Starfinder Society Scenario #3-05: The Hivemarket Heist

I had players who really wanted to go the hive market. I crafted up enough stuff for a good session and a half but I wanted to make it a really big moment for one of the characters. I went looking for inspiration.

The lore provided in this scenario inspired me to create many sessions of potential worth of material rooted in the hive market and surrounding area. The provided scenario itself I won't review but I liked the concept enough to include it as an as a lead in to a bigger multi session adventure expanding on the provided setting information.

Served my purpose MUCH MUCH better then I had hoped.

As GM, I enjoyed this scenario for the most part. I like the setting and found the villain interesting. I had three main problems with it.

I strongly agree with Elegos about not putting mission-critical information in the player questions. It makes the VC's look like poor leaders when they can't give the players enough information to get started unless they are asked a specific question. When my players don't ask the question they really needed to ask (which happens quite often), I'll have the VC just tell them the thing so they don't end up floundering while I'm trying to figure out how to get them on track.

The players found out where the villains ship is before they found out where the villain is or where she's holding the goods, so naturally they wanted to go sabotage her ship, but the scenario doesn't consider that option. GM's are supposed to allow for creative solutions, so mine was to say they could use stealth opposed by one of the mook's perception to sneak up to the ship, then an engineering check to sabotage, which would have meant that they would have started combat with one system already glitching. They ultimately decided against that because no one in the party could do both stealth and engineering.

Finally, my players could have used a four-player adjustment in the final starship battle to remove one of the gunners from the villain's ship. Being blasted on the same arc by a nuke and a particle beam every round meant they were able to punch through their shields hard enough to score a crit almost every round, and the players only had one person on guns because everyone else was needed to keep the ship in the air. If the villain ship had one more nuke, the players would have failed the primary objective.

I sound like I'm just complaining, but it was a good scenario and we had fun playing it.

I ran this for a convention, and while I think everybody enjoyed it, I did have one issue with it: the final encounter. The way atmospheric drag damaged the hull of the ship meant that if I had simply allowed the opposing vessel to run, they could have escaped in three rounds. Without a fantastic (or lucky) gunner, the PCs can easily lose this one, and I felt like it was too stacked against them.

The rest of the adventure was very well done. With the proper skill set, a party will have a lot of fun with this adventure. The enemies are good at hitting but are easy to hit in return, and the tide of battle can completely depend on who throws the first blow...

I was excited to run this adventure, but its execution left a lot to be desired. The crux of the adventure, the investigation, was really disappointing, boiling down to "ask 1 specific npc where the bad guy is and that's it. Compared to other investigations (most specifically 1-10 The Half Alive streets) it was incredibly lacklustre. Even more galling when better investigations have used the very same npc! (Side note,does AbadarCorp have any other employees?)

The combats and traps were fine, though a little lacklustre. The primary antagonist was lacking much in the way of sticking power in a fight, especially if the players provoke them.

Another frustrating feature is a continual peeve of mine: stop putting initial investigation contacts and other crucial information in player questions. A lot of players are really bad at asking questions during mission briefs. I dont know why but they are. As a gm it's really frustrating trying to get them started when they didnt ask the relevant questions and then have no idea how to start.

I really liked the market thing. IF you like roleplaying for the role and not just blasting, it was a great time trying to think of way to not catch the market police's hate.

In one encounter there was this car sitting there. And my character drivers it right into the first encounter running people over while the rest of the party is trying to think of ways to do stuff lol, it was lot of fun, everyone enjoyed it. Then i left a note say, "hey me and these guys had an agreement and so i paid them 1 credit for all the artificats. and then forged their signatures. so its was just ton of fun if you allow yourself to be in teh moment, and not focused on combat.

The starship combat was fun.