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I thought that it might be fun for GMs and players--thus why it is not in the GM section--to relay their in-character experiences: the cheers, the tears, the laughs, and the groans. I'm also certain that many people missed out on different missions, so reading about the ones you missed could be fun.
I placed SPOILER in the title of the thread so that we could avoid using the spoiler tag. So let me repeat: SPOILERS for SFS 1-99 the Scoured Stars Invasion.
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GM Perspective
On Agillae-5, six Starfinder recruits explored the building constructed of crashed starships. It was not long before they came upon a trio of lost Starfinder agents, their mouths gaping in silent screams. Negotiations proved fruitless and their own allies attacked the recruits. While the shirren among them repeatedly begged his companions to subdue the lost Starfinders, the others found it too difficult to pull their blows. Frustrated with the burns and bruises he was receiving, the vesk soldier cut down two of them, gaining an infamous reputation for his bloodthirstiness, before the others stunned the third.
As the Jinsul drove the Starfinders out of the system, one of the damaged Starfinder transports was caught close to enemy lines. The Starfinder recruits set forth to defend the failing transport and engaged with two of the Jinsul fighters. The Jinsul fighters split their attack between the fresh and the flagged starships. While the recruits tried to simultaneously take down the enemy ship chasing the battered transport and defend themselves from the other enemy, the transport took a massive blow, threatening its life support. The recruits threw everything they had into defending the transport. Sadly, moments from the safety of the Starfinder's defensive line, the transport was destroyed and the agents aboard were lost to the vacuum of the Scoured Stars. Demoralized, the recruits fought off the two Jinsul pilots and then limped back to the carrier for the final retreat.
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On the desert side of Callio-2(sp) the PCs were given a simple mission to evacuate some marooned Starfinders on the planets surface. First hiccup was that they could land near the site of the beacon due to a large magnetic storm over the site. No worries, just land outside the storm and drive in and pick them up. Heck they even got to pick what weapons they wanted to have mounted on the ATTVs!(which were represented by desert camo painted matchbox suvs) Not that any action was expected on this lifeless sunbaked side.
The drivers and gunners were selected and took their stations and as one of the PCs stated they were off, "For a Sunday drive in the sand!"
The ground then starts to shake and directly behind them a 40 ft long Sand Worm(represented by the Reaper Great Mother Mashaff mini) burst forth directly behind their vehicles!
I ask the PCs what action they were going to take, and the Halfling Envoy replied, "THE DRIVE FING FASTER ACTION!" LOL
On the Dinosaur Planet, the PCs were surprised by two Dilophosaurus!
When I put the actual minis on the board there were several Jurassic Park jokes and a couple of PCs even started humming the theme song. Then the dinosaurs both spit and blinded one of the PCs and the laughing abruptly stopped with, "Oh sh!#! I forgot they did that!" LOL
Starfinder Society Developer
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I love how absurdly quick Dinosaur Planet got completed ahead of the others. Everyone saw a mission called "Dinosaur Planet" and said 'sold!'
My experience from overseeing and wandering the tables, is that roughly half the tables went to Dinosaur Planet, while the majority of the remaining tables were evenly split between starship combat and the remaining missions. The tabulations are a bit skewed when shown live, because the starship combats tend to take longer. That being said, gee howdy, we have a lot of tables who went all in on starship combat for this special!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Ohio—Dayton
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I love how absurdly quick Dinosaur Planet got completed ahead of the others. Everyone saw a mission called "Dinosaur Planet" and said 'sold!'My experience from overseeing and wandering the tables, is that roughly half the tables went to Dinosaur Planet, while the majority of the remaining tables were evenly split between starship combat and the remaining missions. The tabulations are a bit skewed when shown live, because the starship combats tend to take longer. That being said, gee howdy, we have a lot of tables who went all in on starship combat for this special!
I'd like to think my table and the charity boon Manticore Ship influenced this. Every time we were given an option we went for Starship.
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I'd like to think my table and the charity boon Manticore Ship influenced this. Every time we were given an option we went for Starship.I love how absurdly quick Dinosaur Planet got completed ahead of the others. Everyone saw a mission called "Dinosaur Planet" and said 'sold!'My experience from overseeing and wandering the tables, is that roughly half the tables went to Dinosaur Planet, while the majority of the remaining tables were evenly split between starship combat and the remaining missions. The tabulations are a bit skewed when shown live, because the starship combats tend to take longer. That being said, gee howdy, we have a lot of tables who went all in on starship combat for this special!
I had the same with the Sunrise Maiden.
