golarion", a four-page-long collection of new magical items that have historical links to the now-missing planet. The writer clearly knew their Pathfinder lore, as there's a rich evocation of setting elements in the backstory to each item. In terms of actual usefulness, many of the items are too expensive or too high-level to be useful for most PCs, but I liked the falcon boots (allowing a PC to make a sort of personal gravity field so they can walk on walls or ceilings, even in Zero-G) and the (perhaps overpowered) chained weapon fusion which gives any melee weapon the reach property! I liked the section, though as a timing matter I think it was probably too soon and the space should have been devoted to making Starfinder more its own thing instead of tying it so closely to Pathfinder. New readers can be turned off if they feel they can't get the full story without playing an entirely different game.

A bestiary-style "Alien Archives" introduces 7 new creatures, with each receiving a page. The line-up is: akatas, bone troopers, driftdead, garaggakal, rauzhant, vracinea, and void zombies. The artwork is really strong here, though I don't see much in the way of creative ideas here (and a couple of just updates of Pathfinder monsters). Five of the seven appear in the adventure proper, which is a nice way to save word count there.

Finally, there's the "Codex of Worlds", a one-page description of a planet ripe for adventure that's located somewhere outside of the Pact Worlds system. This issue's entry is "Heicoron IV", an ocean planet with rival civilizations. Although they share a common ancestry, one has adopted to living on floating cities while the other has made the depths their home. There's a "first/early contact" situation for explorers. A classic SF concept that could have appeared (budget-willing) on Star Trek. It's not easy to design a world in one-page, but I liked what I saw with Heicoron IV.

The pattern established in this first issue of the AP persists in subsequent issues, with each including a setting element, a bestiary section, some player-facing character options, and a one-page new world. It's worth noting these volumes are also much shorter (just 64 pages each) compared to first edition Pathfinder APs, making them less of a value for the budget-conscious.

SPOILERS! (for the whole AP):

On to the adventure! This starts with a two-page campaign outline that offers the GM a rough idea of what's in store for the entire AP. In short, Dead Suns is going to be a planet-hopping adventure. The PCs start on Absalom Station in Chapter 1, head to Castrovel in Chapter 2, on to the Diaspora in Chapter 3, a gas giant in the Vast in Chapter 4, an artificial moon in Chapter 5, and then a massive Corpse Fleet flagship in Chapter 6. This is an AP meant to show off themes of space travel and exploration, not one about laying down roots or deep involvement with NPCs and communities. The plot itself concerns the lurking danger of an epic superweapon called the Death St--I mean, the Stellar Degenerator--capable of destroying entire worlds. I'll get more into that in reviews of later chapters.

Part 1 of Incident at Absalom Station is "Absalom Gang War." All of the PCs are meant to be new (or returning) visitors to Absalom Station interested in joining the Starfinder Society (an organisation devoted to exploration, scholarship, and first contact). That's a reasonable premise, but I *really* wish Starfinder did AP Player's Guides like Pathfinder does--they make great advertising tools and help players better immerse themselves in a campaign's premise.

Anyway, I think starting a campaign off with some drama and action is a wise choice, and that's what we get here, because the moment the PCs step off their shuttle and into the docking bay, they're caught in a firefight between two rival gangs! The Starfinder agent meant to show the group around (a dwarf named Duravor Kreel) is killed in the crossfire. I joked with my GM for months after because this is done in a heavy-handed way. Instead of Kreel being killed in the opening descriptive text (before the PCs can do anything), he's required to be killed in the first round of Initiative (no matter what the PCs do, and with no attack or damage roll required). But my PC had a rescue plan! Oh well . . .

With Kreel dead and the gang members dispatched (or fled), the PCs will eventually come into contact with the shirren Chiskisk, a higher-ranking member of the Starfinder Society. Chiskisk is concerned that perhaps Kreel's death wasn't simply a "wrong place at the wrong time" situation, and asks the group to investigate his death as a sort of audition to become members of the group. The investigation aspect is handled pretty well, I think, with five different columns for Gather Information results on different topics and lots of room for creative GMs to flavour how (or from whom) the PCs are getting the info. The PCs will quickly understand that the two gangs fighting in the docking bay (the "Downside Kings" and the "Level 21 Crew") were essentially proxies hired by two rival mining companies (the "Hardscrabble Collective" and "Astral Extractions"). The mining companies are enmeshed in a legal dispute over who gets to claim ownership of an asteroid-sized chunk of rock found in the Drift that had been towed back to Absalom Station by a mining survey ship named the Acreon. As all of the crew of the ship were dead on arrival, Absalom Station's authorities have placed the ship and the Drift rock into quarantine some distance from the station.

That info reveals what the gangs (and their mining company employers) were fighting over, but it doesn't yet explain the nature of Duravor Kreel's death. To get more answers, the PCs need to visit each gang's headquarters and see their leader. The adventure handles this part well, with diplomatic and violent approaches accounted for, and some good characterisation of the NPCs. Busting up gang members isn't exactly intergalactic SF action, but every Starfinder has to start somewhere! Assuming their investigation goes well, the PCs should learn that, in fact, Kreel was an intended victim by one of the gangs--he was a board member of the Hardscrabble Collective and so a hit was put out on him by Astral Extractions out of fear he would also get the Starfinder Society involved in the legal dispute. It's a mystery that has a satisfying conclusion, and gives the PCs an early sense of accomplishment.

