A Starfinder Society Scenario designed for 3rd- through 6th-level characters.
The Drift Crisis has ended, but not all is as it was. Mysterious paths through the Drift, termed "Drift lanes," have emerged, one near Triaxus. It is this Triaxian navigational anomaly that Fitch, leader of the Wayfinders, tasks the Starfinders with exploring. Things are not so simple though, as a gang of pirates has already claimed the Drift lane as their own and fiercely defend their prize. The Starfinders must deal with this threat, as well as attempting peaceful negotiations with whoever happens to be on the other side of this strange new tunnel through the Drift.
When I played it I had one of the worst experience ever and I would give it 0 stars if I could.
As a GM it worked far better and I would have given it solid 3 stars, so overall that would be a 2 star rating.
More details below
Spoiler:
This scenario contains a starship combat, a starship chase and then some mostly diplomatic skill checks. There is no ground combat and most of the skills are of the "one roll per party" kind, so if you are not the envoy you can just spend 2 hours of scenario doing nothing and watching other people play. When I played my vanguard I did a total of 2 rolls outside of starship actions. Also some the role-playing scenes (the Drift Lab and the searching of the ship) felt very weird and could easily be removed to add a ground combat.
Also if most of the scenario is skill challenges make them challenges in which everyone can participate and not one roll per party.
I thought that this scenario wasn't too bad. Contrary to a previous review, our group didn't find this one a slog at all. We actually finished in in 2 hours. It went very VERY fast.
It does involve starship combat, and I know that its not everyone's cup of tea, but I don't mind it usually as long as the group knows what they are doing or has a GM that is moving stuff along. I didn't think much of the starship combat at first, but after the scenario was over, we discussed it as a group and they made me realize it was actually a pretty good gimmick to shake things up a bit. I do feel like starship combat is more interesting when there are other things going on. This is a minor one, but I think it does improve the whole ordeal.
RP and social interactions were plentiful with it being a new place not overly familiar to the pact worlds. Skill checks were pretty varied as well. No regular combat in this one. I think this scenario may have actually benefitted from a fight because of the short runtime, but maybe it takes longer for other groups who aren't as familiar with starship combat.
I'm interested in the new development with the drift, and I hope that SFS does something interesting with this if they bring it back. Hopefully its not just a one-and-done idea.
This scenario has one of the best starshipcombats in the last few years.
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Spoiler:
]It has 0 ground combat[
] - If you can accept that gimmick, it is a quite solid diplomatic/starship scenario. It will not be for everyone, but some of the choices were a quite refreshing experience.
This review is for Drift Scars; If this was my first exposure to starfinder I would not play this system. It is such a negative experience as it needs an experienced GM and experienced players in order to play it without getting bored or easily frustrated. It is needlessly complex with multiple star ship encounters that just drag on. The comic relief as the outsider "Captain" gives you coded hints that are all disguised as restaurant themes that are juvenile, not humorous and insulting. They turn a tense situation into a badly written joke. It's not humorous, it's pedantic, it slows an already complicated system down further. Meanwhile; later on in the episode you have a lot of skill checks to convince people to keep the drift lanes open. The skill checks are almost identical to the same diplomatic ones from 1st season. Nothing new here and it feels like an episode of TV where they run the same script from season one in season 6 and expect no one to notice. Again, it's very boring and uninspiring. And the ending is a choo choo, you are on a railroad and have no creativity to get off. When you talk about world building you need to have a little bit of grounded reality and having dozens upon dozens of space pirates converge at your location where there is nothing you can do other than follow the confines of the modules to make it for a static encounter. There are no heroic moments, no feelings of victory, no joy in this mod as it drags on and on and on. We would have players drop out of the VTT during this adventure as they just were bored and decided to try anything else. At one point I was hoping the space pirates would destroy our ship just so it would be over.
As the start to a new season I'm very disappointed. It is boring and poorly written and drags. I could have chosen anything to play at Piazo con and I was so disappointed by choosing this mod as it was a joyless slog to even attempt to play through.
As a side note: This adventure is already overly complicated so why would you put a complicated mini gambling game in it. And for the hell it puts you through with complicated rules, borning scenarios, and tedious situations there is no cool loot. It's just terrible all around. SMH!!
whats elorain and is this first time they were mentioned? I kinda initially thought "oh thats mentioned in 1e right?" then just now realized "wait no that was different right? So what ARE these?"
Elorains are the "clockwork automatons" native to the Nebula Union's system. They're introduced (with a passing mention) in Ports of Call but this scenario is the first to name them (and provide art for the system's resident species).