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Contributor
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I'd like to think my table and the charity boon Manticore Ship influenced this. Every time we were given an option we went for Starship.I love how absurdly quick Dinosaur Planet got completed ahead of the others. Everyone saw a mission called "Dinosaur Planet" and said 'sold!'My experience from overseeing and wandering the tables, is that roughly half the tables went to Dinosaur Planet, while the majority of the remaining tables were evenly split between starship combat and the remaining missions. The tabulations are a bit skewed when shown live, because the starship combats tend to take longer. That being said, gee howdy, we have a lot of tables who went all in on starship combat for this special!
Yeah, we did!
OMG, 10d10 damage missiles.
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I'd like to think my table and the charity boon Manticore Ship influenced this. Every time we were given an option we went for Starship.I love how absurdly quick Dinosaur Planet got completed ahead of the others. Everyone saw a mission called "Dinosaur Planet" and said 'sold!'My experience from overseeing and wandering the tables, is that roughly half the tables went to Dinosaur Planet, while the majority of the remaining tables were evenly split between starship combat and the remaining missions. The tabulations are a bit skewed when shown live, because the starship combats tend to take longer. That being said, gee howdy, we have a lot of tables who went all in on starship combat for this special!Yeah, we did!
OMG, 10d10 damage missiles.
GM is still huddling somewhere, holding himself in a fetal position.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Ohio—Dayton
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Look, the Society had some VERY efficient starship designs back in the day. Maybe we need to look at reintroducing the Manticore to mainline production.... :)
I never sat down and did a comparison, until Gen Con. But it is a bit of a glass cannon at Tier 6. Loaded with guns, but fewer Shields and hull points than the Drake.
Venture-Agent, Georgia—Atlanta
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Let me tell you, I had a crew that played together regularly. In the 3-4 tier, they were killing the Jinsul in 2 rounds each, and the capital ship shared the same fate. It was fun to run for them.
I would imagine a less organized group would ... have more trouble with it.
Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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I love how absurdly quick Dinosaur Planet got completed ahead of the others. Everyone saw a mission called "Dinosaur Planet" and said 'sold!'My experience from overseeing and wandering the tables, is that roughly half the tables went to Dinosaur Planet, while the majority of the remaining tables were evenly split between starship combat and the remaining missions. The tabulations are a bit skewed when shown live, because the starship combats tend to take longer. That being said, gee howdy, we have a lot of tables who went all in on starship combat for this special!
Most of my group doesn't normally care for Starship combat, but when I got a boon that allowed me to mount Nukes of the ship, we couldn't resist. We took every opportunity we could get to Nuke Jinsils into radioactive space dust.
Venture-Captain, Nebraska—Omaha
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I love how absurdly quick Dinosaur Planet got completed ahead of the others. Everyone saw a mission called "Dinosaur Planet" and said 'sold!'My experience from overseeing and wandering the tables, is that roughly half the tables went to Dinosaur Planet, while the majority of the remaining tables were evenly split between starship combat and the remaining missions. The tabulations are a bit skewed when shown live, because the starship combats tend to take longer. That being said, gee howdy, we have a lot of tables who went all in on starship combat for this special!
My table chose the starship combat by never made the ghost captain angry and avoided the combat part entirely!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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My table chose the starship combat by never made the ghost captain angry and avoided the combat part entirely!I love how absurdly quick Dinosaur Planet got completed ahead of the others. Everyone saw a mission called "Dinosaur Planet" and said 'sold!'My experience from overseeing and wandering the tables, is that roughly half the tables went to Dinosaur Planet, while the majority of the remaining tables were evenly split between starship combat and the remaining missions. The tabulations are a bit skewed when shown live, because the starship combats tend to take longer. That being said, gee howdy, we have a lot of tables who went all in on starship combat for this special!
Yes. We managed to talk them down too, before the Tholians could complete their Web.
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In the board part at the end, my table realized they could jam doors, and proceeded to do so for 30-45 minutes as the Jinsul in my tier were wholly unable to get through the bulkhead doors. Poor Jinsul :(
We may have been a bunch of different races on our character sheet, but we were all half-troll.
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Contributor
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Thanks for this thread, guys! Writing the first SFS interactive special was a daunting task and at the time of writing I had no idea how it'd be received, so it's great to hear you've had some memorable encounters! I had nearly free rein to design the missions, so I was able to include a number of references to sci-fi books and movies that have inspired me over the years. The little dinos are definitely one of those things. :)
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Thanks for this thread, guys! Writing the first SFS interactive special was a daunting task and at the time of writing I had no idea how it'd be received, so it's great to hear you've had some memorable encounters! I had nearly free rein to design the missions, so I was able to include a number of references to sci-fi books and movies that have inspired me over the years. The little dinos are definitely one of those things. :)
I'm sure the six new, young Starfinders at my table would tell you that they had a blast. And I had a blast running it for them!
