First attempt, could have been worse. But I got a lot wrong.

Setup:

  • roll20
  • Battlemaps from the example adventure in the book
  • Some free Quake1 soundtrack (not the original)
  • Discord for voice
  • 2 PCs who haven’t played SF or Slipgate before

They pretty much died in the first room. The first room had 8 Grunts, and the players tried to attack them through alternating moving to optimal range of the Shotgun and firing. Grunts aren’t likely to hit but when five are firing they punched back pretty hard.

Lesson 1: 4 monsters per player is too many

Having now checked, the adventure was for 4-5 PCs, my action economy was entirely off. I was misled by an initial very-successful first round where the players did kill three Grunts. However this wasn’t repeated and I think very lucky.

Lesson 2: It’s not D&D

If you try to use a battlemap then you have to define where your zones of distance are. And players start trying to work out how to get between them and where to stand. This really bogged things down and looking now, SF isn’t that kind of a game.

We spent some time trying to avoid attacks of opportunity and cover, and it didn’t help.