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The Great Grav-Train Robbery is the second
Starfinder “one-shot”, a short adventure played with themed pre-gens intended
to take just a few hours to complete. I
got a chance to play it online via play-by-post, and then read through it for the
purpose of this review. I think it’s a
really fun, fast-paced adventure with some real classic cinematic moments of
the type likely to have players swapping tales about it well after it’s over. If you like classic heist movies with a
sci-fi twist, this adventure is for you.
The PDF is sixteen pages long, though only about ten of that
is devoted to the adventure (with the rest taken up by some excellent
artwork). The pre-generated characters
are a separate download, which I forgot to read for this review, but I do
remember they have personalities fitting their roles in the group and some
background info that ties into the adventure.
Groups can play the adventure just for fun, but Starfinder Society
credit is available as well.
SPOILERS!
The Great Grav-Train Robbery takes place on
the world of Pan in the isolated Tabori Cluster. A mysterious artifact has been discovered in
a mine and is on the way via grav-train to the area’s largest city (and known
stronghold for the criminal Ixo Syndicate).
But a bloke named Aramesh Maageri has another idea, and has organised a
crew to steal the artifact right under the noses of the train’s staff and
passengers! The pre-gen PCs, of course,
are Aramesh and the crew he’s assembled, and like a good heist movie, they each
have a role to play (“The Face”, “The Muscle”, “The Hacker”, etc.). The adventure starts fast, as each PC is
dangling from a rope attached to an enercopter about to swoop down over the
speedy train. At the GM’s discretion,
the players can each have a turn with a “background flashback” to describe how
they were recruited for the mission.
Otherwise, they’re thrown right into the first obstacle: how to get past
a nuar security guard (violence or stealth being likely options).
Although the PCs know which cargo car on the train the
artifact is being stored, they need to acquire access codes to it by obtaining
the personal datapad of Brom Lancaster, the train’s chief of security. Brom’s currently drinking in the train’s VIP
car, so the PCs need to figure out how to get close enough to him and swipe it
without anyone noticing (as this is a heist crew, not a tactical combat
infantry squad!). This plays out in a
well-designed mini-game that has each player take on a role (like “The
Conversationalist” or “The Distraction”) and making skill checks until Brom is
sufficiently vulnerable to the Pickpocket moving in. But there’s a smart twist: the PCs aren’t the
only ones after the artifact, or Brom’s datapad! A rival “gentleman thief” named Royce Flynn
is present, so the situation plays out a bit like a Chase, and the adventure
certainly contemplates Royce getting the datapad first.
Whether the PCs get to the cargo car ahead of Royce or
behind him, once the access codes to the creates are inputted in Brom’s datapad,
every container unlocks at once—including one containing a live mountain
eel! This begins a pretty exciting scene
as Royce’s plan was similar to the PCs—get the artifact and evacuate via
enercopter. His crew’s enercopter is the
first to arrive, so not only do the PCs need to deal with the mountain eel,
they need to deal with gunfire and the risk of Royce escaping with the
artifact. There are some fun additions
to this scene, like a grav-crane that can reposition crates or even hold the
enercopter in place. As the battle
progresses, it becomes clear why the PCs’ plan has *their* enercopter hold
off—the grav-train is about to enter a tunnel!
Royce’s exploding transport is a cool transition to the next scene.
In the last major part of the adventure, the PCs presumably
have the artifact but their exploits in the cargo hold haven’t gone unnoticed
by ship’s security. The heist gang have
to improv an escape plan because the next stop after the tunnel is the train’s
final destination, a grav-train station. Three options are presented to the players,
and they’re all well-detailed in the adventure (and will play out very
differently). First, they can unpacked a
hover cruiser (a floating sports car, essentially) and try to make a run for it
once the train clears the tunnel. This
starts an exciting vehicle chase scene as the Ixo Syndicate pursues on armored
hovercycles. Second, they can decide on
the “guns a-blazing” approach and try to fight their way out. But this won’t be a standard Starfinder
combat—there’s a gargantuan mech stored in the cargo hold, and the PCs can take
it! I’ve never done any mech combat in
Starfinder, but it’s certainly a memorable way to have a big ending. Third, they can decide to bluff their way out
of the situation—this is the one my group chose. Players can’t make various skill checks to
sort-of retrospectively justify their disguises and other steps they took (like
erasing security videos) to get past the train detective. But if they fail, they’re almost certainly
going to be arrested.
The adventure concludes with a very brief two-paragraph
epilogue that essentially leaves things open for the group to continue on if
they’d like.
I ended up playing “The Muscle” in the adventure, so I
generally left all the heist-related decision-making to the others. One of the issues I noticed is that we all
brought different preconceptions to what was realistic to expect—whether
security would hear the violence against the first guard, how long the train
was, whether it’d be possible to pretend to be civilian passengers, etc. This isn’t really the adventure’s fault, but
it’d probably be good for the GM to emphasise from the beginning that this is a
movie-style heist, and although the players shouldn’t be stupid, they shouldn’t
sweat the small-stuff and should focus on the big picture of doing exciting
things in pursuit of their goal.
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