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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Thanks for this thread, guys! Writing the first SFS interactive special was a daunting task and at the time of writing I had no idea how it'd be received, so it's great to hear you've had some memorable encounters! I had nearly free rein to design the missions, so I was able to include a number of references to sci-fi books and movies that have inspired me over the years. The little dinos are definitely one of those things. :)
I want to compliment you on the smoothest scene transitions I've ever seen in a Special. As I think people have noticed by now I really dislike it when time gets called and you have to abort an encounter because other tables moved on. This scenario handled it soooo gracefully.
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I loved the flow of it. First three phases being melded was absolutely brilliant.
My table took the Drake out for a spin at the end, and had a whale of a time blasting missiles at the enemy. They then ran out of missiles, thought for a second, then spent an emergency resupply to do it all over again.
I brought along my xwing minis, and had a houndstooth as the escaping starfinder ship, a c-roc as the Jinsul capital ship. They were flying in a HWK, being harrassed by a group of Concord Dawn protectors.
They seemed to enjoy the props :)
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Venture-Captain, Minnesota
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Yes I was part of Team Manticore. We cheered and wooted everytime we blew something out of the sky. The seventh player who was assigned to our table said, “I’ve never been on a Special table like this. What are you guys, rock stars?”
I must say that I have been having fun runnong this special in Play-by-Post with a gung ho group that has been running at an absurd rate, trying to see as much of the special as they can. They are having so much fun with this!
While I loved Dinosaur Planet with them, I think my favorites may be the vehicle chase, the ghost ship and Cracked Mirror.
So nice to have some adventures that weren’t all about combat!
Hmm
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I used my shirt reroll to avoid the combat on dinosaur planet by feeding the T rex. Profession Chef is totally overpowered. Palms flat!
Our pilot finally got to fly a ship that wasn't Near Space Truckers 7 video ga..simulator
An abysshead fan got to share his love of the band with the universe (if you're replying I still can't hear you)
Keskodai Clone 348 took his son on a very educational field trip
and our envoy convinced everything that wasn't a Jinsul not to shoot us...
and we're almost dead. erm. done.
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"No, I don't think we left too large of a radioactive cloud behind us. Yes, it was full of jinsul wreckage." says the ysoki. "We used exactly the amount of force that we needed to. After all, if the Society didn't want us to use nukes, they would not have given them to us..."
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I played this online yesterday for TPKon VI and had a blast. It was a great first-timer intro to the online play community! I have no idea how I missed an option called "Dinosaur Planet" though - must be getting old...
Like others in the thread, we had a lot of tables doing Space sections, including our own. We had a table of 7 though; starship combat is much more fun when you can fill every role and have multiple gunners. Highlight was definitely activating the First Skirmish boon for an alpha strike round to fire four weapons at a Jinsul ship: we torpedoed the poor bugger in one gunnery phase. For all of their fancy armour and leg-swords, Jinsul tech can't handle the combined firepower of an empowered heavy laser canon, coilgun, mining laser, and a high explosive missile fired at point-blank range :)
Thanks to the GMs and organizers of TPKon, and to everyone helping me muddle through all of the Twitch, Roll20, and Discord links (and init macros!)
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My favourite special to date, to have run, and 2nd favourite for the players.
The fact that if you were half-way through a phase 1 mission, and it was completed, it counted towards phase 2 was a brilliant mechanic.
The only complaint I've heard from other GMs primarily was the Dune worm car chase mission.
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Venture-Lieutenant, Florida—Melbourne
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The only complaint I've heard from other GMs primarily was the Dune worm car chase mission.
Regardless, I am curious as to why GMs didn't like this mission.
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The only complaint I've heard from other GMs primarily was the Dune worm car chase mission.** spoiler omitted **
I played this last weekend & our GM directed us away from that mission - he didn't feel comfortable with the vehicles rules & didn't feel that we'd have a good experience.
The party agreed & we moved on to another mission.
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It's not a mechanic (pun only partially intended) that I've heard being used much, even in home games, until they stated to show up in SFS scenarios. If a GM doesn't have time to learn them in advance and/or is uncomfortable trying to run them during a timed special, I can totally see them preferring to do something else.
