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Hmmm.
They can also complete both the missions, then swap over to the second encounter of the alternate mission.
Development: The House earns a Carrier success for each table that defeats the jinsuls in the Dark Ascendant encounter. Tables that finish this encounter may join the Buying Time mission, going straight to the Counterattack encounter.
All good.
Just seems like an odd thing to sort of swap and change between the encounters, and then sort of swap back.
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"Scoured Stars Veteran" boon: Rescued Starfinder: ... This new PC begins play with 3 XP, 2,160 credits ...
Is that 2,160 credits supposed to be in addition to the 1,000 starting credits that a new character usually gets, or is this character assumed to have spent 1,000 credits on consumables or not gotten full cash on their earlier missions?
I'm pretty sure it's just supposed to mean that you start with three missions worth of credit in addition to your starting jive.
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Out of tier credit rewards are the average of the tier you played (i.e. 5-6) and the tier you belong in (3-4).
Just to update this since I see nothing on the subject since this comment. Tonya has confirmed this is no longer the case. Whenever playing a special, you receive rewards according to the character level, not the sub-tier you played. Example, if you are level four and played sub-tier 5-6, you receive 3-4 rewards. The only exception is if your character level falls outside a listed sub-tier, such as level 9 for PFS. In that case, you would would average the 7-8 and 10-11 and receive that reward regardless of which sub-tier you actually played. Remember, this only applies to special scenarios such as X-00, X-99, etc. Out-of-tier rewards for standard scenarios are still calculated normally.
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I am confused. The creatures in area H3 (sub-tier 5-6) are listed as "Large Summoned Demons" and reference to page 62 of the appendix or Starfinder Alien Archive pages 46 & 144. Page 62 of the appendix does not have a stat block for a demon. However, it does have a block for a Large Elemental which also happens to be page 46 of the Archive. Page 144 refers to Demon Grafts applied to summoned creatures, but the stat block in the appendix does not include the modifications for a demon graft. So what is the intended creature for this encounter?
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In starfinder, most summoned creatures are actually just the elemental stat block with a particular graft applied. So when it refers to a Large Summoned Demon, that means that it's a Large Elemental with the Demon graft applied.
The Demon graft is available on pages 63+64 of the adventure.
Sounds like the intended creature is large elemental + demon graft.
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A good number of the creature descriptions are vague at best. Most of them are new creations and do not exist in the Alien Archive or other published locations so we are depending on the written description to know what we are dealing with.
"...the dinosaurs look like feathered bipedal snakes with rattling frills and two small forelimbs"
"...the dinosaurs are large bipeds with massive maws full of needlelike teeth"
"The larvae look like worms covered in sharp spines, while an adult resembles a cross between a praying mantis and a crocodile"
"small flying drones and dog-shaped robots, each of which has a tail tipped with a deadly spike"
"group of thorny plants"
There is no description of what Jodain is or looks like, only that it is a bartender and once angry "his shape starts changing into that of a monster. He has the statistics of a summoned creature..."
"a 40-foot long creature that looks like an armored worm"
Generally speaking there is very little to go on for a summoned creature base with a graft (aka template) applied. Other than the size, weapon types, and movement options, there is very little to suggest what the creature actually looks like. I dunno how much it really matters. Are the descriptions lacking or is it intentional to give the GM freedom to use whatever they want? The experience is quite different than PFS.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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If there's no image or mini available, I prefer vague descriptions actually, then it's easy to substitute something else without contradiction. I find it more annoying if there's a really specific description of a creature in the scenario but no picture (like the spicodranth in #LEEE!).
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Is this confirmation publically available somewhere?
I do not know. It has been confirmed to the RVC staff and to a group who happened to be standing near Tonya when she responded to the issue at Gen Con. I do not have the access to add it to a blog post or update any sticky threads where it would be most visible. I can only confirm what I know to be true.
EDIT——actually it made it into the Guide v10.0 on page 16, left column, 2nd paragraph (step 5), of the section on Filling Out a Chronicle Sheet...
"For special scenarios with 4 or more subtiers, give the character the gold value for the tier that matches his character level, rather than the tier played."
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I prefer vague descriptions actually
While that makes it easy for us to chose any miniature we feel is appropriate, it gives little to no insight into the intention of the author. I think we can all admit that "group of thorny plants" is pretty vague and relatively unhelpful to answer the player question, "what do we see, what are they?"
