Starfinder One-Shot #2: The Great Grav Train Robbery

The Great Grav-Train Robbery takes place on the world of Pan in the isolated Tabori Cluster. A mysterious artifact has been discovered in a mine and is on the way via grav-train to the area’s largest city (and known stronghold for the criminal Ixo Syndicate). But a bloke named Aramesh Maageri has another idea, and has organised a crew to steal the artifact right under the noses of the train’s staff and passengers! The pre-gen PCs, of course, are Aramesh and the crew he’s assembled, and like a good heist movie, they each have a role to play (“The Face”, “The Muscle”, “The Hacker”, etc.). The adventure starts fast, as each PC is dangling from a rope attached to an enercopter about to swoop down over the speedy train. At the GM’s discretion, the players can each have a turn with a “background flashback” to describe how they were recruited for the mission. Otherwise, they’re thrown right into the first obstacle: how to get past a nuar security guard (violence or stealth being likely options).

Although the PCs know which cargo car on the train the artifact is being stored, they need to acquire access codes to it by obtaining the personal datapad of Brom Lancaster, the train’s chief of security. Brom’s currently drinking in the train’s VIP car, so the PCs need to figure out how to get close enough to him and swipe it without anyone noticing (as this is a heist crew, not a tactical combat infantry squad!). This plays out in a well-designed mini-game that has each player take on a role (like “The Conversationalist” or “The Distraction”) and making skill checks until Brom is sufficiently vulnerable to the Pickpocket moving in. But there’s a smart twist: the PCs aren’t the only ones after the artifact, or Brom’s datapad! A rival “gentleman thief” named Royce Flynn is present, so the situation plays out a bit like a Chase, and the adventure certainly contemplates Royce getting the datapad first.

Whether the PCs get to the cargo car ahead of Royce or behind him, once the access codes to the creates are inputted in Brom’s datapad, every container unlocks at once—including one containing a live mountain eel! This begins a pretty exciting scene as Royce’s plan was similar to the PCs—get the artifact and evacuate via enercopter. His crew’s enercopter is the first to arrive, so not only do the PCs need to deal with the mountain eel, they need to deal with gunfire and the risk of Royce escaping with the artifact. There are some fun additions to this scene, like a grav-crane that can reposition crates or even hold the enercopter in place. As the battle progresses, it becomes clear why the PCs’ plan has *their* enercopter hold off—the grav-train is about to enter a tunnel! Royce’s exploding transport is a cool transition to the next scene.

In the last major part of the adventure, the PCs presumably have the artifact but their exploits in the cargo hold haven’t gone unnoticed by ship’s security. The heist gang have to improv an escape plan because the next stop after the tunnel is the train’s final destination, a grav-train station. Three options are presented to the players, and they’re all well-detailed in the adventure (and will play out very differently). First, they can unpacked a hover cruiser (a floating sports car, essentially) and try to make a run for it once the train clears the tunnel. This starts an exciting vehicle chase scene as the Ixo Syndicate pursues on armored hovercycles. Second, they can decide on the “guns a-blazing” approach and try to fight their way out. But this won’t be a standard Starfinder combat—there’s a gargantuan mech stored in the cargo hold, and the PCs can take it! I’ve never done any mech combat in Starfinder, but it’s certainly a memorable way to have a big ending. Third, they can decide to bluff their way out of the situation—this is the one my group chose. Players can’t make various skill checks to sort-of retrospectively justify their disguises and other steps they took (like erasing security videos) to get past the train detective. But if they fail, they’re almost certainly going to be arrested.
The adventure concludes with a very brief two-paragraph epilogue that essentially leaves things open for the group to continue on if they’d like.

I ended up playing “The Muscle” in the adventure, so I generally left all the heist-related decision-making to the others. One of the issues I noticed is that we all brought different preconceptions to what was realistic to expect—whether security would hear the violence against the first guard, how long the train was, whether it’d be possible to pretend to be civilian passengers, etc. This isn’t really the adventure’s fault, but it’d probably be good for the GM to emphasise from the beginning that this is a movie-style heist, and although the players shouldn’t be stupid, they shouldn’t sweat the small-stuff and should focus on the big picture of doing exciting things in pursuit of their goal.