A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1-4.
A Starfinder expedition's dusty data from an orbital scan shows signs of active technology on a distant, war-ravaged planet. Following up on this old lead, the Society dispatches a team of Starfinder to investigate the far-off world. Between making first contact and exploring the ruins of a dead civilization, long-buried secrets of the past are ripe for discovery.
Content in Yesteryear's Truth also contributes to the ongoing goals of the Wayfinders faction.
Written by Jason Keeley.
Scenario Tags: Faction (Wayfinders), Starship
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As has been mentioned, the starship combat in this scenario can drag. It took my group about 2 hours to finish it up. Rarely did the players feel like they were in danger, it just took that long to actually take out the main baddie.
The rest of the scenario was quick, flavorful and fun. My players had an awesome time having some first-contact and getting to interact with a species that none of them had messed with before.
The final decision at the end of the scenario resulted in near 15 minutes of discussion between the players to decide what to do. I loved it! I also think the players enjoyed it as well, getting to face a moral dilemma at the end of it all. We ended up determining how I would report it by table vote, and they went the Prime Directive route.
This is my favorite SFS scenario out thusfar. The encounters were strong, but not overwhelming, the plot was well done with several vibrant, memorable characters, and the ending leaves the PC with a major moral quandary. My players spent a good 15 minutes debating what to do as I filled out sheets, and it’s great to provide that kind of unique experience for your table.
I felt that the "set up" of the scenario was perfect for me as the GM to really flesh out with descriptive text. We get a great skeleton of a scenario, with some meat, but the rest you've got to describe yourself. It was as if the scenario was an underhanded pitch, and I was able to knock it out of the park by drawing on pop culture and bring it to life.
Space Ship Combat: This is the third time I’ve done combat, and this one was the most exciting. With multiple smaller combatants, the PCs movement on the map is vibrant and becomes important. Given the raw stats of how ship combat tends to work, most 1 on 1 battles become people moving around one another and getting in good arcs. With 2-4 enemies, that’s less possible so PCs instead are scrambling to take down targets and disable systems. All of my players had a role to play, and the flavor of a dated drone deployment module gave me a lot to work with.
All that said, I have run combat three times now and tend to run my combats quickly, so I could see this scenario going long if this part drags (as others have said). My advice would be to keep it simple. My drones only moved and shot, and my platform only advanced and pooped out drones. Nothing fancy. This helped emphasize the "primitive technology" of the platform and allowed my players to accurately guess upcoming actions. So they got to feel reactive and smart, besting my drones. Overall this is the only starship combat I haven't hated. A+
Husk Culture: I depicted this as tribal and unburdened by technology. Not quite luddite, but not too far removed from it either. Inspired by some characters from the Borderlands series, they arrived and polished off the Sand Brute in the second encounter, before butchering it up for use as food, armor, and war paint. We had a great time describing non-verbal communication, and the scenario does well presenting those rules in detail.
Membrane Culture: This was presented as a group of individuals so far into sedentary ways that no further progress was being made (scientifically, physically, socially, etc). Basicically just like the humans in the movie WALL-E. At one point, I described a membrane by a food dispenser who was shoveling a continuous stream of soft-serve ice cream into his mouth.
Arkeost: I envisioned a technologically advanced but dated mega-city, that was also fairly vacant (given the lack of half its populace). So like the ghost planet from Serenity, mixed with some of the “giant force-field protecting us” of Ergo Proxy.
The Great Sin: So for the great reveal, I embellished a bit. The PCs had already indicated that they thought both groups were just ignorant (Husks for obvious reasons, but the Membranes because they refused to accept their technology was imperfect), so were inclined to help both out. I pulled from various sources to play this up, but basically the trope of the repentant scientist that did something evil and then offs themselves rather than lives with the guilt of it.
