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:
Perspective: I played this as a ysoki mystic, alongside two envoys (half-orc and human), an uplifted bear mechanic, an android technomancer, a vesk soldier, and a ysoki operative. Everyone was part of the same crew, but one or two people were absent each session, bringing it to 6 players for most games.
I was pulled into science fiction by Firefly, so this adventure path is one I’ve been chomping at the bit to play since the Starfinder system was announced. As the introduction to this AP, We’re No Heroes faced the Herculean task of capturing my nostalgia for flying aboard Serenity, getting me hooked on the new overarching narrative without it seeming too derivative, and being a mechanically engaging adventure for 1st level PCs all at once. I’ll do my best to address each of these points without spoilers, but suffice to say the end result went above and beyond my expectations.
Atmosphere/Nostalgia: This adventure has everything a fan of the “space trader” genre could want, expertly molded into the Starfinder setting. I was worried about how important interplanetary shipping would be in a setting where anything can be crafted from UPBs, but the jobs all make sense and tie into the local lore beautifully. The Starfinder setting can be overwhelming at times, but this adventure taps into the coolest parts of the various locales enough to bring the story to life without getting the PCs bogged down in the details. The title is apt; PCs aren’t supposed to be warriors, and even the required combats align with the needs of the genre without expecting the PCs to be selflessly heroic. Overall, this adventure has working-class struggles and held-together-with-chewing-gum survivalism in spades. I’m curious to see how well this lasts in a system closely tied to the value of your gear, but the first installment definitely makes you feel like a cog in the corporate machine, forced to do your job no matter how much you resent the machine because the alternative is starvation.
Original Narrative: The plight of the EJ-Corp teamsters is noteworthy in just how many tough decisions the players have to make. Paizo’s APs have a good track record of providing realistic consequences to the PCs’ decisions, but in many cases the good/bad outcomes align with the nature of the AP’s themes. Acts of mercy and justice have the (predictably) highest payoff in Wrath of the Righteous, alienating your fellow crew members makes The Wormwood Mutiny more difficult, etc. In this adventure, there are a lot of situations where there is no right answer. Many times the PCs are faced with the decision to choose between a sympathetic NPC or their own bottom line, with notable penalties for choosing the former. Though it’s too soon to say how those decisions may impact the story down the road, the direct hit to the PCs’ heartstrings (morally or financially) definitely makes you invested in seeing this through. The one gripe that does come up from this story is that, as a “trucker” plot with a strong economic undertone, most of those tough decisions arise from parts of the job “going bad” for reasons the PCs cannot control. This didn’t bother me (things not going according to the gorram plan is what made Firefly fun to watch), but some of our players felt like they were being forced to fail. The GM needs to do a bit of extra work to take the sting off of this dynamic, otherwise reward-hungry players will likely become frustrated. That said, the storytelling is compelling and definitely left us hungry to see what happens next.
Mechanics: Low-level play in Starfinder can be difficult to glorify, especially when the adventure genre expects the PCs to be at or below the poverty line. I knew this going in, and was pleasantly surprised by how amazing the “set piece” encounters turned out. The author squeezed a lot of awesome out of relatively straightforward mechanics, leading to some interesting combats with cinematic outcomes. A few of the combats did seem perfunctory, but some of that is expected in any low-level RPG. My main gripe was the degree to which XP gain outpaced credit rewards, though that may have been a necessary step keep the working-class feel.
Overall:We’re No Heroes is an outstanding springboard for a much-anticipated Starfinder AP. I could not have been more thrilled with how our campaign began, and if the rest of Fly Free or Die plays out as well as this installment did, it will be one of the most satisfying APs Paizo has to offer.
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.
I hear you. Paizo is a print tabletop roleplaying game publisher. I see the maps as inspirational illustration. The GM can use them to recreate for their game around the table. Paizo has not focused on digital VTT play and has historically used VTT partners to convert the maps and images as best they can. We continue to work to expand and improve our product design for these pandemic times. I don't see Paizo circling back to update already published adventures, but we work to ensure the VTT playability of future products.
How is this adventure? Anyone feel like writing a review? Considering purchasing it but want to know a bit more.
Fun. Not a railroad, but definitely not something I'd recommend for first-timers.
If your players aren't all in on the "This gig sucks" train, they're going to be whining that they're being put in no-win situations. You won't get any gear/disposable income until about 2/3rds of the way through (unless your party are psychos).
