Introduction

In the United States, we are still waiting to see the results of the 2020 Election as I write this post. The anxiety that this election cycle has created in myself, my friends and this network is palpable. The fear generated is significant. I just watched Season 2 Episode 23 “The Thaw” of Star Trek: Voyager, and to paraphrase the good Captain Janeway, “The final purpose of fear is to conquer it.” With that in my mind, I am working on conquering my own fears a little at a time, and trying to find the energy to put out this outline post for the readers.

When anxiety comes though, my ADHD becomes harder to manage as well though, even if I’m taking my normal medications to get anything particularly productive done the past week or so has been difficult. When I was working on my hand-written outline, this was particularly true. My mind kept pinging to the things I wanted to discuss in the introduction and conclusion sections of this article. While that is normally true to a point, I can typically keep those thoughts regulated until I’m done with the actual outline. Today, that wasn’t going to happen. So, I took out a second sheet of paper and started writing down my thoughts for this section as well as my adventure outline. This helped me separate my thoughts and really get working on my adventure outline. I really want to “footstomp” on the points that guest blog author Chris L. Kimball wrote in his wonderful piece, Regaining Focus, Tips and Struggles Gaming with ADHD . One of the tools I’ve recently found for Virtual gaming (and might do in-person in the future) is running the sound effects during combats utilizing Syrinscape. I’m not talking about the background ambience so much, but the spell casting and weapon strikes/misses for each of my fellow players’ turns keeps me focused on what is happening in the game, rather than wandering off into social media land.  

With all of that being said, I can only wish for the best, and hope that one day this flavor of fear will vanish for a time. 

Adventure Requirements

The requirements for this particular adventure, after looking back, are pretty straightforward in presenting them, but might take some finessing on my part to really have them hit the mark. So without any additional preamble here are the requirements for Quest #5.

• Have an explainable reason for the enemy ship to not have been repaired in the time between Quest #4 & Quest #5
  • Ensure that GMs know that PCs have enough time for an 8hr rest if they so choose before continuing on to Quest #5 directly from Quest #4
• The leader of the Raiders, Iovita must transform themselves back into their natural form and announce that they are Hiran

Outline

I am appreciative of the fact that I didn’t use the Gravity Fields from Starship Operations Manual in Quest #4 so that I don’t need to worry about in-game time limits. Instead, I can keep my focus on my actual adventure requirements. 

As I was putting this outline together, and some opportunities to use skills, I found myself really wishing that I was writing a Pathfinder Second Edition adventure so that I would have the varying levels of success and failure, instead of the typical binary of success/failure for skills. It isn’t like all skills are binary in their nature. Athletics (swim & climb in particular) have almost always had varying degrees of failure if you failed by less than 5 or more than 5. Expanding that out to just about d20 roll in PF2, has made it a real pleasure to utilize in my opinion. 

Another nice thing, as we are approaching the end of the initial writing of these quests, is that I now have stat blocks created for just about all of the variant encounters that I need for this adventure. This will hopefully cut down on the design time that I ultimately need for Quest #5. As far as I can tell, the only stat block that I’ll need to mess with, is a lower-CR version of the Dandasuka Rakshasa, since it is normally a CR 5 enemy. I’m probably going to re-build the Dandasuka as a CR 3 version of itself from the ground up, trying to stick as true as I can to my original design. Thankfully, I happen to have just about all of my design notes up on a blog!

Pre-Summary

• Revisit the fact that Hiran killed the leader of the Sanguine Raiders and that while the Raiders were aggressive, their increased activity has essentially made them the patsies of Hiran and RakTech
• Let the GM, again, that RakTech is looking to get the mineral rights of Thuringag and that is why they took over the Raiders
• Make it clear here that the PCs can take a full rest

Summary

• The PCs will be told that they need to board the ship to capture and detain as many of the Raiders as they can
• When the PCs begin boarding the Raider, they’ll need to force open the airlock
• Before even commencing with a proper search of the ship, the PCs are accosted by Iovita/Hiran and the remaining Raider crew
  • Here Hiran will reveal themselves and try to coerce the remaining Raiders to fight the PCs
  • The PCs will have a chance to disuade the remaining raiders
• After defeating Hiran and the Raiders, the PCs will be congratulated by Farasa and the Thuringag Council

Getting Started

• Cosmic Captain Farasa will contact the PCs, to inform them that planetary sensors indicate that the ship is likely disabled for at least a day, if not more. 
  • Many of the Thuringag Security Force ships were also damaged, but they were able to cobble together enough crews to send a couple of ships to ensure the Raiders do not attempt any sort of escape
  • The Council though, would like the PCs to actually board the ship, and allow the Cosmic Combine the salvage rights of the ship once the Raiders are apprehended. 

Boarding

• Since the ship is damaged, it cannot board directly. Utilize a similar skill challenge to ‘space walk’ that was in one of the Starfinder Society Scenarios
  • If memory serves it was an Acrobatics check to jump on target, an Athletics check to grab the ship and then Engineering/Computers to force open the airlock. 

The Confrontation

• Right after getting through the airlock Iovita/Hiran and the rest of the Sanguine Raider crew will be waiting for the Combiners. 
  • Hiran will monologue some about the damage already being done for their masters.
    • All the while, Hiran will be transforming into their natural form
• There will be a few Sanguine Miners (low) or Lieutenants (high) with Hiran
  • After finding out that Iovita was killed and Hiran was dooping them, the PCs have a chance to dissuade the Raiders from doing anything further
    • On a regular success the Raiders will simply lay down their arms and not help. On a success of 5 (maybe 10?) more the Raiders will actually help the PCs take down Hiran
      • 1 Primary PC with the rest of the party able to assist on the Bluff/Diplomacy/Intimidate

Conclusion

This outline feels shorter than some of the other non-Starship outlines, but a quick check of the word counts [From Pre-Summary to just before Conclusion]. This outline is 478 words, Quest #3 is 374, Quest #2 is 571 and Quest #1 733 words. That puts this one a little below average so that feeling makes sense. However Quest #1 is a bit of an outlier due to the fact that it does a lot of heavy lifting setting up Thuringag and the history behind this quest.

In the future, I’m considering revisiting the entire series from Quest #1 through Quest #5 and doing editing and development pass on them all to more tightly tie them together and also ensure that each quest is really fulfilling the requirements that I set out for them in my overview outline. During that time I’ll also be checking my actual word count for each adventure and seeing if they are each within about a 5% window of my 2500 word targets. My hope is to write about this process as I’m going through it so that everybody can see what it is like revisiting old work and giving it a good shine!