Designing a Starfinder campaign

[Gryphonfg]

I am starting a Starfinder campaign. It will be my first experience with the system. I've read most of the books they've come out with so far.

The main plot of the campaign is that the players are hired by a coalition of groups to rebuild a space station deep in the void. Different players can/will have ties to different factions that are backing the endeavor. However, the factions have slightly different goals, so there is room for some political intrigue.

The station was abandoned at the edge of an unexplored section of space. Their first task is to clean up the station and bring the systems online. The station will have some sort of vermin living on it. Space cockroaches or something like that.

Once the station is online, the players will man it (I'm trying for a little bit of Kingmaker in space where one player will be the commander of the station and the others will have other command positions). Their backers have 3 main tasks for them. Explore the unexplored sector, establish trade routes, and preserve the peace.

The sector is home to some space pirates. The players could have encountered the pirates on their way to the station. The end of the first story arc/module/whatever will be the players taking out the pirates base and thus preserving the peace as well as making the space lanes safe for trade.

Later on, they will have to deal with bigger problems. The Azlanti Empire is near the station. Part of maintaining the peace will end up involving keeping the peace between the Pact Worlds, the Azlanti, and a few other empires. Maybe the Vesk. I am thinking that I'll set up a Babylon 5 type situation with ambassadors from the different places. The Azlanti are thinking about expanding and later on the players will need to deal with that.

What I am looking for, is some ideas for specific encounters for low level characters for the first part of the campaign.

[Florian]

Hm, so a Starfinder sandbox game, with a more or less clear center and focus?

Ok, the cons of your idea first:
- SF is a very action oriented game and is really weak for political intrigues without porting over the whole of Ultimate Intrigue from Pathfinder.
- SF is very much: "Will work to fly, will fly to work", supporting something like "Firefly" or the original Star Trek and early Star Wars, but not really a Babylon 5, other types of realistic campaign, like focussing on commerce, trade and such, not without a major overhaul of some backend rules.

That said, that is nothing that cannot be tackled.

Let´s talk about some PF/3PP sources first.
- Stars Without Numbers is based on a D&D Retroclone with some good system and planet creation rules and, more important, a way of handling the interaction between minor and major power players, aka "Polities" in a very good and d20 compatible way. Skyward Steel, Starvation Cheap and Suns of Gold add some solid mass combat and trading rules to the overall framework, while Hard Light is a fantastic micro-setting.
- MGT Traveller is.. well.. it´s a revamp of Traveller, the original SF hex crawl RPG. Of note here are Powers and Principalities, the Spinward Marches and Spinward Adventures.
- WH40K Rogue Trader RPG and the Into the Storm supplement. Of note here is the "Endeavor" system and how to set up story and campaign arcs within a solid framework to work with a sandbox.
- WEG Star Wars: The Darkstryder campaign box is a more than solid example how to marry frontier exploration with a solid storyline and mystical elements, even more so than Kingmaker.
- Pathfinder: Ultimate Intrigue.

Basically, I'm a bit averse to using B5 as the general campaign outline, because that is already set in "known space" and severity limits the exploration and starship options of the game. I´d rather go the Kingmaker/Darksryder route of having a larger campaign goal, but which can only be reached by exploration, discovery and pushing the boundaries of "known space". The recent Against the Aeon Empire mini-AP imho has a solid backstory that can be salvaged, by presenting pre-Drift jump drives and a colonization effort that was earlier than the Pact Worlds. SF core also mentions that plane shift-based ships also were a thing for a while. Now that makes me think about the movie Event Horizon and either the Shadow Plane or the Dark Tapestry, therefore the Dominion of the Black.

[Gryphonfg]

Hm, so a Starfinder sandbox game, with a more or less clear center and focus?

Yes.

I understand some of those cons, hence starting with hunting down space pirates as their first main issue. This final arc I have imagined is lifted from Marvel's Annihilation Wave, using the Swarm in place of Annihilus' forces. Cons can be overcame with some work. B5 managed the politics and intrigue, Battletech has done it too, to some degree.

I discussed campaign ideas with a few friends. It was 2 to 1 to do the space station vs. doing a Firefly type game.

I have the first part of the Against the Aeon AP, I'll have to see about getting the others. I did think of an encounter last night. While the PCs are working on fixing the station, after they get the sensor arrays online, they detect a distress signal. Going to investigate, they find a derelict ship with something evil onboard, something 1 or 2 levels above the APL, so that it's a challenge. It could be a plane shift based drive ship, so they picked up something from another plane.

As I said, the station is near an unexplored sector, so they can do some exploring. Maybe they could find some alien race and make first contact and establish a trade deal with them after saving them from some great threat.

At the start of the game, while repair the station, I'm thinking there are some non-combat based encounters. Like hacking a locked door, repair checks, dangerous environments like a section open to space or high radiation near the power core.

[Florian]

Ok. Beware a bit, tho: The core of sandbox gaming is exploration, player agency and creating/following plot hooks at a whim. As GM, your work is to create the opportunity for plots to emerge, but you don't tell a story, that's the job of the player characters, you only arbitrate the rules and play the game world in the actual session. Repeat after me: No or minimal storytelling.

That said, a campaign like Kingmaker, Darkstryder or The Sword Of Air includes an overarching main plot, that will become apparent during the actual game and should provide the general direction, but large swathes of it stay hidden, else they will force the players to react, which is counter to exploration.

I´d structure such a campaign somewhat like this:

Lvl 1-3: Get chartered by AbadarCorp to explore and map a certain star cluster on the edge of Pact World space, including surveying some planets. Party will get a scout ship, has access to an AbadarCorp scout base and can also take on some quests and bounties. The end point of this arc is capturing an ancient star base that has been dismantled nearly to the functional core.

Lvl 4-6: Pure exploration phase. The characters will have to look for resources and the missing parts of the ancient station, which have be scavenged by a lot of pirates, minor races or other factions. Instead of something like the Kingdom rules, the players can only advance their space station by forming an alliance and inviting more factions to join in, bringing their resources along.

Lvl 7-10: The "Internal Enemy" phase. Let´s include the major faction at this point, so Pact Worlds, Aeon Empire and Voss. Exploration is basically done at this point, as the reach of the space station has touched on the space of the three major factions, so let's ramp up the political game. To spice things up a bit, lets begin to introduce the Swarm by starting a plot arc to sabotage any major alliance in the region by sleeper agents (think WH40K genestealer hybrids and such).

Lvl 11-15: Final Phase. Around lvl 11, the invasion begins, lvl 12-13 should be the hard political work to form an alliance against the Swarm, lvl 14 is fighting the swarm and the capstone level would be a direct confrontation with the Swarm Queen (or some such).

[Gryphonfg]

Thank you for the suggestions. I'm incorporating some of the ideas.

We had a very good session this week, introducing the characters and traveling out to the station.

Next week is Halloween, so I want to add a bit of horror to the session. I did have an encounter planned where they go out to a ghost ship. The party is five 1st level characters. During the exploration of the ghost ship, they will encounter a CR3 monster (I have a few that I'm trying to decide between) which was involved in the death of the original crew of the ship. I could use a couple of other encounters to add to it. I was including a bit of a time crunch. The air on the ship is bad, so they only have what they have in their suits. The ships is dark, quiet, they'll find a room full of skeletons. But that's all I have so far. Maybe an encounter with a ghost or something.