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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I am confused. The creatures in area H3 (sub-tier 5-6) are listed as "Large Summoned Demons" and reference to page 62 of the appendix or Starfinder Alien Archive pages 46 & 144. Page 62 of the appendix does not have a stat block for a demon. However, it does have a block for a Large Elemental which also happens to be page 46 of the Archive. Page 144 refers to Demon Grafts applied to summoned creatures, but the stat block in the appendix does not include the modifications for a demon graft. So what is the intended creature for this encounter?
Bob, they use creature grafts based on the elemental.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Ohio—Dayton
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Is this confirmation publically available somewhere?
I do not know. It has been confirmed to the RVC staff and to a group who happened to be standing near Tonya when she responded to the issue at Gen Con. I do not have the access to add it to a blog post or update any sticky threads where it would be most visible. I can only confirm what I know to be true.EDIT——actually it made it into the Guide v10.0 on page 16, left column, 2nd paragraph (step 5), of the section on Filling Out a Chronicle Sheet...
"For special scenarios with 4 or more subtiers, give the character the gold value for the tier that matches his character level, rather than the tier played."
Can someone confirm if this same language made it into the new SFS Guide? I'm having an issue with my downloads.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Can someone confirm if this same language made it into the new SFS Guide? I'm having an issue with my downloads.Is this confirmation publically available somewhere?
I do not know. It has been confirmed to the RVC staff and to a group who happened to be standing near Tonya when she responded to the issue at Gen Con. I do not have the access to add it to a blog post or update any sticky threads where it would be most visible. I can only confirm what I know to be true.EDIT——actually it made it into the Guide v10.0 on page 16, left column, 2nd paragraph (step 5), of the section on Filling Out a Chronicle Sheet...
"For special scenarios with 4 or more subtiers, give the character the gold value for the tier that matches his character level, rather than the tier played."
I don't think it did - I searched the document for "subtier" and nothing like that turned up.
However, this was in fact the policy applied by Tonya at PaizoCon UK this year. We had a L7 play down at our 5-6 table and he got 7-8 credits. Meanwhile a table of mostly 3-4s played up due to an APL miscalculation and only got 3-4 gold. They were not so happy after working very hard.
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Can someone confirm if this same language made it into the new SFS Guide? I'm having an issue with my downloads.Is this confirmation publically available somewhere?
I do not know. It has been confirmed to the RVC staff and to a group who happened to be standing near Tonya when she responded to the issue at Gen Con. I do not have the access to add it to a blog post or update any sticky threads where it would be most visible. I can only confirm what I know to be true.EDIT——actually it made it into the Guide v10.0 on page 16, left column, 2nd paragraph (step 5), of the section on Filling Out a Chronicle Sheet...
"For special scenarios with 4 or more subtiers, give the character the gold value for the tier that matches his character level, rather than the tier played."I don't think it did - I searched the document for "subtier" and nothing like that turned up.
However, this was in fact the policy applied by Tonya at PaizoCon UK this year. We had a L7 play down at our 5-6 table and he got 7-8 credits. Meanwhile a table of mostly 3-4s played up due to an APL miscalculation and only got 3-4 gold. They were not so happy after working very hard.
She also stated the same thing at SkålCon, and Thursty gave my Lucius 5-6 credits when playing down at 3-4
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This is weird. My copy, that I just downloaded, does not have a step 5 at all and I don't see the language that andreww posted.
I looked at my copy and it looks like step 5 is missing. Step 4 starts on page 15 and rolls to 16, followed immediately by step 6. Perhaps it is an editing error and they intended for step 5 from the PFS Guide to be copy/paste into SFS Guide and it was missed in the final development run. I’ll point this to Thirsty. Maybe he can confirm the intent and push for the Guide to get updated.
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Contributor
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I prefer vague descriptions actuallyWhile that makes it easy for us to chose any miniature we feel is appropriate, it gives little to no insight into the intention of the author. I think we can all admit that "group of thorny plants" is pretty vague and relatively unhelpful to answer the player question, "what do we see, what are they?"
Firstly, everyone, sorry about my lack of participation in this discussion!
Bob, to answer your questions about the descriptions, I'll try to describe some of the difficulties of writing an interactive special that contributed to the vagueness of the monster descriptions.
A "normal" PFS or SFS scenario is 10k or 12k words, while the two interactive specials I've written were each 20k words. It sounds like it's a plenty, but since there are only 4-5 encounters in a typical scenario and around 20 in a special, each encounter on average gets 50% or less space. There are also a lot more GM instructions both for Table GMs and the House GM, which means even less space for each individual encounter. Here it's important to note that stat blocks in specials do *not* count against the 20k limit because they go into the back matter, while in normal scenarios they *do* count against the word limit.
