Galaxy Exploration Manual Review

Whats in the new book?

The Galaxy Exploration Manual has been out for a little while now, but it's been a little difficult to get my hands on a physical copy. If you're reading this you're probably wanting to know “Is it worth it? Should I pick this up? And is it any good?” Well I'm hoping to answer all of those questions about the Galaxy Exploration Manual, and give my thoughts, my review on and finally my rating.

What Is it for?

First things first if you're looking to pick this up there are several things that this book is there are many things that this book is, and a couple things that it is not. The Galaxy Exploration Manual or the G.E.M. as I'm going to refer to it from here on out, because it is it is a GEM, it is the closest thing to a dungeon masters guide that exists currently for Starfinder.

Even saying that doesn't really encapsulate what this book is about. What's in this book and who is it designed to target? When you first get into the book, you will find some character creation background and some tables. You can use these for character creation inspiration and to create a better backstory, if it's something that you're struggling with. These tables are mostly the d100 percentage dice so you need 2d 10s to roll on these.

For new players and folks who are new to Starfinder, or are just starting a new campaign, this could be a good source for some interesting character stories. At the very least it can give you some ideas if you don't know what to do. It also provides some ideas on how a party can know each other from the very start.

You dont have to start from square one every time, maybe you all know each other, or a couple of players characters have some history. This does give you some ideas you can roll on a table and these are great ideas not just for starfinder. If you were to use these table on an other game, you have to tweak some of the information in these tables to suit your needs.

After the character creation tables, we're getting into some more of the meat for players. There are some different class options for every single class that exists up until this point. Biohackers, Envoys, Mystics, Mechanics, Operatives, Solarians, Soldiers, Technomancers, Vanguard, and the Witchwarper. They all have a whole new skill set geared around exploration specifically, and doing sandbox games. I found that some of them were a little situational, at least as I interpreted them in my reading. Some abilities will definitely have use no matter what type of game you're playing.

Pahtra Sniper

Yo dawg, heard you like starships

Next comes a few starship options. There are new ship systems designed specifically for exploring and mapping out new planets, scanning so that you can find out what's on them. There's also some new downtime activities that are again, geared towards exploring a planet and learning more about it. This can be very useful when you jump out of the drift and you're randomly over a new planet that you want to learn a little bit more about. I've talked a little bit about the drift, click here to learn more.

From here we start to move into the equipment section. Throughout this book there is dispersed items, and feats, and different magical spells. The back of the book does have an index for these as well. Again some of the feats and the magical spells I feel are quite situational as well, not all of them, but many of them. The follow the design concept of this book which was exploration. If you're not doing that in your campaign, you may not get as much value for your characters as you would something else. I’m referring to the character operations manual which I've reviewed the link, will be here for that.

Lets build the perfect world

The back half of this book is dedicated to world building. It's so amazing! its very dense and I understand why it needs half the book. The world building section is phenomenal. this section is the meaty main course of the book. These are all optional systems, they're not new rules that you can layer in for added complexity for your game, they are simply tools for a Dungeon Master or Game Master. Creating planets on the fly is not easy and Paizo released an accessory to DMs called the Deck of Many Worlds.

It does kind of accomplish the same thing it is a little less expensive and easier to create planets on the fly. However, if you're looking for something to take your planet building, your world building, and just crank it to the next level then you're definitely going to want to get the G.E.M. The Deck of Many Worlds will give you a planet type, some species that live on it, and tell you if the planet is a high or low tech world.

The G.E.M. takes this and absolutely runs with it, giving you tools to create fully fleshed out ideas for your worlds. What kind of biomes does it have? Desert, Aquatic, Arctic, Boreal, and even the black openness of space. There are specific tables that give you some ideas to create planets, or spaces, for your players to interact with. Not only does it give you tools to create those spaces your players can interact with, it also gives you world building ideas around this.

These tools go right down into the nitty-gritty, once you have a biome, and you know what a planet is going to be. You then progress into a system that Paizo have called accord. What they mean by this is how cooperative are your citizens. There are high, medium, and low accord levels. Paizo really does try to give you as many ideas as possible around these different levels of agreement. trying to make world builders think about what society looks like when they all agree with eachother. When they all disagree with each other. What if they are actively hostile with each other?

