In this thrilling kick-off to the new Fly Free or Die Starfinder Adventure Path, a crew of scoundrels, rogues, and misfits finds it hard to survive in a galaxy where everyone has a price. Targeted by a crime boss and his army of enforcers, preyed upon by faceless mega-corporations, and hounded by rivals, the crew of the Free Trader Oliphaunt line up the big score that will at last make them rich beyond their wildest dreams. But when their many enemies join forces and the crew loses it all, they find out there's two things in the galaxy that can't be bought: freedom... and revenge.
It's just another day punching the clock when the player characters, a blue-collar transport crew, are blamed for a bad cargo and stiffed of their bonuses. They take a dangerous job smuggling weapons to a world conquered by militant hobgoblins, but one fiasco later, they're in debt to a crime boss and about to be fired. Their only chance is to steal the Oliphaunt, an experimental cargo hauler with a magical secret, and then survive long enough to collect the payoff!
“We're No Heroes" is a Starfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for four 1st-level characters. It makes an excellent introduction to the game for new players. The adventure begins the Fly Free or Die Adventure Path, a six-part, monthly campaign in which a merchant crew with an experimental starship tries to get rich, escape interplanetary assassins, and outwit their rivals. This volume also includes rules for finding, buying, and selling interstellar cargo (and using the profits to enhance your starship), a collection of deadly threats, and a player's guide that provides advice and new character creation options ideal for this Adventure Path.
Each monthly full-color softcover Starfinder Adventure Path volume contains a new installment of a series of interconnected science-fantasy quests that together create a fully developed plot of sweeping scale and epic challenges. Each 64-page volume of the Starfinder Adventure Path also contains in-depth articles that detail and expand the Starfinder campaign setting and provide new rules, a host of exciting new monsters and alien races, a new planet to explore and starship to pilot, and more!
ISBN: 978-1-64078-282-2
We're No Heroes is sanctioned for use in Starfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle sheets are available as a free download (5.3 MB PDF).
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
This is a review for books 1 though 4 of this AP. It's very disappointing. There is very little connection between the authors when you go from book to book. It seems each book has a different theme with a different set of campaign expectations.
For example book 1 & 2 there are ways to gain BP for your ship. Book 3 and 4 don't even mention them at all.
Book 3 mentions did the party take the high road or the low road. but only gives examples within book 3. But much more serious high/and low road examples can be pulled from book 1 and 2.
Book 1 has a few very deadly encounters. Books 2 through 4 do not.
I GM APs for a connected story, not a series on modules. Paizo used to be great at this. But in this AP it seems the authors had no contact with each other and the overall AP developer simply didn't do their job very well.
The book and the story are solid enough to get you into Starfinder, and has enough wiggle for creative ideas and characters all within the theme's paramiter of space-truck drivers working for corp with no morals. Firefly vibes essentially. The writers working with the mechanics did a good job. Thats that carries this star rating.
However.
The PDF images for the MAPS are horrible, low qauility and fuzzy at best whenever I use -any- PDF image extraction program (adobe, office libra ect). AND they don't fit any dimensional adjustments in roll20. Maybe in foundry?- but I don't have that to compare. SO it's incredibly fustrating to pay for the (very few) maps you get out of this adventure path, and they aren't as useful as they should be. Plus there are so many other potential scenes and places that -should- have maps, that don't have maps it feels like, so then you're just sitting there talking with a random image pop up or an old map scene with your players wondering if they should tune out or not because you need to dingle-dangle some keys infront of them with an RP scene with an NPC.
I'm not to unfamiluar with graphics and getting images to work in roll20 or just working on various DPI qauilities. No amount of adjustment and grid aligment works. So expect to either play with your virtual table top system of choice's grid-system OFF or make your own maps (which defeats the purpose of -buying- these APs in my opionion).
This entire adventure path is "Bad things happen to you every job, and someone will betray you every time you turn around.
The players need to decide before they start how far their reactions to this can diverge before the game stops being fun.
By book 6, one player was murdering every person who betrayed us, non combatant or not (to be fair, they had been conspiring to kill us, so they weren't exactly innocent.) and another player was trying to only kill people who were actively shooting us, and the game eventually fell apart.
Also, make sure your players *know* when doing a smart thing lets them avoid a fight. Even if that means having "cut away" scenes showing shadowy figures waiting for them where they were not going. Without that, by the end of the 5th book, (or possibly even with that) it just felt like we just automatically failed whenever the adventure wanted something dramatic to happen.
We're No Heroes is a frustrating start to the Fly Free or Die AP. It sets a great tone and has a very cool core concept, but it quickly reveals itself to be very narrow in scope and very determined to deliver a "playable movie" sort of story. I went through it as a player and had a good time leaning into the concept, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't frustrated and emotionally disconnected from the events to a degree that I haven't experienced with other APs.
