Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Starfinder Society Scenario # 1-06: "A Night in Nightarch" [RPG]


NO SPOILERS

I ran this for a group of five PCs at Tier 3-4.   If the cover or title doesn't give it away, I will: expect drow--lots, and lots of drow, and probably not of the heroic Drizzt-type either!  It's a good scenario for players who like a lot of combat, though there are a couple of skills challenges as well.  It's also a long scenario, and not one that should be attempted in a super-tight time spot.

SPOILERS

A Night in Nightarch begins with the usual briefing, but this time it's from someone new: Naiaj, the bleachling gnome Venture-Captain that PCs may have met in the gala during # 1-05 ("The First Mandate").  Naiaj is a dour, straightforward NPC, but a good choice to send the Starfinders off on a dangerous mission.  She explains that the Society is in desperate need of weapons given the loss of so much material during the Scoured Stars Incident, and that the group has therefore arranged to import some from the drow world of Apostae.  However, before the weapons could be transported, they were stolen.  The PCs' task, obviously, is to travel to the surface settlement of Nightarch on Apostae and recover the weapons without creating a major diplomatic incident.  Naiaj explains that the thief is a minor drow noble named Villyth Zeizerer, but a ranking member of House Zeizerer, Ceobarn, has agreed to serve as a contact to resolve the matter.

There's no drama on the trip to Nightarch, and soon the PCs' shuttle sets down in the domed settlement.  I like the description of Nightarch, and GMs should try to play up its gloomy, ominous nature--this is not a place to trifle with!  The meeting with Ceobarn is handled as a social encounter/skills challenge, with PCs needing to use different lines of argument and different skill checks to persuade him to help; the more successes they get, the more he'll help.  The minimum he'll give is 24 hours of "diplomatic immunity" so that the PCs can get in, get the guns, and get out without further reprisals.  There's a couple of cool things available if the PCs rack up the successes, like Ceobarn loaning them his personal armored transport or even his personal sniper.  I like the idea of social encounters when they can be handled naturally and as an aid to role-playing, but I found this one was awkward because it's unclear if the PCs are to make an argument and then roll the corresponding skill check (some of which are unusual in this context, like Mysticism or Perception), or roll a skill check to know which argument to make.  When I ran this, the RP was a bit stilted and forced, and the DCs were high enough that the PCs attempting the checks usually failed.  I applaud the idea of trying to make more skills than just Diplomacy useful in social encounters, but the way it was handled in # 1-05 was better (with the players getting hints about what types of skills might impress different NPCs, and then RPing and attempting the skill check accordingly).  I should add that a couple of players were frustrated by this part, as they felt their PCs had very little to offer.

The next part of the session is another set of skill checks to locate where the weapons are being held (a warehouse) and potentially other pieces of information such as a floor plan, defenses, access codes, etc.  GMs are instructed to handle this like the montage scenes in a heist movie, and that worked out pretty well in my session.  The players are then expected to quickly plan their raid.  The key issue is that there's a lot of content in this scenario, so all of this work is supposed to take no more than an hour of table-time.  That's a lot to expect of RP-heavy groups (where gathering intel and planning a raid could easily take up a whole session), but I'm glad the warning was given to GMs to pass along to players about what the expectations are.

One of the flaws of the scenario is that locating the weapons, gathering intel, and even getting to the warehouse are all assigned very concrete periods of time (down to the half-hour in some cases) so that the players feel like getting everything done within their 24 hours of diplomatic immunity is a crucial element of the scenario.  Oddly, however, there are no stated consequences if PCs go beyond that time period!  It's a false urgency that could have been handled better.

The bulk of the scenario is the raid on the warehouse, which has two levels: a surface level of offices (guarded by 4 drow) and a subterranean storage level (guarded mostly by half-orcs).  One of the things GMs should be aware of is that the repeated use of the term "heist" in the scenario might lead one to think about movies like Ocean's 11 where disguise, misdirection, precision timing, clever scams, etc., are the key to success.  I guess it would be possible, but there's very little support or information in the scenario for that approach, with either a stealthy infiltration or a traditional frontal assault being the most plausible options for success (with the former possible only until the quite loud elevator to the storage level is activated).

I have to give the writer credit: each room in the office level is fleshed out, and it has a sensible layout that even includes toilets!  Groups can spend a lot of time fiddling around with various computers, etc., (the fake shell countermeasure on the control room terminal really did a number on my PCs!), but their main goal has to be reaching the elevator and either hacking its controls or using a keycard found on one of the drow guards.

Things get more interesting on the storage level.  A quasit who has been mistreated by Villyth Zeizerer can be made friendly and give the PCs some advice, such as how to avoid (most of) the nasty traps that guard the place.  The weapons crate the PCs are after has been loaded on a forklift robot and is guarded several half-orcs, including one who has been "fleshwarped" with a tentacle for a head!  Other reviews I've read have complained that the half-orcs are so little threat that this part was a cakewalk, but that wasn't my experience--their attack roll modifiers are high enough that they wear down the PCs who may have no idea that the worst is yet to come.  Once the PCs activate the forklift and start heading for the elevator, two waves of attackers (including Villyth herself) rush the trapped PCs.  The PCs I ran this for unfortunately split up and had running battles all over the warehouse, leading to all but one of them getting killed! (the lone survivor, to his credit, made it out with the weapons crate and thus accomplished the mission).  It's a cruel trick, quite worthy of drow, to make getting in easy but getting out hard.

Overall, this is probably the most combat-heavy scenario released up to this point.  PCs may not realize when it's safe to rest and recover stamina, as the natural urgency they feel to get the goods and go can lead them to keep pushing on despite getting slowly worn down.  I thought the scenario was tough but fair, and provided a much-needed counterpoint to the sometimes too-easy earlier scenarios.  They say drow never forget, and I'm pretty sure the people I GMed this one for won't forget it anytime soon either.

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