Starfinder Bounty # 4: "Poacher's Prize" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Poacher's Prize  is the fourth of the Starfinder Bounties (short adventures meant to be playable in an hour or so).  Like the first three, I played this via play-by-post with my journalist character, Vitellius Korpopolis.  I think it's probably the best written of the four, as it contains a good mix of skill use, role-playing, and (depending on how the PCs approach things) combat.  Even though the cover art (a rhino with elk antlers, really?) is a bit silly, the interior art is better and the scenario makes clever use of a flip-mat.  I'd recommend this one.

SPOILERS!

Arkanen is a moon of the gas giant Liavara, and is infamous for its bizarre orbit that causes atmospheric bleed and intense electrical storms & magnetic disruption.  None of that really comes into play in Poacher's Prize, which is set in and around a research station and nature preserve on the moon.  The PCs are called into Elkrius, the research station, because someone has stolen a pair of animals overnight.  But these aren't just any animals--the station has used advanced genetic recombination technology to bring back two specimens of an extinct species called mistuors (the animals depicted on the cover).  The station doesn't want any adverse publicity or to involve the authorities, so the PCs are hired to find the culprits and get the animals back before they're killed or sold off-planet.  It's an interesting set up for an adventure.

The first part of the Bounty takes place at the research station as the PCs investigate to figure out how the crime took place and "whodunnit".  That last bit's actually the easiest, as the leader of the break-in gang is caught on video surveillance: a former employee of the research center named Darvis Olem.  Still, I thought this part of the adventure was handled really well because there are a lot of different skills that can be used during the investigation and a variety of clues that can be uncovered, each of which adds a bit more information to the story of what happened and where the mistuors are now.

The second (shortest) part of the Bounty has the PCs racing toward where they think the mistuors are being held but having to overcome several obstacles along the way (such as not getting lost, removing felled trees on the road, etc.).  This was presented well, with reasonable consequences for failure.  (I hate adventure design where players just keep rolling dice until they succeed).

The third part of the adventure takes place at the forest campsite where Darvis and his gang have set up several trailers for themselves and some cages for the mistuors while they wait for the animals' buyers to arrive.  I really liked the set-up here, as it takes place at night and multiple approaches are viable.  The PCs can race into the camp at full-speed for a "shock and awe" approach (which is what my group did--it made for the best vid-footage!), or, if they're very careful and stealthy, they could sneak into the camp, unlock the cages, load the mistruors into their own vehicles, and escape before anyone at the camp realises they're gone.  Most groups probably will end up in combat, and the Bounty provides a plausible account of how the different poachers and their leader will respond depending on what the PCs do.  The Space Colony flip-mat was repurposed to serve as the campsite, and worked surprisingly well.

After the animals are (presumably) rescued and returned to the research station, the scenario ends on a curiously ambiguous note.  The research station is suspiciously adverse to contacting the authorities (even to turn over a captured Darvis), to the point where I wondered if they were themselves engaging in illicit behavior.  Or, maybe I'm just reading too much into it.  Anyway, Poacher's Prize meets the brief of a short, solid adventure, and I imagine most players will enjoy it.