A nascent cosmic entity stirs deep within one of the Pact Worlds planets. To aid the god’s birth, its most devoted followers search the Ghost Levels of Absalom Station for a sufficient power source—a strange pocket dimension existing alongside the hub of the Pact Worlds. As the entity’s emergence sends ripples across space time, a group of heroes becomes trapped in the Ghost Levels! With dangerous creatures and ominous power surges threatening the station, the heroes must team up with the residents of Little Akiton to investigate these horrifying new foes, stop their meddling—and stay alive!
A Cosmic Birthday is a complete Starfinder Second Edition Playtest adventure for 1st-level characters written by Jenny Jarzabski, and features fan-favorite Starfinder creatures updated to Second Edition, all-new cosmic horrors, and a mix of classic dungeon crawling and narrative-rich sandbox adventures. This adventure is designed to introduce the Starfinder Second Edition Playtest rules, giving players like you a chance to shape the new edition through feedback surveys about your playtest experience! It also takes place during a pivotal moment in Starfinder history—even if you miss the playtest window, you won’t want to miss the adventure!
NOTE: This is a review in-progress. While I have read the adventure cover-to-cover, I am only about halfway through it as a player. Thus, it is possible that my opinion may change after I either complete it or run it myself as a GM.
The structure of this adventure is a socially-driven sandbox sandwiched between two bite-sized dungeon crawls, with a very intense final string of encounters at its climax. It runs the tonal gamut from cozy slice-of-life to sweeping cosmic horror with some classic D&D tropes sprinkled in for flavor, all knitted together with Jarzabski's usual compassion, humor, and because-it's-cool-and-I-felt-like-it inclusions. Others have expressed confusion over its organization and hazy timeline, but neither of those were a problem for me.
Unlike my other reviews, where I rate conservatively and recommend GM-side improvements, this one receives a generous rating with a caveat: it's possible to make it suck if you don't know what you're doing. While every single adventure benefits from being read cover-to-cover before launching, this one especially needs to be understood holistically before ever hitting the table. If you want it to shine, you need to give it the prep time it deserves, and you need to be willing to lean into every NPC and strange creature and spontaneous roleplay moment that emerges. This adventure is absolutely not a script, and running it as such will sap the life out of it. This goes for hostile encounters as well: a few enemies fall flat if you run them as simple HP removal devices, and others have nasty little gimmicks attached that can absolutely blindside your party if you aren't careful. This module lives and dies by the love and care you put into it, moreso than any other playtest adventure.
So, while I personally rate it as a four-star adventure with a whole lot of heart, it could easily drop to a three or two if you don't put in your heart in return. It also might bounce off players who don't care for dungeon crawls or human interest stories.
Well, I say "human" interest, but let's be real: it's Starfinder.
So there is a lot to like, but it does feel like "playtest" adventure.
Liminal space take on Ghost Levels is good and fascinating, but it does lead to combat encounters feeling like grab bag of random elements to test out variety of stuff. It does fit liminal space idea, but it definitely feels play test-y
Anyway, my party had mostly absurd amount of luck (lot of 6 hp enemy fights resulted in things like "soldier attacks with area weapon, rolls 8 on damage dice, every enemy fails reflex save) so they managed to avoid lot of hard parts in this adventure (like they critted animated statue on first attack), but there are definitely lot of tough fights mixed in and some encounters could be really grueling with wrong skills in party like one of final hazards in adventure, considering that it has hardness 12 if party wanted to break it without skills.
Biggest problem with adventure is editing really, it was unclear in adventure itself whether Newborn had born yet (Midwives shouldn't exist if it hadn't hatched, but certain characters speak about newborn as if its birth was imminent) and nothing in adventure itself clarified its basically meant to be in the "egg has hatched, but its still stuck in placenta" stage. Chapter 2 was also confusing to read since it was mixing of "roleplay with quest giver, quest they give" moments where it went back and forth rather than either listing all locations and then all quests or location followed by quest given.
Part 2 even with all editing problems IS the most fun part of adventure though, there are lot of memorable moments and npcs are given enough depth that it is easy to run them and thus they are easier to actually be endearing and I appreciate extra information given on them as well which isn't necessary for running adventure, but gives them extra depth.
(also the heist mission was weird to run for party without any of assumed skills and I soon figured out it does miss lot of information that would be helpful for pcs to plan the heist x'D Also I think as written it says "turning off generator gives alarm, also if turn off generator and improperly disable remote ability to turn it on causing it to explode, that pings alarm" is either editing error or redundancy if it really is meant that its impossible to disable generator without alarm ping)
You're not paying $25 for a single level. I think they said this one was the size of a normal stand alone adventure, which tend to run 1-4 or 7-10 at the same price point. Probably this is 1-4.
Wheel of Monsters is $6 and presumably a single level, Empires Devoured is $25 and probably 10-13.
The most recent Paizo Live confirmed that A Cosmic Birthday runs levels 1-3 and spits PCs out at 4th level. Which is to say, the standard advancement rate for an adventure. Presumably Empires Devoured will likewise run levels 10-12 and spit PCs out at 13th level.
The scenarios sound like they're closer to a Starfinder Society scenario or possibly even bounties - think more in terms of a single combat encounter.
Just for clarity's sake does this adventure take place before, during, or after the events of ** spoiler omitted **
Oooh, good thought. Based on the preview they showed at PaizoCon, I'm guessing after the scenario in question - it had a little "you're probably wondering how we got to here" section, that spoke about that scenario's events in the past tense (and more, besides, making me think there's at least a little time between that scenario and this adventure.)
On the topic of being able to playtest without having to buy the new SF2 modules, can people give feedback on the SF2 playtest classes while running them alongside PF2 characters in a PF2 adventure?
On the topic of being able to playtest without having to buy the new SF2 modules, can people give feedback on the SF2 playtest classes while running them alongside PF2 characters in a PF2 adventure?
There's specific guidance about what elements of PF2 to use. PF2 classes are one of the elements they ask you not to playtest with to focus on SF2 elements and maximize their data gathering and relevance.
Roll20 has part of the Adventure for free up, the maps and tokens just have to buy the adventure PDF, and use Demiplanes character sheet or use the Paizo one.
Yeah, playtest should be free, and I would even say they should include a playtest adventure for free, because that will make the playtesting process much easier and yeah, like Oceanshieldwolf said, playtesting is basically volunteer labour.
Roll20 has part of the Adventure for free up, the maps and tokens just have to buy the adventure PDF, and use Demiplanes character sheet or use the Paizo one.
I have lots of experience with Roll20, but not Demiplane. Can anyone give me more info about how I would use Demiplane's character sheet with Roll20?
(If this is documented somewhere, a link is fine. Thanks!)
So… I think they’re changing some of the established numbers around the Station cause the opening preamble say that’s it’s home to “Billions” of people and last time I checked the pop. was sitting at 2.1 mil.
I mean, the playtest adventures for SF2e so far are pretty much regular adventures, but using PF2e player core rules and intended for testing SF2e playtest content. So its not going to change much until release because its mostly player content that will change. Granted out of all of them, this is the most "playtest" feeling one because of wide variety of creatures it uses.
Pathfinder Maps, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
The playtest itself is free. The Adventures still cost money, but if you want to write your own, there's nothing stopping you. Adventure writers still need to be paid.