One of the difficulties of writing specials is their sheer size -- keeping track of everything and fighting fatigue while trying to come up with 20ish encounters that should all feel fun and exciting. However, personally, even more difficult (+frustrating, tiring) is finding dozens of suitable stat blocks for the 20 or so encounters. Most specials have 5 subtiers; #1-99 has (thankfully) only 4 subtiers, but it's still a lot of stat blocks even though I intentionally try to introduce overlap between subtiers and encounters.
In #9-00 Assault on Absalom, finding suitable stat blocks was difficult and time-consuming and involved some hair-pulling and sacrifices to dark gods, but I think I managed to strike a good balance between ease of use, variety, and having stat blocks that made sense, story-wise. In #1-99, quite frankly, that would have been impossible because the game was still new; I basically had only AA1 and Pact Worlds NPC stat blocks to work with, and it's not much. It was a lot of extra work to create (I think) around two dozen new stat blocks, but that really was the only way to get monsters that felt unique enough to this unexplored region of space, had a reasonable amount of variety, and last but not least, had suitable CRs for the encounters.
An additional layer of difficulty comes from the amount of editing a special requires after you've finished writing. I'm usually several thousand words over the limit at that stage, and the only ways to fix that are simplifying mechanics (very useful but also *very* difficult and time-consuming) and cutting descriptions (relatively fast and easy). You can probably guess which type of text is more likely to get cut. During development, Thursty also has to remove some text to make other things fit, so descriptions are likely to get hit again.
In summary, interactive specials are really tough m*****f****** to write. They involve a lot of trade-offs and some weird shenanigans to make them work. In #1-99, custom stats were necessary, and creature descriptions were competing for space with tons of other types of information, and as a result, the descriptions are vague. But on the plus side, that leaves more room for creativity on your end, so I hope you can enjoy the freedom of describing the creatures as you see fit. Extrapolating from stat blocks might also help you describe the creatures--e.g. does it attack with tentacles, is it strong or nimble or fast, and so forth.
I hope that helps.
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Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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Mikko,
I think you did an excellent job on that special. The only difficulty I had was Appling the grafts. That took a little bit because the stat block really were not the clear. But once I got the hang of it they were quick and easy.
Thank you for a highly enjoyable adventure!
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I just wanted to say that prepping this was an absolute bear. I've never spent so much time getting ready to run anything before. I've been at it for days and I feel that I could spend countless additional hours at this if I really wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly. I haven't GMed an interactive since PFS Season 5. Have they all gotten this complicated?
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BTW, in Evac 5: If the Sand Slitherer manages to catch up and then successfully engages, isn't it pretty likely it's very first attack swallows a whole vehicle? (passengers included?) That seems sort of harsh...not to mention if everyone is gulped down I imagine a lot of parties would be in trouble.
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I believe it was clarified either in the Gen Con 2018 GM-Prep Slack channel and/or on-site before #1-99 that if the Sand Slitherer "defeats" a PC's vehicle, they escape but their vehicle is toast. This results in instant mission failure as they have to get rescued themselves and can't retrieve their original objective.
(I'm in the middle of running a local con this weekend or I'd try to track down where it was stated. Hopefully someone else will chime in to help with finding that, or else I'll try to some time this week.)
Venture-Captain, Germany—Bavaria
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I prefer vague descriptions actuallyWhile that makes it easy for us to chose any miniature we feel is appropriate, it gives little to no insight into the intention of the author. I think we can all admit that "group of thorny plants" is pretty vague and relatively unhelpful to answer the player question, "what do we see, what are they?"Firstly, everyone, sorry about my lack of participation in this discussion!
Bob, to answer your questions about the descriptions, I'll try to describe some of the difficulties of writing an interactive special that contributed to the vagueness of the monster descriptions.
A "normal" PFS or SFS scenario is 10k or 12k words, while the two interactive specials I've written were each 20k words. It sounds like it's a plenty, but since there are only 4-5 encounters in a typical scenario and around 20 in a special, each encounter on average gets 50% or less space. There are also a lot more GM instructions both for Table GMs and the House GM, which means even less space for each individual encounter. Here it's important to note that stat blocks in specials do *not* count against the 20k limit because they go into the back matter, while in normal scenarios they *do* count against the word limit.
One of the difficulties of writing specials is their sheer size -- keeping track of everything and fighting fatigue while trying to come up with 20ish encounters that should all feel fun and exciting. However, personally, even more difficult (+frustrating, tiring) is finding dozens of suitable stat blocks for the 20 or so encounters. Most specials have 5 subtiers; #1-99 has (thankfully) only 4 subtiers, but it's still a lot of stat blocks even though I intentionally try to introduce overlap between subtiers and encounters.