In addition to the above, the "terrain zones" that appear in #1-99 are a bit different than the "relative zones" described in the core rules - I had a slightly unfair advantage in that I talked to Thurston during the first day Gen Con and heard that they were intended to be used in place of the "relative" ones in order to make sure that the chase didn't potentially become endless. That info alone made the chase as it appears in #1-99 make a lot more sense in my brain.
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We're on the dinosaur planet. We need to get into the dinosaur nest. The carnosaur starts as Unfriendly; I use Wildwise and Survival to increase its attitude to indifferent. This works for awhile while the rest of the party maneuvers.
Then it sees my fellow vesk soldier digging through the nest and goes hostile. Sigh. I punch it across the nose to assert dominance. We end up punching it into unconsciousness and making off with the item in the nest. Poor mama dino. I'm sure she was alright later.
Zoggy don't kill dinosaurs, and most of his allies know better than to try it.
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Question about one of the boons. I noticed when you make a level 2 character you get 2160 credits, does that mean you miss out on 1000 credits that new characters get? Not a big deal just thought I would ask
I don't think so. Notice how it says for every xp you get you 720 credits? (the same amount as most starting adventures) . It would be really weird if someone that got 2 credits off of it got a thousand gold more than someone who got 3 credits off of it.
Venture-Captain, Netherlands
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We're on the dinosaur planet. We need to get into the dinosaur nest. The carnosaur starts as Unfriendly; I use Wildwise and Survival to increase its attitude to indifferent. This works for awhile while the rest of the party maneuvers.
Then it sees my fellow vesk soldier digging through the nest and goes hostile. Sigh. I punch it across the nose to assert dominance. We end up punching it into unconsciousness and making off with the item in the nest. Poor mama dino. I'm sure she was alright later.
Zoggy don't kill dinosaurs, and most of his allies know better than to try it.
Vesk soldier is playig a big game hunter. Delighted we are going to the dinosaur planet. Runs to get up close and personal with big dinorsaur. Dinosaur is next. Full attacks. Crit/hit. Does 75 damage.
Vesk rethings lifechoices as Jurrasic park T-rex scenes flashes trough his head.|
Contributor
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I've enjoyed reading your stories, keep 'em coming! :) And thanks for the feedback on the vehicle chase -- I have to admit that I didn't have a chance to properly playtest it and thus wasn't sure how easy it would be to run or how balanced it would be. I think the GM who directed his group away from the encounter made the right call; I can imagine it requires a lot more prep than most of the other missions.
Also, the two people who have reviewed the scenario so far, if you're reading this, thanks so much for the kind words! ^_^
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Venture-Lieutenant, Netherlands—Leiden
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I've enjoyed reading your stories, keep 'em coming! :) And thanks for the feedback on the vehicle chase -- I have to admit that I didn't have a chance to properly playtest it and thus wasn't sure how easy it would be to run or how balanced it would be. I think the GM who directed his group away from the encounter made the right call; I can imagine it requires a lot more prep than most of the other missions.
Also, the two people who have reviewed the scenario so far, if you're reading this, thanks so much for the kind words! ^_^
I really liked the concept of the vehicle chase; but I'm not convinced the chase rules themselves are all that solid, and they're not very convenient to learn for players (or even the GM) during a special.
One of the main problems is that it's fairly easy to lose the pursuer: if you end up with a two-zone gap after movement then you lose your pursuer. So if the worm doesn't successfully uses Speed Up and the PCs do, then the chase is over in the first round.
Another problem is that the worm needs to Engage in melee distance to do anything, which costs an action, or -4/-4. It's effective piloting skill really isn't all that high, so then its chances of success go down a lot.
It gets even worse because several of the terrain zones require you to Evade or take damage. This means it gets even harder for the worm to close in or engage. Meanwhile, for the players there's not really any downside to trying to Evade, because it doesn't slow you down and the check is easy.
In my GM run at 3-4 they shot the poor worm to bits in a couple of rounds without it ever getting close enough to attack them.
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I had tremendous fun running Sands of Oblivion in Play-by-Post. It makes for a fun read!
(Actually, I had tremendous fun running your special in PBP, period!)
Hmm
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Once the Jinsuls showed themselves, my table spent much of the battle taking the fight to them in a boon-modified tier 6 Drake. We dispensed no fewer than 7 tactical nukes into their ships, averaging only 2 rounds to take each one apart. Their capital ship fared little better once we found its weak spot.
All at the same time, judicious aid token passing and boosting allowed me to keep our low-level ground crews at other tables alive.
In fact, I think all my spent spell slots went to boosting the aid tokens, as we had no need of HP healing at our table.