Optional encounters, and other session fillers ideas for shorter scenarios

[Driftbourne]

Starfinder Society Scenario #1-32: Acts of Association has an optional encounter you can run. I had not planned on running the optional encounter, but when the last combat ended quicker than expected thanks to the dice, it didn't make for an exciting ending so decided to run the optional encounter. As luck would have one of the players had some great failing forward moments, then in the end made the killing shot, making for a much more exciting ending.

In one of the Gen Con blog posts we learned some new details for SF2e organized play
Join Paizo Organized Play at Gen Con and Origins in 2025! .

blog wrote:

Starfinder Society scenarios for Second Edition will be 2-3 hours long, and will cover a two-level range.

I support the idea of shorter scenarios, largely because I know how playing in a live game feels when you are rushed racing to finish a scenario before a game store closes. The downside of shorter scenarios is if the dice favor the PCs enough the game can be over quicker than expected, this got me thinking back to the optional encounter in Acts of Association, as a great way to be able to keep playing if you have more time left.

The optional encounter in Acts of Association could easily fit in with any scenario on Absalom Station or almost any space station, or easily reskinned for a city setting. This got me thinking if more scenarios had optional encounters, and we could use them in other scenarios, over time the pool of optional encounters would keep growing. Besides filling in for a session that ran short, this could be a good way to make repeatable more varied. Optional encounters could have tags saying what setting or environments they fit in.

One downside for me for shorter scenarios is there's less time to get into the story. Having more meta plots would be one way to deal with that, even if some of them were short two-part meta plots. With scenarios that are 2-3 hours long, groups that have more time could even play both in one session, another option would be scenario + bounty.

If you end up with extra time having the option to add an extra encounter, bounty, or a second scenario would fit almost any situation that comes up.

[Darrell Impey UK]

Adding an extra encounter to an adventure is very unbalancing; you're effectively offering the players the chance to burn extra consumables without gaining extra treasure bundles to reward them.

[Driftbourne]

Good point. Looking more into this I just realized I've never played a series 2 quest in PF2e, they came out just a few months before the local PFS group here disbanded. Looking at the reviews maybe 2-3 hours is a good length. How would you feel about all PFS scenarios where series 2 quests? Not saying all PFS scenarios should be 2-3 hours long, I'm just courious since it sounds like they might be in SF2e.

Some more thoughts on adding an extra encounter if the game runs short. This would typically happen at the end, this is likely easier to do for Starfinder since the end is almost always returning to the Lorespire. It would be easy to add an extra starship encounter or cinematic starship encounter, these likely wouldn't involve using consumables. Another option could be there's a stowaway on the Party's starship to deal with, or some trouble at the ship docks when landing, in either case, the PCs would have several days rest before dealing with an encounter, reducing the need to use consumables. Something could go wrong in the Drift with time and any consumables used in the extra encounter reappear once the PCs leave the Drift.

Bounties have the advantage of being already set up for player and character rewards. Having some bounties that are "on the way back something happens," would allow them to be almost seamlessly added to the end of any scenario or regular bounty. There could even be a repeatable bounty that covers multiple things that could happen on the way home. Another one could be "while at Absalom Station." Almost all the encounters in Acts of Association could be used as random encounters while on the station.

Similar things could be done for PF2 but would have to take into consideration for different types of travail like by ship or overland, and returning to various lodges.

[Quentin Coldwater]

PFS1 pretty much always included optional encounters, which I really liked. I kinda miss them in PFS2, but Darrell makes a good point about consumables. I think PFS2 is lighter on the consumables, but still. Sometimes you have a longer slot, or the dice go well, and you have an extra 45 minutes to spare. A little extra encounter would be nice to have. But that's also extra pressure on the author to include them, something that they don't always have space/time for.

On the other side of the coin (and this is more for Pathfinder than Starfinder): any easy solution would be to "downgrade" one existing encounter to optional. I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the word count is the same between PFS1 and PFS2, so essentially they should also have the same amount of encounters and alotted time. I have often run short of time due to slow play or newbies that need rules explanations. A clear-cut indication of "you can skip this encounter if you want to" would be nice to have, and would be cool if scenarios were designed with that goal in mind.

[cavernshark]

Given the limited about of development resources for these scenarios, which may already be loss-leaders from a direct product standpoint, I'd be disinclined to spend time producing optional content. From a pure opportunity cost standpoint, I'd rather that effort be spent on adding an extra 2-3 hour scenario or two in a given season -- even if or especially if those sessions are lighter or more world building and less related to the metaplot.

[Driftbourne]

Quentin Coldwater wrote:

A little extra encounter would be nice to have. But that's also extra pressure on the author to include them, something that they don't always have space/time for.

cavernshark wrote:

Given the limited about of development resources for these scenarios, which may already be loss-leaders from a direct product standpoint, I'd be disinclined to spend time producing optional content.

There's no need to write optional extra encounters for this. I used the optional encounter from Acts of Association as an example because it could easily fit in at the end of almost any other SFS scenario. All that would be needed to do is identify and make an approved list of encounters that easily fit in with the ending of most other scenarios.

The list doesn't need to include every possible encounter that would work for this, just finding a few would be enough. Since this would involve already or future published encounters the organized play community could be used to identify and submit a list of encounters that might be usable, and then someone at Paizo could just do the final approval.

[cavernshark]

I think you might be underestimating the impact / effort of "someone at Paizo could just do the final approval part" and also the effort necessary to build that list in the first place but a community group. What happens when the first few encounters get stale because everyone's seen them and you want to add more? How do you document and distribute this.

This is fine for a home game, but it really would take more work and be more complicated to organize, communicate, and maintain than I think you're giving it credit for. And it's even more awkward if this all *doesn't* live in the scenarios themselves. At which point it's harder on GMs. I don't mind more role play and world building. I'd prefer it in games I'm playing. But I also don't think the organized play vehicle is the best way to do that if isn't a part of the scenario being offered.