In #9-00 Assault on Absalom, finding suitable stat blocks was difficult and time-consuming and involved some hair-pulling and sacrifices to dark gods, but I think I managed to strike a good balance...
I had a lot of fun playing and running this one, any prep problems I had were relatively minor and in general, apply to all scenarios (something for a separate thread), sometimes I really wish that authors could be provided with more word count.
While this might allow some authors to take two pages to convey information that should just take a fraction of that, it could also allow authors to explain things with examples, which might make preparing scenarios far easier.We currently plan to offer it again, I guess we will see how many players will find a way to replay this one ^^
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I just wanted to say that prepping this was an absolute bear. I've never spent so much time getting ready to run anything before. I've been at it for days and I feel that I could spend countless additional hours at this if I really wanted to make sure everything ran smoothly. I haven't GMed an interactive since PFS Season 5. Have they all gotten this complicated?
On the whole, yeah. Some are easier, some are much worse.
It kinda comes with the premise of a multitable special. You get mechanisms for tracking the collected successes of what all the tables are doing. But more importantly, the idea of modern multitable specials comes own to "you guys go that way to deal with that while we go this way to go deal with this". To give people a choice of directions in which to go, there need to be more directions, and thus more encounters.
The hardest to prep was certainly Cosmic Captive. For high tier I had to prep about 10 different flipmats and 23 combat encounters. That one earned a lot of backlash on how insane it was to prep, and since then specials have tried to not use too many different flipmats (rather, use both sides of each) and not quite as many different monsters.
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I'm on the cusp of running this for my home game (which means I can be a little creative in my interpretation) and I'm starting to (over?)think the backstory behind this adventure. Specifically, how a few of the situations the PCs encounter came to pass. What, exactly, went down in the Scoured Stars before the Godshield rose?
Are there any other GMs out there who've crafted answers to any of the following? (Or are there explanations somewhere I've overlooked?)
1. What was the source of the insidious virus on Agillae-5? (I have a headcanon for this, but lately I wonder slightly if this will come back in Year 4.)
2. What killed the crew of the Empyrean Eye? Just bad luck? Piloting accident? Presumably the battle damage it's received came from other Starfinder starships the crew attacked in their ghostly confusion.
The adventure also suggests that starships were still flying around within the Scoured Stars system after the Godshield appeared, which doesn't jibe well with its depiction elsewhere (as a permeating field that prevents interplanetary travel).
Thinking aloud now: As I continue to review, it seems the Godshield permeates the system, preventing interplanetary travel, but it seems that the original civilizations could reach their orbiting satellites. (Ancient jinsuls of Bastiar-8 could travel to their moon, for example.) So perhaps the Godshield trapped the Empyrean Eye (and at least 9 other starships) in orbit around Bastion-7, giving them a long enough leash to fly among the gas giant's ring...
3. Who woke up Kadrical? (Actually, it seems pretty clear that it was the Starfinders on Bastiar-8's moon.) But related question:
3A. What is the nature of the disembodied entity the PCs encounter on Bastiar-8's moon? It isn't Kadrical (it speaks of Kadrical as a separate entity, and summoning demons seems out of character for a LN deity). It seems to suggest that this is one of Kadrical's divine heralds, and is in line with Dhurus' behavior, but that seems hard to line up with that we learn of Dhurus elsewhere (namely that he's been locked out of the system with the jinsuls until now).
Thinking harder on this. Head canon: This is Dhurus; we learn elsewhere that the divine heralds can project their consciousness across the stars.
Deeper down the rabbit hole: When the Starfinders on the first expedition entered the sacred sanctum of Kadrical on Bastiar-8's moon, they in advertently connected to the sleeping god (similar to what happens in #2-00). But responding to these prayers fell to the divine heralds -- and Dhurus, currently out overseeing the construction of a jinsul armada -- intercepted the call and responded. It's Dhurus who summons the demons and imprisons the Starfinders on the moon, but Dhurus' interaction with outsiders within the sanctum rouses Kadrical, who responds confusedly and instinctively by raising the Godshield. So as of the moment of the Scoured Stars incident, Dhurus knows that "intruders" have entered one of the most sacred sites in the Scoured Stars, and he's locked himself out of his own house. (Presumably the other divine heralds get the memo as well, leading to so-and-so swiftly stepping in to help the Starfinder Society.)
OK. Good chat, folks!