I just finished reading the incident at absolom station and I am supremely disappointed. It has barely 35 pages of adventure. The rest (68 pages total) is filled with useful fluff but still fluff. My group will go through this in one session. Then its a 5 week wait till the next one comes out. Past paths provided months of adventure in each installment. This however..is..just bad for $15.99.
I wouldn't really call the bestiary "fluff" (I also wouldn't call any of the flavor or information "fluff" though).
It also has a writeup for Absalom Station, a new planet, and relics of Golarion (really neat equipment players may later want).
And Pathfinder adventure's are only around 50 pages so I don't really know how 15 pages is extending something from one session to "months of adventure".
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Part of it is that they have to build up an entirely new setting from the ground up. There isn't a monster book out yet other than First Contact, so they need to introduce more monsters. They also have to flesh out the station where things are taking place in case your PCs decide to go off the beaten path. When they launched Pathfinder they at least had third edition monster manuals to draw on, here they have extremely little that they can use for encounters. My guess is that they will get better as more product is released. I would recommend adding in your own fluff to draw out each of the three chapters so that each chapter takes at least one full session and meet to play this every other week instead of every week. It will draw it out until about the time the next one comes out. Or you could spice things up by running a couple SFS scenarios that take place on Absalom station as well. The PCs are expected to be part of the Starfinder Society after all.
Small published adventures are better than no published adventures.
It's not like you don't have 80 years of sci-fi movies, comics, and t.v. shows to draw from if you get bored. :-)
Also, I feel I should reiterate that Bestiary monsters are easily converted, so there is plenty of antagonists you can throw at people. :-)
Umm.. isn't every AP like that? Half the book is adventure, the other half is a chapter on fluff and a bunch of new monsters and NPCs.
Also, how long are your sessions? My first session didn't even last us through all of Part 1, and we played for four hours.
Starfinder was a risk on its own. They didn't bring on many new staff but handled it all in house. As such, they have to balance putting out lots of stuff in the new lines with continuing to service the old lines. (Consider that every page of extra SF material would have "cost" a page of the established, proven PF lines - or they would have hired people with the very real risk of having to fire them a year or two later - something Paizo management have been loathe to do).
Starfinder is doing very well on release, so I'm really hoping year two involves either a shift to monthly releases or an increase in Adventure material. We have to deal with a slower release schedule this year, though.
Umm.. isn't every AP like that? Half the book is adventure, the other half is a chapter on fluff and a bunch of new monsters and NPCs.
Also, how long are your sessions? My first session didn't even last us through all of Part 1, and we played for four hours.
I believe yo missed the point he was trying to make.
Only 1/2 the AP is adventure- checkThis AP is 68 pages and the others are roughly 100, therefore 1/2 of it being an adventure is a significant reduction in material.
I'm not complaining, but rather pointing out that there is a genuine concern that isn't being addressed with the above response.
I believe yo missed the point he was trying to make.
Only 1/2 the AP is adventure- check
This AP is 68 pages and the others are roughly 100, therefore 1/2 of it being an adventure is a significant reduction in material.
I'm not complaining, but rather pointing out that there is a genuine concern that isn't being addressed with the above response.
With that context, it's a fair complaint. It's just not something one would be able to glean from the opening post without prior knowledge of the page count of previous APs.
Whilst I can certainly understand that the book is shorter, it feels like one of the reasons for that is that they seem to be encouraging GMs to come up with their own way to handle the roleplaying aspects in a way that better fits the group they are playing with. They give you all the important information but instead of telling you where to go in order to get it they suggest you find a way to make the players look for it on your own, which is both a good and bad thing, but I won't get into that right now. Partly I definitely think it's because they've had to invest a lot in a brand new product and going out the gate with monthly 96 page APs then finding that nobody is buying would've been a huge loss for them, which in an industry such as this one is very much not a good thing. I think once the Paizo guys have more sales data and a better idea of what Starfinder is gonna do for them, we'll see more, bigger products and hopefully a slightly faster release schedule.