Part 2 is "Ghost Ship." The PCs have a few days of downtime to explore and establish themselves on Absalom Station--something that's good for role-playing, even if the GM knows they won't be staying there long. They're then invited to a meeting with Ambassador Gevalarsk Nor, the necrovite (a type of undead) ambassador from Eox! Friendly chatting with evil undead is something some players will have difficulty swallowing, but the premise of Starfinder is that Eox is a full member of the Pact Worlds and that although some people find them distasteful or suspicious, they're generally treated decently. It definitely makes for an interesting meeting, as the PCs learn that the ambassador has an offer for them: he wants them to investigate the Acreon and the Drift rock, and report what they find. It turns out that Ambassador Nor is the mediator between the ongoing dispute over who should get to claim the rock. He's willing to pay well, and he offers additional payment if the PCs bring back to him personally a particular container in the ship's hold--though he won't reveal what's in it! I can't argue with a "What's in the box? Don't open the box!" mystery.

Assuming the PCs agree, they'll get their first taste of the game's starship combat rules. The shuttle they've been loaned is attacked by a single-seat interceptor piloted by an android assassin (hired by whichever mining company the PCs seemed most adverse to). I'm on the record as loathing starship combat in Starfinder, but at least this one is quick and easy, and serves as a straightforward introduction of the rules to players new to the game. As is often the case, I am annoyed that whether the PCs win or lose this starship combat, there are no real consequences, as the adventure assumes that the PCs take lifeboats to get on to the Drift rock (I have no idea why this "professional assassin" wouldn't just shoot down their lifeboats, and the adventure provides no explanation either).

Exploring the Acreon plays up to the classic science fiction "ghost ship" trope. The crew are either dead or vanished, and the PCs need to figure out what happened to them. Their investigation is hampered by the fact that some space goblins from Absalom Station broke into the quarantined ship earlier; I like how they can be simple foes to neutralize or made short-term hirelings (my group chose the latter option, because we needed all the help we could get!). The answer to what befell the ship's crew comes pretty quickly: the movie Alien. Here, they're "akatas", but they look and act very similar to Ripley's foes, complete with the egg-laying-in-human-host bit. Frankly, I wouldn't have minded an answer that was more creative and original. On the other hand, the "what's in the box?!" mystery has a great reveal. When I played, our group didn't open it because the Ambassador said not to and we wanted to get paid. But if a group does, they see there's a dead body inside--and the body opens its eyes and speaks! In short, the container contains an undead "bone trooper" who was being smuggled into Absalom Station by Ambassador Nor. This can turn into a combat or a role-playing encounter, but either way I think it's a creepy-fun answer.

Part 3 is "Phantoms of the Drift" and sees the PCs exploring the Drift rock itself. A well-concealed cave leads to a hidden complex of chambers with technology far in advance of what the Pact Worlds has. The PCs won't know this now (and even as a player, I never realised it until preparing this review), but the Drift rock is actually a small sheared-off portion of the Stellar Degenerator itself! While exploring, the PCs have to survive the android assassin who comes after them in person, some zombies (crew members from the Acreon infected by the akatas), a security robot, and more. They'll also be attacked by a driftdead (a new creature from the back matter's bestiary) that was once a space explorer named Moriko Nash--who died 75 years ago! It turns out Nash was the captain of a starship called the Sunrise Maiden that encountered the Drift rock decades before the Acreon. In a touching bit, the PCs find Nash's last recording that details her fate and gives an ominous warning that something is hunting her.

The PCs probably won't have realised it, but once they landed on the Drift rock and started exploring, their shuttle is remotely activated and flies back to Absalom Station, leading them stranded. This is a contrived (and to my mind execrable) excuse to force the PCs to find another way home. Of course, they'll find the Sunrise Maiden in a hangar bay, the ship intended to be their real home for the rest of the campaign (and the subject of the inside front and back cover). But first, they have to deal with what killed the ship's former captain.

The big boss of Incident at Absalom Station is a new monster called a garaggakal. It's a CR5 monster with a bite attack that does 2d6+9 damage, a special "Leech Life" attack that it can use (a limited number of times per day) to instantly do 5d6 damage that it then gains as temporary hit points, and an EAC/KAC high enough that PCs will probably hit it only 25% of the time. Oh, and if PCs barricade themselves in a room somewhere to rest and heal, it can pass through walls to get them! In short, it's a TPK waiting to happen, as evidenced by several posts in the forum. My experience as a player was exactly the same, although the GM took pity on us and had it act in ways that allowed us to eventually beat it. Frankly, I'd rather suffer a TPK than get a pity win. But in any event, placing the garaggakal there was a terrible decision idea by the adventure writer. I guess I can chalk it up to the difficulties with appropriately scaling difficulty in a brand new game, but I feel like just eyeballing what it can do versus what four average Level 2 PCs can do shows it's likely to be a big problem that leaves a sour taste in the mouth moving forward. And that's where the adventure concludes--there's not an epilogue, because the action starts up immediately in the next volume of the AP, right when the PCs leave the Drift rock.

