What you hope won't be in there.


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Or is it "out there"

* Generic space conqueror #11010100.
*


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I just want it to stick strongly to the genre choice James used in the blog post 'space fantasy'. I don't want hard sci-fi, I don't even want Star Trek, I want Star Wars or Warhammer 40k or more specifically Pathfinder in Space with some interesting tech, much of which I hope to be powered by magic or the like.


Halflings.
Gnomes.
Dwarves.

etc etc etc

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Jingasa of the Fortunate Space Marine.


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I'm hoping to see not to much Lovecraft stuff. I really want to like this, but once Pathfinder got heavy on the Dark Tapestry, I switched to Shadowrun, and I'm worried that JJ's Lovecraft thing could come through even stronger in this game.


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From the look of things one of the things I am hoping they will avoid is the whole humanocentric view of everything that has annoyed me since I started playing this game in the late 80s. I am of a wait and see attitude. There has not been much announced yet but what has been promised looks promising.


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Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
martinaj wrote:
... but once Pathfinder got heavy on the Dark Tapestry...

uh, so when exactly did that happen?


I feel like it was sometime around Ultimate Magic. It just started showing up more and has been gradually creeping in ever since, to the point that we have stats for the great old ones. I've never like the Mythos stuff.


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Modern society has a way of being over-specialized for the kind of group dynamics Pathfinder are built around. SF settings have a tendency to be very bad for "party coherency" - the netrunner is away one way, the pilot does the flying, the soldier does the fighting. And in each of these scenes, the rest of the party are basically bystanders. Trying to avoid this hazard that has made SF games lean towards space opera. I think there are more interesting ways to do this.

Assume a very tight, reliable communications network that lets the characters be in different places and still be able to support each other. Things like personality splicing and remote control of equipment makes the split party a thing of the past - where one is, we all are. On the other hand it creates a very fractured, confusing storyline.

I guess what I am saying is that if done well, the post-cyberpunk hyper information society of a game like Eclipse Phase can be amazing. But it is very hard to do well. Perhaps space opera is the safe bet after all.

What I do NOT want is what I began with describing; a game where specialization only really allows one character to act at a time. Try and avoid sub systems and minigames for things like netrunning and space combat that only engages the specialists.


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Mixing it with Golarion is a bad idea.

The Pale King wrote:
I just want it to stick strongly to the genre choice James used in the blog post 'space fantasy'. I don't want hard sci-fi, I don't even want Star Trek, I want Star Wars or Warhammer 40k or more specifically Pathfinder in Space with some interesting tech, much of which I hope to be powered by magic or the like.

Star Trek is fantasy.

For the remaining i may agree.

martinaj wrote:
I'm hoping to see not to much Lovecraft stuff. I really want to like this, but once Pathfinder got heavy on the Dark Tapestry, I switched to Shadowrun, and I'm worried that JJ's Lovecraft thing could come through even stronger in this game.

Don't agree with that.

Can't wait for paizo increasing lovecraft content in Pathfinder and in Starfinder.
There are not enough.


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The Dark Tapestry as one of the major adversaries for this line is something I for one would love to see. Cosmic Horror, as in a lot of the stuff Lovecraft and friends wrote about would fit rather well. That's just my opinion but right now I am just giddy this is being done.

Dark Archive

Wizjolnir wrote:
Mixing it with Golarion is a bad idea.

Yeah, I'd rather see the homebrew setting from James Jacobs.


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Starfox wrote:

Modern society has a way of being over-specialized for the kind of group dynamics Pathfinder are built around. SF settings have a tendency to be very bad for "party coherency" - the netrunner is away one way, the pilot does the flying, the soldier does the fighting. And in each of these scenes, the rest of the party are basically bystanders. Trying to avoid this hazard that has made SF games lean towards space opera. I think there are more interesting ways to do this.

Assume a very tight, reliable communications network that lets the characters be in different places and still be able to support each other. Things like personality splicing and remote control of equipment makes the split party a thing of the past - where one is, we all are. On the other hand it creates a very fractured, confusing storyline.