If I had to characterize We're No Heroes, its as a playable series of improbably persistent no win scenarios, crossed with the typical Starfinder writing and encounter design. Each of the scenarios involve the PCs being given a job, some improbable event causing the job to go bad, the PCs having to do some easy skill checks or combat to salvage the remains, getting some sort of moral choice, and then there being essentially no meaningful consequence for any choice made. The events are written such that there's no way to avoid things "going bad", and no way to turn them around.
It leads to an odd feeling in play. The amount of "things going wrong" is oppressive, but they're never all that hard to resolve. Narratively, the PCs are always down on their luck, but mechanically, you're getting credits and leveling up just fine. You're never in a position where you're really, truly, put on the back foot, and none of the bad twists are a result of your own mistakes - just the author's narrative chugging along. It's a format that delivers the right "feel" but only on a surface level.
Some specific annoyances:
Berry Selling:
Nothing about this scenario makes much sense, from the berries being completely unwanted in the market, to a criminal intermediary sending enforcers to attack the PCs for berries she doesn't even want. It smells like a sandbox of possibilities to establish merchant connections and leverage your social skills, but everything is just a dead end. It actively resists PC problem solving in order to leave them with the moral dilemma at the end.
The Stealing of the Ship:
Level 1 or 2 characters slickly stealing a high value super special experimental ship from right under the noses of a big corporation's highest security is an enormous stretch that requires exceedingly weak foes, humble security measures and incongruously low DCs. However, it's especially baffling in the context of this adventure, which has so far presented nothing but partial failures for even the most innocuous of tasks. It shatters any illusion that there's consistency and fantastical-realism to the world. These tasks are doable for low level PCs because the authors wanted to PCs to get the Oliphaunt, and they thought this would be a fun set piece to give it to them.
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All these complaints said, the adventure definitely establishes that scrappy "feel", that the PCs are nobodies in an unfair universe and rolling with the punches. For a group willing to go along for the ride without thinking too hard, its quite the romp with some fun moral dilemmas to argue about and ponder in character. It has some great art and a wide variety of encounters and challenges.
All in all, a unique adventure, but with some irritations that are likely to break it for some groups.
The writing is disjointed and unclear. In the end, I had to write 5 pages of notes to tighten up the writing and make decisions about who does what and when. I really don't think anyone play tested this all the way through. The timing of the events makes everything happen at once, taking choices away from the players.
The economic parts of the game are silly and defy logic.
Railroad-y to the point of silliness as well, the storyline even comes right out and says, "no matter what choice the characters make, this is the outcome".
The NPC's are not compelling and there wasn't anyone to care about for the most part.
And the "Fly Free or DIE!" has like no flying. None. At all. I had 4 characters with a mix of starship combat skills that didn't get used. But they did die quite a bit in some of the unbalanced combat situations.
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:
Can you be a little more specific?
Every single asset in the PDF is cut into 5-6 image pieces, making it almost impossible to easily export into roll20 or any other VTT of choice. Previously, I could simply pull a map image out of a PDF, without the numbers, and import it into my VTT to give my players the great, colorful, detailed maps as-is. For some reason, the layout of this PDF has made that nearly impossible. Even the smaller maps are made up of two or more images, while the larger ones are in 6+ pieces of varying sizes, making it nearly impossible to properly size and lay out in roll20.
Yes, this PDF is not useful at all. As has been said, the maps are split into several tiny images and none of the text is selectable. Even tried downloading the file per chapter option and it's the same. Hoppefully there's a fix coming or it's going to make running this thru any VTT extremely difficult
There is an irritating number of typos in the print edition. Hopefully future editions will undergo a more thorough editing process.
That being said, the AP is really promising. The guide and rules provided will be useful for those that just want flavor in a campaign, but don’t want to run an AP. Specifically, the nuts and bolts of buying commodities, searching for buyers, hauling, loading, and unloading, and finally selling them.
And, of course, dealing with those that want to interfere in your business.
It's a minor issue at best, but note that on page 55, in the "Downgrades" section of the Galactic Trade article, the text mistakenly references the coilgun's pre-errata cost of 6 BP, rather than the revised cost of 10 BP.
(I have not yet "audited" the BD514's BP breakdown.)
As a result of some unexpected file size issues on Starfinder APs beginning with volume #31 (The Devastation Ark part 1), we have released interactive map PDFs so that GMs can extract the maps from that PDF instead. We will continue releasing interactive maps for the entire run of Fly Free or Die and beyond.