Overall, both as a player and a reader, I felt some disappointment with Incident at Absalom Station. There were some bits I really enjoyed (the investigation and dealing with the ambassador, for example), but the plot afterwards was pretty basic: a ghost ship followed by a space-dungeon crawl that I've seen a million times, in Starfinder Society scenarios and elsewhere. I was hoping that the first AP for the game would really hit things out of the park (like Rise of the Runelords) did for Pathfinder, but that just isn't the case. And the big boss encounter made it clear that the writers' expectations of what an average group can do is not realistic.

Good starting adventure, but not that good intro

3/5 —

So I'm having bit of problem with these reviews because I'm doing them while running the final book, so by now players' reactions and such isn't super fresh in my mind :p But at least my impressions have had time to age.

The adventures premise of "your contact got killed that ropes you into plot between two factions competing for same thing" and gags involved in it IS interesting.... But have no relevance to rest of the plot at all, so it all feels kind of... Irrelevant?

If Dead Suns is structured like a scifi action adventure movie, this book is essentially pre credit roll intro thing. Like Indiana Jones stea- err finding that golden idol and having it stolen by his evil counterpart. Except instead of lasting 5-10 minutes, it lasts for one sixth of the story.

(that said, actual adventure is fun, I like use of akata and stuff in the drift rock in itself, but its weak overall plotwise when you look at the ap as whole. It does have interesting stuff like potential enemy you can turn to friend and I do like idea of drift rock's discovery setting you up on grand journey. Though this book has several moments of straight up railroading that feels unnecessary or like if it could have been written around differently)

P.S. Gevalarsk Nor is the best npc of this ap. I do find it bit of mixed bag in how its kept secret for gm what his subplot is actually about, but I do like it you can reasonable figure it out by paying close attention through entire ap.

I expected so much more from Paizo then this...

2/5 —

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.

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Silver Crusade
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

I believe all books in this AP are 64-pg long, so shorter than 96-long PF APs. Perhaps the later books have a little less background material, but not by much, this AP is shorter than Pathfinder ones.
Dark Archive
1 person marked this as a favorite.

Just to note, I'm going insane from waiting since I check everyday and keep refreshing the page even though I know its gonna take 3 weeks at max

I'm too spoiled by my previous subscription experience when I got them around same time Skeld did :'D
Dark Archive
1 person marked this as a favorite.

YUSH IT HAS SHIPPED NOW TO LOAD
Liberty's Edge
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Rannik wrote:


The adventure, however is too short for my liking. Feel more like a module then the start of an adventure path. Looking at the book again, the adventure starts on page 7 and finish on page 37.

I won't disagree that the adventure seems too short. I think the major problem the devs had was writing an AP without a firm rules set. We saw the same thing happen in the first PFRPG AP, where in Council of Thieves, the adventurers ended up at only 13th level at AP's end. Dead Suns goes to about the same XP level (or a little less).

And 64 pages to work with instead of 96 is not a small point, either.

Now, put that aside for a moment. There is an obvious HUGE gap in Rob McCreary's design and he lays it out for the GM as to what critical information the PCs have to obtain from the rest of Part 1. Those ideas and the principal actors provide strong inspiration on how to fill it in. It will take some work on a GM's part, but the ability here to set the tone for YOUR version of the Pact Worlds and the look and feel of your Starfinder campaign lie within it. It's KEY - and it's all yours.

As written, the first encounter goes off and the follow-up event to it with the Starfinder rep Chiskisk will occur as well. But after that, there is really very little guidance on how the rest of Part 1 will flow.

Then we get to this little paragraph from Rob McCreary - and it is not a throwaway:

"Although the PCs’ inquiries and the information they can learn are represented by simple skill checks, feel free to flesh out the investigations via roleplaying encounters with various denizens of Absalom Station. In short, this section of the adventure can and should be modified to meet the needs of your game and your players with as much detail as you deem necessary."

The subject matter and structure of these potential areas and encounters on Absalom Station are left entirely for the GM to determine. You can write your own NPCs, areas and challenges -- and much of this, on careful reflection -- seems very interesting and inspiring.

If you want this to have a feel like "The Expanse", mixing in Belters, and Dockside labour unions, and well-heeled (and racist/classist) corporations -- it's all there. The tables are awesome inspiration for this. I suggest to you that the inference that Hardscrabble = Belters is the obvious direction to go with. (I am going to seize this moment with joy.)

There are lots of maps for levels of spacestations (or at least, portions thereof) which can be integrated in, too.

So while I take your point that the adventure is shorter than you would have preferred, this invitation to write, cast and determine how your Starfinder campaign will feel is AWESOME. All of this unfurls as the first real look at how your players will ever play Starfinder - you set the rules, atmosphere, plots and tenor of your campaign. It is tablula rasa with some guidance.

