Starfinder Module: "Skitter Shot" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Skitter Shot is Paizo’s Free RPG Day offering for Starfinder in 2018.  It’s a standalone, one-shot adventure that casts the players in the role of skittermanders, the delightfully friendly and (sometimes over-)helpful race of six-armed aliens that have become the game’s unofficial mascot through popular appeal.  This review is based on playing through it once and then reading it.  Overall, it’s a fun adventure that, despite a few flaws, should leave players in a good mood when they’re done with it.  It’s really hard to hate skittermanders because they’re just so darned . . . helpful!

SPOILERS

The premise of Skitter Shot is that a vesk space scavenger named Nakonechkin has hired a crew of four skittermanders to help him with his work.  When Nakonechkin disappears while exploring a luxury liner that’s inexplicably drifting in space, it’s up to the skittermanders to find him and figure out what’s wrong.  The answer turns out to be a rogue AI on the cruise ship that has turned the ship’s systems against its crew and passengers!  To save the day, the skittermanders will need to disable the AI and fight off a hostile pirate ship.

The inside front cover of the module provides the layout of the cruise ship, while the inside back cover provides a nice list of “10 Facts About Skittermanders” that should be read to players before the session.  The module comes with a full-page character sheet for each of the skittermanders (they’re Level 2) that includes an entertaining bio and high-quality artwork.  Each of the skittermanders has a distinct personality and role, which always helps to bring pre-gens to life.

The adventure itself is divided into three parts.

In Part 1, “Docking Procedures,” the PCs realize that Nakonechkin has been gone for too long and isn’t responding to communications.  They’ll have to do a spacewalk over to the cruise ship (the “Emerald Empyrean”) and force their way through an airlock to gain entry.  Apart from the risk of being struck by micro-meteteroids, this part’s pretty easy and straightforward.

Part II, “Relaxation Protocols,” is where the adventure really heats up.  The PCs have to fend off security robots who think they are “pets” and should be caged accordingly, robotic massage tables that have trapped Nakonechkin into an endless (and painful) massage, strange shadowy caterpillar-like creepers that have somehow drifted onto the ship from the Shadow Plane, a former crew member that has arisen as a cybernetic zombie, and more.  The encounters are done well and are interesting, but I did find that as both a player and a later reader that it was hard to make sense of how some of the encounters could be traced to the rogue AI aboard the ship.

Part III, “Termination Measures,” is where the PCs have to do a sort of skills challenge (complicated by radiation and electricity traps) in order to shut down the rogue AI.  There’s a problem in the encounter design for this one that is also found in the earlier encounter against the shadow creepers: only one of the four PCs has the skills necessary to succeed, and if that PC is dead or disabled, the party is pretty much out of luck!  More specifically, only the one PC trained in Engineering can disable the AI, and only the one PC trained in Mysticism can stop the shadow creepers from respawning each round.  Arguably, this could be a way for each PC to get a chance to shine, but with a little bad luck the PCs could find themselves in an unwinnable situation.  This part of the adventure also has a battle against space pirates (optional if time is short) that suffers from the same problem I’ve unfortunately found with Starfinder starship combat in general: it’s a long slog that provides more tedium and frustration than exciting thrills.  Still, it is a way to show new players what the system  has to offer.  [as an aside, the artwork for the pirate ship depicts a witch straight out of the credits from Bewitched, something that I found distracting for a futuristic SF game set in another galaxy!]

There’s then a nice little conclusion that has Navonechkin offering the skittermanders their own ship as partners in his business, setting things up nicely for future adventures in future years.  I would like to see more skittermander adventures in the future—they were fun and very different to the normal tone of the game; as long as they don’t get overused. 

Overall, although not perfect, you really can’t complain about such a well-done, professionally written and illustrated adventure that is 100% free.  It’s an entertaining, welcome addition to what Starfinder has to offer.