Starfinder And Why I Love It.
(This blog post contains Amazon affiliate links)
If you have been in the RPG gaming space for any length of time over the last two years, chances are that you have heard of a little gaming system called Starfinder. It shares a similar name to another D&D like system called Pathfinder.
Both Starfinder and Pathfinder are from a publisher by the name of Paizo. In 2017 they released Starfidner to the public and it was met with a warm reception. What Paizo had done was taken their existing world of Golarion. The ten plus years of content, books, adventures, lore, and thrown most of it aside.
A carefully chosen set of characters and monsters (read aliens for the context of Starfinder) were chosen to evolve through time, into the setting of Starfinder. One could be forgiven for just assuming that Starfinder is D&D or Pathfinder in space. If you have had a casual familiarity with Starfinder that might sounds like a simple description to give. However, in doing so you invalidate the hard work, creativity and new spin on classic fantasy ideas that got pushed forward in time within the world created in Pathfinder.
There is no copy paste of any classes from Pathfinder, everything is new. Every new class is familiar but distinctly its own. Operatives are sly rogues, but in space. The mechanic is like druid with robotic animal companion or hacking specialist. They could also be an armour or weapons specialist. You get to choose. Even with a new class on the horizon, The Precog, for 2021 its concept is distinctly its own.
I think that is where Paizo has really nailed it. They have a clear direction of what their game should look and feel like. The balance between classes is for the most part very well executed, and each individual class feels viable.
When it comes to lore of the universe, on the surface it can feel very shallow. As a gold mine starts with dirt, just beneath the surface lies the treasure. It doesn’t take a lot of digging to find a gold mine of ideas, concepts and story hooks to fill a radioactive dragons lair.
As I mentioned, common popular characters and factions have been adjusted and changed. Reflecting the passage of so much time. The evolution feels well thought out. Some factions that were smaller in Pathfinder such as the pirates of Besmara. She was a smaller god when limited to single planet and high seas hijinks. When the vastness of space opened and the opportunity for pirates opened to a galactic scale, she became a much more powerful and respected deity.
In the Starfidner setting an event called The Gap happened. Basically no one knows what happened and a few hundred years of memories are just gone. This happened collectively across the universe. Any written trace of history in every culture, every race in the universe has also disappeared. As one might imagine this has strained relations and confused the hells out of just about everyone.
Some have pulled together amidst this chaos though and some glorious new galactic empires are forming. If you would like to learn more about these empires, I have a few links to video resources I have produced at the end of the post.
The magic happens for me in between where The Gap ends, and everyone collectively remembers things again from that point onwards. Any of the additional supplements that Paizo has released talking about their world and setting are less a story of the lore and more plot hooks. Its almost as if Paizo is saying “Here’s a few things we might try…” one such example in the pact worlds supplement Paizo talks about a city that has been built and stands for a very long time. They have recently discovered a subterranean city under their own city that no one remembers or knows anything about. Any attempts to investigate have not gone well. That’s it. That is the lore of the city. To me it screams “There’s and idea for you! Now go forth and make it interesting.” This approach to gaming works so well for me and my ADHD. To get into that I need more scope than this blog post offers.
Paizo is literally giving buyers and creative GMs plot hooks for adventures in digestible sized books. All the planets, cities, galaxies are thought out enough to give a solid feel for what they should be like. Then Paizo takes it one step further and gives you, the GM, the world builder “permission” to go out and make it your own. I would even go as far to say that they dare you to take what they have done and run with it.
What if you don’t like anything they have created? Guess what? It’s a game set in space, which is huge, like incomprehensibly large. If being given the keys to a universe of pre-thought out planets and ideas isn’t good enough for you, nothing is stopping you from making your own galaxy of planets, and space empires. Even in this, Paizo has created something to help give you the keys to limitless imagination.
Paizo is one of the few companies I have paid attention to that actually sells useful accessories. The Deck of Many Worlds is what I’m referencing specifically. Do you need a planet on the fly and don’t want to have to sort out all the minutia of literally building a world from scratch because your players couldn’t find the neon plot hook? This accessory is a literal deck of cards with planet types, technology levels, religious level or leanings. Creatures that would be found on said planet. Its beautiful.
They have many other accessories for their games that are not as useful for practicality but when you have the extra money to throw around on these kinds of things, practicality is usually not the reason for the purchase. Yes, I’m calling myself and you, out for buying that 10th set of dice we clearly didn’t need since the other ones work just as well.
Starfinder is more than Pathfinder or D&D in space. It walks a fine line between lacking depth and having too much lore to know what to do with. This can make new GMs or GMs not familiar with the lore fearful to run games for players who are more familiar with it.
Its familiar in function because of the D20 system that powers other games new players will likely be familiar with. And Paizo gives tools to their players to help them work within the game world or go off on their own and make it theirs.
The creative freedom, the encouragement to go take what Paizo has done, add to it. Or make it all my own from the start. To be honest it did take a while for this concept, that I don’t have to follow the world the game designers set up, to set in. Its made me a better GM for it though.
Thank you Paizo, for the love and care for a wonderful game. Thank you that I have been able to use something you created to tell stories with my friends and teaching me about my own creative potential in the process.
The Pact Worlds – The main campaign setting
The Veskarim – Empire of warring space lizards
The Azlanti Empire – Basically space Romulans
