Ask Gallant James S., Enduring Owen and Beloved Rob your Starfinder Questions Here!


General Discussion

501 to 550 of 803 << first < prev | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | next > last >>
Creative Director, Starfinder Team

Malikjoker wrote:
will every class in the party be able to contribute to ship to ship space combat?

Yes! This was very important to us. Not only will everyone be able to contribute, but there'll be a variety of ways for folks to contribute depending on their abilities and what interests them most. (You don't *have* to be the gunner just because you're the soldier.)


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

So then, for the previously mentioned ship where computers can help in certain areas, any class could choose to be a pilot and fly themselves around the galaxy, yes?


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

And another question-when will we get more information about the classes? Or more races? Just a little tease about each would be awesome-as would knowing when such a tease would be.


What are your thoughts about Rogue One so far?


In _Artifacts and Legends_ there is the Scepter of Ages. Is this item still around by the SF era?

Would this object permit characters to travel forward or backward from one setting to the other?

How many years of travel forward or backward would be required to do this?

What if someone from the SF era tried to use this Scepter to time-travel into or just before The Gap, could they use this to collect information then try the Scepter again to return to the SF era with their research intact?

*****

Unrelated question: Will there be a pattern to the starting times or durations of blackout that arise as part of The Gap?

The Gap has some planets and areas experiencing blackout at different times. Whatever or whoever instigated The Gap, if it initiated at a point of origin we might expect it to propagate outward over time, like the light of a supernova. The galaxy that contains the supernova will receive its light first, the nearest star systems before more distant ones, then years later nearby galaxies will see the supernova, then more distant galaxies, and so on and so on.

Or, if The Gap had several points of origin, we might expect the total wipe to propagate in a similar effect: star systems nearest to a point of origin will experience The Gap first, then systems further out, like ripples in water from a handful of pebbles hurled into a lake.

An enterprising and diligent character will try to pinpoint Points of Origin by charting Gap Times across 3D space with the idea that those settlements, planets, or star systems with the earliest or longest periods of blackout where very close to the one or more possible points of origin.


Do you plan on only doing archetypes with Starfinder or are you going to do prestige classes also?

If you are keeping prestige classes are you going to specific archetypes that lead into specific prestige classes like the Winter Witch, Aldori Swordlord or Magaambyan Arcanist in Pathfinder?


How did society not utterly collapse from the gap?
It appears that there's a hard line where no info exists - even documents.
So no one's got any orders, there's no shipping manifests, medical reports, star charts, etc.

Like, how did people not die of untreated medical conditions that were wow from their memory? Or while contours/planets not starve because of production failures?


Pharniel wrote:

How did society not utterly collapse from the gap?

It appears that there's a hard line where no info exists - even documents.
So no one's got any orders, there's no shipping manifests, medical reports, star charts, etc.

Like, how did people not die of untreated medical conditions that were wow from their memory? Or while contours/planets not starve because of production failures?

They touch on this in the recent Polygon interview, "Imagine if you woke up one day," Sutter said, "and you still have all your knowledge, and you still have roughly a sense of who you are, but you have no real memory of your past. After The Gap, whole nations knew that they are at war with other nations, but they didn't really remember why. People might have recognised their wives or their children, but they didn't have any specific memories of how or when they got together. That event is far in the past of Starfinder, but it’s nonetheless played havoc on the setting. Society has just sort of reshaped itself and that, to me, is a very interesting question." So there was a collapse but now, after several centuries, things have normalized a bit.


Torbyne wrote:


They touch on this in the recent Polygon interview, "Imagine if you woke up one day," Sutter said, "and you still have all your knowledge, and you still have roughly a sense of who you are, but you have no real memory of your past. After The Gap, whole nations knew that they are at war with other nations, but they didn't really remember why. People might have recognised their wives or their children, but they didn't have any specific memories of how or when they got together. That event is far in the past of Starfinder, but it’s nonetheless played havoc on the setting. Society has just sort of reshaped itself and that, to me, is a very interesting question." So there was a collapse but now, after several centuries, things have normalized a bit.

I get it's an interesting question, because it is, but it seems...superfluous? Like...either it matters in the here now, in which case the book is going to have to spend a goodly amount of pages trying to convey what was lost vs. what wasn't and the consequences of how adjudicating one way shapes your game adding in a significant amount of complexity that the setting becomes about The Gap by default

or
It's so far in the past as to be a weird setting quirk with players (and DMs) never really getting to engage with the Very Interesting Question because the setting answered it.

