A series of five Starfinder Quests designed for levels 3–6.
When agents aren't travelling across the galaxy in search of ancient civilizations, the Starfinder Society often sends its agents to showcase their skills with various Pact Worlds corporations. Each of these adventures showcase different roles the Starfinder Society takes in the corporate world. From testing out new firearms and starships, to battling escaped outsiders used as corporate experiments, the PCs have the perfect chance to showcase their skills!
Corporate Interest includes five, 1-hour adventures that involve AbadarCorp, Arabani Arms, Frozen Trove, Resurgent Technologies, and Sanjaval Spaceflight Systems.
Written by Diego Valdez, Emily Parks, Joseph Blomquist, and Sam Phelan
Coming out of Gen Con I won an auction for a charity boon. Then I ran into this mod where you can't use any boons. So you pay for boons you cant use. It hits hard and sets up a sour taste for the mod. The mod is pretty solid but unspectacular. Each feels like a little vignette that would have been better as a stand alone adventure on their own. Lots of potential here it just feels like Starfinder keeps trying to set up these mini-adventures and nothing comes about due to it. Better than average, would rate it 4/5 if it did not have this boon restriction.
Corporate Interests helps answer a question that makes perfect sense (and that I had never really thought about before): where does the Starfinder Society get all of its money from? This series of five Quests all have the PCs working as consultants for different corporations around the Pact Worlds to earn some coin for the Society. Otherwise, the Quests are unrelated. I ran the series via play-by-post at low subtier. A couple of the Quests needed some more play-testing or another round of development, but a couple of the others had some nice elements. I'd average them all together as . . . average.
As an aside, it's interesting that the scenario only allows for the slotting of personal boons and no others. I imagine that could create complications for some PCs.
SPOILERS!:
Each Quest begins with a message, via handout, from Venture-Captain Naiaj explaining the group's goal. Just as each Quest sees the PCs working for a different corporation, they each also take place in a different location in the Pact Worlds. These corporations and settings don't necessarily get a lot of distinct flavour in the actual adventure (though, ironically, there's usually plenty in the GM-only background sections). Taken as a package, they do offer a good mix of combat, role-playing, and *sigh* starship combat.
The first Quest is "AbadarCorp." Having recruited an expert in the weapons trade from the Idari, AbadarCorp is concerned she may become a target "among dangerous groups." The PCs are contracted to wait for the expert's arrival on Absalom Station and escort her to corporate HQ. The Quest uses the fitting Spaceport flip-mat but is structured as a problematic mix of skills challenge and combat encounter. The premise is that while they wait in the spaceport gate for the expert to arrive, the PCs begin to notice suspicious people lurking the crowd and have a certain number of rounds to use skills to sabotage their gear or lower their morale. I imagine that the vast majority of groups would instinctively confront the threats immediately instead of tip-toeing around messing with their stuff, but that's not the assumption the Quest operates on. After the (way too many) rounds to sabotage stuff has concluded, the expert arrives and then there's a big firefight in the spaceport. We never get any information or background on who these "mercenaries" are or who they're working for or why exactly they see the expert as a problem.
The second Quest is "Frozen Trove". Alert players may recognise the corporation's name from a memorable Season One scenario (# 1-19: To Conquer the Dragon). This Quest has the PCs sent to infiltrate an isolated Frozen Trove research outpost in the Diaspora and steal computer files. This one turned out to be really good. Although the PCs could just barge in and handle things through some old-fashioned ultra-violence, they really can succeed without ever firing a shot if they're smart, a little deceitful, and a little stealthy. It's nice to see that option supported, and I liked the Quest's lone NPC--a lonely research scientist named Karezen who just wants some to talk to and for his bosses to recognise his achievements.
The third Quest is "Resurgent Technologies". A corporation based on Aballon, Resurgent Technologies has been conducting testing of a weapon prototype that incorporated summoning extraplanar creatures. As one could surely predict, things went awry and one of the summoned creatures got loose and is now killing folks. The SFS is contracted to do an investigation and track down the culprit, which turns out to be a "venedaemon", a daemon formed from evil souls killed by magic. All I know: awesome artwork! I remember the PCs had a surprising amount of trouble defeating it--probably because of its multiple resistances and immunities. A solid Quest.
The fourth Quest is "Sanjaval Spaceflight Systems", the requisite starship combat Quest. I actually kind of liked this one though. The premise is that the PCs will be test pilots for a new starship design--a Remorhaz-class vessel. The distinctive thing about the Remorhaz is that its heavy weaponry faces the rear of the ship, so you want foes to get behind you. The Quest also has a fun twist. The test combat against a drone starts with everything being simulated, but when the drone goes haywire and starts firing live weapons, the PCs won't realise it until they get hit for the first time--when their actual shields are down! Taking actual hull damage certainly got my players' attention.
