SFS # 1-02 "Fugitive on the Red Planet" [RPG]

NO SPOILERS

Fugitive on the Red Planet tasks members of the Starfinder Society with tracking down a rogue member (the "fugitive") who has fled to the desert planet of Akiton (the "red planet").  This is the scenario for fans of Firefly, as the story and setting very much fit the "Western in space" mode, and indeed the scenario is very much an homage to a particular episode of Firefly.  I like that it shows the range of stories that Starfinder can tell.  It's not the most original or creative scenario, but it's solid.  It's also the one to pick if you're worried about time, as there's only two to three encounters and most groups (including mine) ended up completing it well shy of the 4 hour mark.

SPOILERS

The scenario starts in the usual way: the PCs are summoned to the Lorespire Complex for a briefing.  Venture-Captain Arvin tells the PCs that a former member of the Starfinder Society named Reynald Talbot has stolen an artifact from the Society's vaults and fled to the Mars-like desert planet of Akiton.  Talbot, disgruntled because he didn't receive an expected promotion, stole what he believes is an ancient philosopher's stone that transmutes one material to another; but, in fact, he actually ended up with a charlatan's stone, in which the transformation is temporary.  V-C Arvin tells the PCs to head to Akiton and follow Talbot's trail to retrieve the charlatan's stone--it's not really valuable, but the Society can't afford to be seen as unable to look weak after the Scoured Stars incident.  For the GM, there's a good section on the questions PCs are likely to ask, and I particularly like that if they don't ask *any* questions, V-C Arvin yells at them for being slack!  My one suggestion is that, now that I've run a handful of these, it might be good if some scenarios break with the "briefing at the Lorespire Complex" model and shake things up just a little for variety's sake.

The PCs take a civilian shuttle to a city on Akiton called Maro.  Maro, in its brief description, sounds really interesting: built vertically on either cliff face of a deep trench.  In Maro, the PCs are allowed to make a variety of skill checks to figure out that Talbot is in the nearby town of Tasch.  This was a workmanlike solution (one success and they get the info), but I thought it was a missed opportunity.  Maro's too good of setting to essentially skip past, and it would have been great to have an encounter that took advantage of the city's odd architecture (such as chasing a friend of Talbot *up* the side of a cliff face, etc.).  There are no locations or NPCs provided in Maro, so the PCs receive Talbot's location in dry exposition unless the GM invents something.  One thing I did like was that failure on their checks holds some (minor) consequences later in the scenario, as word of their investigation gets around.

Tasch is a one-horse (err, dune buggy) town, the only location of note being a bar called Digger's Dive.  Any mention of Talbot inside reveals a surprising thing to the PCs:  Talbot is a local hero!  He's seen as the town's savior for devising a way to turn a previously-useful mineral into modern Drift fuel and bringing credits and jobs to a dying place.  For those of you who have seen "Jaynestown" on Firefly, the similarities are clear.  There's a fan-made song on the forums that is perfect as well!  The PCs shouldn't have much difficulty figuring out that Talbot is presently in the mine just outside of town.  Before they leave, however, they're asked to sit and talk by representatives of AbadarCorp who are also in the bar.  AbadarCorp paid Talbot an enormous sum of credits to get his new fuel, only to realize a couple of days later that it was fake! (obviously, the charlatan's stone in use).  AbadarCorp wants Talbot to set an example that they're not to be defrauded.  This is a role-playing encounter that can very quickly turn into a combat encounter, and I liked it a lot.  A potential deal is that the PCs will take back the stone, and bring Talbot back to AbadarCorp.  But if negotiations aren't successful (they get two chances at a Diplomacy check), violence is inevitable.  It's nice when negotiations have real consequences.

The next encounter takes place either in Digger's Dive (if the negotiations were successful) or on the way to the mine (if the negotiations were not): an ambush by Talbot loyalists.  This is probably the first time the PCs will have encountered a shobhad, one of the four-armed natives of Akiton.  The battle here seemed well-balanced, and I liked the special abilities that the shobhad was able to employ.  The general idea is that it adds to the notion that by coming to Tasch, the PCs are *not* seen as heroes but as pesky trouble-makers.  Sometimes it's good to change things around!

The last part of the scenario is the mine.  Apart from some lockers to search and a laser rifle trap (good to see traps are still a thing), the main thing here is the final encounter against Talbot and a couple of his supporters.  The little twist here is that Talbot will have likely heard the PCs coming (thanks to the laser rifle trap) and crouched down in an electric mine cart.  When the PCs advance, he'll use the cart as cover and make a run (roll?) for the exit.  Thanks to his holographic clone Operative exploit and the cover provided by the cart, he has pretty good defenses.  In my session, he made it to the mine's exit and fled, so the PCs lost out on the Primary and Secondary success conditions for the scenario.  I would have liked more detail on what happens if he makes it to the exit, how long the PCs have to catch up to him before he gets to Tasch, Maro, off-world, etc.  In addition, one of my players aptly pointed out that he would sometimes actually be better off *not* using the mine cart because it slowed him down (the exception being that the cart allows him to roll over PCs who try to block his path).  But those concerns aside, I thought it was a nice change-up to the usual encounter: it's not just about defeating the bad guy, it's about defeating the bad guy in a running chase before he can reach an objective, and PCs who don't figure that out quickly are in trouble.  I'm guessing most groups *will* catch Talbot, but I liked that there are reporting conditions so that he might turn up in future scenarios.

As I said at the beginning, this is a very short scenario: two fixed combat encounters (the shobhad-led ambushers and Talbot's group) and one encounter that could be role-playing or combat depending on how negotiations go.  I didn't particularly mind the shorter duration because all of the previous scenarios I ran went over time, but it's good for GMs to know this is one where they can expand a bit on the NPCs, role-playing, scenery description, etc., without worrying that the ending will have to be rushed.  The premise of a rogue Starfinder stealing something and fleeing to Akiton was a good one, as was the "Western space" theme.  The encounters, both combat and role-playing, were solid.  All in all, I'd sum it up alliteratively as a: short, solid scenario.