A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for 5th- through 8th-level characters.
Desperate to pinpoint the location of the mysterious mastermind behind the Data Scourge digital attacks, the Starfinders attend an interfaith religious summit to connect with representatives of the Church of Triune. When religious zealots attack the summit, the Starfinders are caught in the crossfire! Can the Starfinders defend the summit's religious leaders? Or will feuding faiths shatter their burgeoning alliances?
I live about five miles away from an organization that tries to have interfaith conferences on a semi-regular basis. The concept of religions getting together, sharing notes, and comparing their various paths was *directly* in my wheelhouse, almost like the scenario was written for someone with my interests.
As always, this review is conditional pending running the scenario, which I am looking forward to in the future, personal schedule permitting.
Review:
When we sat down to play this with two soldiers, an operative, and Navasi we felt at first like we were going to fail the mission miserably even with good role-play.
By half-way through the scenario, it became clear that it wasn't 'what class our characters were' but 'what *faith* (if any) our characters had and how does it relate to other religions.
The novel ways each of the representatives presented their faiths, as much for a war of hearts as for novel ways of looking at deities was impressive.
The idea of approaching the unconventional representatives, and watching their entourage for *how they reacted* to what the representative was saying was the best balance of how to depict 'new directions' versus 'old guard'.
Shadowbringer Nevis was, despite the overtones of being of an 'evil' faith, one of the most interesting takes on an 'evil' deity I've seen, and also the most 'modern' or 'plausible in-setting' shifts of a public representative for a faith.
The hope is that we'll see the Shadowbringer again in the future, because there is more than just physical scars that people have to deal with.
There were no 'clunkers' among the representatives, imo, though personally the missed opportunity to have an Arshean representative who was socially reserved is something that might be touched upon in the future.
Word count is a harsh mistress in such a scenario, and hopefully we'll soon have a Second Interfaith Conference!
Disclosure, got chance to play this at author table and now I've read it
So obviously good experience on player side will affect my opinion on scenario, we had non stereotypical diplomacy group of two soldiers, operative and pregen envoy, but everyone was contributing equally to roleplaying and diplomacy to great success :D It ended up playing along with how all major npcs in this scenario play around with stereotypes.
Normally I'm annoyed whenever LG/LN is portrayed as jerkish(not the case in this scenario though) and I think I might have been bit put off about how majority of NPCs have alignments that don't fit their religions if I had read this first, but on player side you won't know about things like that. Like starfinder likes to play around with idea of "How do religions behave when gods are real, but clerics aren't really a thing anymore and priests can be of any class". I'd still think that most of people who don't fit religion's general teachings would be either getting minor curses from god or not advance super highly in hierarchy, but I think the reasoning for presence of three unusual worshippers of deity in delegation make sense. I get feeling that gm might have in middle of roleplaying either given us bonuses for roleplaying well or misremembered details about mechanics since influence scene seems harder than I remember, but we did roll consistently well so that might be it as well.
And honestly, how scenario plays around with expectations is fun so I ended up not minding that there isn't "typical example to contrast the unusual characters" here, I think lot of gms might make mistake of not leaning onto that aspect of scenario if their players walked away feeling confused, but the all npcs are fun and quite philosophical.
Once you get over what this isn't, what is is pretty good.
The mission briefing for this one gets you all jazzed up and ready to go confront the big bad guy for the season...only for you to end up needing the assistance of some priests and end up getting dragged into a big ole Faith-a-palooza.
I am of two minds about the key scene in this one
Specific Scenario Spoilers:
On the one hand, I really appreciated how all the priests were playing against type. On the other hand, it couldn't help but feel very "an evil organization sends its least evil member to gain acceptance before coming back full on evil." It's unsettling to say the least that this ends up being the argument made by the scenario's villains! It got me pretty good and the NPCs were fleshed out well enough that they were joys to roleplay as, which can often be a challenge in scenarios like this one.
Overall, I really enjoyed myself running this one and the bait and switch aside, so did my players.
This scenario had a delightful social influence encounter with intriguing priests, each of which had their own unique twist on their faith. It also had a fun investigative sequence, a plot twist and two fairly challenging fights. My favorite character by far was Shadowbringer Nevis, the best Kuthite I have ever seen in either Pathfinder or Starfinder lore. However, we also really enjoyed visiting with the Damaritosh representative.
A Sporty Aside:
Being Minnesotans, we were vastly amused by the ice-hockey loving Vesk. Given that author Scott Young is Canadian who is also from ice hockey territory, we felt much sporty kinship over this quirk, and my party puckishly made hockey puns all night.
One of the PCs I GMed for was so moved by the description of Iomedae and fighting the good fight that they converted on the spot. I always like it when scenarios help PCs make self-discoveries and character growth.
Yes, this one runs a little short (about 3.5 hours if you luxuriate in the roleplay, which we totally did) but I considered that a bonus since our venue closes early. I did ding this scenario for poor editing and for not having more mechanical effects for the party also influencing some of the the non-featured delegates, but all-in-all I found this scenario quite enjoyable.
Bring back Shadowbringer Nevis in future scenarios!
I had a blast as a player. I tend to play a solider but the local GM's always find a way for me to be successful at social functions and this one made for some great RP. My solider was convinced to become a follower of Iomedae. I think that if you assumed that the leaders were going to follow the strict tenants of each faith that might have caused issues. I felt that each leader was given their own personality as well which was fun to see. and the combats were actually pretty dangerous for my level 7 solider.
It isn't in Pact Worlds, but might have been commissioned for it. I know I've seen it around, but don't have it in my "library," which suggests to me that it's possibly just been used for promotional stuff, like the temp cover above.
It isn't in Pact Worlds, but might have been commissioned for it. I know I've seen it around, but don't have it in my "library," which suggests to me that it's possibly just been used for promotional stuff, like the temp cover above.
Pact Worlds Pawn Set, listed as Human Hellknight. Not in the Pact Worlds book proper, which leads me to think it's originally from an AP volume.
Back on the topic of this scenario: So you're telling me that Starfinder Society gets into high shenanigans at a Triune summit, what, two months before the Drift crashes?
Back on the topic of this scenario: So you're telling me that Starfinder Society gets into high shenanigans at a Triune summit, what, two months before the Drift crashes?
No, no, I don't see anything going wrong here.
I may need to rethink sending my Formian Soldier and his malware infested datapad... eh, what's the worst that could happen?
I may need to rethink sending my Formian Soldier and his malware infested datapad... eh, what's the worst that could happen?
Even knowing the recent revelations, now there's a wee part of me that wishes the entire Data Scourge could be traced back to a single viral malware-infected Abysshead plushie.
Sudden wacky longshot theory that I'm going to toss out now before I'm (100% dead certain) proved wrong when this hits tomorrow:
The Drift Crisis will be caused by...
Spoiler:
the Year Four Big Bad attempting to upload the virus into the entire Drift beacon network as a platform to launch itself into Triune itself. Triune hits the kill switch to stop it.