Yip, can confirm for both that the text is now selectable. Can extract maps from the bundled interactive maps pdf. However, all the character artwork and maps within the main pdf are still split into several smaller images. Means a bit of work with gimp to get character art into a VTT, but much less work than I was facing.
It won't let me download the updated version of the file. When I click on it in my digital assets I get an XML page with the message "AccessDenied". Other files work fine.
As a result of some unexpected file size issues on Starfinder APs beginning with volume #31 (The Devastation Ark part 1), we have released interactive map PDFs so that GMs can extract the maps from that PDF instead. We will continue releasing interactive maps for the entire run of Fly Free or Die and beyond.
Can you confirm whether there will be a fix for the other art in the book which is also randomly separated into blocks or will this remain as-is?
As a result of some unexpected file size issues on Starfinder APs beginning with volume #31 (The Devastation Ark part 1), we have released interactive map PDFs so that GMs can extract the maps from that PDF instead. We will continue releasing interactive maps for the entire run of Fly Free or Die and beyond.
Can you confirm whether there will be a fix for the other art in the book which is also randomly separated into blocks or will this remain as-is?
At this time, we are only providing the maps as separate PDFs.
Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Robert G. McCreary wrote:
Luke Spencer wrote:
Katina Davis wrote:
As a result of some unexpected file size issues on Starfinder APs beginning with volume #31 (The Devastation Ark part 1), we have released interactive map PDFs so that GMs can extract the maps from that PDF instead. We will continue releasing interactive maps for the entire run of Fly Free or Die and beyond.
Can you confirm whether there will be a fix for the other art in the book which is also randomly separated into blocks or will this remain as-is?
At this time, we are only providing the maps as separate PDFs.
I don't think he was asking for the artwork a separate files, but rather for it to be correctly integrated in the PDF. Currently, each piece of artwork in the PDF is a puzzle of tiles, and you can even see the thin white lines separating these tiles if you look close enough.
Is this all fixed up yet? VERY leery of buying this PDF for such a cool sounding adventure.......
If not then hopefully soon please
Thanks
Tom
Not absolutely fixed. You can copy and select text now, and most of the maps are in a separate pdf that you can extract them from easily (all except the very last one for some reason). All character art and stuff within the AP pdf is still split into several smaller images so a little bit of work is needed to extract them. If all you need is the text and maps tho, you're golden.
Can't you make a screenshot of the pdf and then cut the images out?
Sure, and that's what I ended up doing. Usually I run an image extractor which pulls everything out in a couple of minutes. It's not a huge deal, just extra work for me
Can't you make a screenshot of the pdf and then cut the images out?
Sure, and that's what I ended up doing. Usually I run an image extractor which pulls everything out in a couple of minutes. It's not a huge deal, just extra work for me
What program are you using to do the image extraction tricklet? I use NitroPDF.
A little program I found on Reddit an age ago. This one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/35lp3s/my_favorite_image_i n_any_paizo_product_to_date/cr5saf9/
Using pdfextract on linux is what I use to extract all images from a module when prepping a VTT. With the art being all cut up into pieces this is... trying.
Pathfinder Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
tricklet wrote:
A little program I found on Reddit an age ago. This one: https://www.reddit.com/r/Pathfinder_RPG/comments/35lp3s/my_favorite_image_i n_any_paizo_product_to_date/cr5saf9/
That's the one I use too. Needs a bit of manual work, but is usually great. I also modded it a bit to have different use cases (once I found that some small Icons I wanted to extract was removed by the "remove all images smaller than X" line of the script).
I use PDF Candy Desktop, which is cheap, versatile, and usually excellent for extracting images (but for unknown reasons fatally chokes on 2nd Edition Pathfinder PDFs).
Thanks gang, looks like I'll wait til the Starfinder team fixes this all, jumbled pictures in a PDF is not a complete product, nice that they have the extra map PDF though.
Can't you make a screenshot of the pdf and then cut the images out?
Sure, and that's what I ended up doing. Usually I run an image extractor which pulls everything out in a couple of minutes. It's not a huge deal, just extra work for me
What program are you using to do the image extraction tricklet? I use NitroPDF.
Can't you just use the print key and MS paint? Or are the PDFs protected against that.
Can't you make a screenshot of the pdf and then cut the images out?
Sure, and that's what I ended up doing. Usually I run an image extractor which pulls everything out in a couple of minutes. It's not a huge deal, just extra work for me
What program are you using to do the image extraction tricklet? I use NitroPDF.
Can't you just use the print key and MS paint? Or are the PDFs protected against that.
You can (In fact I had to for this pdf) but you often have to manually remove text, and sometimes images are overlaid on sidebars and it makes the picture look a bit naff when you've got 1/3 of the background a different colour. Image extractors get rid of those issues and are generally just faster.