I guess what I am saying is that if done well, the post-cyberpunk hyper information society of a game like Eclipse Phase can be amazing. But it is very hard to do well. Perhaps space opera is the safe bet after all.

What I do NOT want is what I began with describing; a game where specialization only really allows one character to act at a time. Try and avoid sub systems and minigames for things like netrunning and space combat that only engages the specialists.

Your analysis is interresting.

I would also see a lot of tools to play sandbox game in SpaceFinder.


Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
the David wrote:
Wizjolnir wrote:
Mixing it with Golarion is a bad idea.
Yeah, I'd rather see the homebrew setting from James Jacobs.

That's something entirely different.


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I'm okay with cosmic horror as a concept, but I'd much rather they use it as an inspiration for something new is far preferable to ripping creatures straight from the pages of Lovecraft's stuff, which seems to be the way it always goes. Lovecraft always seems to be afford this sacred untouchable status and fans who incorporate his stuff into their games seem completely unwillingy to adapt it, instead forcing the game world to adapt to Lovecraft, but we don't do this with other source material. We have the Whispering Tyrant instead of any number of actual fictional evil overlords, for example. We don't actually see Sauron in the world, so why is there this need to use Cthulu instead of a Cthulu substitute?


Starfox wrote:
Try and avoid sub systems and minigames for things like netrunning and space combat that only engages the specialists.

Netrunning (and computers in general) tend to be a problem in most sci-fi games, either totally glossed over so that PCs can't really do anything, or so detailed that nobody really understands what's going on, and only the netrunner gets to do anything for a while because of the different turn length. It's something that needs to be abstracted a bit to keep the game moving for everybody, but you've got to balance that out so that people who want o be l33t h@x0rs can do so.

I spent most of my time at university (86-89) and a few years after going through all the available cyberpunk games trying to find a system that got it right, and never found one, and never really worked out a great way myself either.

Silver Crusade

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Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber

Here's a big "I don't wanna" - I don't want for existence of Starfinder to result in sci-fantasy elements getting removed from vanilla Pathfinder. On some level, this is an opportunity for Paizo to have the cake and eat the cake, with Pathfinder being more "traditionalist fantasy" and Starfinder covering the weird stuff. While I'm very happy that I am getting a full-blown sci-fantasy RPG, I'd love for robotz with lazors to creep into baseline Pathfinder books every now and then.


I wanted to find out more about the planets, not many years in the future, but how they are in the current timeline.

Also why no playtest?

I hope humans are not a core race.


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While I like keeping things largely Pathfinder derivative, I'm hoping magic items and the associated snowballing economy get the axe.

I mean, you can still have treasure, but the way rewards and costs scale with level in 3.x/PF completely destroys realistic in-game economies (i.e. it's weird going into town and paying 1 SP for a stay at the local inn with meals included then selling 30 +1 swords for 10,000 times that, each).

Plus, it really disincentivizes peaceful negotiation. If I talk this guy out of a fight, I don't get his +3 sword and armor I'd have gotten from killing him, and wow that's a big chunk of change.

Being able to have rich and poor characters in the same party is also a nice dynamic to have access to via traits and such that doesn't work if everyone's getting insanely rich off adventuring.

... although on the other hand, investing a huge amount of cash in bigger and better spaceships has some appeal.


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Anything not awesome.


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martinaj wrote:
I'm okay with cosmic horror as a concept, but I'd much rather they use it as an inspiration for something new is far preferable to ripping creatures straight from the pages of Lovecraft's stuff, which seems to be the way it always goes.

Give them some time to modify Lovecraft content - Paizo has a great history of modifying adapted creatures. Goblins might be the most famous example, but there are like a dozen books focused on 'revisiting' creature types. Strange Aeons is coming up, and I am pretty sure they will build upon Lovecraft instead of just copying him. Any serious designer wants to introduce his own content, after all...

Beside this, there is always the risk of hardcore fans dismissing modified content as 'untrue' and being vocal about it. They expect their favourite content to be integrated true to original, and only thereafter they will accept slow modifications.


