A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1-4.
A missing Starfinder ship's distress signal would have gone unnoticed were it not for a passerby detecting it and selling the information to the Society. The PCs are to travel to the crippled starship, and once aboard, reach the bridge in order to piece together the tragic story of the vessel's lost crew. Only by unraveling the mysteries of the drifting starship can the PCs hope to uncover information critical to the Exo-Guardians future operations.
Content in Cries From the Drift also contributes to the ongoing goals of the Exo-Guardians faction.
Written by Joe Pasini.
Scenario Tags: Faction (Exo-Guardians), Starship
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From my experiences as a player on roll20 and running at my local gaming shop...
I really enjoyed Cries from the Drift. Some details (and some minor spoilers) below.
First, the story. I thought the atmosphere for the scenario was great, with PCs exploring an "abandoned" ship as a strange storm approaches, dim lights flickering... all in all excellent execution.
Second, the game play. This was my group's favorite starship combat yet. It might be that we're getting more experienced with the medium, but a one vs. one fight with an interesting environmental twist kept everybody engaged and thinking. Once everybody got to the ship the story was engaging, and the PCs were totally in the dark about the second half of what had gone on until the very end.
Last, some minor gripes that kept this from being a 5/5 for me.
Starship combat:
Spoiler:
First, in the starship combat, the given the rules of the “honorable” duel the PCs (who, to their credit, kept winning piloting checks) would just position their ship so the Honorbound was always firing into their rear arc. Rather than break his own rules, I had the Honorbound refuse to fire, which led to the PCs never being in any real danger once they figured out that trick to the combat.
On the ship:
Spoiler:
Second, regarding the doors on the ship, the PCs (naturally) wanted to pick the lock into area B6 where the spooky undead was. The scenario didn’t give the door stats or give any DC for opening the lock other than via the plot device (aka the key card in B9). At one point one of my players said “this feels like a video game where you can only do everything in a certain order”. Additionally, when trying to get to the bridge, the PCs were planning on having one member of the party stay back in B7 and switch out the one battery they got from B3 to open the door from B9 to B10 – and thus bypass the entire final combat with the undead if they had wanted to after they recovered the log (they went out of a sense of completionism, which is good because it netted them the scenario’s secondary objective).
All in all a very good scenario, especially the starship combat and flavor, but there were just a few weird things on the ship that didn’t quite add up. Still very good and highly recommended!
The initial RP encounter was augmented by playing some J-pop and the players enjoyed Zigvigix immensely.
The spaceship combat still drags and I'm not sure whether it's our lack of experience or the rules being too clunky. But everybody loved the unusual opponent and RP opportunities.
The exploration part was spooky, creepy and just long enough to wrap it all up during one evening. The fights were tough but manageable. Some really nice touches in form of room dressing and treasure.
Overall, a very good module.
Going to be very random with LOTS of table variation
I basically like the scenario. The space battle is quite fun. I liked the fact that it wasn't JUST a space battle.
The basic horrorish approach on the spaceship is good.
I agree with others that it is a poorly disguised railroad with no choices at all.
But the two BBEGS are a little too much. Maybe a lot too much. We played at low tier with 1 L1, 3L2 characters and a L3 Operative (who, not surprisingly, probably did more damage than the rest of us combined).
I don't want to spoil things too much but
The first one encountered is definitely WAY tougher than nearly any other creature of its CR I've so far encountered (do not have Alien Archive yet). Its also using some as yet ill defined abilities (I can actually construct a reasonable argument that would make this creature LITERALLY unhittable and therefore automatic run away or die). Depending on how optimally the GM plays the bad guy this combat can be both dangerous AND long. A few bad rolls on the aura effect and it could easily be a TPK.
There are items placed in the scenario to explicitly help against this. Out of the 9 characters (4 when I ran, 5 when I played) exactly 1 character could make use of these items. Which isn't too surprising really.