You can totally ignore the story awards for securing the information in the tables, too. All you need to do is ensure that most of that information can be obtained, and then set up whatever skirmishes or combats you choose which would result in roughly the same XP (and roughly the same information).

It's a significant and very welcome gap in the adventure design at the very outset of anybody's Starfinder play experience. This will determine the entire tone for your campaign and how most people think of Starfinder. The opportunity it that ripe.

I, for one, am excited as hell to be able to design my own aspects to it to plug in to this deliberate hole left for ME at the outset of my campaign.

I don't disagree with you on the openness of the book proved to flesh out the adventure to our liking. But for me, when I buy a premade adventure, I would like the ration on the page numbers to be more on the adventure and less on the fluff. The book has been already shorter than the regular path, so having just 30 pages of it seems like I'm not getting what I was hoping.

Also, you raise a good point about the fact that this is the first one. While I don't remember how many pages of the Council of Thieves, I do remember that it gave more work than any other Path I GMed so far.

This is the first time that the product coming from Paizo didn't match my hopes. So I will give them time to build some momentum and we will see. Maybe it was a case of over hype, I don't know.

So what level are the PCs at the end of this?
Silver Crusade
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

It would seem they end up on 3rd level.
Liberty's Edge
3 people marked this as a favorite.
Rannik wrote:

I don't disagree with you on the openness of the book proved to flesh out the adventure to our liking. But for me, when I buy a premade adventure, I would like the ration on the page numbers to be more on the adventure and less on the fluff. The book has been already shorter than the regular path, so having just 30 pages of it seems like I'm not getting what I was hoping.

This is the first time that the product coming from Paizo didn't match my hopes. So I will give them time to build some momentum and we will see. Maybe it was a case of over hype, I don't know.

No, I take your point. I won't say that I didn't have some of those same misgivings too, initially.

I think the real issue here is that I was unprepared to receive a 64 page volume; I thought I was getting a 96 page AP installment. I have no idea if it was announced as 64 pages. It probably was, but if so, I never saw it. That has consequences.

The real issue behind the 64 pages vs 96 and the every-other-month decision lies, in the end, in this little tidbit that is from a discussion of the Alien Archive book:

James Sutter wrote:
... And to be completely honest, there's also a big element of risk to doing a new game like this, and it's safer for us to put out slimmer books that reflect less of a resource investment than a massive all-hands-on-deck hardcover—we *know* roughly how many copies a Pathfinder Bestiary will sell, but until we've got some numbers on Starfinder, we need to be cautious!

And that really is the main delimiter here. Starfinder is a big risk for Paizo. They didn't know how it would turn out. They had hopes, but they had to be tempered with prudence, too.

Looking back earlier this year, they announced a pre-order for the game products. They did not initially announce a subscription. The pre-order was strong enough to justify the subscription option, so they did and switched them over. They presumably ordered a print volume based upon the demand expected/derived from pre-orders and subscriptions. They went conservative on that print run.

Then the sales window opens and what happens? VOOM Thy sell out the number of hardcopies reserved by Paizo for Vol 1 of Dead Suns in ~48 hours.

Turns out, demand vastly exceeded the cautious supply. Who knew?

These are good problems to have, but they all come down to the problems of gauging demand. It's a hard target to hit on the wing, and SF games have traditionally created a whole lot of smoke but very little sustained fire. That's a statement fans of the genre don't like, but there is really not any serious debate about it. There has not been a print version AP released alongside a SF game, EVER, in more than 43 years of SF RPG gaming. This is a real risk.

Now, maybe Paizo has found a way to crack that open once and for all.

And maybe not. We'll see.
Liberty's Edge
1 person marked this as a favorite.
John Kretzer wrote:
So what level are the PCs at the end of this?

If by "this" you mean Vol 1 of Dead Suns 1: Incident at Absolom Station? Yes, 3rd level.

If by the "this" you mean "end of the Dead Suns AP"? 12th to 13th.
Zaister wrote:
The gazeteer says Absalom Station is 5 miles across.

Is that on all axes? I'd expect that a space station would fill more three-dimensional space than a typical earthbound city would.

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Sold out already? Well done, Paizo.
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
3 people marked this as a favorite.
CorvusMask wrote:
Oh man, back when I had just one subscription it didn't take long for me to get it shipped, seems like with two it takes bit more time :'D

I'd just like to point out that while the contents of your subscription order do affect when your order ships, there's a truly mind-warping number of other variables involved that make it impossible for anyone to predict the outcome.

Which is to say that sometimes having two subs instead of one will get you shipped later, and sometimes it will get you shipped sooner. You best bet is to buy what you like and try not to worry about it too much.
4 people marked this as a favorite.

Is your system clever enough to spot dummy accounts? Say if someone split off those lines for which they have multiple subscriptions into a separate user name, thus ensuring one big and one little order each month?

