A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for 3rd- through 6th-level characters.
At the request of the Dataphiles faction leader, a team of Starfinders travels to Verces to recruit a mysterious hacktivist who has attempted to contact the Society on multiple occasions, hoping that their expertise can help solve the mystery surrounding the ongoing Data Scourge digital attacks. Another wave of digital interference forces the PCs’ ship to crash-land on the planet’s dangerous Darkside. The PCs trek across an inhospitable, frozen landscape toward civilization, hoping there’s still time to complete their mission…
Everyone around my table really got a kick out of the name and numbering sequence. And as a GM I really appreciate when NPCs from APs make guest appearances. I enjoy that kind of cross-pollination among products. My players’ characters got lucky with my poor dice rolling. The optional encounter could very much have gone way south for them. The only complaint I got from everyone was: “Hey, why can’t OUR grenades do that kind of damage?” Given my experience with actual frag grenades, I have to agree.
I do like how it show cases vercesian creatures from alien archives that haven't gotten much screentime unfortunately, and I do like overall premise of this. I am maybe bit annoyed of "reporting conditions where its clear what organized play team wants to happen because its better story telling" though :'D Like I don't have problem with it being relatively easy to finish mission peacefully (aka avoid combat with anything that isn't a animal) or that it requires players being murderhobos or extremely bad luck to get worse option, but like what IF it did happen that majority of players were murderhobos? "Oh I guess plot of this season is then that starfinders fail to make any allies but umm we can't have game over so they beat the data scourge anyway?"
...Ahem got sidetracked there, that isn't really a criticism of scenario as of bit of trend lately. Don't get me wrong I do like that there are variety of scenarios where reporting conditions are whether we successfully recruit allies vs data scourge, but in this case it really does feel like team wouldn't want hactivist storyline end in anti climax of "aand players murdered them because gung ho". I'm fine with other examples I've seen this season, this one just feels weird to me.
Anyway back to scenarios, more flavorful stuff on how these starfinder hating virus attacks cause tons of collateral damage and tasks players get up to is pretty fun :'D The only reason I ended up giving 3 stars is that some of the tasks really require specific kind of characters since otherwise characters might be like "Umm why would we randomly help out a vid team?" and I do like that there are multiple paths players can proceed, but I also had players miss relevancy of things until I nudged them along so I don't think it flows as naturally as it could. Like players did both slumber warehouse and vid team helping thing and didn't initially realized that note they got from first one was code for "you are leet hackers, please come to join" they were like "Wow that was random". Which might be on them yeah but still affected my impression of scenario
Fortunately for Starfinder Society players, seasons generally only run to 24 scenarios. Otherwise #4-26 would be a mission to go check on why the Hadley's Hope terraforming colony has stopped responding...
Waaaaait a sec, is the mysterious hactivist same person who out of blue keeps sending starfinders messages at end of random scenarios speaking with voice modulators and being like "hey do this one thing"?
I never realized that was all same person, but in retrospect, makes sense :p
Waaaaait a sec, is the mysterious hactivist same person who out of blue keeps sending starfinders messages at end of random scenarios speaking with voice modulators and being like "hey do this one thing"?
I never realized that was all same person, but in retrospect, makes sense :p
Waaaaait a sec, is the mysterious hactivist same person who out of blue keeps sending starfinders messages at end of random scenarios speaking with voice modulators and being like "hey do this one thing"?
I never realized that was all same person, but in retrospect, makes sense :p
My PCs have never encountered that hacktivist because, once upon a time, on their first field mission, they chose not to rob a saloon.
Waaaaait a sec, is the mysterious hactivist same person who out of blue keeps sending starfinders messages at end of random scenarios speaking with voice modulators and being like "hey do this one thing"?
I never realized that was all same person, but in retrospect, makes sense :p