Starfinder Adventure Path: "Dawn of Flame, Chapter 3: Soldiers of Brass" [RPG]

 NO SPOILERS

Here we go with Soldiers of Brass, the second chapter in the Dawn of Flame adventure path.  I ran this online via play-by-post with a fantastic group of players.  I'm glad they've been a patient and tolerant group, because just like with Chapter 1, Chapter 2 isn't exactly spectacular.  One might even say it's more of the same, just in a slightly different context.  Just as I was surprised that James Sutter wrote Chapter 1 and it turned out kinda bland, I'm surprised Crystal Frasier wrote this forgettable adventure.  But I'll get to all of that in the Spoilers! section below, and instead talk here about the non-spoilerly back-matter.

The art design continues to be stellar (pun intended), and the cover is fine.  The artwork of that NPC on the cover pops, and the background of Iconics facing off against foes in what looks like a museum is pretty neat.  The inside front- and back- covers detail the "Excoriation Combine Jezail", a Tier 6 efreet destroyer from the Elemental Plane of Fire.  The schematic makes it look like a Romulan Bird of Prey, but there's nothing particularly interesting or memorable about the ship itself, and its equipment is a good example of why starship combat is a slog--its biggest weapon does 3d8 damage, and its shields have 25 points in each quadrant.  If multiple attacks manage to hit the same quadrant in the same round, it's *just* possible you'll scratch the hull a bit before those shields get rebalanced and you have to start all over again.

The back matter consists of "Merchants of the Brass Bazaar", "Touring the Archipelago", "Alien Archives", and "Codex of Worlds".

"Merchants of the Brass Bazaar" is an interesting and detailed overview of the sprawling marketplace in the bubble-city of Corona.  There's (secretly) a solar dragon running a kitchen!  I wish I would have had time to incorporate more of it for the PCs, though I did manage to get the lazy Drow merchant Berdac Zeizerer into a brief scene.  Several new pieces of tech are scattered about, but I'd avoid the solar flare grenades--a lot of effort for very little payoff.

My favourite piece of back matter is "Touring the Archipelago".  Written as a "real" travel guide for newcomers to the Burning Archipelago, this would have been *perfect* as a Player's Guide to give players before they started Dawn of Flame.  It's full of great flavour and is also really use for the GM in understanding the setting better.

This issue's "Alien Archive" has six entries.  There are two new playable races (sulis and sylphs).  Mephits are introduced with grafts for various types--some will be familiar (dust or fire mephits, for example), while others are unique to Starfinder (pollution, tech, and radiation mephits).  I would like to make friends with a janni--useful pals for CR 4 creatures!  Salamanders and thoqqua (fire worms) round out the list.  There's nothing spectacular in the entry, but some useful additions to the game.

The "Codex of Worlds" covers Topheki b, a mysterious haven in the Vast for damaged ships.  It's an interesting concept, but the mechanics of Starfinder mean that it's hard to conceptualise why PCs would ever go there--if they don't have a working Drift engine, they won't get anywhere, and if they do have a working Drift engine, they'd surely head back to Absalom Station.

Now, onto the adventure.

SPOILERS!

In Chapter 1 of Dawn of Flame, the PCs put down a rebellion in Asanatown.  There, the PCs learned that the local lashunta rebels had surprisingly managed to hire an expensive mercenary group called the Brass Dragons to lend a hand.  Here in Chapter 2, we (though not the players) learn that the Brass Dragons undertook that operation because their leader, an ifrit from the City of Brass named Jalusann, is an agent of General Khaim!  Jalusann has been ordered to soften up the Burning Archipelago by destabilising it, while also suppressing any signs that an invasion is imminent.  Although the coup in Asanatown didn't work out as planned, Jalusann and the Brass Dragons have a new operation: they plan to hire a local street gang to break into the Deep Cultures Institute and steal data from surveys that could reveal the impending danger to the Pact Worlds.  With this background out of the way, the adventure proper is structured in three parts.

Part 1 is the robbery at the DCI.  The adventure assumes the PCs are staying at the DCI's Museum of Endosolar Sciences, but it doesn't give any NPCs or other background on the DCI to help integrate this concept into the campaign.  (the PCs know Nib from the DCI, but that's it).  The adventure also doesn't provide much information on Stellacuna, the bubble-city where the DCI is located.  One of the things that the reduced page count of Starfinder AP issues from their Pathfinder 1E cousins affects is how much supporting information GMs receive.  Here, GMs have to do a lot of the legwork themselves to make everything fit together.  Anyway, the PCs will be asleep in the museum when they realise intruders are inside. The street gang doing the breaking-and-entering are the Bloodshots, a group of fairly generic ikeshti thugs.  The plus side is that the action starts quickly.  Afterward, there are some good avenues of investigation for the PCs to start tracking the Bloodshots back to their headquarters (because the stolen data has already been transmitted somewhere, and the DCI wants it back).

Part 2 really has three different parts within it.  First, the PCs need to travel through Corona, a bubble-city notorious for solar shields that often flicker, letting in solar flares.  This was fun, and definitely got my players' attention! (they became a bit paranoid to even walk around)  There are a couple of events that can be ran at the GM's discretion (something I always like), my favourite of which is an encounter with a huckster named Practical Prestine.  Second, the PCs can investigate a business called Cryo-Generics which is linked to the Bloodshots.  The gang has an ambush set up for the PCs here.  Third, there's the Meltdown, a scrapyard in which the Bloodshots' leader, Mama Throsh, resides.  She's a good NPC and will 'fess up about the gang having been hired by the Brass Dragons.

Part 3 has the PCs attacking the Eos Athletics Club, the two-level headquarters of the Brass Dragons.  A bit of fun can be had with thoqqua tunnels for surprise attacks and with the vehicles in the motor pool, but Jalusann is not particularly interesting for a "boss battle" because she's built around mobile hit-and-run attacks but there's just not enough room on the map to make that feasible (though I gave my players a surprisingly hard time with a couple of grease spells.)  Assuming the PCs win, they'll recover the data and might even pick up a few hints that the Brass Dragons are part of something bigger and even more dangerous.  The data is pretty scattered, however, and I don't think my players have really put anything together yet.

The epilogue has Nib telling the PCs that the recovered data points to a location somewhere deep in the sun--a place called Noma.  That's a good set up for Chapter Three, when Dawn of Flame really starts to shine.  Yes, another pun.

Overall, the problem with Soldiers of Brass is that it's almost all space dungeon crawl--a room-by-room battle against gang members and mercenaries.  The crawl might take place in a museum (Part 1), a warehouse and a scrapyard (Part 2), or an abandoned gym (Part 3), but it all has pretty much the same feel.  The enemies are fine but forgettable, and there's little that really shouts out "we're having adventures near the freaking sun!"  The problem is magnified because Chapter 1 of the AP was pretty much the same thing just with terrorists and mercenaries instead of gang members and mercenaries.  For a role-playing game, the adventure just doesn't involve much role-playing.