A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for 7th- through 10th-level characters.
When pahtra pop star and rebel leader Miiyu contacts the Starfinder Society for help securing a base of operations for the Pulonis Liberation Front in the war-ravaged wastelands of Vesk-6, a team of Starfinders is dispatched under cover of researching the dangerous storm known as the Shriek. But when the Starfinders meet up with Miiyu, they discovers there's more to this mission than meets the eye! Dangerous double-agents beholden to a hidden power hide among the Pulonis Liberation Front, manipulating the group from within, and it's up to the Starfinders to help Miiyu root out the last of these murderous traitors.
I wanted to make somethings clear before I started
A) I played this as one of 6 characters on Foundry VTT
B) THere was a 4 hour timeblock assigned to this running
C) High Tier
I recently had the pleasure of playing this scenario on Foundry. Even from the description I realised it was some form of follow up to an earlier scenario I had not played. What I came to learn a bit further in is that it was attempting to mix an investigative scenario with mech combat. Sadly I found that one of things was crushed by the other.
Investigative or mystery scenarios can be interesting, however they are nearly always timesinks. People ask odd questions, npcs have to explain more than normal and often there are artifical gates in case the pcs solve the mystery too early. Ie a death, a piece of boxed text and so forth.In this scenario you gain 3-4 pieces of key boxed information from the npcs of which one is a killer.. and all the one line sentences point to that person. Its not a bad way to reveal information, but comes across as a little unnatural, as there feels there is not a way to investigate the killer outside of these boxed text dumps.
Tangled up in this story is a Mech combat. Ill be honest. Ive never read the mech combat rules, I doubt many have. THis is my first ever encounter with it in Starfinder. I didnt know what to expect, however the dm was very excited about the prospect. However much to my chagrin , the mech stuff occured basically at the terminus of the scenario. I didnt really have the focus at this point to appreciate it or all the rules I suddenly had to learn. THe problem is that all the combats feel like they come towards the end of the scenario and that means the pacing feels very off and rushed. The investigation as all investigations are is time consuming as I mentioned earlier and while the combats are logical where they are they feel almost pushed in to give the obligatory amount of combat encounters.
In the end by the time of the mech combat we were close to one hour and a half overtime. Im not faulting the dm at all. While we did had a player or two who was very excitable and distracting , he did push us through the scenario. It was more the fact we just didnt get to appreciate what we were given until .. it was gone.
Im not sure mixing an investigation and a unknown mech combat was a great idea.
I would never advise running this in a convention slot.. ever. Even a standard slot at a store might find playing through this in time hard. Its a great scenario, with interesting elements... but it has one or two big issues with pacing and encounter location.
I ran this scenario 6 times at this years gen con and I have to say it was an incredible experience every single time.
This scenario features the society slowly but surely choosing a side in the civil war on Vesk 6 aka Pulonis and dealing with the repercussions of the SFS earlier actions in the Veskarium back when we were desperate for help during the fallout from the Scoured Stars incident.
This is a really thick and heavy scenario despite being the normal length.
It has it all, travel adventures, a detailed look at previously unexplored locales, intrigue and a mystery to solve (there is a traitor after all) and of course super cool plot reveals and our first foray into mech combat.
Highly recommend but give yourself an extra hour to finish up.
This scenario has plenty of options for fun roleplay, some interesting combat, a fun 'whodunnit', and then swaps in for some mech combat.
It was fun to see a designer do something a little bit fresh and not just run what is now becoming formulaic 'social combat', but instead get the players themselves having to think and come up with what they think happened and how they feel about that.
The mech combat was nice to see, but this is where we bogged a bit as the rules are not really well understood although the cheat sheets really helped.
It took us about 5 hours when we normally take about 3.5 hours per scenario, so it may run long.
Please note that while this is technically a May release, it will not release to the public until June 1. More information can be found in this thread.
