Noah and Mike LOVE Starfinder!

[Mike]

We have the book! It's beautiful! And it's inspiring! And at over 500 pages, they are clearly just scratching the surface. It's clear that they have so much stuff already fleshed out, but only lack the pages to describe it all. The next book out is going to be a guide to alien races. I can't wait. They mention so many different peoples and cultures in this book, but just in passing. There is so much out there and so much coming. It's gonna be good.

Noah's reaction: Oh my GOSH! I have to be an android! Look! I can be an android technomancer! No wait! I should be a thief! No wait! I'm going to be an android battle technician!

I think that's where he finally settled. Android was no question for him, and having his own combat drone really appealed to him. But the point is that it is a really incredible and appealing setting that feels fully fleshed out right from the get-go. Sure, you can use these rules to play any sort of sci-fi game if you want to, but the setting is integral, IMO, and adds so much. All of it makes you want to grab everything and try it all out, because it's all so cool.

For those of you not familiar, let's get the setting out of the way immediately: This is the Golarion solar system. That is, it is exactly the world of Pathfinder, but advanced several thousand years. Somehow, there is a huge amount of time simply missing from all record and memory. Known as The Gap, this time period extends from the end of antiquity to about 300 years ago. The gap is probably several millennia long. No one knows for sure. Somewhere in there, the entire planet of Golarion vanished, with only the 5 mile long Absalom Station left in its place. The gods who will answer assure us that the planet is safe but unreachable. We suspect that they don't really know. There are several starting "standard" races for play, and all of the aliens are very detailed with rich cultures and such, but you can also play any of the "legacy" races from Pathfinder if that's your bag. I particularly find the Starfinder elves and halflings to be really intriguing. I really want to play a halfling envoy with an icon theme, but then I'm just playing another version of Dothan at that point.

And now we have space travel! Traditional travel within a solar system has been around a long time, but shortly after the Gap, we were given the Drift--an extra planar realm that allows rapid travel between stars.

Interesting setting note: On any given planet or location, you've got instantaneous telecommunications. Between planets, every communication is a few hours. Between systems, communication takes as long as traveling there through the Drift, so days or weeks. I like this a lot.

I also like that there's no dichotomy of magic vs technology. The old world had really amazing and powerful magic. It still does. But also technology has advanced to an incredible level and the two supplement and augment each other in really organic ways. And Starfinder feels really powerful compared to Pathfinder, and I think that's right. Look at the difference a few centuries or millennia make in the real world when comparing technologies and power levels. No matter how well prepared they think they are, a Roman legion gets blown away like a pile of leaves by a modern military battalion. It's the same sort of differential here.

The expected setup for a Starfinder game is that the players are the crew of a ship, exploring different worlds for... reasons. You can be explorers, smugglers, couriers, mercenaries, whatever. The point is that you're the crew of a spaceship in a space opera. You can play other ways, but this is the default.

I haven't dug into the rules the way Jeff has, but I've looked over a lot of them, and they make a lot of sense in how they've been adapted to a higher-powered sci-fi setting. I like that since there are so many technical skills, knowledge skills have just been rolled in as aspects of other skills. I like seeing how many feats are skill dependent. I love the idea of themes. So sure, you've got your race and class as always, and classes can be specialized or customized into archetypes as we've seen in Pathfinder, but then there's also themes that you add on in the beginning. Are you an outlaw, a priest, a minor celebrity, bounty hunter, mercenary, etc? You can be any of those themes along with your class. The theme adds flavor and some minor mechanical bonuses that guide your development. Any class can be an outlaw. Any class can be a mercenary. And so on.

I've looked through combat and equipment and such and I like it. Without a playtest, I can't really judge effectiveness, but I assume Paizo put as much time into playtesting the mechanics as they did into developing the setting, so I won't second-guess them without more experience, but it LOOKS solid.

And Noah's entranced. That sells me right there. I'm going to goof around with my kids creating some characters just for fun. We'll see how it goes. Plus I need to give the spaceship rules more than a passing glance. But seriously... so exciting. My expectations apparently weren't over-inflated.

[Reika]

I haven't dug through it as deeply as others, but I am seriously in love with this game. Both the setting (a space opera that's a cross of Mass Effect and Shadowrun with a splash of 40K? Yes please.)

My braaiin has already started contemplating a Lashunta Technomancer.

[Mike]

Right?

And if you like Jedi, the Solarians can fill that niche. If you want to play Firefly, make a band of "outlaws" and find some raw colony system somewhere. Elijah looked at the game before I did and said, "It feels like Guardians of the Galaxy."

[Tahlvin]

It definitely has the feel where they said, let's build so someone can play Star Wars if they want to, or Firefly, or Guardians of the Galaxy, or... They did a great job putting together a great starting point, and I'm excited to see where they take it from there.

And I'm with Noah: I really want to play an android!

[Mike]

Ysoki all the way!

[Zen]

Lashuntas would be my first choice. I'm not sure which sub-species.

[Cazmonster]

All the old races are around? Cool! I wanna be a gnoll... IN SPACE!!

[El Jefe]

Corebook only has elf, dwarf, halfling, human, and half-elf for the old races. Orcs and goblins have both been confirmed as making it off Golarion before it disappeared. No word on gnolls.

[Mike]

Half-orcs and gnomes are in there too. They have conversions for all the original core races.

[El Jefe]

Yeah, my bad. I totally just spaced on the full list. I should have noted that.

[Cazmonster]

I really want to be a Gnoll who's something like Travis Pastrana or Shaun White. Somebody who's using his natural skills and charisma to be a stunt superstar (eventually).

Also, I need the book, cause a PDF ain't gonna cut it.

[El Jefe]

Operative with the Daredevil Specialization. It is terrifying, you'll love it, and enemies will be goddamn confused when you space parkour through and leave them bleeding out from precise dagger cuts or pistol-blaster shots.

[Mike]

My Eli finally settled on a Lashunta hit-and-run style soldier. Seeing the potential for combining ranged and melee totally sold him on it.

[El Jefe]

Hit and run with the four-armed kasatha is TERRIFYING. No need to ever worry about free hands again.

Edit: Whoops, misread that. Lashunta, not kasatha. Really doesn't matter. Hit and run is one of my favorite soldier options. Plus, with cyber...everybody can have four arms!