A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 3-6.
A routine business deal goes awry when a spiteful drow noble seizes a shipment of weapons destined for the Starfinder Society. The PCs are sent to the gloomy world of Apostae to retrieve the stolen arms. Granted 24-hours of diplomatic immunity for any actions taken against the thief, the PCs strike at the rebellious drow noble and retrieve the shipment. Whether through guile or sheer force, the PCs must prove that the Starfinder Society is not an organization to trifle with.
Written by Mikko Kallio.
Scenario Tags: None
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The module all depends on how experienced your GM and your players are. Dealing with the Drow are always dangerous but the mod doesn't telegraph this effectively. It's up to the players to really draw this out and immerse yourself into how dangerous and alien a world you are in.
That being said, breaking into a compound on an airless moon sounds cool. But there's no airlock, there are no real environmental dangers. It becomes a wasted opportunity to really make the module shine as a science fiction adventure. Without it , you just have your standard dungeon crawl.
Once inside it's a standard mission. Feels like an empty call center and not the lair of a dangerous weapon smuggler. Then the final encounters in the basement are all pretty much standard.
As several reviews state; when you are given the task of retrieving your weapons you start thinking how the hell will we do this? Do you have a null chamber? or power armour to be able to haul it all out? Instead you get plot armour and a free pass to take weapons home. It's a cool concept that falls flat.
A Night in Nightarch is a really neat concept. The Starfinder Society has a weapons supplier on Apostae - they're buying weapons from the drow! When a scheduled delivery is interrupted, its up to the Starfinders to find out why, navigate the tangles of drow society, and secure the delivery. Of course, its not going to be that simple.
After some information gathering, this scenario turns to full-blown infiltration, as the party heads to a drow base to complete their mission! Sadly, the actual infiltration part falls flat, at least partially because the scenario has to be technically completable by the Soldier-only party with no relevant skills. But also because the entire hind-part of the scenario turns out to not be designed to be infiltrated at all! (more details in spoilers)
The Bad (spoilers):
The back half of this scenario is a drow base that ostensibly we should be trying to infiltrate. But wow does the scenario assume you'll want to slaughter every drow in the place. On the upper floor, there's no significant skulking about necessary- the enemies are spread about, don't meaningfully patrol, are easy to defeat, and there's little that we're even meant to secure or interact with up here to find the weapons cache. On the bottom floor, there's absolutely no way to complete your objective quietly. You HAVE to fight multiple waves of orcs no matter what you do.
Furthermore, despite the first half of the scenario being about prepping for your assault, no plans you make ahead of time matter. The location of the weapons is practically highlighted with a glowing beacon once you get to the right map, and completely unknown before then.
Once you reach the drow base, getting full rewards expects you to search every room and beat every guard, a strategy that stands in direct opposition to your stated goal of 'get the weapons cache and split'.
Really obvious logical issues, like: 'This is a whole shipment of weapons, how are we going to get it out when I can't carry that much bulk?' The scenario actually solves this FOR you by giving you a forklift in the final room, but there's no way to know this exists while you're outside and planning.
For a Drow scenario, disappointingly no one betrays you! In comparison to how the drow are portrayed in PF1E and older fantasy games, there's a distinct lack of evilness to the ones in this scenario.
The plot never really goes anywhere - you go in, find the weapons right away, fight some guards and a pathetic party kid, and you're done.
The Good (spoilers):
There's a lengthy skill check portion in the beginning that helps you accrue advantages for your inevitable assault on the drow warehouse base. Some of these seem pointless, but others are pretty neat.
Fun drow flavor, like the fleshwarping lab and drow heavy metal music.
Some fun, fairly challenging encounters in closely chained string. The warehouse makes for a good battle map: elevation changes, traps, obstacles, and plenty of room to maneuver. The auto-forklift as a moving hazard was excellent.
I absolutely love the premise of this scenario. It’s got some fun NPCs to interact with, awesome drow artwork, and does a great job of setting an atmospheric tone with only a few short sentences. Skills are really important for this one. I really enjoyed that the mission was on a timeframe, and the quick mechanics that were used to speed up/determine time. The office levels were well-detailed and organic. It had character, which was really nice. I loved the little details hidden here and there, like the advertisements –- particularly the one featuring Zo!’s reality tv show! There were multiple ways to go about one of the encounters which allows for players to go in guns blazing or infiltration.
Minor Spoiler:
The outcome of the battle doesn’t change too much from one to the other, but its nice to have the option.
Allowing the players to take over the mainframe and grant themselves remote access was a nice touch that can really affect gameplay.
The scenario starts off very strong, and those of you who love shady dealings and investigation will have a blast.
Also, if shadowrun is your thing, you will love this!
The scenario does taper off a bit towards the end, but the "zamboni" makes for a lot of fun!
Giving PC's a carte blanche for pretty much anything is probably going to be bad idea. I for see this scenario providing us lots of infamy, which isn't a bad thing.
super excited about this scenario - more information on Apostae and its arms dealing rulers!! Just how much mayhem can a group of adventurers cause in 24 hours with diplomatic immunity.......I'm drooling at the prospect :o)
Thanks to the infamy mechanic, that is an option—albeit an option that's not necessarily good for your character. That said, our adventure design aims not to require infamy-earning actions in order to complete a scenario satisfactorily.
super excited about this scenario - more information on Apostae and its arms dealing rulers!! Just how much mayhem can a group of adventurers cause in 24 hours with diplomatic immunity.......I'm drooling at the prospect :o)
I'm very glad to see people are excited about the scenario! Infamy will definitely play a role in the scenario, but as John pointed out, doing bad things is totally optional. There are several ways the PCs can track down the weapons.
How are society characters intended to be Level 3-6 by now?
1-00 is 4th level pre-gens. It's not reasonable to assume everyone applied this to a level 1.
1-01 1XP
1-02 2XP
1-03 3XP
1-04 4XP
1-05 5XP
Not enough to be level 3 for the next scenario
1-06 Forced to play a pre-gen?
No problem! I had to do the math a couple times myself to be sure how it all shakes loose. But playing the Quests is a great intro to Starfinder and I recommend them highly!
We wanted to make sure that we had something right away to showcase that we aren't forgetting about higher level content. You can expect to see a few scenarios stepping back into the 1-4 routine after this, but we'll also be introducing more and more 3-6 scenarios in increasing number.
Bought this through the Starfinder Society subscription. Despite getting the paizo.com order emailed to me about 5 hours ago, this isn't in my downloads - it just says "pending" on the order. Would love to be able to read through this - am running it on Monday.
Bought this through the Starfinder Society subscription. Despite getting the paizo.com order emailed to me about 5 hours ago, this isn't in my downloads - it just says "pending" on the order. Would love to be able to read through this - am running it on Monday.
Same here (except that I'll be running it on Saturday).
Organized Play Lead Developer