What kind of magic exists in your society or on this world? is it high, medium, or a low magic society? Again Paizo goes into ideas on each of these concepts. Paizo also try to give you as many ideas as they can around the religious beliefs of a society and how much technology exists within the same society. I would argue that you wouldn't want a high magic and a high tech society, but it's your world you do what you want. After they've given you all of these tool for fleshing out ideas, all the ways that a society would work with religion, technology, magic, and even how much the people just get along. Paizo then takes it one step further for the GM by giving you a plot hook generating table. they have plot hooks for all options in the categories I have just explained.

Need an alignment?

Paizo have even added an alignment section, for better or worse. Regardless what your opinion on the alignment system is, there is one in this book and again it prompts the Game Master to think about what does a society look like when it is lawful good, when it is chaotic evil. What do corporations look like when they fit inside this grid of the alignment system whether you actively use it or not, it is there for ideas.

These tools in the hands of even an uninspired GM should not go to waste. Paizo has done an amazing showing you how to build great worlds with in-depth societies. With Paizo being the over achievers that they are, they take it one step further and show you, as GM, how to design a whole campaign. Not just a single campaign but also how to design a whole campaign setting. One of the biggest parts when you're designing an exploration based sandbox setting, is having a home base for your players. This would either be your starship primarily, for obvious reasons. Or you would have to either build or establish some base of operations somewhere convenient. They then help you plan your next adventure by giving advice on what an adventure should look like what an encounter should look like. Complete with Encounter tables in the book. Did I mention there's a lot of tables?

My likes and dislikes

There's a couple of things that I really liked about G.E.M. I've never really used tables before so I liked having access easy access to things, rather than trying to create something on my own. It gives me some nice tools for on the fly. The other thing that I liked was the sheer number of plot hooks and the ideas for plot hooks that Paizo have given. I've never really struggled with ideas for creating a story, but I have found some challenges in keeping that story going.

The world building tools around biomes for your planet, what society looks like and how technology, magic, and religion influences the planets denizens around their moral compasses. If you choose to use the alignment system there are some great ideas here as well to explore morality.

Some of the things that I did not like with this book, and I feel that they're mostly minor, some tables have the option “re-roll on this table” twice on them. I don't know why you would need two of those on there? As I mentioned earlier I haven't used tables before, I know that in some cases a “re-roll” on this table is is used, but I'm not sure it's worthwhile having it there twice. In my opinion just have two more options in there and then you don't have to worry about re-rolling.

It's more nit-picky on my end, again I don't have a lot of experience with using pre-generated tables for my games. I'm definitely planning to start using these ones though.

Another thing that I also did not appreciate, came from my physical copy. This isn't the fault of Paizo, but my book actually has a misprint in it. Pages 41 through 48 were printed twice. it's just an interesting misprint.

The only other negative that I can say around this book, is I wish it was longer. coming in around 163 pages (not including my misprint) but if you look at some of the other supplements that are coming out for Pathfinder and Pathfinder 2e. Specifically the Advanced Player's Guide was 60 percent larger than this. Some of the lost omen guides are closer to the same size, maybe a little smaller. I suppose with any good supplement that comes out for a role-playing system that one enjoys, one is always left wanting more.

I really enjoyed this supplement it doesn't really fill in any blanks for me on the lore part of things, but it does give me as a GM, so many campaign creation tools, world-building tools, that you don't have to use specifically for Starfinder. If you are a writer and you just need some inspiration or how to create a world these are excellent tools they go beyond just creating campaigns in Starfinder. these are excellent tools no matter what creative outlet you're trying to use them for.

This book is mostly geared towards the GMs and the people who want to build their own adventures. If you're running an adventure path you're not going to get as much use out of this as you would the Character Options Manual. If you're looking for more character options then please go with the character operations manual first, then look at the Galaxy Exploration Manual second.

If you are a GM who is looking to run Starfinder in a sandbox capacity, this is absolutely a 100 must-have book for you.

My final score

This is phenomenal book, Paizo has totally hit another home run with this. The quality of the writing that's been coming out from Paizo not just around Starfinder has just been amazing. if you haven't checked out Starfinder yet i would highly encourage that you do so. This is a phenomenal system and those familiar with d d 3.5 will be right at home with starfinder. if you would like to learn a little bit more about Starfinder I have a YouTube playlist for you.