A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for 5th- through 8th-level characters.
For weeks, Absalom Station's news circuit has been dominated by a series of high-profile antiquities and art thefts perpetrated by a gang of violent Starfinders. An investigation by Radaszam, leader of the Acquisitives faction of the Starfinder Society, quickly determined these Starfinders were imposters. Determined to catch the audacious crooks and restore the good name of the Starfinder Society in one swoop, Radaszam has teamed up with AbadarCorp and Station Security to enact a sting operation, designed to publicly catch the true culprits red-handed. On Radaszam’s orders, a team of Starfinders are dispatched to find and infiltrate the gang of Starfinder imposters, uncover the mastermind behind their audacious plot, and bring them down—all while making a good impression on any media that arrive on the scene! The reputation of the Starfinder Society is in your hands!
This is the final 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.
Overall, this was a decent scenario. We played it over two sessions, and like others have said, it does run on the long side. It could have been tightened up a bit by cutting some sections. In fact, our GM even cut the vehicle chase and it still ran long.
Without getting into too many spoilers, the first part of this has you trying to make connections to get into a gang. I thought the setup was ok and the writing was good.
The gang compound was the best part. I liked how the stealthy characters could snoop around, while the charisma characters could chat up the NPCs. The NPCs were pretty interesting to deal while in the compound. There was even some combat for the combat classes.
After the compound is where the wheels start to come off. The sting happens and through incompetence from Starfinder Society leadership, your cover is blown and you are outed immediately. Some NPCs you don't have to fight, but then others no matter how much you improved your relations in the prior section will still fight. You then have a vehicle chase which doesn't really matter, then track down the gang leader and another NPC and deal with them.
Not a bad scenario, but could've used a bit more time to tighten things up.
I played and GMed this one.
Overall this is a nice scenario, there are a lot of abilities to roleplay and different characters can shine.
BUT
This scenario runs far too long for a normal 4 hour slot. Running it took me over 5 hours and when I played it took us over 6 hours, in both cases that was with only 4 players.
The vehicle chase feels rather pointless and doesn't really add anything. Adding a subsystem in an already overcrowded scenario without any major payoff was a big enough mistake for me to retract 1 star.
I am not sure why the previous reviewer says that some PCs, as a result of failing a skill check, get locked out and unable to continue. If this actually happened, it was a GM error of interpretation. This was certainly not intended and should never be the case for any SFS scenario.
Depending on the party, the combats can certainly feel overly easy, as other reviewers have pointed out. And there are certainly some handwavy logic-defying bits that the GM will have to smooth over. Despite some execution issues, I like the concept.
GMs:
This scenario will tend to run long relative to the nominal 4-hour benchmark. For GMs under strict time constraints, try your best to get out of the training area before the 2.5-hour mark, or earlier if you get the sense that the party does combats slow. Expedite the chase sequence, which is largely uninteresting but can be done fast.
This module lacks equity. Early on you have a skill challenge and if you do not make it you miss out on a good portion of the mod, while those who passed the check are able to continue. It is not a good mechanic as it just promotes boredom and frustration as you are mechanically locked out of the mod.
The module takes a lot of prep from the GM as there are a bunch of faceless NPCs you can interact with. Depending on the skill of the GM this part is endearing or maddening. Too much of this module relies on the skill of the GM to bring magic to this adventure and its asking a lot.
The module also railroads you again and again. As part of the adventure you get bagged and tagged and sent to a black site. This is a mod for 5-8 level adventures so you have a lot of tricks and such to learn where the black site is. But the module needs you to not know where the black site is, so nothing you do works. As in your Class, Feats, Spells,and Skills just mechanically do not work and you do not get a chance to even roll for it. The answer is NO. If this was a 1-4 level adventure then this would make more sense but as a mid level adventure it rings hollow.
Needlessly frustrating and joyless. Feels like a throw back to 1st Edition D and D where the best part of a mod was searching room from room and finding magic items and gear you could then use in the module. As a season final I was extremely disappointed and can not recommend this module at all.
The tiles making up the map on p16 are incorrectly aligned and the resulting image has been unfortunately flattened into a single image instead of retaining separate tiles, so unless/until this is fixed, GMs on VTTs will need to use the actual flip-tiles product rather than extracting the tiles from the PDF.
It's sorta interesting to me that at the end of the Redemption's Rise arc, the lesson the Starfinder Society seems to have learned from all its troubles is...
Spoiler:
"The real problem is that we need better public relations."