Goblins
Fireballs
Dragons
Goblins
Non energy weapons
Goblins
Elves
Goblins
Things that look too much like WH40k


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Pathfinder LO Special Edition, Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, PF Special Edition Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Starfinder Superscriber
Googleshng wrote:

While I like keeping things largely Pathfinder derivative, I'm hoping magic items and the associated snowballing economy get the axe.

I mean, you can still have treasure, but the way rewards and costs scale with level in 3.x/PF completely destroys realistic in-game economies (i.e. it's weird going into town and paying 1 SP for a stay at the local inn with meals included then selling 30 +1 swords for 10,000 times that, each).

Economics was not the strong suit of whoever invented the economies of many FRPG worlds, especially D&D and its derivatives.


Pathfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Gorbacz wrote:
Here's a big "I don't wanna" - I don't want for existence of Starfinder to result in sci-fantasy elements getting removed from vanilla Pathfinder. On some level, this is an opportunity for Paizo to have the cake and eat the cake, with Pathfinder being more "traditionalist fantasy" and Starfinder covering the weird stuff. While I'm very happy that I am getting a full-blown sci-fantasy RPG, I'd love for robotz with lazors to creep into baseline Pathfinder books every now and then.

Yes, that´s one of my main concerns too.

It´s like splitting the playerbase and i really don´t want to see that happen, but neither to do i want to see the traditionalist and conservative people rule either of the games. Those had a lot of upwind lately through clever networking and being extremely loud on the forums and elsewhere. Pathfinder needs to stay weird too, and not only as a Lovecraft copycat thing. I think after the Strange Aeons AP, it might be good to let Lovecraft rest for a while and explore other options of being weird. This already feels like a repetition of Runelords stuff in some parts before it even began.

The concerns about overspecialized party roles aka pilot, hacker, etc where the rest of the party can´t do anything are real concerns and a very serious thing to adress.


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Gigantic dystopic systems that comprise all the galaxy/whatever. Massive shoulderpads. Monotheistic theocracies used as a tool for conformity among PCs. Chaos used as a catch-all term for bad. Grimderpness.

No, I don't like WH40K's setting, why do you ask?

Dark Archive

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2nd 3rd (whatever) dont go 40k. I want this very much to not be opressively gothic and bleak. That said i cant see 2017 get here soon enough now.


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Nothing too 40K. It's a really silly, aesthetically displeasing setting to me, so I hope it ain't gonna inspire Starfinder in any noticeable way.

EDIT: Kinda ninja'd, but still. :P


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Hayato Ken wrote:
The concerns about overspecialized party roles aka pilot, hacker, etc where the rest of the party can´t do anything are real concerns and a very serious thing to adress.

A while back, I spitballed an idea for this problem:

Logorrheic Slaad wrote:

...this is also a problem in Shadowrun, where usually the party only has a single rigger PC controlling the main vehicle and drones (vehicular and gun emplacements) while the rest of the party is off dealing with other threats. As a GM, I always found it tough getting anyone to play the rigger (or the decker/hacker), and next to impossible to get other party members to allocate skill points and cyberware as gunners and assistant riggers.

So... maybe have the weapons and other ship systems be quasi-smart systems? Just spitballing here: from a RAW mechanics perspective, ranged weapon skills aren't really that different from heavy weapons/gunnery skills. Directing animal companions/eidelons/cohorts isn't that different from directing ship drones. Maybe the ship/vehicle/base systems are semi-smart enough to translate a meat ("wetware") user's reflexes, target-differentiation, training, tactics into usable commands? Sure, your elven archer may not be optimally trained to fire rail guns, but he understands enough (tactics, cover, targeting, ammo control, coordinating with teammates, etc.) that the the ship's semi-smart system can translate his mental commands into rail gun attacks. That way, the team can still contribute in ship actions without the PCs dropping too many resources into those skills/feats that are useless on away teams/off ship. And if a PC (or NPC) wants to dedicate themselves by taking specialized ship training/feats/archetype, they can be even better than most at the job (while understanding they'll be less optimal in off-ship encounters).