So when they accessed the data terminal in the end, I had the information presented through a series of “video diaries” of a lead scientist and some government officials talking about the plan to reduce population within Arkeost. She played like the female doctor from V for Vendetta (the coroner), originally on board with the plan, but by the end disgusted by what they had done. For the final recording, after the Husks had been tricked out of the city, I had her speak “about knowing what she had to do.” Then she ordered the robots from the previous encounter to open fire and they proceeded to massacre the rest of the people involved. “I’ll have the drones clean the room and dispose of the bodies. Then I’ll kill myself. Now my people can live without the Sin of what we have done.”
It really made my party appreciate why they had separated the Husks from the city, and caused the discussion about what to do with the technology to become even more intense. One of my players said “I completely understand why she did what she did,” in reference to the fictional scientist. The vote came down at a 2-2-1. Two wanted no one to know, two didn’t care, and one wanted to share it with Husks.
Overall I loved running this and will happily run it again.
I know a lot of others are coming down hard on this scenario, but I just GMed it and my group had fun. They did have a level 3 soldier/Solarian playing with them, so the combats were a breeze, so I can't speak to that, but the rest was fine.
The first space combat is a bit annoying, but the PCs used smart maneuvering to stay out of the firing arcs of the drones and just shot the main ship a bunch. It didn't take too long. One thing for GMs, just roll one piloting check for the drones and use that for the 'initiative' for all of them. Helps speed things up a lot.
The PCs ended up correctly guessing the big plot twist about halfway through the scenario, but still liked it in general. They were sad that there was no option to convince the Starfinders to provide humanitarian aid, as they were big on helping them rebuild.
Only complaints I really have for this scenario is that it really assumes the PCs will have certain skills-Diplomacy and Engineering in particular. It's easy for a party to miss out on a bunch of stuff or do very poorly if they lack those skills. Luckily our party had them, but it's something that might not happen with every group.
Lastly: a word to future GMs for this:
Spoiler:
it is super easy to miss out on a boon in this scenario. Have the venture captain during the mission briefing ask them to investigate any orbital defenses, that should be enough for the PCs to board the drone launcher and do the salvage operation. No other scenario (thus far) has had space salvage, so otherwise PCs might not even think to do it, and miss out on the boon and money.
Yeah, I get it. It's a new system and nobody has a lot of experience designing for it. Still.
There are two things majorly wrong with Yesteryear's Truth. The following conclusions are drawn from running this at Tier 1-2.
And I can't say anything substantial if I have to fear spoilers:
First of all, the design of the combats is poor, both on the level of the crunch and as a pacing thing. The first combat encounter took us two hours of very tedious play as the Starfinder ship whittled away the remarkably numerous hull points of the adversary, all the while facing death by a thousand cuts from a numerous but remarkably ineffective drone fleet. To fix, I would suggest cutting down the drone platform's hull points by a third.
The second combat, following straight on the heels of the first, has nothing to do with anything and the only reason it's not positively lethal is that there's a deus ex machina cop-out to prevent the monster from killing the party if that's the way the dice roll. For a monster that can easily one-shot a first-level character, they're very liable to roll that way. Why even have what amounts to a random encounter in an organized play module? There's no story here. If there must be an encounter to illustrate the dangers of the uncharted world, I'd much rather have seen an environmental hazard related to the radiation.
The final combat encounter does have a reason to exist, but is fundamentally uninteresting, and by far the easiest fight in the module. The last fight should be the tough one, both because it feels appropriately climactic and if the really hard ones are put up front, a character death will lose the player a lot more game.
The second problem is the uninspired writing on the ghibrani. With the exception of a couple of things related to architecture, they basically come across as humans in rubber masks. They bow as a sign of respect, and smile, despite having mandibles for mouth parts. They use the colour red to signal emergency. It's horrendously banal.
The whole first contact thing also seems terribly matter-of-fact and lacking in oomph. If half the module wasn't consumed with filler combat, it could have been used to build up the cultures of the ghibrani and make it feel like the big reveal at the end – which is a pretty cool one, I give it that – would feel more momentous.
