SFS #1-22: The Protectorate Petition

[BigNorseWolf]

I did like the scenario

It was great to see starfinders doing actual archeology

The background was a little more convoluted than i think is going to come accross completely in the evidence.

A magical society

Technologist attempted insurection

Tehnologist successful insurection

Wiping out the magic users

Rise of the robots and wiping out the robots

[Dracomicron]

I realized fairly quickly that the Copaxi were basically the Quarians from Mass Effect.

No biotics/wizards
Created sentient robots by mistake
First whiff of free will from robots = robo-genocide

And they have ruined their planet because of all this conflict, while the Quarians just lost their planet to the Geth.

[Ade]

Found an error:

Influencing Therseis after searching any of the the areas requires a Diplomacy or "Deception" check. That's supposed to be a Bluff check, right?

[Ascalaphus]

Played this one last night. Very enjoyable, but it's a bit unusual one.

1) Yeah, as a GM you really need to get the story straight for yourself and know what everyone knows. Because players WILL ask questions in different scenes than the scenario could possibly anticipate.

2) The "Vast Worlds Factbook" handout was appreciated.

3) There's no finale fight. I kept expecting there to be some government security detail that had decided we'd learned too many uncomfortable truths and should have an "accident" rather than reporting back home.

That makes for a weird tension curve. But it's good, because usually people's attention drops after the boss fight, and in this case you want them sharp for The Report. You could mention the Report several times to emphasize that that's the finale.

4) Gerard ran it for us and made pawns for the copaxi (undead) you meet along the way. Afterwards he handed them out to the players along with the appendix for playing a copaxi. That was neat.

5) I really like this way of adding a new playable race. This is not just another random weird race now; playing one of them has a heap of story for me already. And their statline makes for some nice naive envoys (lower wisdom, high charisma and little knowledge of the cosmos). Or maybe Solarian.

6) Gerard did a good job of hinting that Therseis was open to dialogue and persuasion, despite his cultural background. I think how the GM portrays him is key to how players experience the scenario.

---

Our group voted unanimously in favor of protectorate status. My character was of the opinion this species was on the bring of self-destruction, and literally needed "protecting".

As someone with a background in History studies myself, I appreciate its use a story element. This is a civilization that's grown up in isolation. After the Gap, and after they'd wiped clean their own history, they were basically sailing blind. They weren't seeing the ecological disaster coming because they has no perspective or comparison. Compare that to the Pact Worlds with a dozen of civilizations. And, well, Eox.

I'm going to have to figure out how to write a non-spoilery review...

[BigNorseWolf]

When I played this, the table caught on to the conspiracy real quick.

My characters reaction was "You guys are trying to whitewash this?" and to hand them a datapad with Wikipedia open to the Eoxians.

[Ascalaphus]

It was obvious to us too, it's probably meant to be. Of course, our table had a formian who was somewhat fascinated by these walking and talking hive creatures, and who also thought that any sentient decision-maker clearly had to be a queen. So just because it was obvious didn't mean we were going to do something as banal as a direct confrontation :P

[Dracomicron]

I played a dwarf from Salvation's End who, probably understandably, was extremely annoyed with the fact that the copaxi were lying to their people. She and one other voted against Protectorate status, but we were overruled.

[thistledown]

What's the deal with the map on page 16? There's a row of half-sized grid. Should that be expanded to full size or treated as not there?

[RocMeAsmodeus]

I drew the maps without the partial spaces and they worked fine.

[Wishing Wells]

So question about the encounter in area B3, would you say that Less Than Three is a SRO/ or progenitor of modern SROs? I'm running this scenario this coming Saturday and one of my players has an SRO boon that they're using and the whole block seems to lead on that LT3 is an ancient one. I feel it would make for a very interesting revelation for a story and RP aspect.

[Ade]

Yeah, I think LT3 is an SRO by the very definition.

[Ascalaphus]

Well SRO is a bit of a wide-ranging concept. Just because there's only a couple of PC-stat variants doesn't mean NPC SROs are limited to those.

Of course most SROs come from Aballon where the evolution of machine life has been going on for a lot longer. So LT3 is basically a similar species that evolved somewhere completely different.

[Hmm]

Andrew, I treated LT3 as an SRO

[Halgur]

I'm printing this up for Sunday and cannot find handout #2. Is there something wrong with my PDF?

[BigNorseWolf]

handout 2 is the map at the end. You should also scribble on it "bad guys here" "this looks safe" "bob vanished here and haven't seen him again"

[John Mangrum]

Question: Where on Tabantria is the copaxi research base?

[Mike Kimmel]

John Mangrum wrote:

Question: Where on Tabantria is the copaxi research base?

*forehead smacking intensifies*

You know, I'm scouring the scenario, and I don't see that its location is indicated on the map or in the text.

[John Mangrum]

Let's say, theoretically, where should it be? Only clue we have is that it's near the edge.

[Mike Kimmel]

You could put it on the southeast "arm" of the city. It doesn't especially matter for the scenario's purposes but I can understand the desire to know where it is.

This should not be considered an official answer. But, again, it probably doesn't matter too much.

[John Mangrum]

For posterity, we played this in my home game over two long sessions, wrapping up yesterday. You could almost feel the breeze as the players got sucked into the story as soon as they entered the first unsecured site.

[Mike Kimmel]

John Mangrum wrote:

For posterity, we played this in my home game over two long sessions, wrapping up yesterday. You could almost feel the breeze as the players got sucked into the story as soon as they entered the first unsecured site.

Glad you had a good time, and I appreciate you reporting back on how it went. :)