Asking for a friend.
Dark Archive

I have pretty positive impression of the book, won't be doing review before I've run it though(I need to catch up with my review backlog now that I think about it), but I am bit worried about how short it will be since roll20 games go real fast .-. Like even if I run this bi weekly, will my players have to wait for whole month to get to part 2

Anyhoo, since starfinder aps are apparently 1-12 with flavor being left to gms, wouldn't mind modules or something for that 12-20 range so we can try it out with higher levels too if we want to continue campaign after epic climax : D
Dark Archive
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Steel_Wind wrote:
Rannik wrote:

I don't disagree with you on the openness of the book proved to flesh out the adventure to our liking. But for me, when I buy a premade adventure, I would like the ration on the page numbers to be more on the adventure and less on the fluff. The book has been already shorter than the regular path, so having just 30 pages of it seems like I'm not getting what I was hoping.

This is the first time that the product coming from Paizo didn't match my hopes. So I will give them time to build some momentum and we will see. Maybe it was a case of over hype, I don't know.

No, I take your point. I won't say that I didn't have some of those same misgivings too, initially.

I think the real issue here is that I was unprepared to receive a 64 page volume; I thought I was getting a 96 page AP installment. I have no idea if it was announced as 64 pages. It probably was, but if so, I never saw it. That has consequences.

The real issue behind the 64 pages vs 96 and the every-other-month decision lies, in the end, in this little tidbit that is from a discussion of the Alien Archive book:

James Sutter wrote:
... And to be completely honest, there's also a big element of risk to doing a new game like this, and it's safer for us to put out slimmer books that reflect less of a resource investment than a massive all-hands-on-deck hardcover—we *know* roughly how many copies a Pathfinder Bestiary will sell, but until we've got some numbers on Starfinder, we need to be cautious!

And that really is the main delimiter here. Starfinder is a big risk for Paizo. They didn't know how it would turn out. They had hopes, but they had to be tempered with prudence, too.

Looking back earlier this year, they announced a pre-order for the game products. They did not initially announce a subscription. The pre-order was strong enough to justify the subscription option, so they did and switched them over. They presumably ordered a print volume based upon the demand expected/derived from...

64 pages was in the original announcements of the AP, but it would've been nice to have it in the product description to make it clearer.

In relation to your other point, my understanding was that the delay in getting subscriptions was a case of deciding on what benefits to give and getting the appropriate code base, more than not wanting a certain level of pre-order - the comments I saw were all "we'll probably have subscriptions closer to the time, but we're still working out the details"
CorvusMask wrote:

I have pretty positive impression of the book, won't be doing review before I've run it though(I need to catch up with my review backlog now that I think about it), but I am bit worried about how short it will be since roll20 games go real fast .-. Like even if I run this bi weekly, will my players have to wait for whole month to get to part 2

Anyhoo, since starfinder aps are apparently 1-12 with flavor being left to gms, wouldn't mind modules or something for that 12-20 range so we can try it out with higher levels too if we want to continue campaign after epic climax : D

Hmm my roll20 games take forever lol. Maybe im just too long winded :) My pathfinder group I GM for is a bit large as well so that contributes. I picked up the Society adventures for this exact concern though. I intend to sprinkle them in where appropriate and adjust encounters where necessary.

Scarab Sages
Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Is there a Player's Guide for Starfinder Adventure Path?

There is not, at least for this first AP.
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Charles Scholz wrote:
Is there a Player's Guide for Starfinder Adventure Path?

The answer really should be stickied at the top of the thread - it's a pretty popular question.

As for my first impressions (just got the PDF yesterday), it is short, true, but there is plenty to work with an flesh out with more social interaction and possible combats.

My biggest disappointment is the 1st-13th level range for the AP, but I can work with it. We use the "milestone" system in our home games, and I usually like to level people to 2nd after the first or second game to give them a sense of progress, but I might not be doing that in this game, depending on when they get to Act II of Book 1.

I will be putting together a simple "Player's Guide" for my players, and may wind up posting a link here when I'm done if there's interest.
Steel_Wind wrote:
John Kretzer wrote:
So what level are the PCs at the end of this?

If by "this" you mean Vol 1 of Dead Suns 1: Incident at Absolom Station? Yes, 3rd level.

If by the "this" you mean "end of the Dead Suns AP"? 12th to 13th.

On a side note, hi, Steel_Wind! just wanted to say I was a big fan of the Chronicles podcast, and miss your and Azmyth's style. :) Thanks for the always insightful posts here.

Liberty's Edge
ENHenry wrote:


On a side note, hi, Steel_Wind! just wanted to say I was a big fan of the Chronicles podcast, and miss your and Azmyth's style. :) Thanks for the always insightful posts here.

Thanks for the kind words. I'm trying to persuade Azmyth to come on back and restart the Cast to tear apart Starfinder and this AP, specifically.

And if I can't persuade Az to do that, I have a backup plan. :)

Let's see what September/October brings. We don't ever want to tear down an AP module without actually having a chance to play and GM it first. The reviews and observations gamers have from just reading a product are never good enough, imo. The most important rough spots show up during play, not merely during reading. And the difficulties they pose are sometimes hard to appreciate until you are actually experiencing them during a real campaign game session.
Scarab Sages
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber

Is there a reason that the product doesn't have an Interactive Map PDF?

