A series of five Starfinder Quests designed for 1st-level characters.
When a mysterious visitor comes to Absalom Station selling items belonging to a lost Starfinder, the Starfinder Society takes note. The PCs are dispatched to discover out how the recent arrival found these items, leading them on a series of quests beyond the Pact Worlds and into the stars.
Into the Unknown includes five, 1-hour adventures that take the PCs from exploring Absalom Station, to partaking in starship combat, to exploring an alien world. The fifth adventure in the series provides a stunning conclusion that takes the PC's previous accomplishments into account for a climactic final showdown against an enemy starship.
Written by Ron Lundeen.
Scenario Tags: Quest, Repeatable, Starship
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Into the Unknown exists for a very specific purpose at a very specific point in time, which means it's forgiven a lot of things that wouldn't fly in a proper module. It's function in the campaign is to serve as an introduction to the ruleset, which it does a decent job of, and apparently to also foreshadow a bunch of stuff, which it also accomplishes.
While I am generally a fan of the complex, the ambitious, and the outside-the-box, you first need to build the box before you can go outside. That's what Into the Unknown is doing. It's a simple railroad, but it does not need to be anything more than that. Though the quest format has felt off in many of the Pathfinder Society quests, this one makes it work. I can even forgive its crime of including what's essentially a random encounter, since that's more or less in service of exhibiting the hazards of exploring an uncharted planet.
If I had to find something to criticize, it's that the payoff at the climax feels a bit weak and Lawblight feels kinda distant as the ultimate villain. It might be that the amount of bonuses the the party can gather up against it over the previous quests makes the fight too easy. Both times I've played this, Lawblight didn't manage to so much as dent the heroes' shields.
There's also a memorable NPC, some nifty local colour for Absalom Station like the Vat Gardens, and four lines of text that ought to be good for a couple of seasons of storylines.
To sum up, Into the Unknown aims low but it hits its mark. It's eminently playable and replayable.
I'm not a fan of the way quests are done. I understand that they are broken up in order to be presented in 1 hour sections but when a player plays them all together and in order, it feels super disjointed. With that said, this quest was done well and had more of a natural sort of flow to it then previous quests I have played or run (all of them)
Last night was my first opportunity to run this quest at our local game store and the players really enjoyed their introduction to the Starfinder Society. Our table consisted of four veteran PFRPG players who were new to the Starfinder RPG. We got started a little slowly, reviewing the rules and explaining differences between the two systems, but the game eventually picked up and ended with a dramatic space-opera finish.
Unlike other Pathfinder Quests with six encounters, this quest has only five encounters which helped give the players an opportunity to work through the rule system in the four hours we had scheduled to play the game. The stages of the quest are best played in order so the plot makes sense. Each stage of the quest introduces the new concepts of the system in subtle ways without placing the players in mortal danger.
Pros: Good plot, good story, nicely developed characters. Even the hired guns in the first encounter have names! Most of the system mechanics are familiar but slightly different so it helped to remind veteran players to be flexible.
Cons: The maps do not identify the starting locations for any of the foes or the party. The GM should consider in their preparation where the PCs enter the map and where the NPCs are likely to be staged. Each new encounter introduces new system rules so the first few rounds of an event takes extra time. Space combat especially takes time to initially understand the process because of the unique rules (hexes?). Fortunately the pace of starship combat improved by round three and each round took only a few minutes after that (Engineering - Helm - Gunnery - Next round).
Recommendations:
-Buy the maps. John Compton’s post listed the maps in the Quest and printing them is expensive.
-Use the starship character sheet to help the players visualize and track the condition of the starship shield/weapon arcs and systems (http://paizo.com/download/starfinder/PZO7101-ShipSheet.zip)
Overall, this is a great adventure to introduce players to the system and setting, but be patient with your players and GMs!
Into the Unknown was my first taste of Starfinder as a game and my first Starfinder Society experience.
Difficulty was about appropriate for an intro/pregenerated character scenario. We were able to get a taste of how the game worked, and even got a couple passes at the all new starship combat system!
The story was reasonably interesting; we got to see many aspects of the Starfinder world in a few brief parts (the 5 quests in the pack).
I enjoyed it! Not my favorite game, but well rounded with lots of interesting things to do. If you get a chance to play, I recommend it!
Pathfinder Adventure, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
I noticed that the second space encounter has the Starfinders use a Tier 4 version of the Drake. Is that on purpose? I assumed so when I ran it for my group last night, but it seemed odd.
Spoilers!:
Presuming the party has high enough skill modifiers to make the higher DCs on a higher tier ship (my group did fine), the higher tier gives them a nice edge against the heavily armed pirate ship, so it could be on purpose.
