Starfinder Society Scenario #4-08: Precious Cargo

I ran this for 3 players last night in high tier. Many of Kaushal Avan Spellfire's comments are spot on (having DCs for the ability to disable some of the items would be nice), but it was definitely a fun scenario. Due to a variety of factors, my table started almost an hour after the slot started, and we still finished 30 minutes before the end of the slot.

The last handout made my wife cry with how poignantly and hopefully written it was. Bravo.

Too hard to review without spoilers...but...

Hard to run 'on the fly', you'll need to read it, then read it again.

I produced a simple schematic of the ship to aid understanding.

The mechanical parts can be a bit janky, and people can get hung up on self inflicted red herrings.

***

With that said, excellent and unique adventure - totally recommend.

I've run this at two different conventions now and both sets of players and myself have had a blast with this scenario. Having a scenario where its possible to talk your way through without combat is always a nice change and the moral quandaries and philosophical discussions were a delight to see my players work through.

Some groups that prefer their combat to talky-talky stuff might not enjoy this as well, but I had a lot of fun running this and its easily one of my top 10 favorite scenarios.

I GM'ed this one in low Tier
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Before going into detail, I'm not that able to talk about the difficulties of Combat encounters since one High Tier Character kinda stomped them (while the others got at least pummeled a bit), but I'd say they are quite standard even though much more flavorful than most.

The big pro of this adventure is the setting, story and RP. It was a lot of fun to gm and my players seemed quite happy, too. This was especially the case when they noticed, that not everything has to be killed. I really don't want to include many spoilers, but the scenario is amazing in portraying the "antagonist". I really don't want to say anything more.

The negatives in this scenario are on the mechanical parts. As a GM a bit of improvisation is necessary. Some things aren't described in detail, others are just missing and the Flip-Mats are functional at best. This gives the GM some space to interpret but on the other hand will also shift the adventure for some groups. These things aren't that bad but also sadly disqualify an otherwise great scenario for 5 Stars. A neutral point might be one encounter, which is purely narrative without map and can be inserted at different points (at least that's how I read it). This can either be an opportunity or burden depending on the GM.

To summarize: I can definitely encourage RP focused people to look into this, you will have a lot of fun. I would give 4.5 Stars if I could.

I GM'ed this for a high-tier table.

Precious Cargo is a tier 1-4 scenario that engages with a well-trodden but interesting concept in Sci-Fi: The concept of artificial intelligence. Set aboard an automated cargo freighter, the scenario offers a heartfelt and poignant story that is left open-ended enough that groups do not feel rail-roaded toward a particular conclusion. As much of the scenario’s strengths are roleplay-based, it would be impossible to discuss them in details for risk of spoilers. That said, the antagonist of the story is an interesting and sympathetic one, which I very much enjoyed playing.

Mechanically, Precious Cargo is a mixed bag. Although the rules are fairly straightforward, several situations possess murky details about how to resolve them. Furthermore, the flip mats selected for the combat encounters do not feel as well-matched to the scenes as they could have been, and a general lack of direction about where characters should begin, and where NPCs should appear, makes setting scenes difficult. That said, the combat encounters are well-designed and imaginative, easy to scale, and fun to narrate. Better still, each encounter has multiple ways to resolve it, which rewards clever or thoughtful groups.

Overall, Precious Cargo is a fun, if somewhat quick, scenario that works equally as well as a set piece or side story in a larger campaign (such as the Fly Free or Die adventure path). Sci-Fi enthusiasts will enjoy this telling of a familiar story, and some players may just enjoy the opportunity to punch a finicky 3D printer shooting junk at them.