I run on a tabletop with an actual Monitor set into it and the PDF maps are super useful for me. Without a PDF Map for encounters, it's a lot more work to run and my desire to run this adventure wanes precipitously.
Liberty's Edge
Stratagemini wrote:

Is there a reason that the product doesn't have an Interactive Map PDF?

I run on a tabletop with an actual Monitor set into it and the PDF maps are super useful for me. Without a PDF Map for encounters, it's a lot more work to run and my desire to run this adventure wanes precipitously.

I'm guessing it is cost. For now, use these to get your images out and in a manner you can use in your VTT/Monitor setup:

http://www.rlvision.com/pdfwiz/about.php

see also:

https://mupdf.com/docs/manual-mutool-extract.html

Mutool is command line driven, but very powerful.
Acquisitives
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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
Zaister wrote:
CorvusMask wrote:

Ah, Starfinder gets away from "NPCs have to follow PC rules" thing?

Thats actually pretty good thing I wasn't expecting them to do in d20 system .-. I mean, it is pain to dissemble npc statblocks, so if they their own rules, that is bit simpler yeah.

YMMV. I consider this to be exactly the opposite of a "pretty good thing". Especially when we don't even have the rules that NPCs are supposed to follow. The rule book actually says "NPCs don't have levels", but I can't really see how that makes any sense at all. Do you just arbitrarily assign class abilities?

why should NPCs follow any rules at all? Why not throw in whatever abilities you want onto an NPC.

it doesn't seem to me that the old way of operating made any sense - a DM needs an NPC to do X, but doesn't want to give what shouldn't ordinarily be able to do X, say..a WAND OF X or a SCROLL OF X, which might fall into the hands of a PC. Or just doesn't want to spend the time figuring it out.

Simple solutions are best - if a DM says he can, then an NPC can do X.

Easy cheesy.
Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer
Steve Geddes wrote:

Is your system clever enough to spot dummy accounts? Say if someone split off those lines for which they have multiple subscriptions into a separate user name, thus ensuring one big and one little order each month?

Asking for a friend.

That would be counterproductive. As with pretty much anything you might try to do, sometimes it would shorten your order processing times, and sometimes it would lengthen them. But one thing it would *always* do is prevent us from combining those items in ways that could reduce your shipping costs.

Vic Wertz wrote:
Steve Geddes wrote:

Is your system clever enough to spot dummy accounts? Say if someone split off those lines for which they have multiple subscriptions into a separate user name, thus ensuring one big and one little order each month?

Asking for a friend.

That would be counterproductive. As with pretty much anything you might try to do, sometimes it would shorten your order processing times, and sometimes it would lengthen them. But one thing it would *always* do is prevent us from combining those items in ways that could reduce your shipping costs.

It might be expensive (I'm resigned to high shipping costs), but I figured it's unlikely that the big, custom order is going to be moved farther back in the queue by being made just a tiny bit smaller - it will still be large and include preorders+sundry additions. Granted the mini-order will sometimes go later (granting me nothing), but my gut feel would be that it'd help more often than it hindered.

It's all academic, anyhow. I was just kidding. I figure pizza for the warehouse crew is the simplest method.
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Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber

I‘m looking forward to running this now. I really like the adventure‘s flavor. It feels like Babylon 5 here, And like a mixture of The Expanse and Firefly there. Very nice.

I‘m wondering one thing though: who‘s the woman on the cover?
CorvusMask wrote:

Just to note, I'm going insane from waiting since I check everyday and keep refreshing the page even though I know its gonna take 3 weeks at max

I'm too spoiled by my previous subscription experience when I got them around same time Skeld did :'D

Killing me too. I ordered everything because I've been excited and it seems like the big orders are the ones getting shipped last. Just dangling there in front of me.

I had 37 items this month and mine was shipped right at the beginning. It's a weird lottery, unfortunately. :/
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Steve Geddes wrote:
I had 37 items this month and mine was shipped right at the beginning. It's a weird lottery, unfortunately. :/

Well there goes that theory! I suppose we're back to just terrible luck.

No worries here!

Hopefully tomorrow. :-)

I have noticed (probably because its on backorder status) it doesn't say in red above that i purchased this one, even though it's clearly on my order.

Just wanted to report it, can't wait for it to ship! :-)
Sovereign Court Senior Developer, Starfinder Team
2 people marked this as a favorite.
Zaister wrote:

I‘m looking forward to running this now. I really like the adventure‘s flavor. It feels like Babylon 5 here, And like a mixture of The Expanse and Firefly there. Very nice.

I‘m wondering one thing though: who‘s the woman on the cover?

Her identity (but not her name) is hinted at in this blog post.

If you already have the adventure, check out the "On the Cover" section on the bottom left of the very first page for her name and identity.
1 person marked this as a favorite.
ShingenX wrote:
Steve Geddes wrote:
I had 37 items this month and mine was shipped right at the beginning. It's a weird lottery, unfortunately. :/
Well there goes that theory! I suppose we're back to just terrible luck.

