STARFINDER, GAMA 2017 Previews!
Last Fall Paizo Announced a new rpg system based on their popular Pathfinder ruleset. This New game, Titled STARFINDER, would be set thousands of years in the future in the very same star system the planet Golarion (the setting of Pathfinder) is nestled in. They are calling this new game "sci-fi fantasy" and it will be a galaxy in which magic and space age technology work in harmony to fulfill the daily needs of the various inhabitants populating the many worlds you will explore.
The core book is said to contain all you need to start playing, and will apparently contain what would normally be broken out in to the DM's handbook, players guide and monster manuals; apparently this book will be clocking in at over 520 pages!!
I have been rabidly hunting across the internet far and wide for new tidbts and every scrap of information I can find about this new system; reading blogs, listening to podcasts, interviews, ever on the hunt for a new scrap of information. A few points I consider most prevalent:
• James Sutter has stated in pretty much every interview that they want this to be a kind of sandbox concept system, where you can take the rules and pretty much play ANY kind of sci-fi universe you are interested in, the aim is to have it "free" enough that it would work s well for a star Trek themed universe as it would say Guardians of the Galaxy.
• SHIPS! Spaceships will be an integral part of the game; each party will have their own ship they can upgrade customize and pilot. Each member of the party will have a different role in the crew, and when ship combat occurs, every one participates in their crew role on the ship. The space combat aspect of the game will be utilizing a hexgrid. James has said in interviews that the development teamhas viewed the ship encounters as Starfinder's way of introducing random encounters like you would run into in say the forests in Pathfinder.
• THE GAP: Across the entire galaxy there is a 300 year period where everything is a complete mystery, everyone's memory and history just VANISHED., along with the plane Golarion. Nobody knows basically anything about what happened, who they were, where they came from, or why anything is the way it is. It was a huge source of unrest and turmoil across the entire galaxy. The setting for Starfinder takes place several hundred years after this galactic cataclysm, but it's effects are still felt throughout the setting.
• THE DRIFT: Faster than light travel is a new gift to the universe in Starfinder, given to the species from a newly formed super powerful AI. This new AI "god" has discovered this new plain of existence which can allow travellers to basically enter and emerge on another part of galaxy impossible distances away in mere fractions of the time it would normally take to travel there. THERE IS A CATCH however, for every journey taken into the Drift, a chunk of another world/plain of existence is pulled inside of it, making this pocket dimension larger, and inhabiting it with all manner of displaced things. You could run into derelict ships, fragments of planets, or all manner of horrible and unpleasant beings trapper there, and more than a little unhappy about this fact.
• PLAYER RACES: the core book will contain 7 player races, 6 of which have been officially revealed. They are: humans, androids, lashunta (humanoids with antennae... ala Mantis from Gaurdians of the galaxy), kasatha (tall pale humanoids with large elongated craniums black eyes and 4 arms), ysoki (ratfolk) and the Vesk (a race or large lizard like creatures). All the other fantasy races, elves, dwarves etc. are still available, and pretty much any race you can think of will potentially be available as a player character. The 7th race looks to have been revealed at GAMA, more on that below.
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| L-R: Human, Kasatha, La Shunta, Android |
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| L-R: what I believe to be the 7th player race, and insectoid species called the Shirren, Vesk, Ysoki |
• Backwards compatible! Becuase this is based on the pathfinder ruleset (which they have apparently cleaned up and streamlined) monsters etc. will be able to be ported back and forth between the systems with little effort.
• James Sutter has said many times that they hope that this system does for sci-fi opera "what shadowrun did for cyberpunk".
Onto the pics! I found these images on Figures.com; and action figures news and review site... not the first place I would have expected to see covering rpg's and boardgames, but I'm glad they did! I took their initial pics and fixed the funny angles and colours a bit to share here. To see the original gallery, click
HERE.
MINIATURES:
Ninja Division announced just before GAMA that they would be working on a range of prepainted minis for the game; according to sources at GAMA their release is to coincide with the release of the Core rules at Gencon in August.
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| Ships from the Pactworld Alliance |
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| More Ships from the Alliance |
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| The Capitol Ship of the Eox Empire; a race that destroyed themselves in a war with their own weapon, and now exist as a planet of space necromancers. Their ships are created from bone and have no life support systems... as they are all dead. SO METAL. |
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| More Eox Ships. |
For more information please check out
Paizo's Blog and this great interview on
Taking20. It's 45 mins, but well worth it!