As it stands, Yesteryear's Truth is a whole lot of wasted potential.
I've just finished running the Quests and the first 3 PFS scenarios at a Con. These reviews are partly for the impression that they collectively left on me and so the beginning of the reviews are identical.
Together, these form a wonderful introduction to both Starfinder and the Society. There are lots and lots of background details that just pop out and are very evocative of the setting. Together, they illustrate just how wide a range of possible games can be run using Starfinder and the variety of adventures that we can hopefully expect in Society play.
The end result of running this material is that I am much happier with both the mechanics and setting than I was going in. The game plays better than it appears that it might, all the characters were participating in all the scenarios and none really dominated any particular scenario.
And the setting has become quite interesting. There are LOTS of stories to be told and the system is robust enough to tell most of them :-).
=== Yesteryears specific review
Ok, this was wonderful in so many ways.
It REALLY felt like an episode of Star Trek (the original series). Other than the fact that probably even Kirk wouldn't have slept with the alien babe :-).
The starship combat was very different from the two combats in the quest. Its nice to see that the rules support at least 3 combats with quite different feel even at level 1 with simple ships and only 1 per side.
I Really liked:
1) the fact that the aliens are BUGS that are sapient, pleasant individuals. One lesson in this scenario is to not judge by appearance.
2) That the two subspecies actually live in harmony
3) There is no universal translator. Communicating via the gizmo was more fun
I thought this a good mix of roleplaying and combat.
One small nit - They should have given me the stats (or at the very least the page number) for the translator device. Finding it was a bit of a pain
Can't wait to see a Starfinder version of the Shadows or Klicks from Alternity, or for that matter the Arachnids from Starship Troopers. And then just when the players think they're the bad guys, pull the rug out from under them and make the good guys in the scenario! And have the cute fuzzy "ewoks" be he evil race...bwahahaha!!!
Possibility that this whole mission is going to go FUBAR and we're gonna need an extraction as we fire machine guns at space monsters while running through the wilderness? Check, double check, and check mate.
Possibility that this whole mission is going to go FUBAR and we're gonna need an extraction as we fire machine guns at space monsters while running through the wilderness? Check, double check, and check mate.
Possibility that this whole mission is going to go FUBAR and we're gonna need an extraction as we fire machine guns at space monsters while running through the wilderness? Check, double check, and check mate.
Turns out that this mission is actually mostly peaceful first contact with new species and mostly roleplaying :P With possibility of pcs causing great cultural shift for new species.
But yeah, this is awesome scenario if you ask me, but if you don't warn players that "gung ho, let's kill aliens" characters have boring time with this one, well let's just say mission will be kind of horrifying failure :D
There's at least one editing issue in this scenario.
Spoiler:
In the combat with the sand monster thing, the setup tells the GM to have the players place themselves in a dotted area, and then put the monster on the indicated space, but the map in the scenario features neither a dotted area nor an indicated space.
I just have to give mad props to Eleanor Jenner, the GM who ran this for us at DundraCon this past weekend. There's a part of the scenario where you read a bunch of information off a data terminal, and it reveals some key plot points. Rather than just reading us the info, or giving us handouts, Eleanor programmed a mock terminal. At the relevant moment in the scenario, she handed over her laptop and a tablet, and we were able to navigate through the menus to read the log entries and gradually come to an understanding of what happened - and she made it look like a screen from Fallout, which just added to the coolness.
It was easily the best interactive visual aids, as well as one of the coolest moments, I've had in five years of PFS.
This is a very "Star Trek" style story, with some combat encounters but mostly consisting of roleplay & diplomacy with various people. It also explores the impact on the native planetary society of an ancient cataclysm, and of their first contact with aliens (i.e. the PCs). In other words, it's much more *science fiction* in feel, rather than the *science fantasy/space opera* tone of most Starfinder scenarios.
The above is probably why "Yesteryear's Truth" is my favorite SFS scenario so far, but it gets lower reviews from some.