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I want Starfinder to provide the basics to adapt a lot of generic space fantasy/science fiction type settings. I want the game to be easily merged with Pathfinder but not in the extent that it becomes GNOMES...IN...SPACE.

I don't want Arcane magic to be common or even existent. If Divine magic also has to exist let it be a more minor element. Occult Magic should be the dominant system.

I also don't want a bunch of "here's a short human, here's a pretty human, etc" races. I want stuff that looks weird and act weird and isn't simply a fantasy race with the serial numbers filed off.

I don't want a lot of planar stuff. Keep that to Pathfinder. Give us weird hyperspace/time/ and similar stuff.


Starfox wrote:

Modern society has a way of being over-specialized for the kind of group dynamics Pathfinder are built around. SF settings have a tendency to be very bad for "party coherency" - the netrunner is away one way, the pilot does the flying, the soldier does the fighting. And in each of these scenes, the rest of the party are basically bystanders. Trying to avoid this hazard that has made SF games lean towards space opera. I think there are more interesting ways to do this.

I tend to agree with that. I had this exact problem in a scifi game I ran before, which become quite troublesome, and I'm seeing it with shadowrun.


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I hope that it is in no way made to balance with Pathfinder. Letting things mechanically interact is one thing, but having CRB balance standards would infuriate me.


the David wrote:
Wizjolnir wrote:
Mixing it with Golarion is a bad idea.
Yeah, I'd rather see the homebrew setting from James Jacobs.

You have a good deal of it already. Much of Golarion is from Jacob's material with some names changed, and others kept.


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Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

Re: Overspecialization and effectively "splitting the party"

This is definitely a concern, but I don't really see much of a solution other than a space opera treatment. For ship-to-ship combat, a similar treatment to Skull and Shackles (or, for a more complex version, requiring separate people to handle separate systems during combat: communications/jamming, engineering/power, piloting/navigation, targeting/weapons). For "hacking/netrunning," I could see using a similar system to psychic duels, where everyone can use "virtual avatars" (i.e., psychic manifestations) to participate, but those that specialize gain advantages.

Those subsystems just need to have the character investment required minimized (and probably some streamlined versions to speed play, as well as the "full" versions), so that you don't get into a situation that a character has to focus nearly their entire character around that one subsystem (which was one of the flaws in Shadowrun; deckers, riggers, mages/shamans, and street samurai were all basically doing almost completely separate things and completely/nearly ineffectual outside of their specialty). One or two skills, plus a few feats and/or class features to enhance the effectiveness, to handle those activities with the focus still on "meat-body" adventuring, social interaction, etc. (except for those groups that want to focus their game on that particular subsystem; i.e., all hackers, "space pirates," etc.) is the way to handle it, IMO...

Liberty's Edge

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What I Want From Starfinder:

* Adapt the Fast Play Ship Combat rules from the Gamemastery Guide to space combat. (I'm doing it for a Microlite20 game!)

* Gyrojet pistols/rifles. (Google them, or watch You Only Live Twice.) Seriously, these need more love.

* A nonmagical way to add effects to weapons/armor, like the Workshops from Knights of the Old Republic I and II.

* Do away with guns operating against Touch AC.

* CONTROVERSIAL: Make any magic-using classes have their spells per encounter, not per day, and massively reduce how many spell slots they get. At the same time, make a way to recover some (but not all) spell slots between encounters.

* Give martials cooldown-based powers. (Like the Binder class from Tome of Magic.)

What I Don't Want:

* Dwarves, elves, halflings, gnomes, or orcs.

* Every alien can speak perfect English. The old PC game Ironseed handled this the best: There were half a million people in the galaxy who could speak English, and they were all aboard your ship. The automatic translator did its best to try to translate alien language, but you had to make some educated guesses and deal with some really *odd* syntax.

* Wish, Miracle, Reality Revision, or any similar powers.

Liberty's Edge

I'm not picky: I'd be varying degrees of fine with just about any way they went with this.

Oh, except, put me with everyone who's suggesting the game stays far the hell away from anything like WH40K. That's about the only setting/aesthetic that is just an absolute turn-off for me.