Well, it's not terrible luck, we're still only on the seventh day of shipping out of fifteen. Now, really terrible luck would be getting your package on the 18th, or even past then because it turns out their estimate was low, especially since the PDF would be available for sale by then...

Luthorne wrote:
ShingenX wrote:
Steve Geddes wrote:
I had 37 items this month and mine was shipped right at the beginning. It's a weird lottery, unfortunately. :/
Well there goes that theory! I suppose we're back to just terrible luck.
Well, it's not terrible luck, we're still only on the seventh day of shipping out of fifteen. Now, really terrible luck would be getting your package on the 18th, or even past then because it turns out their estimate was low, especially since the PDF would be available for sale by then...

Yeah, those are gloomy (but thankfully, rare) months.

Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Robert G. McCreary wrote:
Zaister wrote:

I‘m looking forward to running this now. I really like the adventure‘s flavor. It feels like Babylon 5 here, And like a mixture of The Expanse and Firefly there. Very nice.

I‘m wondering one thing though: who‘s the woman on the cover?

Her identity (but not her name) is hinted at in this blog post.

If you already have the adventure, check out the "On the Cover" section on the bottom left of the very first page for her name and identity.

On I totally missed checking there. :)

Dark Archive

Okay, I just read Relics of Golarion article and... HOLY COW the artifact in it. WHAT IN NAME OF ALL THE GODS HAPPENED DURING THE GAP??

Can't probably say what it is before book is released to everyone, but seriously, I want to hear story behind that one xD

Sooooooooooo,

AP Spoilers:
since you have to work with Eoxians in this AP how would you handle playing a Good aligned character who is opposed to Undead, or someone who worships Iomedae, Pharasma, or Sarenrae?
Scarab Sages
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Luthorne wrote:


Well, it's not terrible luck, we're still only on the seventh day of shipping out of fifteen. Now, really terrible luck would be getting your package on the 18th, or even past then because it turns out their estimate was low, especially since the PDF would be available for sale by then...

That's happened to me a couple of times in Paizocon and Gencon months. It's infuriating. On the other hand, This month I got my PDF on the 7th! So yeah, luck.

Stratagemini wrote:
Luthorne wrote:


Well, it's not terrible luck, we're still only on the seventh day of shipping out of fifteen. Now, really terrible luck would be getting your package on the 18th, or even past then because it turns out their estimate was low, especially since the PDF would be available for sale by then...
That's happened to me a couple of times in Paizocon and Gencon months. It's infuriating. On the other hand, This month I got my PDF on the 7th! So yeah, luck.

Yea, I've had it happen every now and again at similar times...I definitely felt unlucky. I mean, it's awesome when it ships the first week - or even the first day! But I don't really feel unlucky until I'm one of the very last ones...

Paizo Employee Developer
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Steve Geddes wrote:
It's all academic, anyhow. I was just kidding. I figure pizza for the warehouse crew is the simplest method.

Just the warehouse crew? *sad*

Silver Crusade
4 people marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

SHIPPED>>>>PDF>>>>#$(ACQUIRED>>>>>PR OCESSING>>>>>PROCESSING>>>>>PROCESSING>> ;>>>
Scarab Sages
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
Mark Moreland wrote:
Steve Geddes wrote:
It's all academic, anyhow. I was just kidding. I figure pizza for the warehouse crew is the simplest method.
Just the warehouse crew? *sad*

Developers get Pizza when he wants you to write faster.

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:
Sooooooooooo, ** spoiler omitted **

How to deal:
Well... For starters, based off the synopsis off the next books, there seem to be OTHER Eoxians out there that are even worse.

Other than that, I'd probably suggest taking a page out of Reign of Winter... Originally, having heard of the Geas part beforehand, I was thinking "oh boy, my (CG) character would agree, only for the sake of the world, but is going to have to swear to get payback for having to be under a geas to do it"... Only for the dude giving it the geas to turn out to be a dying old man, who looked more kindly than his servant of Babayaga status made him out to be... And I was like "Well... Damn... I don't think me or my character would have the heart to say that to his face."

So... If the representative of the Eoxian is similarly sympathetic, possibly not even Eoxian themselves, then there's a lot one can get around.

Also, its apparently pretty common in cyberpunk esque settings to be like "well, the guys we're opposed to is supplying us stuff to take out a shared enemy... Hey, their funeral! Who are we to pass up a chance to part a fool from their money?"

But yeah, their "assistance" isn't exactly your motivation, so as long as the character in question has motivations that would suggest they would go on this quest for its own sake (such as, saving the pact worlds), then you'd be surprised how long they can delay the gratification of punching their reluctantly accepted allies in the face.

Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:
Sooooooooooo, ** spoiler omitted **

Spoiler:
On pg 20, it says that your Starfinder contact reminds you eoxians are full members of the pact worlds and to suck it up. But I agree, it's a failure point.

@Luna:
They are a full on Eoxian Ambassador and all that entails.
@Paper:
And I have... words for that contact. Namely, do the countless people being tortured and murdered in the Eoxian gameshows not count as members of the Pact as well?
Liberty's Edge
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Eoxian Ambassador?

