Looking for short "patron" style adventure ideas


Advice


Our group's Starfinder campaign begins on Wednesday. The premise is that the party have acquired a starship via not-quite-legal means and run up something of a large debt to some decidely shady individuals. Now they're desperately trying to earn enough cash to keep the ship flying and keep the creditors at bay without getting caught out as not technically the owners of the ship in question.

Their ship has no drift drive at the moment, so the first few adventures will all be within the Pact Worlds system. I'm looking for a bunch of short missions that will provide excuses for the party to visit many of the locations mentioned in the SF Core Rules.

Any suggestions (either of plots or products out there which might provide inspiration) would be greatly appreciated.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

One I'll be offering my players, once they "acquired" their first Starship, is as follows:

AdvantCor, a company specializing in genetic treatments, is constantly on the look out for new specimens to extract genetic material. This is mostly legal in unexplored territories but the holy grail of specimens exists within the Pact Worlds. The Dreamers of Liavara have fascinating abilities and any company that could replicate them would make billions of credits. Problem is Liavara is strictly off limits, at least legitimately.

Players are hired to acquire a Dreamer specimen, preferably alive, and deliver it to a hidden lab in the Diaspora. AdvantCor have chosen to hire ships specifically without Drift Drives for this job, in order to ensure that lazy crews don't draw a direct trace from Liavara to the Diaspora when they are done.

Gameplay wise Liavara presents an awesome and different environment from standard, will involve lots of ship based shenanigans and encounters with fantastic beings.


Excellent. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thanks!


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber
Steve Geddes wrote:
Excellent. That's exactly the kind of thing I'm looking for. Thanks!

Once they get a Drift Drive players already know of a buyer if they ever want to do a monster hunt style game. Or they could stay driveless and now that they have proved themselves capable, AdvantCor hire them for espionage, stealing genetic codes or even entire specimens from their competitors.


This went very well. I didn’t have them target dreamers (I think they would have balked at the ethics of it). That introduced another element as they were told to target a kind of octopus-blobby thing that they were informed was kind of krill: nonsentient, bottom-of-the-food-chain organic matter. In reality, they were kind of “eggs” of a sentient species.

As it turned out, the party failed all their sense motive and life sciences skill checks and then played the story out without ever uncovering the misinformation. It was a cool, one week mission though that really felt like exploring the pact worlds.

Thanks! :)


1 person marked this as a favorite.

One of the Bone Sages of Eox wants a package delivered to certain location, without anyone knowing about it. Definitely not any of the other Bone Sages.

What's in the package? Well, that information is above the PCs' pay grade.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

So there's a Triaxian holiday coming up, and it only happens once every Triaxian "year," so it's a pretty big deal. One of the bigwigs there (dragon maybe, but doesn't have to be) wishes to punctuate his banquet with a rare delicacy.

Unfortunately, a key ingredient for this dessert is a gland from a dangerous beast (ice wurm, desert beetle, supershark, etc) and the PCs need to travel to a dangerous locale to wrangle the beast before the big day arrives.

Complicating the matter is the fact that the beast is scared off by anything as large as it is, so the PCs need to dock their space ship and go hunting by jetski/dune buggy/motorcycle.

Also complicating the matter is the fact that there is a group of indigenous people who regard the great beasts as sacred (unbeknownst to anyone, of course.)

So the PCs are in for traveling to a fantastic planet, exploring a fun environment, hunting a huge monster, getting in a vehicle chase with locals, maybe fighting them, and maybe dealing with some moral quandaries. All on a time sensitive schedule.

I left the exact details vague so that they could be plugged in as best suits your story.


I'd dust off my Star Frontiers books for adventure seed inspiration!


Ventnor wrote:

One of the Bone Sages of Eox wants a package delivered to certain location, without anyone knowing about it. Definitely not any of the other Bone Sages.

What's in the package? Well, that information is above the PCs' pay grade.

Cheers. They’ve already decided the Eoxians aren’t to be trusted, so I think this can tie in easily with a previous adventure.


TempusAvatar wrote:

So there's a Triaxian holiday coming up, and it only happens once every Triaxian "year," so it's a pretty big deal. One of the bigwigs there (dragon maybe, but doesn't have to be) wishes to punctuate his banquet with a rare delicacy.

Unfortunately, a key ingredient for this dessert is a gland from a dangerous beast (ice wurm, desert beetle, supershark, etc) and the PCs need to travel to a dangerous locale to wrangle the beast before the big day arrives.

Complicating the matter is the fact that the beast is scared off by anything as large as it is, so the PCs need to dock their space ship and go hunting by jetski/dune buggy/motorcycle.

Also complicating the matter is the fact that there is a group of indigenous people who regard the great beasts as sacred (unbeknownst to anyone, of course.)

So the PCs are in for traveling to a fantastic planet, exploring a fun environment, hunting a huge monster, getting in a vehicle chase with locals, maybe fighting them, and maybe dealing with some moral quandaries. All on a time sensitive schedule.

I left the exact details vague so that they could be plugged in as best suits your story.

Thanks again. I’m going to take this one pretty much whole cloth. I think the fight with the beast might end up being our first epic battle. Give me a chance to try out a big CR creature. :)


Steve Geddes wrote:


Thanks again. I’m going to take this one pretty much whole cloth. I think the fight with the beast might end up being our first epic battle. Give me a chance to try out a big CR creature. :)

If your goal is to be not 100% transparent, try not to pick desert/sandworm/spice/Fremen :P


Browsing existing threads for ideas that others have begun, I came across this one. I like all of the ideas presented. Did you end up developing and running the beast gland adventure idea, Steve Geddes?
The "patron" adventure theme has a lot of potential in the Starfinder setting. Here are a couple of "classics" to add to the mix, with a bit of the quasi-legal caper flavor to them.

  • An illegal beverage is sought by rich socialites on Verces. The beverage is brewed on Aballon, and the PCs have accepted a bet to transport a load of it across the solar system under a strict timeline to get full payment. There's just one problem -- an overzealous customs officer who likes to overreach his jurisdiction in order to apprehend the beverage runners. (Cue "Smokey and the Bandit Theme".)
  • The agent of a Triaxian technomancer from Preita was killed on his way back to Preita from the Drakelands with stolen information about a massive shipment of gold being made through the spaceports in Zo to the private vault of a dragon financier in the Drakelands. The information falls into the hands of the agent's old compatriot from their heist days who learns from it that the gold is part of a massive illegal operation involving prisoners being sold to Eoxian body snatchers for nefarious purposes on Eox. The old compatriot calls upon some friends (the PCs) to help him orchestrate a grand heist to steal the dragon's gold as it makes its way from Zo through the idyllic summertime countryside aboard hover trucks to its final destination in the Drakelands. (Cue "On Days Like These".)


The party has been invited to compete for cash prices in an Eoxian game show called "Mortals do the darndest things". To win, they have to go through a series of challenges that range from lethal to simply bizarre.

Then watch some of the zanier japanese game shows for competition ideas!


Qui Gan Dalf wrote:

Browsing existing threads for ideas that others have begun, I came across this one. I like all of the ideas presented. Did you end up developing and running the beast gland adventure idea, Steve Geddes?

No, my campaign was kind of a “trial run” of the rules and only lasted a few adventures. We wound it up a couple of weeks ago at level five. Now we’ve started a more genuine campaign where I’m a player.

Community / Forums / Starfinder / Advice / Looking for short "patron" style adventure ideas All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.