A Pathfinder Society Scenario designed for levels 1-4.
An important leader in the Veskarium approaches the Starfinder Society to explore a mysterious magical portal that suddenly activated on the frigid world of Vesk-8. Travelling through the portal, the PCs quickly find themselves in over their heads and needing to find a way back to civilization.
Content in Frozen Ambitions is an ongoing series of adventures set in the Year of Exploration's Edge. These lower-level adventures are the perfect starting point for any new Starfinder character, and can be integrated into almost any ongoing campaign with little extra effort. While it is encouraged to begin with this adventure, the adventures in the Frozen Ambitions series can be played in any order.
So umm. I would normally give this scenario 5 stars since its really flavorful, interesting and nice moments, but there is one thing in this scenario that is really harsh on level 1-2 characters.
That one thing:
There is a construct(meaning mind affecting immunity so no mindthrust) swarm in this and scenario doesn't give players any extra area of effect items or anything they could do to bypass it or avoid it in the text. And if they don't get pass it, they are kinda stuck in as written version. In my case the only area of effect in entire party was solarian's supernova, so I allowed magic missile to hit it since teeeechnically it targets multiple creatures.
Besides that, the scenario provokes interesting ethical choice, interesting fellow to meet and is start for interesting mystery. Also Jularaz the Frozen and his ambitions ;D But yeah, interesting to see how this story arc will proceed, players made in character theories based on information in the scenario. And players are rewarded for doing their job well and being through, it allows them to succeed at secondary condition without compromising their ethics. I love that kind of stuff myself.
Interesting premise dragged down by annoying combat
are not fun. They drag out combat forever. They are not challenging. They are just annoying. You either have the weapons/classes to fight them or you don't. I hate gimmick fights and this is gimmick fighting at its finest. Please do not put these creatures in a scenario unless you give the PCs the ability to deal with the creatures in the scenario.
That being said, the setting and NPCs are interesting. I like the concept of a prison planet.
Like the title of the review says, I have mixed feelings about this one. I GMed this before the other parts of the Frozen Ambitions arc were released.
The plot, characters, and flavor:
The Veskarium portion felt very underdeveloped to me. You're doing this thing that is maybe sort of related to the evils of the Veskarium but you just totally drive by the horrors of the penal colony working its workers to death, and as a result the Veskarium representatives come across as quite reasonable people when they perhaps shouldn't. As a GM, you can play the evil up a bit more, but it's not something the scenario intrinsically deals with. The reason the Society is working with the Veskarium itself is also quite perfunctory, which contributes to the whole "glossing over" issue.
The characters you meet once you're off-planet are quite interesting, though. The scenario gets bonus points from me for making me look up kothama society, which is enjoyably crazy.
I feel like the plot may make more sense as we see more entries in this arc, but as a stand-alone scenario it really feels like it's just setting something up for later. This adventure isn't the main event at all.
The setting:
I mentioned in the plot section above that the Veskarium portion is underdeveloped. The setting of a strange, airless moon is an interesting one though and you get to run around in some exciting locations. The hobo in a crashed starship, the strange trek through floating ice razors, the shrine on the airless mount; all interesting and unusual places. I felt like this was a strong suit of the adventure, and would love to see more interesting venues like it.
Editing, development, consistency:
I felt like I had to keep fixing things throughout the entire scenario and it got on my nerves a little bit at the end.
At the beginning, the event that strands you on the other side of the portal is subject to some awkward double-fixing with both the portal winking out and a cave-in sealing you off from the portal. I'm not sure how that came about, but it felt... very contrived. One or the other seems to have been added later, as there's contradictory text you may want to change.
Someone also felt the urge to get very detailed with sounds and smells throughout the entire adventure, despite the vast majority of the scenario taking place in a vacuum--a basic mistake that really made the whole thing feel amateurish. That there were two long conversations that were probably also held in a vacuum--it's hard to push air through your vocal cords to make vibrations that are carried by the atmosphere when there's no air and no atmosphere--just added to the frustration. As a GM you can work around it and invent pressurized areas where you can talk, or you can just not take it seriously and ignore the glaringly obvious issues, I suppose. It did make telepathy and certain non-verbal communication skills more useful, at least.
The crashed starship area could have been developed better or further or more consistently--a little extra detail about possible entry points would have been nice, as well as the expected presence or absence of atmosphere. There were some inconsistencies between the location of a trap in the text and on the map, and the trap area wasn't well-described on the map either. (As a GM, you can make a call as to where it goes and what squares it affects, but there are a lot of ways to be inconsistent.)
Some of the box text was... inconsistent with the story and my players caught it immediately and became concerned and confused. We got pulled out of the moment as I tried to backtrack and make sure that I could communicate what the box text should have said, rather than what was written. It's not the biggest of issues, but it was just significant enough to be worth mentioning.
Finally, I'm not sure what the thinking was with the summary on the chronicle sheet. I didn't even see the first checkbox, and hiding it like that makes it really hard to find. Would it have been so hard to put the checkbox on the same line as the thing it references?
Combats:
The combats were excellent. There's an easy combat with some explosions that weren't really a threat, except to the low-subtier characters playing up--but they happened to be a handy mechanism to introduce one of the obstacles to the PCs returning home. There was a brutally hard combat against some high-damage, high-HP swarms that my particular party just couldn't deal with--the HP could probably stand to have been dropped. I'm not sure I'd want to play this low subtier! And finally the shimmerstone elemental was nasty but had a reasonable out to save the party if they got in trouble.
I'd probably rate the combats as the strongest part of the adventure--a definite treat.
Note, however, that one of the combats for levels 1-2 is tuned way way high--in 1-2 you still fight one of the 40 hp swarms. I can imagine level 1-2 parties that can handle it, but most of the level 1-2 parties I've seen couldn't. I wouldn't recommend this at level 1-2.
Strong setting and combats; mixed plot and characters; and what I'd consider below-average editing and development... I'd play this without question, but it's not an instant classic and the quality of the experience is going to be heavily dependent on the GM.
Run this scenario today and realized I'm currently unable to report it since its not on reporting form yet. So uh, yeah, hopefully that gets fixed soon since I want to report scenarios as soon as possible
