A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for 5th- through 8th-level characters.
The Starfinder Society has identified the source of the Data Scourge, prompting the Stewards to dispatch an armada to end this dangerous digital threat once and for all! Yet, with the Stewards gone and Absalom Station undefended, a mysterious silver mass controlled by the architect of the Data Scourge attacks Absalom Station! Can the Starfinders defend Absalom Station and bring the Data Scourge to an end? Or will Absalom Station and the Starfinder Society fall under the control of an old foe?
If, like me, you're not fortunate to have a regular group methodically playing through PFS or SFS scenarios in orders, there are occasional downsides to just signing up for what's available online. For me, I didn't realise that Hope for the Future was the big capstone scenario to the Season 4 ("Year of the Data Scourge") metaplot. Playing it not only spoiled me on some of the twists in the season's storyline, but it also fell fairly flat because I wasn't really aware/invested in what was happening. The scenario itself is (almost) one long "boss battle" that might have been satisfying if I had played steadily through the season. But them's the breaks! As a scenario, it has more of the feel of a Special--high stakes, lots of combat, and limited role-playing. Not my favourite style of game, but your tastes may vary.
Oh, but awesome cover! The art design team has really picked things up in Season Four.
SPOILERS!:
Hope for the Future takes place on (and technically around) Absalom Station. Apparently, the Starfinder Society has learned that the mysterious Data Scourge virus was engineered by the revived Historia-Prime. The Stewards have dispatched a fleet to the coordinates where the virus' "source location" is and expect to finally confront Historia-Prime in the process. The PCs, and hundreds of other Starfinders, gather together in the Forum in the Lorespire Complex to learn (and grumble about) not getting to be part of the action. There's a good opportunity for some role-playing before the drama actually starts, and I liked the premise of Royo and some of the Society's other tech-adverse NPCs starting a movement to limit the organisation's reliance on technology.
First Seeker Ehu Hadif has just started addressing the assembled crowd when suddenly Absalom Station comes under attack by a massive, ever-shifting, silvery fluid vessel! The Armada tries to defend the station but isn't having much luck. Ixthia the Unbreakable gathers together the PCs and rushes to their shuttle to be part of the action. Curiously though, by the time the shuttle gets into space, the silvery vessel has transformed into a massive space-platform--a near-perfect copy of the Lorespire Complex floating in orbit around Absalom Station! Apparently, Historia-Prime has pulled a sneaky trick and, instead of waiting around for the Stewards to arrive, has launched a sneak attack to take over Absalom Station. As a player, I found all of this fairly confusing, but I can appreciate it as a cool image if the GM is able to really sell it.
From this point, we have a classic "space-dungeon crawl" as the shuttle lands on the surface of the complex and the PCs disembark to investigate. (Ixthia the Unreliable conveniently stays behind to "harry the defences from the outside"). The PCs encounter artificial nanite-composed simulacra of Celita and jinsuls before encountering someone "real"--an android named Hope-01 (from SFS # 4-13). The group better rescue him, because he says he can delete Historia-Prime's digital back-up copies so the PCs can defeat him once and for all. Along the way there are "nanite mounds" which function both as traps and as a resource that PCs can manipulate for advantages (I don't think our group did much with them)
Most of the scenario is taken up by a three-phase combat versus different forms of Historia-Prime in a (admittedly cool) chamber called the Prime Core. History-Prime does lots of classic villain monologuing during the battle, which helps to fill in some of the backstory, but in essence this is a long boss battle. Once it's over, and assuming the PCs win, they face an interesting moral choice. Hope-01 explains he still retains part of the memory and personality of Historia-Prime and could someday evolve into a threat, and should therefore be destroyed himself. The scenario supports either course of action (though subtly rewards the "let him live" choice by providing additional Reputation). There's also a whole thing about the artifact that apparently let Historia-Prime continue to clone his consciousness, but the scenario takes the lazy opt-out of providing no detail about it and saying it'll be locked in an SFS vault.
Anyway, that's the end of the Year of the Data Scourge! I wasn't particularly impressed by the finale, but, as I said, part of that may be me coming in without much background.
A good season finale, fights were a little undertuned.
I loved running this scenario. It's very atmospheric, and really manages to bring an epic end to the season. Glad to see this one put to bed in such a decisive fashion.
Prime is a fantastic villain, and will play well to gm's that love a bit of maniacal self justifying evil egotism. (like me!)
The combat's...maybe I was just rolling like ass, but it felt like despite the number of fights, none of them were particularly exciting.
Also...please space out character changes in dialogue during briefings! It's very hard to rapid fire 6 different voices in a single paragraph!
All in all, I'd highly recommend this. Great to see a season finale that isn't a special!
This was skittertastic! Flump rolls in and is immediately needed for his diplomatic skills, attempting to resolve friction between the Society and his day job bosses. Then, a sudden crisis! Yay a chance to help both!
Great intro, plot-building middle, with some nice, well-played sci-fi tropes, and then a fun, climactic final encounter. I loved the tactical challenges present.
One of those times you are aching for another 6 pages of content.
This was an excellent adventure which brought to life the grievances held by Historia Prime. Everything this season was leading up to this and unlike some previous season's attempt at a resolution of this sort, this delivered and felt earned.
I would have loved an even deeper dive into the psyche of Historia Prime, into the origins of the society and his role there and the "deal" with Guidance. This is all alluded to, but getting those close really made me want to delve deeper and it just wasn't there.
The Combats were all excellent, one of the better realized boss fights in organized play.
This ran us around 4 hours, but it really felt like we were left scratching the surface of what could have been here.
Good scenario though I am lacking a bit of context
Fun scenario, I am missing a lot of plot since didn't manage to actually play a plot-related scenario this season, but it felt like a good ending to the storyline (despite the regrettable fact, that the number of scenarios had been cut down to that degree).
The fights felt quite fitting if anything I feel the scenario could have used a bit of custom art, though it was nice to see a custom map.
I played this one at the higher end of the low tier and we had some level 8s (among them mine) so I can't really comment on the difficulty (though the players were rather proficient).
We finished in about 3 hours but that is not that unusual for this kind of location.
Personally, I appreciate the fact that while this was involving a ship, it did not necessitate any starship combat.
My appreciation for this will likely change a lot once I dive deeper into this season's plot, but I had a good time.
Edit: I ended up running it after I had played it and, I still really enjoy it ^^
Hate to be a whiner, but the scenario is currently missing some basic formatting (bold text, specifically) that would help with readability. There's a big difference between "Creatures:" and "Creatures:" for my rapidly aging eyes.
In fact, it looks like all the text that should be bold is actually just in a different, smaller font.
Hate to be a whiner, but the scenario is currently missing some basic formatting (bold text, specifically) that would help with readability. There's a big difference between "Creatures:" and "Creatures:" for my rapidly aging eyes.
In fact, it looks like all the text that should be bold is actually just in a different, smaller font.
Don't think that bringing up accessibility issues is whining, it genuinely makes things much much harder to read.
To echo CorvusMask, this is definitely not whining. Our bold formatting is there for a purpose and both accessibility and readability are important to us. Thank you for pointing this (odd) error out. As correcting these issues takes more than one team along the way, I can't speak to speed, but I can say I'm looking into it and getting the process started.
Organized Play Line Developer