The fifth Quest is "Arabani Arms". Here, the PCs need to test fire several new weapon designs on a range and then use some of them in combat against some battle robots. The twist is that several of the weapon designs have hidden faults and malfunctions, some of which are positively harmful for the wielder. I liked the premise, but I found in practice it dragged a little due to the need to fire each of the weapons five times and describe the results.
Overall, Corporate Interests is a solid but unspectacular package, and something to do on a rainy day (or while stuck in lockdown).
As has been said previously, it was very refreshing to have a set of 5 mini scenarios that didn't have a connecting story. The overarching concept behind all of these is an interesting change to the usual sometimes stories that explain where the Societies get their funding. It also is a little deeper delve into he corporations of the universe.
I honestly would be quite interested to see another one of these that is quite similar but is with different corporations.
So this is actually pretty good. The problem I usually have with quests is that they are too disconnected to function as a full scenario, but are too connected to be a standalone adventure. This quest series does away with any connective tissue other than the theme ‘these quests all have something to do with Starfinders and the Corporations that they work with.’ Unlike other quests that feel like you can’t really start and stop them at any time (I’m looking at you Withering World) these are just a straightforward series of 1-shots that you really feel like you can drop in-drop out of.
The quests are all varied (and all of them are more than go here, do skill check, get ambushed by a fight) and have a unique flavor to them. I really appreciate that. Plus, it is another 3-6 repeatable, which I enjoy.
Unlike the other two quest pack scenarios (Dreaming of the Future and Withering World) this one is a true quest pack - that is it is simply 5 standalone sub-hour length adventures.
This makes a worthy way to introduce the game to some players and makes a good opportunity to show off the level 5 pre-gens of the new classes to seasoned players as well.
Content Spoilers:
One of them - Arabani Arms - was truly outstanding. It presented a real departure from the normal scenario logic and it's shoe horned in required fight was incredibly interesting, especially if you can get players to play along. That fight becomes a fun and unique challenge!
Three of them were okay but had problems
ABADARCORP creates a really fun sandbox but the instructions of how to lay out the scene really run at odds with the combat tactics. In particular having multiple enemies taking actions which have 0 effect and visibly so is a little odd. Its overall really fun to have the players play security guard though and has a very solid workaday feel to it up til the splosions.
RESURGENT TECHNOLOGIES lays out what sounds like its going to be a solid near scenario length investigation scene but no matter which direction players go, they instantly solve the mystery which undercuts any intrigue the scenario might otherwise have had since there just is legitimately not a lot to find out.
SANJAVAL SPACEFLIGHT SYSTEMS is good narratively, but has some mechanical issues. It has no recourse for when players are able to end the fight in a single round (and thus never discover the actual plot of the mission). In general it sort of assumes that the starship combat in play is some level of dangerous or nerve-wracking when it simply isn't which undercuts an otherwise solid outing.
One was bad - FROZEN TROVE
Frozen Trove was confusing and somewhat difficult to navigate. It only envisions one way in which the players might try to engage with the content and without that approach in mind, the scenario loses literally all of its intrigue and the fights in it are just speed bump tier.
I've also docked a star simply because these adventures that are meant to be used a promotional tools being something that people pay for as part of their subscription has just always struck me as a bad practice and I wish you wouldn't do it so frequently as between this, Four for the First and Withering world we have had THREE of these in 10 scenarios and its just too much.
Frozen trove... What??? I was sure they were disbanded? after ** spoiler omitted **
Frozen Trove:
Nah, those sorts of things only force a corporation to pay a fine, and even that depends on the quality of their legal counsel. I assume they settled out of court without admitting any wrongdoing.
Frozen Trove also has the best (or worst depending on your point of view) lawyers on Triaxus at their disposal. Not to mention, the army of law firms throughout the Pact Worlds itching to do the bidding of such a high profile cash cow.
So Frozen Trove's illicit activities are, mostly, obscured behind intermediaries, shell corporations, and other legal smokescreens.
As I recall, the identity of the main villain in To Conquer the Dragon was not revealed to the PCs. Even if they were identified, Frozen Trove could still disavow their direct involvement.
We still haven't even met the CEO, but I anticipate they'll be a major villain at some point.
The text in the scenario says you must use the 4th level pregens, but yet the chronicle sheet is setup for levels 3 to 6...
The text denotes that you can only use the 4th level pregens if you're using pregens. Since our level 4 pregens are the only pregens that fit in this Tier of a scenario. Otherwise, you're free to use any level-appropriate character for this quest pack! :)
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