Starfinder Society Scenario # 1-22: "The Protectorate Petition" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

I ran this at high-tier using the four-player adjustment.  It's a solid, standalone scenario that captures the sort of mission one would expect the Starfinder Society to go on.  It's not particularly challenging, and would be suitable for a non-optimized or new group.

SPOILERS

The general plot of The Protectorate Petition is that the PCs are sent to a planet in Near Space on a contract mission to evaluate whether it's ready to become a protectorate of the Pact Worlds.  While there, they can investigate several sites of interest in any order, and (probably) come to realise that the planet's government has covered up a disturbing history of violence and genocide.  But the decision isn't an easy one, as the events happened centuries ago and the current leaders aren't directly responsible.  The PCs are faced with an interesting moral decision on whether or not to recommend that protectorate status be granted.

The scenario starts with a briefing from the always-forgettable Venture-Captain Arvin and a much more memorable presence: an eight-foot-tall android officer of the Stewards, Major Tower-9.  Together, the two explain that the PCs are being sent to a planet called Tabrid Minor, a planet whose native inhabitants, the copaxis, are humanoids composed of sentient colonies of coral-like organisms.    The Stewards are considering an application from Tabrid Minor for protectorate status (which is like being a full member of the Pact Worlds but without voting rights) and have contracted the Starfinder Society to undertake an evaluation and issue a recommendation on whether the petition should be granted (each member of the survey team will be lodging an independent "yes" or "no").  It's an excellent premise for an adventure and a plausible use of the Society.  I really liked Major Tower-9, and hope to see her again soon.

The journey to Tabrid Minor is uneventful and the PCs land on one of the planet's abandoned floating cities, which the copaxis only recently re-developed the technology to explore.  A copaxi archaeological team is waiting.  Most of the members of the team are legit scientists, but one, Therseis, is really a government agent whose mission is to steer the PCs away from discovering anything potentially damaging to the petition.  Based on some hints in the text, I had a lot of fun role-playing him as someone who describes everything in too many words.  The initial meet-and-greet has a fun little bit of testing the Starfinders' ability to adapt to new customs, and it's the first opportunity to gain a point in an Influence score that is tracked throughout the scenario.  So far, so good.

At this point, the PCs are presented with a map of the floating city with potential locations of interest marked, some with warnings that the archaeological team found them too dangerous to approach.  There  are seven different locations, and the PCs can explore any or all of them in any order.

Three of the locations are perfectly safe (a market, a university campus, and a transport station).  Each allows the PCs to make a skill check or two to start to get the sense that they're being manipulated (such as by finding "ancient" coins that were minted recently, or books on magic written by a poseur, etc.).

Each of the other four locations, however, leads to an encounter.

1) At memorial gardens, the PCs realize that there was a massive war in the city about three hundred years ago, and that, despite the government claiming to have only recently deciphered it, the copaxis understood the Signal that gave the secret of Drift travel at least since then.  The encounter is against a couple of undead (skeleton) copaxis and is pretty forgettable.

2) In a gaping hole in an otherwise residential neighbourhood, the PCs may start to realize that the coral-like substance that composes the copaxis' body was the subject of extensive mining because it has innate magical properties.  Entering the hole leads to a battle against a "corchaaz" (essentially, a giant crab-like monster with huge pincers).  Past that, the PCs find a shrine to Triune occupied by several defunct robots.  They might manage to reactivate one in order to learn that, in the past, the copaxi used robots widely as servants but when they started to develop sentience, they were, to a one, destroyed or deactivated.  Robo-genocide!

3) An old observation tower is currently occupied by a couple of stowaway drifter copaxis.  There's a fair opportunity for the PCs to bribe them into leaving peacefully, or (as my group did) behave like jerks and go in guns-blazing.  I think I actually liked this combat encounter the best, as the copaxis have some abilities to negate gravity and (especially with the Jet Dash feat) can jump all over the place in cool, cinematic ways.  One way or another, the PCs will likely recover a journal written by a member of the city's magical aristocracy and read about how they were slaughtered after receiving the revelation of Drift travel.

4) Above, I casually dropped in the fact that the copaxis can partially negate gravity!  This was used in their past to play a sport called Parabolas.  If the PCs explore an old stadium, they'll see some useful items (like books and weapons) floating in the center of the arena which has had its gravitation field permanently altered.  Retrieving the items requires successful completion of a skills challenge, and I liked how there was some flexibility in the acceptable means used and real consequences (destruction of everything in a chain-reaction) for too many failures.

None of the encounters are particularly difficult (the PCs always drastically outnumber their foes), and since there's no looming deadline, the PCs can fully rest and heal between them.  I guess since this is more of an exploration-themed scenario than a survival-themed one it's okay, but I think more attention needs to be given to the role of the presence or absence of time-pressure in adjusting encounter difficulty (especially in Starfinder with the 10 minute rest option).

After each encounter, Therseis checks in and the PCs have a chance to gain an Influence point.  I found the Influence mechanic a bit weird, as it's still not clear to me how/why the PCs (in-character) know that they should be trying to influence him (whereas his interest in influencing them is obvious).  In any event, the more Influence points they accumulate, the more likely Therseis is to confess his role in misleading the investigators.  It becomes clear that he's not really evil and doesn't even fully understand himself what has transpired in Tabrid Minor's past.

After the PCs have explored as much as they want, they'll probably have won Therseis over.  He'll basically go along with the PCs' decision, expressing a desire to join the Starfinder Society someday.  It's a bit anti-climactic of an ending, so I took the advice in the forums to really play up the significance of the PCs' decision and encouraging the role-playing of their deliberations on whether to recommend entry or not (the actual voting was done by secret ballot and then I revealed the results after the scenario was over).  If at least half of the PCs approve of protectorate status, the players earn a boon allowing them to play copaxis in the future, which is cool but means that those groups who voted the other way get kind of shafted (unless they earn a certain number of Influence points).

On the whole, I like the premise and structure of the scenario a lot.  It feels open-ended, there's enough combat to keep things interesting, and the PCs have a good moral decision to make at the end.  My criticisms are twofold: 1) it's really easy (that is, the combats are pushovers and it'd be *really* hard for a team not to get the requisite amount of Influence) and 2) the history of Tabrid Minor is overwritten with too much going on (a failed coup, a successful coup, a robot apocalypse, Signal/Drift drama, the coral-stuff is magical!, a cover-up, etc.) to be digested by most players in a single session.  I'd suggest a better plan would have been one or two big revelations, but more carefully seeded via gradually-building clues throughout the scenario.  Still, Tabrid Minor and the copaxis are an excellent piece of world-building, and I'd gladly go back there someday on a follow-up mission.  The Protectorate Petition isn't perfect, but it's a solid, enjoyable scenario.