A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for 3rd- through 6th-level characters.
When an archaeological expedition co-managed by the Starfinder Society and Cahadusar University is imperiled by the Firewings gang, the Society wastes no time dispatching a pair of formidable Starfinders to save the day. When an internal inquiry reveals these Starfinders are cunning criminals, a fresh team of agents is sent to the Marixah Republic to bring these malfeasants to justice, put an end to their schemes, and salvage the archaeological expedition!
This is the third scenario in the ongoing story of the Year of Redemption's Rise. While it is recommended you begin with Intro: Year of Redemption's Rise, the remaining scenarios in the Year of Redemption's Rise can be played in any order.
There comes a time when you start to wonder if the meta-plot behind the game just doesn't like the Starfinder society. Are they trying to make a meta commentary that the organization should be defunded as there are so many bad eggs in it? And then the special mechanics with the bad guys, it is so easy to overlook with an inexperienced GM. Another miss by Starfinder by having a strange and unique mechanic buried in the text blocks where it can be missed. It becomes another module that is not really memorable except for the starship combat at the end.
Which is just another terrible example of starship combat. Our GM remarked that in each and every example where they have run this. The only option for players is to run and high tail it out of there. There are no other choices as the ships are exponentially outmatched against each other.
I just don't understand why Starfinder keeps trying to push starship combat when the majority of encounters with starships are just terribly unfun. Play it as part of the series but don't expect much out of it.
...Yeah I had pretty much fun time with this. Reading it it seems fairly dense information wise, but there aren't really complicated subsystems or such, the scenario just uses its pages efficiently to flesh out lot of information in the scenario meaning there is lot to pull over it for sake of roleplaying if you want to. Storywise lot of good things happen, design wise things felt good, I haven't run scenario (I first played it and now months later read it) but I'm super impressed by what I read.
I don't particularly remember how the starhship combat went, but I don't remember it being particularly painful. Its one of those "only one big gun" ships though and I was bit bummed I couldn't use my starship boon x'D
Having to deal with "starfinders" doing shit again is kind of tedious and lets you question why we still have these people in the society.
From an encounter standpoint the starshipcombat does its best to show the players EVERYTHING wrong with the system with giving them a bad ship (no turret and no aft weapon and the sides being weak enough to not really be there) and having the enemy have a superior ship (it can fire 2 weapons nearly every turn while the PCs can ever only roll one attack and have better statistics in every relevant kind.)
Okay, I'm definitely bummed that this scenario seems to be over looked considering its actually pretty well written :'D
I have enough trouble getting people through a regular starship combat, much less one where they're in a drake and you're fighting with a garbage scow.
Spoiler:
We did not have a good group for starship combat. My vanguard was the entire effective flight crew, and we wound up just sticking the mystic on the pedal like a brick ovepowering the engines/shields and running for the hills. Even so i'm having ahard time envisioning a path to not total obliteration there.
