Posts
Test Flight is the second instalment
of the Starfinder “Bounty” series of short adventures meant to be playable in
just an hour to an hour-and-and-half. I
got to play it via play-by-post with my favourite new PC, a journalist
character. It will appeal to fans of
starship drama (though not necessarily starship combat) and has a fun NPC. It’s definitely suitable to finish in a short
time window. The sort-of “for all ages”
story, such as there is, doesn’t really fit my tastes, but it’s fine.
SPOILERS!
In Test
Flight, a shirren starship manufacturer named United Interfaith Engineering
(nicely incorporated from the Starship Operations Manual) has developed
a new Grimshaw design meant to be robust but affordable for adventurers
and explorers. The PCs are hired by one
of the company’s project managers to conduct a test flight from Absalom Station
to a small moon orbiting Liavara. The
project manager, a shirren named J’scib, has awesome artwork (love the suitcoat
and bowtie!) and the description of his office is great fun. I’d happily see more of him. There’s also a fun little bit when J’scib is
leading the PCs to the hangar where he asks one PC for the names of their
parents or first pet, and if they answer, he mocks them for lacking the common
sense not to give away valuable clues to hackers. I appreciate the humour early in the
adventure.
The Grimshaw basically
looks like a house fly, and is unlike any Starfinder ship I’ve ever seen
before. Once in space, the PCs’ main
goal is to test out its various systems.
This is done by each PC making two skill checks, but they get to choose
whether to make easy (low DC) checks or hard (high DC) checks. The harder the checks, the more “Data Points”
they’ll accumulate, but each PC only gets to make two checks in total. I liked the risk-reward mechanic here. The checks themselves are pretty pedestrian,
but a good GM might be able to add some flavour to make things more interesting.
The encounter in
the Bounty is with a pair of adolescent voraijas (essentially, space whales). The adventure gives PCs the option to engage
in starship combat with them, or to use skill checks to lure them back to their
home. Regardless of what happens, a
Xenowarden ship shows up after 4 rounds to solve the problem, which is one of
those “no matter what, everything’s going to be fine and you can’t really fail”
plot elements I always hate in RPGs. Decisions
without consequences are poor story design.
Once the PCs
arrive at Liavra, they’re paid off and receive an extra reward if they’ve
accumulated enough Data Points (with, oddly enough, big bonuses to Data Points
if they peacefully drove off the Liavra and deductions if they killed them). And that’s that!
In my very first
review of a Starfinder adventure almost six years ago now, I complained about its
“Space Disney” feel. I’ve reconciled
myself to the fact that that’s mostly what Starfinder is, and this Bounty
definitely fits into that mould.
No comments:
Post a Comment