How is this adventure? Anyone feel like writing a review? Considering purchasing it but want to know a bit more.
Short review without spoilers I can do.
I'm currently running two groups through this, though currently only a session in for one of them. Second group starts this Saturday, it'll be interesting to see how they deal with things compared to the first group.
It's a nicely put together adventure, with some avoidable combat if you talk your way round it. The characters are interesting and there's a couple of moral choices to make that really encouraged the roleplay in my group. Influences are obvious - if you like sci-fi like Firefly, maybe a bit of Farscape, there's opportunity for many references.
There's no starship combat in this book, but there is a bit of vehicular combat which has the potential to be a very memorable encounter.
There's a new trading subsystem which changes how Build Points are handled. You no longer get them automatically to upgrade your ship, you need to do trade runs to earn them. Legitimate trade as well as smuggling is possible and it looks like a well built system so far - haven't needed to use it yet. It's also completely ignorable if your group isn't interested.
The book says you might also benefit from having Alien Archive 2, Character Operations Manual, Armory and Pact Worlds
however, that is simply for a more comprehensive look at all the rules employed. With what you have you don't really need much else. You can also check aonsrd.com which tends to be up to date on most rules.
I really liked this book, I'm planning on running it as soon as it gets sanctioned so until then I'm gonna hold off on any in-depth criticism
The book says you might also benefit from having Alien Archive 2, Character Operations Manual, Armory and Pact Worlds
however, that is simply for a more comprehensive look at all the rules employed. With what you have you don't really need much else. You can also check aonsrd.com which tends to be up to date on most rules.
I really liked this book, I'm planning on running it as soon as it gets sanctioned so until then I'm gonna hold off on any in-depth criticism
Thank you very much!
Will definitely look at picking them up. They're already on the list but hobby funds etc are a bit tight at the moment.
Wanted to make sure it was playable with what I had plus maybe one or two additional purchases before grabbing it as it looks a lot of fun!
Holy crap, I just tried to get an image out of this for something unrelated and it is a complete disaster. Almost entirely unusable for a VTT, still.
We were thinking of running this, but I don't think we'll be able to if this is what the image extraction experience ends up as. We were thinking VTT, but hell, we can't even do in-person gaming well with this.
Holy crap, I just tried to get an image out of this for something unrelated and it is a complete disaster. Almost entirely unusable for a VTT, still.
We were thinking of running this, but I don't think we'll be able to if this is what the image extraction experience ends up as. We were thinking VTT, but hell, we can't even do in-person gaming well with this.
I really don't understand all the hubbub. I'm running this on Roll20 with zero issues and having some of the most fun that I've had in my 20+ years of GMing.
Thank you to Jason and all of the authors and developers for the good times. I'll be sure to put up a review once we've completed volume 1. We're about to head into part 3.
I do appreciate that new campaign mode sanctioning means you can give these chronicles to more wide range of characters including final chronicle being giveable to level 13-14 as well :O
Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber
For in-person games, what have you all done with maps in the APs? Do you use a VTT and then have players use their minis on a screen? I'm trying to get some best practices for in-person sessions.
Am I remembering incorrectly that maps and assets from new PDFs were going to be made more compatible with VTT for those of us who are stuck playing in isolation? I've been terribly excited for Fly Free or Die, and I eagerly downloaded my digital copy the moment it became available - only to find it's going to be an utter nightmare to run for any of my digital groups.
Every single asset in the PDF is cut into 5-6 image pieces, making it almost impossible to easily export into roll20 or any other VTT of choice. Previously, I could simply pull a map image out of a PDF, without the numbers, and import it into my VTT to give my players the great, colorful, detailed maps as-is. For some reason, the layout of this PDF has made that nearly impossible. Even the smaller maps are made up of two or more images, while the larger ones are in 6+ pieces of varying sizes, making it nearly impossible to properly size and lay out in roll20.
There's a simple solution to this. Download "TokeTool" go to File > Open PDF and it will separate all the images from the PDF individually.
Then (if they are segmented images), you can drag-drop them to paint and line them up like a puzzle, easy-peasy.
Struggling and dissapointed trying to use the BD514 map on the virtual tabletop system I and my all over the country players use.
After an hour of trying and failing to get the grids of the ship to match the VTT, we realized the GRIDS ARE NOT SQUARES....seriously. Not only are the grids not truly square, but the 'not squareness' is not even consistent across the map, so adjusting for it with ratio tweaks is a failure too.
Of course problem would be solved or ignorable if the ship had been included in those interactive map pages with the adventure, but for some reason is not...
Have had issues with Paizo maps like this before, and becoming increasingly disheartened by my purchases in the last year.
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