Product– Starfinder Adventure Path #40: Planetfall (Horizons of the Vast 1 of 6)

System- Starfinder

Producer– Paizo 

Price– $22.99 here https://paizo.com/products/btq026i0/discuss?Starfinder-Adventure-Path-40-Planetfall  

TL; DR– Fun but it can drag if not careful! 87%

Basics–  INTO THE UNKNOWN!  Settle a planet and fend off the wildlife AND the friends you brought along the way in this Kingmaker in Space adventure!

Mechanics or Crunch– This adventure focuses on building and exploring a location.  The problem with this and most other RPGs of this kind is randomness.  Each hex has a random chance to happen there unless something is scripted.  This problem can lead to you having way too many encounters to the point the book even says reduce the experience the players get.  That feels a bit cheap.  Couple that with the fact that there are only eight random encounters means players can get bored quickly with the encounters.  There are scripted events and locations that do make things more fun, but be aware!  It’s fun, but it can get a bit same-y for the fights.  Most of the fun comes from the social and that is done well, but if a party just makes all murder hobos which are excellent in the bush, they will get decimated in town as they will be out maneuvered at every turn by the people they came to lead!   4/5

Theme or Fluff– Just like in the crunch, the story can get same-y if you are not careful.  Depending on how players handle the world, they can spend tons of time just running around in circles exploring the same hexes again and again if they are slow.  The town encounters and managing all the NPCs is the bulk of the story in this one.  There is some toward the end showing the world is more than it might have seemed, but most of the time there is just town and other local claims to deal with as the bulk of the story.  It’s fun, but this is an intro game that will help power level the characters more than dig deep into the story. 4/5

Execution– PDF? Yep.  Hyperlinked?  Yep. Solid Art?  Yep.  Good layout?  Honestly yes.  Paizo does books and adventures well.  Paizo was a publishing company before an RPG company, and honestly that experience shows in a clean book that is easy to read.  5/5

Summary-There is a reason players wanted Kingmaker in space.  You build a location and make it shine!  This book sets the foundation for that, but like all foundations it takes time to set up.  This one is a bit slow and  honestly needs an expanded random encounter table as eight separate things is just not enough.  Give me 20 or give me more set encounters in each place, even if they don’t advance the story!  That right there would lift this WAY up in the ranks as even my players had almost memorized what the D8 meant for the coming encounter!  The story that is here is fun and my players quickly learned to love and HATE some NPCs.  That makes me happy as a GM.  It goes almost without saying that I love Paizo’s bookmanship, so top marks there.  It’s a good adventure that just needs a bit more for the random to keep things a bit more entertaining.  87 %