Now..by 'fiddly details' let me go through this thought experiment -
It's december 25h, 2016 and you wake up with no idea what's going on. you have a vague sense of if where you are is 'home' or not, can sorta recognize close relatives (parents, children, spouses) and have all your technical skills.
The question yet answered is "what records are gone?" - if it's anything related to history then your music is gone, your e-mail is deleted, all the documents on your hdd are gone, video games are gone (credits, copyright dates yo), actually your OS is probably gone as well because historical information is in the code.
Phone numbers are gone - they're actually smart numbers that convey geographic information, and you can't remember your name.
You can't celebrate christmass, even if the bible isn't blank, because it's not in the bible it's in a bunch of media works that provide historical clues.
You probably can't even celebrate the new year because calendars give tons of information and would have to be expunged.
You have no access to your bank accounts, because financial history is even more information dense than a mere calendar.
You don't know where you work, you have the food findable in your house. You can drive a car, which is fine, until you run out of gas because you don't know how to actually refill the gas stations.
You better hope little notes to one's self about where trucks, boats and other deliveries are going because basically 20% of the Earth's population is going to starve or freeze over the next three months or so as utilities fail, the economy has been vaporized, and farmers have no idea what they planed to plant for the coming year. That would require climate data & weather patterns which, again, are information dense. The world descends into warlords with production capacities cut in half and you'd be lucky to stop at 18th century levels of technology as about 80% of the world's population dies.

And that's us, with modern equipment and knowledge. You do that to an agrarian society at war? It's Bronze Age collapse all over again.

To whit - There aren't 'empires suddenly at war' because to have an empire you'd have to have people that know each other more than at the squad level and other people wearing the same uniform or the same flag. TO have a war you'd have to have troops moving coherently against each other. What you've got now is roving banks of, well, bandits hungry, armed and trained in violence. You have no songs, because traditionally they'd speak to historical events. Tax rolls are blank, pursers don't remember where coin is hid or maybe they just run off with the money or get cut down by the generals and knights who suddenly are freed from emotional, cultural and legal ties to the rulers and as the strongest and most powerful take over.

Culture, by the way The Gap is currently explained, is expunged.

If culture and nationality isn't expunged then it's going to start getting very, very, very complex on 'well, what exactly did survive?' while also not being enough information that several centuries of determined investigators with access to magic and super science couldn't have put things back together.

Like...the book is going to have to sell me on what this setting feature brings to the table because so far it just looks like another nightmare thing to try to engage with.


i think a lot of names and generalities of culture survived the Gap, over the centuries since there has been a lot of rebuilding and redefining what certain concepts mean in each culture but i bet the game play kicks off at the start of a "new age" when people finally have the stability and means to start digging into the past and finding out what exactly it was that hit them. you could set a game earlier i suppose if you want to focus on surviving the fall but this is about the rise afterwards. at least, thats the impression i have gotten so far.


Torbyne wrote:
i think a lot of names and generalities of culture survived the Gap, over the centuries since there has been a lot of rebuilding and redefining what certain concepts mean in each culture but i bet the game play kicks off at the start of a "new age" when people finally have the stability and means to start digging into the past and finding out what exactly it was that hit them. you could set a game earlier i suppose if you want to focus on surviving the fall but this is about the rise afterwards. at least, thats the impression i have gotten so far.

We'll have to see. On the face of it "star wars by way of spelljammer" isn't a hard sell for my group, it'll depend on The Twist that makes investigation suddenly possible that hasn't existed for the past 15 generations.


Who says The Gap will be any more explored than the death of Aroden in Pathfinder?


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I think that goal will be more tangible. Through the play of starfinder modules, I bet you'll be able to slowly piece together what happened and why it happened. I don't think they will leave it as unsolveable as Aroden's death, but it won't be something that's discovered right away.


Franz Lunzer wrote:
Who says The Gap will be any more explored than the death of Aroden in Pathfinder?

I dont think the Gap will be very well explored at all at launch. in fact it might have just come to light that the boundary of the Gap is inconsistent even. But exploring where the boundary is and filling the Gap has been heavily cited in the Starfinder interviews thus far. As far as i understand it, the main driving faction for the PCs is the Starfinder Society which exists primarily to explore the Gap whereas the Pathfinder Society does not have any specific stated mission to research Aroden and it is not a main focus in the Pathfinder setting.


Are there going to be grippli? I'm thinking my first character might be an exasperated second-in-command grippli named Gif Groker...

*is dragged off by IP lawyers*


I'll be your Zap Branigan here and not help you with those Lawyers. You will of course be docked PTO for your time in court and or jail and your lack of support to me during this time will be reflected in your yearly evaluations.


Torbyne wrote:
I'll be your Zap Branigan here and not help you with those Lawyers. You will of course be docked PTO for your time in court and or jail and your lack of support to me during this time will be reflected in your yearly evaluations.

Och! You mean "Zip Brunugan" of course. Di ye wanna get sued?!

:)


You can be sure Shaft Jackson and his company Orifice Technologies will be all over Gap research, inventing all kinds of strange new extracts and mutagens to inflict on test subjects along the way.

Scarab Sages

Matthew Shelton wrote:
You can be sure Shaft Jackson and his company Orifice Technologies will be all over Gap research, inventing all kinds of strange new extracts and mutagens to inflict on test subjects along the way.

Orifice Technologies - Go ahead, ask us about the lemons.


