Starfinder Adventure Path #39: The Gilded Cage (Fly Free or Die 6 of 6)

Taking break and coming to reread ap part with new eyes is sometimes really handy, while its easier to review aps as whole when you read all six parts in row, its much easier to notice strength and flaws of individual part when you aren't exhausted from reading all of them. In this case I can start that while I haven't run the adventure, I can tell that most of combats don't feel like they are there just for exp besides nyssholora one which feels like randomly out of nowhere pacing wise.(though I think lot of other people might feel otherwise about part 1) So I feel pretty decent about combat encounters even if I don't know how they feel like in practice.

But yeah, after reading this few years ago and rereading now, I kinda have to agree that yeah fly free or die IS railroady. Like, I get feeling that the dev in charge of ap and assigning ap books to different authors had really strong idea what kind of story role each books fills and writers went along with it? I could be wrong, but it feels like best way to run ap as written is to basically at start of campaign give players handout "here are all story arcs/acts, you can prepare in advance thinking how your character will develop into these acts" kind of thing <_< Like it goes beyond the whole "players will go from rag to riches back to rags and then get their revenge" story buying aspect of it, some parts of different ap books kinda make assumptions about characters about do or ap as written goes off rail, even if some of the books provided the minor branching paths pcs could take.

Its not really fault of the book itself since it applies to all six books as whole and I do think its entertainingly written and enjoyable to read, but admittedly pacing wise its kinda weird that this book starts with "After taking revenge on other person who screw them over and learning of bounty, pcs try to live normal life for while and ignore the larger problem". Like yeah in book or movie you could justify with it being clear how untouchable the big bad is, but in trpg campaign players tend to be very proactive. (lot of things like this make me think fly free or die as whole would work better as a video game)

What kinda surprisingly make this worse for me is that book acknowledges this with sidebar, which just makes me think devs should have figured out more natural way to do the part 1. Heck it doesn't help that at time part 1 seems to go with "Look, we all know this is that part of story, this part can't happen if all pcs have great disguises and nobody recognizes them" while still allowing some minor encounters to be avoided with disguises (and then in part 2 allows disguises to work again. Heck pcs really might be masters of disguise considering the heist earlier in the ap). It just feels railroady because the part 1 is derailed if players do anything that deviates from assumption of "pcs try to return to regular work and don't try to disguise themselves 24/7 in public"

Like... The story and writing itself gets across the bittersweet frustration of "man everything is going to s&!~ again, ignoring the bounty doesn't work" but I just don't see what kind of party would actually need all three events to be convinced to do something about it rather than the first one at best? Dr. Gulm one especially feels like railroady (so random passerbies recognize pcs and his medicine instantly gets destroyed when combat starts unavoidably).

Part 2 is pretty much best part of the book and I like Smuggler's Moon. if Smuggler's Moon was its own standalone module it would be easy 3 or 4. But as part of this ap it feels kinda convenient? Its new location that is 1) distant enough that players could hide there and Sinjin couldn't contact other goons 2) it happens to have several people related to Sinjin 3) it happens to be perfectly reasonably to be taken over by pcs 4) one of its rules is that bounty hunting isn't allowed. Like.... I honestly don't mind that its very perfect location for pcs' purposes. What I mind is that its new location disconnected to events or characters from previous ap books. Like I feel like final confrontation with Sinjin should either take place somewhere familiar to PCs or Smuggler's Moon should have been introduced way earlier in earlier jobs or even as temporary hiding place for pcs. If this is space trucker ap then it could have been one of the common stopping points for pcs. Considering that book 5 is the "and now all your good deeds and friendships pay off" book, book 6 feels kinda disconnected from stuff pcs do personally even if its mentioned that their friends can still help them.

Part 3 in itself is just "here is an example plan, but your pcs could really just come across with any kind of other plan, but try to uses statblocks and ideas to help you plan out what happens" which is good. (though I do find it kinda amusing that example plan assumes that players trust certain character to do their job well considering players might have done same thing to him that Sinjin does to him as well xD) And I do like the possible fate of smuggler's moon and variants of it(maybe pcs take control of it, let it stay on status quo, improve things and maybe mend relationship between two characters, etc) and I do like Sinjin's anime transformation(might have preferred more of Yakuza game reference though ;D). So I do think there is lot of great things to the book(ursolha from bestiary are one of my favorite monsters btw) but yeaaaaaaah.

Part 1's pacing in bigger campaign and weird zig zagging between "players can use their skills to minimize harm" and "sorry, but this is spot where things go bad because they get recognized" and "Your players might not need any convincing to go after Sinjin, but here is 15 pages of things going wrong to convince them to do so also so that they have enough exp but hey you can just replace them with assassins if needed to" combined with how part 2 feels disconnected from grander ap is what brings down my rating for this one. I don't think its badly written or anything and most of problems with it as problems with ap as the whole, but I really do feel like smuggler's moon would work better as standalone or gm should introduce it as much earlier as much more important location to pcs for this book to work better.