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Several items are unclear in this one. Sorry for the length, but here are the questions:
1. In part A there are 5 beacons. There are 8 different checks the PCs can make to find the beacons. Am I correct in assuming that the first 5 successful (unique) checks turn up a beacon and the others are just additional options?
2. The map in Part B shows 4 enemy craft. But there is only one. (Not a big deal, I’ll just choose one as the starting location.) But where are the PCs supposed to start?
3. Does destroying a civilian ship carry any penalty?
4. The map of the bridge in Part C burned my brain for a long time. Even after reading the text multiple times. I think I have it right now. What is now the “floor” was the forward wall/viewscreen when the ship was in flight. Can anyone confirm that?
5. For the Hazard in Part C8; what is the speed of the wind? That determines the penalty to ranged attacks. (CRB page 400).
RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4
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Sorry I didn't see this sooner. I only had the other thread flagged and didn't check for others. Provided answers to the best of my understanding, though development has final word.
1. There are only so many beacons, so yes, the other checks would be extraneous. It's just to give more options to the PCs. On the plus side, if they find all the beacons, they aren't penalized for not doing the social encounters.
2. I used the random starting distance from the Starship Combat rules when I've run it. 3d6+5 spaces I believe.
3. I'm not sure about this one. There were some changes made in development and I'd only be guessing.
4. That's correct, the bridge is tilted 90 degrees. the view screen is now the floor.
5. The winds are referred to as a storm in the Area C description.
Sorry that wasn't more explicitly restated in the encounter description.
Hope that helps!
Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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I get that the view screen is now the floor, but can't tell where on the map the viewscreen is. Is it the 'south' wall?It’s that big black 2 square x 3 square rectangle in the center of C8.
That's got to be the true floor though - all the chairs are mounted to that plane. That rectangle's an elevated platform or something.
I know we had all our mini's turned sideways with some direction as relative 'down' when I played, I just can't remember which direction.
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I get that the view screen is now the floor, but can't tell where on the map the viewscreen is. Is it the 'south' wall?It’s that big black 2 square x 3 square rectangle in the center of C8.That's got to be the true floor though - all the chairs are mounted to that plane. That rectangle's an elevated platform or something.
I know we had all our mini's turned sideways with some direction as relative 'down' when I played, I just can't remember which direction.
Matt confirmed above that what the map shows as the “floor” was the forward wall when the ship was in flight.
Those chairs shouldn’t be there. (maybe they fell there?) And when the ship was in flight apparently the walls, ceiling, and floor were ALL curved. Why did somebody put a secret door in the ceiling? That part of the map does not lend itself to easy visualization, I know it made my brain burn.
Venture-Lieutenant, New Hampshire—Merrimack
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Okay, now that I'm trying to wrap my head around the bridge.... my brain is now hurting. This piece of map would be greatly improved if I had an isometric view of what is UP. The chairs on the map are really throwing me off....
Really I think if someone just tells me which direction is DOWN, I'll be okay. Is west down and east up? Is "into" the map down, and towards me reading it up like most maps?
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4
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Yea, sorry for the confusion. Into the map is down as per normal. I'm going to write a more detailed explanation below.
The space is the bridge of the ship but tilted down 90 degrees from normal.
Like if you look at this picture of the sinking Titanic, it's a similar orientation for the bridge as the front half of the ship
http://i3.ytimg.com/vi/FSGeskFzE0s/hqdefault.jpg
And you can also somewhat make it out in the aerial view in the bottom right of the Area C map.
It's then a 50 foot drop from the "top" of the broken bridge to the view screen on the floor. The corridor leading down into that space is only 20ft wide and tall, but that's not shown on the map.
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Venture-Lieutenant, New Hampshire—Merrimack
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I'm struggling to describe my confusion. The map as presented looks like a typical top down view, but when you say it's tilted 90* my mind struggles to resolve why there's a secret door in what would normally be the ceiling...
I'm sure it's my thick-headedness, and not your description.
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RPG Superstar 2013 Top 4
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It's a smuggler's compartment that was in the ceiling. Like a hidden attic crawlspace. It's actually listed in the starship's stat block and I invested in it to justify making it hard to find.
And no worries about the confusion. It's not straight forward, and I hope the novelty of it outweighs the frustration.
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Venture-Captain, California—San Francisco Bay Area North & East
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Ok, enough confusion on this. It sounds like these are the proper views of the bridge - correct? Or similar with the hallway flush with the floor instead of in the center of the wall?
Apologies for the rough model of the structure, it's not really the type of modeling I typically do.
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It felt more than a little bait and switchy to have pages of hand outs about the NPCs we're supposed to interact with, only for all the importance to suddenly be on the beacons PCs may not discover before it's too late.
Unless the expectation is that the party isn't doing the interactions one at a time, you could easily have a party of 5 go socialite socialite socialite engineer socialite.. and then need to make 4/5 checks in the next round.
Venture-Agent, Virginia—Hampton Roads
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It felt more than a little bait and switchy to have pages of hand outs about the NPCs we're supposed to interact with, only for all the importance to suddenly be on the beacons PCs may not discover before it's too late.
Unless the expectation is that the party isn't doing the interactions one at a time, you could easily have a party of 5 go socialite socialite socialite engineer socialite.. and then need to make 4/5 checks in the next round.
Slight necro. I am finding the same when it comes to social interaction vs beacons. I try reminding the players to keep their eye on security as that was the main focus in the brief but the amount of interactions can be a slight bit tight if you have PC's with some social skills wanting to role play some and that is something I like to encourage.
Venture-Captain, Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh
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Slight necro. I am finding the same when it comes to social interaction vs beacons. I try reminding the players to keep their eye on security as that was the main focus in the brief but the amount of interactions can be a slight bit tight if you have PC's with some social skills wanting to role play some and that is something I like to encourage.It felt more than a little bait and switchy to have pages of hand outs about the NPCs we're supposed to interact with, only for all the importance to suddenly be on the beacons PCs may not discover before it's too late.
Unless the expectation is that the party isn't doing the interactions one at a time, you could easily have a party of 5 go socialite socialite socialite engineer socialite.. and then need to make 4/5 checks in the next round.
I actually thought this was a really interesting conceit. You have the experienced AbStat VC who tells the players that security is important, and the flighty VC-ish dragon who's new to leadership and who says "Naaaah, it's okay, don't worry about security! We've got it covered!" And then how well the PCs listen to the experienced VC determines how well they actually do.
I do think it benefits from some emphasis on the GM's part early on, but I don't think it's necessarily a problem. Starfinders don't always succeed, and this is a really interesting way to fail. At least IMO.
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I do think it benefits from some emphasis on the GM's part early on, but I don't think it's necessarily a problem. Starfinders don't always succeed, and this is a really interesting way to fail. At least IMO.
1) It's one or two sentences, easily lost if the DM is paraphrasing.
2) It goes far beyond just general security. There are security options you can take that won't help you find the beacons. For all the party knows the guests themselves are the security threat and interacting with them/checking them out/ looking into some of their shifty behavior is helping security.
3) This can be vastly affected by something as simple as which side of the table the DM starts on (with the engineer or with the socialites), or something not specified like whether the characters all declare and then start acting or just act as their turn comes up.
Hmmmm.. I looked at the secondary success conditions again and decided it's not nearly as bad as I thought. Getting the beacons is just 1-2 of the success conditions. I think the DM misread something when I replayed this.