Starfinder Society # 1-10: "The Half-Alive Streets" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

I ran this at Subtier 1-2 using the four-player adjustment. All in all, I think I'd say it was about average.  There's a good mix of investigation, role-playing, and combat, though the plot, NPCs, and encounters aren't particularly memorable.  It definitely runs towards the short side of things (my group, which I think of as pretty good at role-playing, finished it in just 3 1/2 hours).  It might be a good one to use for relatively new players so the GM can take the extra time getting everyone up to speed.

SPOILERS

The Half-Alive Streets, written by Mara Lynn Butler, takes place entirely on Absalom Station.  The gist of the plot is that the PCs are drawn into an investigation of how strange, unstable bio-tech augmentations have come onto the market.  They soon learn that the augmentations are killing people and then resurrecting them as cybernetic zombies!  It all gets traced back to some shirrens holed up and trying to contain a malfunctioning assembly ooze.  I tend to think there's a lot of potential in the scenario, but it falls a bit flat in execution.

The briefing is with Venture-Captain Arvin, an NPC I still haven't gotten a good read on how to role-play in an interesting way despite his appearing in a few scenarios now.  Accompanying Arvin is a much more fun NPC, the vesk pawnbroker Julzakama that some players will remember from Into the Unknown.  I'm on the record of saying how much I appreciate the reusing  of good NPCs from scenario to scenario, as it helps give the illusion that what happens in one scenario is meaningful for others.

The first main act of the scenario has the PCs sent to the Freemarkets, a multi-level shopping complex run by AbadarCorp.  The PCs should (fairly easily) come across several leads to narrow the list of five possible biotech firms responsible for the dud augmentations to just one: Renew-You.  It's frankly pretty hard for the PCs to fail in their "investigation," but I liked some of the little role-playing opportunities like the gossipy elderly shirren, the vesk barber, the ysoki pawnshop owner who is far more prone to talk to someone if they buy something first, etc.  Another NPC from a past scenario can play a major part in this one: Philt, the shirren AbadarCorp representative from Fugitive on the Red Planet.  (those boons do come in handy!)

In a bit of forced plot development, the PCs will find Renew-You frustratingly closed and out-of-business only for a halfling child to lead them to his home where his mother is sick with a botched lung augmentation.  The idea here is that the PCs can help the halfling by either removing the augmentation or helping the family obtain a new one.  If they do, they get a lead on the "acquaintance" who first told the family about the clinic that installed the augmentation.  I thought the writer did a good job portraying the close-knit nature of halfling society and that this was a good role-playing opportunity.  In what's become a bit obvious now, successful handling of this situation allows for the player to earn a halfling PC boon on their Chronicle.

The "acquaintance" lives in a rough part of the station that provides free housing.  I'm really glad I had the flip-mat for this, because "Urban Sprawl" is so cluttered with stuff that it would take ages to draw by hand!  And I will say one thing for Starfinder: traps are appropriately nasty!  There's one on the front door that will wake up any players that found the going a bit slow so far.  Inside the residence is a classic set-up: a body is underneath a sheet, and (after a few rounds in the room) will suddenly lurch to life and attack!  It probably won't surprise experienced players (especially if they got the clue foreshadowing the augmentations' quasi-resurrection ability from examining the halfling), but I'm okay with the classics.  There's only one of the cybernetic zombies, so it's not a hard encounter.

An address found on a computer in the residence leads the PCs to the last section of the scenario.  Here, the shirrens responsible for activating the malfunctioning assembly ooze that created the dangerous augmentations have holed up in a barricaded house as zombies try to batter their way in from the outside.  The PCs have to deal with the zombies (a few small waves of them, in fact) and then fight their way into the house because the shirren are willing to talk but definitely not willing to surrender. If the PCs breach the house and start winning, the shirren get desperate and release the assembly ooze from its containment unit.  When I first read the scenario (and remembered the awesome pic of an assembly ooze in the Alien Archive devouring an android) I thought this would be an awesome "oh crap!" moment for the players.  But when I did my prep and actually looked at the assembly ooze's stats, I realized it actually presented very little threat--probably less than one of the cybernetic zombies.  And indeed, when I ran the scenario, the assembly ooze was destroyed easily and it was a bit anti-climactic. The biggest threat to the PCs, actually, was one of the shirrens (a technomancer who could automatically do damage with magic missile a few rounds in a row).

The scenario ends with a conclusion that is a bit abrupt, like many Starfinder Society scenarios.  I think it would be worth paying as much attention to the conclusion/epilogue as is paid to the Getting Started section in terms of narrative or dialogue support.

I don't have a great explanation for why the scenario left me feeling a bit flat, but I can throw a few ideas out there.  First, I think part of the problem is that the premise is something that could be easily transposed to Pathfinder (just have a botched alchemical remedy accidentally killing people and turning them into zombies instead of botched augmentations) with hardly any changes.  In other words, the scenario doesn't make full use of the science-fantasy setting to tell a new and original story.  Second, it's one of those scenarios that gives the illusion of "investigating a mystery" but that doesn't actually require any thinking or puzzle-solving by the players.  It takes real skill to hide the rails in a published adventure, and in this one they're just a bit too obvious.  Last, the final encounter has so much potential to be awesome if there was a plot change that led to the PCs being trapped in the house trying to do something time-consuming (like broadcast a certain frequency to shut off the augmentations) while wave after wave of cybernetic zombies started bashing their way through various windows and doors in the house.  Then, you'd have a classic Night of the Living Dead/race against time ending that would be far scarier and more memorable.

But, all that speculation aside, The Half-Alive Streets is certainly a competent scenario and I'm sure most players will have fun with it.