[Spoilers] S1E01 "Groundbreaking" - Player Reactions

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Blurb:

New to the Stargate Phoenix Program, you have been selected as a recruit for training. If all goes well, you may graduate to become a Stargate Phoenix team member to go off-world and explore the galaxy. Are you up for the challenge?

 

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This was a great episode in its own right and a fantastic one to open the Living Campaign with. It contained a nice mix of mental, social, and physical challenges, and as such presented opportunities for all character types to excel while not overwhelming parties where those characters were absent.

Of note

1. The combat training at the beginning flowed well into the armed conflict at the end in terms of getting people to think about use of environmental cover
2. I think a lot of people are going to want to go up against Wepawet (and his scheming bride) again. He's enjoyably competent enough to trip player paranoia, and enough of a jerk players are going to want to take that smirk right off his face
3. The cake mystery

[Algernon Pike]

So we must have skipped a section of the mission at our table.

My only complaint is that the mission was choppy. More specifically, it would have been better had we caught Wepawet's Jaffa on the planet and had to make a decision there whether or not to engage. If we had, then we would have been captured (only to be freed by the Tok'ra infiltrator) or received vital information through stealth (still meeting the Tok'ra infiltrator).

The second mission in the single mission broke the flow of things in my eyes.

Also, if we did miss part of the mission by dispatching/evading the Jaffa sent to seize the infiltrator. I think in true SG fashion it is perfectly fine to have us get stunned/zatted/completely outgunned and forced into surrender rather than giving us an out. Basically, it was pretty easy with the six of us to break the Jaffa pursuit or even just fight them off.

Finally, I think an "outro" would have been good based on all available ending options. We escaped relatively unharmed with the Tok'ra agent (thus breaking cover) so a reprimand from the Tok'ra would have been interesting (or at least a bit of tension when she didn't say thank you). You could also have had "outros" for being captured and released by the Tok'ra, lost the infiltrator in a fight, lost team members, etc. There was the slight debrief to be sure, but I was left wanting more which made it not feel like a full episode.

Overall, rating, Mostly Positive, but questioning the whole "cake" thing above.