Given that we are currently dealing with low level characters being run by inexperienced players, it is no surprise that some characters will be LITERALLY be unable to do ANYTHING against this enemy. That both makes the battle harder and is going to very boring for the player.
Another place where there is going to be table variation is whether the PCs are allowed to take a 10 minute rest between the two encounters.
The second encountered isn't that bad. It felt a lot more dangerous than it actually was. The scenario went to great lengths to make sure that what seemed very dangerous actually wasn't all that bad.
This review is based on running the game at Tier 1-2.
Cries from the Drift is a pretty good scenario. It works as both science fiction and as horror, employing familiar tropes efficiently. Its only major flaw is the lack of illusion around the railroad.
Spoiler:
The scenario seems inspired by works such as Alien and Event Horizon, which are good things to draw from. Exploring the derelict vessel is interesting and every room has something interesting in it, but it's not too packed. However, what it is is a railroad in a rather videogamey mode. There's only a single way to advance to the bridge and a very clear succession of steps to get there. It's not exactly contrived, but the number of steps required – get battery, open door to mess, get keycard, open door to captain's cabin, get other battery, open door to bridge – makes it very obvious. A few alternative ways to get through would've been cool. Like, air ducts? What about brute force?
Another thing is that the whole is tonally disjointed and the parts don't quite seem to fit together. The space duel with the vesk ship is interesting and works very well as an encounter, but going from that to the gory horror of the derelict vessel is a bit of a mood whiplash. It doesn't help that the scenario is bookended by appearances from the most comedic of the faction bosses, complete with Strawberry Machine Cake.
Which is a nice bridge for me to note that in this scenario, sound design pays off. I looped a Babymetal song for the briefing scene, put on a playlist of bombastic sci-fi themes for the space duel and used Alien: Covenant's soundtrack, stripped of any climactic pieces, for the derelict ship. Turns out that film is good for something after all.
The combat balance felt good, and I like the trend that defeat in space battles does not mean character death, yet defeat does come with consequences. In this case, pretty cool ones.
This scenario just works, I find it hard to describe how reminiscent it is without a lot of spoilers, but this was 5-star scenario after reading half of it... and it keeps that level.
I really want to see more from this author, I am really impressed.
This adventure, when I played it, was completely boring.
I played it in Starfinder and there is such a high emphasis on Engineering and Computers that I just didn't have. As a Solarian I felt completely worthless and useless in this game. The Space Combat was interesting, everything else was a complete snooze. I seriously felt like I could have left the table and had no impact on the game. That is bad adventure design.
There should always be significant things for any type of character. Not just those who chose to be "Skill Monkeys" which we had. So the rest of us sat back useless as one character had a +10 to +12 in every skill. It was not fun and I just wanted it to end.
Sorry you felt that way. There are fewer skills in Starfinder, and some classes (like the Operative) that gets so many skill points and inherent bonuses to skills that it is easy for them to be good at pretty much everything. Still, that being said, I've run this adventure and there's lot of role-playing to be had in figuring out what to do next (and how to do it), not to mention some really exciting combats.
Sorry you felt that way. There are fewer skills in Starfinder, and some classes (like the Operative) that gets so many skill points and inherent bonuses to skills that it is easy for them to be good at pretty much everything. Still, that being said, I've run this adventure and there's lot of role-playing to be had in figuring out what to do next (and how to do it), not to mention some really exciting combats.
The fight against the "big threat" lasted 1 round. Literally it died before acting.
The other one took 3 rounds.
There wasn't much room for roleplaying because the skill monkeys just rolled to know *everything* and thus... Well aside from the brief conversation with the Vesk... Nothing for me to do.
My recommendations would be for there to have been damaged portions of the ship where physical things such as Strength checks and Athletics checks would have been useful.
Maybe have a tear in the hull, or something where characters have to jump it? Or a door that can only be opened via strength? Something so more physical characters don't go for 2+ hours without being able to do any rolls aside from "assist" all the time.