Liberty's Edge

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Copy-pasted rules. Pathfinder's rules are a right mess. This is a great opportunity to streamline and simplify them. Players should not have to reference years old erata in a brand new game.

I want a genuine attempt to balance the classes, not just reskin the existing ones for science-fantasy. Equal power levels between martials and magic/technology users. Give martial cool abilities to use in and (sit down, I'm about to blow your mind) OUT OF COMBAT.


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Crisischild wrote:
Copy-pasted rules. Pathfinder's rules are a right mess. This is a great opportunity to streamline and simplify them. Players should not have to reference years old erata in a brand new game.

This one. Thisone. ThisoneThisoneThisoneThisoneThisoneThisoneThisone.

Crisischild wrote:
I want a genuine attempt to balance the classes, not just reskin the existing ones for science-fantasy. Equal power levels between martials and magic/technology users. Give martial cool abilities to use in and (sit down, I'm about to blow your mind) OUT OF COMBAT.

Also.


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Snorb wrote:

What I Want From Starfinder:

*

* Do away with guns operating against Touch AC.

* CONTROVERSIAL: Make any magic-using classes have their spells per encounter, not per day, and massively reduce how many spell slots they get. At the same time, make a way to recover some (but not all) spell slots between encounters.

* Give martials cooldown-based powers. (Like the Binder class from Tome of Magic.)

What I Don't Want:

* Wish, Miracle, Reality Revision, or any similar powers.

Uh...those sound less like Starfinder requests and more like Pathfinder 2.0 requests.

Miracle and Wish in particular do not strike me as appropriate in a science fantasy game.


I would like Ultimate Equipment and the Technology Guide to not share a single sentence with Starfinder.


MMCJawa wrote:

Uh...those sound less like Starfinder requests and more like Pathfinder 2.0 requests.

Miracle and Wish in particular do not strike me as appropriate in a science fantasy game.

It better be Pathfinder 2.0 for a brand new core book, separate adventure paths, etc. Taking the FFG Star Wars approach of three core rule books for a single set of rules would be terrible.


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I'm half and half about Starfinder being a ninja Pathfinder 1.5. On one hand if the basic rules are streamlined then the real problem with Pathfinder would just be magic and how it works. On the other hand I'd rather We not pollute Starfinder with complaints about Pathfinder.


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Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I hope guns and similar ranged weaponry won't completely replace melee fighting.


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martinaj wrote:
We don't actually see Sauron in the world, so why is there this need to use Cthulu instead of a Cthulu substitute?

Cthulu is public domain, Sauron won't be for another 30 years or so. So there's the why.


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Dragon78 wrote:

I wanted to find out more about the planets, not many years in the future, but how they are in the current timeline.

Also why no playtest?

I hope humans are not a core race.

That, kinda.

No large scale playtests.

Not THE CORE Race.

- - - - - - - -

+1 the no WH40K.


Aaron Hackett wrote:
martinaj wrote:
We don't actually see Sauron in the world, so why is there this need to use Cthulu instead of a Cthulu substitute?
Cthulu is public domain, Sauron won't be for another 30 years or so. So there's the why.

The name might be, the look and the story?


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Well, we kinda have the story. After all: liches.

But, uh... nothing else really meshes with that, yeah.

(I'm a fan of leaving the actual mythos stuff alone and doing your own thing with elements inspired by it, instead. Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem was a perfect example of doing exactly that.)


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Technology is the new Magic, aka, without it you are useless.


That magic will be non-existent or penalties in playing spell casters or certain types of spell casters.

Shadow Lodge

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Time travel. Unless it's implemented as a one-off backstory thing to explain retcons. Though once it gets used, it's never a one-off thing.


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The Shifty Mongoose wrote:
Time travel. Unless it's implemented as a one-off backstory thing to explain retcons. Though once it gets used, it's never a one-off thing.

Oddly enough, I have to respectfully disagree.

Normally, I can take or leave time travel as far as Sci-Fi tropes go, but the opportunity to cross over with PF Classic is just too enticing.

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