Starfinder: Get Down Tonight
We’ve played another session of Starfinder so I’m ready to log the game. This is a record of my first Starfinder game I hope to look back on and learn from as a GM. If you’ve missed the first couple posts, you can start at the beginning or check out the last session.
In this game, we are playing through Paizo’s Dead Suns adventure path (AP) with some custom story thrown in. This session was much smoother than the last one, and I got some great feedback after the game was over. I’m still learning a lot and hope to continually get better with this system.
My Prep
Getting ready for this session was easier than the last, and I expect this to be a continuing trend. As we all become more familiar with the system, there is less need for a hardcore refresher. For instance, I’ve been running a Pathfinder game for over a year. This means, if needed, I can improve my way through a session without any prep at all. This isn’t my favorite way to play, but I can do it when I can’t get anything else done. I did send a message out about some rules and scenarios that might come up so the players could brush up before the game. However, there will always be strange situations or little used rules we have to look up on the fly.
Next, I prepared for the adventure. I started by reading through the first book of the AP again. This gives me a clear idea of what the goal of this session is, but also what the overarching story of the campaign is so I can drop hints, lead players in the right direction, and keep the story moving organically. I then listened to some great actual play podcasts that played the same AP. I’ve mentioned it before but Androids & Aliens by the Glass Cannon Network is pretty great and they regularly discuss rules and scenarios.
Once I had decided how far we could reasonably get in a session, I drew up a map for the combat encounter I thought we would get to. The players had some choices of where to go, but I knew from the info they had gathered that they would probably check out the nightclub hideout of an enemy gang. Drawing a map of a night club was cool and different and I got to use lots of colors!
Session 2
This session started with a bit of a realization for me. In the last session, I mentioned that I should have made the information gathering more dynamic. Well… in my enthusiasm to get started I may have missed that there would be multiple opportunities to get that info. Oh well! I scrapped a couple of small encounters and added some extra info to the ones I felt were most important.
The game officially began with the players going to meet the mysterious head of the Level 21 Crew. They had located a bodega, Mama Fats, that the gang used as a message drop. The bodega was run by the titular Mama Fats, a loud, obese, and slightly grubby halfling woman. She was amazingly fun to play. After the envoy, Kosmo, did some fantastic role-playing, and she made some roast beef sandwiches for several party members, she arranged a meeting with the leader of the Level 21 Crew, Jabaxa.
Before the meeting, Mama Fats asked the party to give up their weapons. Everyone decided to comply except Shin, the operative decided to sit out of the meeting instead of giving up his weapons. He didn’t even order a sandwich.
The meeting with Jabaxa went pretty smoothly. He didn’t have any evidence that the party was involved with the fight on dock 94 and had taken down his men, so he was happy to provide some information. Jabaxa explained that the Level 21 Crew had been hired by a group of miners called the Hardscrabble Collective. The Collective was in a legal battle with a large and powerful corporation and was afraid of retribution. They had hired the Level 21 Crew to protect their members.
The party had some of this information already. This is where I noticed that I had front loaded the information gathering. The players already knew that the Hardscrabble Collective was in a fight with the less than trustworthy Astral Extractions over a piece of space debris called the Drift Rock. Members of the Collective had found the rock during a prospecting contract with Astral Extractions and decided to bring it back with them. When the ship arrived at Absalom Station however, the entire crew was missing. The ship had been put under quarantine immediately while station security tries to figure out what happened. Meanwhile both Astral Extractions and the Hardscrabble Collective have laid claims to the Drift Rock.
They had also discovered that Astral Extractions had hired the Downside Kings to threaten and silence the Collective. This information came as no surprise to the party’s operative Shin, who had worked for Astral Extractions on another planet fairly recently. He knew what they were capable of and was not keen on getting involved with them again.
Jabaxa couldn’t offer them much more information, but he did give them the location of the Downside Kings’ headquarters, The Fusion Queen. This nightclub was much further down in the bowels of Absalom Station and was where they conducted a lot of their business. He also mentioned that they were currently having a communication issue and the guards out front didn’t have contact with anyone inside.
After some debate, the party decided to head down to the Fusion Queen and do some recon. The plan was for the two best talkers to head inside and get a lay of the land. The gnome envoy, Kosmo, and the ysoki mechanic, Twik, decided to forgo their weapons and get in the club the old fashioned way. Once inside they began to check out the people, computers, exits, and suspiciously unused doors.
Outside was a different story, however. Leaving the party’s operative, solider, and solarian to their own devices they came up with a plan of their own. Recalling that the bouncers did not have a line of communication inside, the fighters decided they could dispatch the guards and get inside with their weapons. They got the jump on the unsuspecting bouncers and quickly drew first blood, and then the unexpected happened: one of the guards ran inside.
At this exact moment Kosmo had been planning to create a distraction so Twik could sneak into the suspicious back room. He cast the spell Ghost Sound to create the sound of an explosion near the stage at the other end of the club. With the explosion chaos broke out as the guard rushed in and informed the bar that they were under attack.
More enemies began to rush towards the front door, people in the club began screaming and pushing towards the door trying to get out. The fighters out front had to push their way into the club through the waves of intoxicated, frightened patrons. Twik and Kosmo were inside but without any weapons so they didn’t have much ability to help. In an effort to clear the way, our shirren solarian decided the best plan of action was to set off a HUGE fireball. People screamed as their hair and clothing were set ablaze, some were trampled as they tried to get away. More damage was done to the club goers than any of the enemies.
Finally making their way through the club to the back rooms, they encountered something much worse. Kosmo had used the battle as a distraction to slip into the back office of the club, finding a woman and her heavily armed vesk bodyguard. He managed to talk his way out of the room and tried to warn everyone of the danger. Our solarian, Nox, unfortunately chased a final guard into the office. Thinking he could attack and then withdrawal, he was sadly mistaken when the giant vesk was able to knock him unconscious with a single blow. Now the party had come face to face with the leader of the Downside Kings and her most valued enforcer, Vrokilayo Hatchbuster.
Cradossk, the soldier, had been in poor shape at the start of the fight, still not completely recovered from the past few days. It took the whole group and some very nimble maneuvering to chip away at the formidable vesk but the soldier was rendered unconscious during the battle. It was a final shot from our combat adverse envoy that took down Hatchbuster. Afterwards, we realized that this shot had been Kosmo’s very first combat action.
After Vrokilayo had been taken out, the leader of the Kings, Ferani Nadaz, surrendered herself in exchange for mercy. She gave the party concrete evidence that Astral Extractions had hired the Downside Kings to kill Kreel on dock 94. She also had quite a bit of valuable loot in the office with her, as well as the first healing serums of the game. With Cradossk and Nox back on their feet, the party decided to turn Ferani over to the Starfinder Society with the evidence. They decided to leave before dealing with station security.
Loot was divided, experience was awarded, and mini’s were packed up. Session 2 of our Dead Suns game was over and it was a blast! There was more collateral damage than I expected, and I think the players are getting a feel for how each person plays and reacts. It was, as always, a learning experience in one way or another. Now to begin preparing for the next one!
