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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?
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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:
... 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.
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.
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Sold out already? Well done, Paizo.
Chief Technical Officer
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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.
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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.
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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
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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:
... 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"
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.
There is not, at least for this first AP.
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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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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?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.
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.
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Chief Technical Officer
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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.
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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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?
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. :/
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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! :-)
Senior Developer, Starfinder Team
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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.
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...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.
Yeah, those are gloomy (but thankfully, rare) months.
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. :)
Sooooooooooo,
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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.
Sooooooooooo, ** spoiler omitted **
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.
Sooooooooooo, ** spoiler omitted **
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Eoxian Ambassador?
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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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.
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.
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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...