Spoiler:
Nahhh. I don't think so.

Seems to me that Rob McCreary used the Eoxian Ambassador as a way to just let the PCs know Eox was involved in this and it dealt with the problems of getting access to the shuttle and not knowing whether the PCs will support Hardscrabble (likely) or Astral Extractions (unlikely).

But the distinctive Eoxian interceptor accomplishes that without letting the PCs in on the details.

I really don't like the Ambassador's involvement with PCs of this level though. It doesn't make narrative sense that a guy like Ambassador Nor would turn to the PCs on a station as large as Absalom. The population of the station is in the MILLIONS. You turn to some noobs that have been on station for ~48 hours or so? Why? It's just implausible and stretches all credibility.

There is another option: Have access to the shuttle, an Absolom Station Defence Shuttle, be provided by either Hardscrabble/ Level 21 Crew or, Downside Kings on behalf of Astral. They have stolen the control codes for it' all that remains is to steal the ship itself. The PCs are not yet Starfinders and are unaligned and their hiring may be disavowed if they are caught. So they are competent, but unaligned. They also have a licensed pilot among them who can, along with the others, be used to locate important information on the status of the Acreon that can be obtained for use as evidence in the pending arbitration to their advantage.

For Hardscrabble: "Exhibit A - Prove that the Ship was abandoned and it is a derelict which may be recovered under the Space laws of Salvage as an abandoned derelict. PCs may claim Acreon for themselves as, long as they give up the Drift Rock. That's their deal"

For Astral: "Exhibit B - Prove that the ship was deliberately sent in to Absalom Station under AI power with a living sentient on board and it is therefore NOT a derelict, and the contract continues to apply. Astral will pay *WELL* for this evidence.

Note: There's a *catch* to proving "B" which will turn on interpretation of the word "living" by Ambassador Nor, but I digress...

Meanwhile, the Eoxian Stilleto continues to intercept the Hippocampus, as set out in the Dead Suns AP. Perhaps it *is* sent by Eox.

You can whip up a whole operation to distract maintenance crew and permit the theft of the Hippocampus. The beginning of Part II turns into a Heist operation, basically. It's a constrained, free-form RPG session where the PCs have lots of potential choices to steal the ship which revolve around a central set of known facts and a pre-arranged map. IDEAL scenario for a SF GM. And WAY more heroic and plausible than what is presented in the text.

You've summed up my feelings exactly. That's why I called it a failure point.

In fact, there's several of them in this adventure. I don't want to spoil plot points, but after reading this adventure and the description of the future adventures in the path, I'm a little concerned at how railroady it seems. I don't want to use the term lightly, but when the opening encounter has the sentence (I'm paraphrasing) "this has to happen or nothing else in this adventure will make sense" my eyebrows raise. And then the next encounter has some of the same.

In total, I counted at least 5 points where the adventure implies, or straight up states, "The characters can take whatever action they like, but this is what happens next or the adventure stops here."

And reading the AP synopsis, the climax is apparently triggered by something pcs can neither prevent nor detect, even if they take precautions, because otherwise the entire last third of the AP won't happen. At least, I'm guessing based on the description; I'm possibly doing the writers a disservice here.

Railroading has it's place in adventure design, and APs often are that place, but having so many points where PC actions can break the adventure's plot completely seems weird. Maybe it just seems that way because of space limitations, but there seems to be so little space for characters to take meaningful, plot changing actions within this adventure. It reads more like an RPG video game than an RPG.

Edit: I say all this not as if I'm great at adventure design myself, I'm certainly not, but as a consumer looking for adventures to buy. The story itself is interesting, I want to like this piece, but these concerns fairly leapt off the page at me.
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Steel_Wind wrote:

Eoxian Ambassador?

Truncated for brevity:
There is another option: Have access to the shuttle, an Absolom Station Defence Shuttle, be provided by either Hardscrabble/ Level 21 Crew or, Downside Kings on bahalf of Astral. The PCs are not yet Starfinders, and are unaligned and their hiring may be disavowed if they are caught. Still, they have a licensed pilot among them who can, along with the other, be used to locate important information on the status of the Acreon that can be obtained, illegally, and used as evidence in the pending arbitration to their advantage

That's actually ANOTHER failure point that I didn't even think of.

Spoiler:
The adventure assumes every party will have at least one pilot. It's a fairly safe assumption, but its another point in where the plot gets in the way of a character's, or in this case a player's character selection, potential choices.

I promise, I'll stop being negative in a minute, but this is the kind of thing that a player's guide would have addressed: basic roles of starship control would have guided player concepts and made sure all the bases were covered.
Scarab Sages
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook Subscriber
AnimatedPaper wrote:


That's actually ANOTHER failure point that I didn't even think of. ** spoiler omitted **

A competent GM will talk to their players about character creation during Session 0. You don't actually need a Player's guide. They're nice, but not necessary. Like Maps. I wish Starfinder's APs came with Maps like Pathfinder's do...

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