Torbyne wrote:
Franz Lunzer wrote:
Who says The Gap will be any more explored than the death of Aroden in Pathfinder?
I dont think the Gap will be very well explored at all at launch. in fact it might have just come to light that the boundary of the Gap is inconsistent even. But exploring where the boundary is and filling the Gap has been heavily cited in the Starfinder interviews thus far. As far as i understand it, the main driving faction for the PCs is the Starfinder Society which exists primarily to explore the Gap whereas the Pathfinder Society does not have any specific stated mission to research Aroden and it is not a main focus in the Pathfinder setting.

Especially with all the references to doing for space opera what Shadowrun did for cyberpunk, I hope that Starfinder also follows Shadowrun's suit in having a more truly living, mutable setting than Pathfinder. It'd allow them to go into this with a real ending planned for the Gap plotline that, even if it's a monumental event like the stuff involving a certain Shadowrun dragon, doesn't wreck the setting's foundation and invalidates products published before it happens.

If there is a Starfinder Society, they might also be able to fulfill the promise of organized play factoring into broader non-organized play setting development in ways it can't in Pathfinder.

Spoiler:
Something on the scale of Dunk's fan-balloted election and assassination seems doable.

Finding Golarion and undoing the Gap might tilt some factional scales, and even if it returns from wherever it is, Golarion in Starfinder is still just a speck of dirt next to one tiny light in the galaxy. Golarion in Pathfinder is where nearly everything in the product lines is set, and fundamentally upending how it works makes a bunch of material irrelevant.

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

1 person marked this as a favorite.
quibblemuch wrote:

Are there going to be grippli? I'm thinking my first character might be an exasperated second-in-command grippli named Gif Groker...

*is dragged off by IP lawyers*

No, but for real. I needs Grippli.


so it really sounds like we can drag and drop races from Pathfinder into Starfinder. Most of the core races of Pathfinder are supposed to exist in SF but arent being detailed in the corebook there might be a sidebar about skill modifiers that change or something but i would be surprised it Grippli werent compatible with the system. Heck, even if the Grippli somehow dont survive the Gap, guess what the new species that just made contact with the Pact World Alliance looks like? ;)


Petty Alchemy wrote:
No, but for real. I needs Grippli.

And perhaps some kind of porcine anthropomorphic race. BOOOAAAARRRSSSS IN A VACUUUUUMMM!!!

*dragged off once again by IP lawyers*


what about the Griff? when will we see the Griff in Starfinder?

Imagine a griff society that developed nuclear weapons...

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

1 person marked this as a favorite.

What became of your blog, quibblemuch? I liked reading those short stories.


Petty Alchemy wrote:
What became of your blog, quibblemuch? I liked reading those short stories.

Wow! Thanks! I didn't think anyone was reading, so I took it down (so as not to clutter the internet). Still writing though--my latest completed novel is a kids' fantasy that's sort of ALICE IN WONDERLAND meets OCEAN'S ELEVEN... maybe someday...

RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16

1 person marked this as a favorite.

Well like, bring it back? Or sell me a compilation of shorts like The Bureaucromancer so I can set it by my fruit bowl and when I inevitably bore my guests, I can point to the book and they will pick it up and think I am smart by association for having it.


3 people marked this as a favorite.
Petty Alchemy wrote:
Well like, bring it back? Or sell me a compilation of shorts like The Bureaucromancer so I can set it by my fruit bowl and when I inevitably bore my guests, I can point to the book and they will pick it up and think I am smart by association for having it.

Here you go!

And seriously, thank you. Writing stories has been a weird business, mostly conducted in silence and a sense of isolation. It's nice to know someone is reading.


Will the other planes of existence still be accessible? If so could you fly a starship their? Would their inhabitants know of the world before the gap?

Silver Crusade

FirstChAoS wrote:
Will the other planes of existence still be accessible? If so could you fly a starship their? Would their inhabitants know of the world before the gap?

From what I've heard from the devs, the entire multiverse is affected by The Gap, so even angels and devils that lived before and after would not know what happened (and could be very shaken by this information).


When Golarion disappeared did the inhabitants of Golarion end up on the station or was the station built after the occurrence of the gap?

Is the station large enough to house all of Golarion's species and/or did only a select few survive?

Will the world of Starfinder have a form of Internet?


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I think a recent article said that Absalom station is mostly made of people who were odd-world when things went down. So the people of golarion are still on it. I think.

My question-I was reading the previous page abs saw mention odd sunder and combat maneuvers and can't help but ask - will Called Shots come standard in the core book? Cause shooting guns out of hands is awesome, and likely more relevant now in a song full of blasters. Hoping it'll be is own maneuver, or something, but it ivory may not be strength based.

Basically, called shots please!

Scarab Sages Developer, Starfinder Team

FirstChAoS wrote:
Will the other planes of existence still be accessible? If so could you fly a starship their? Would their inhabitants know of the world before the gap?

Certainly the other planes still exist, and you can get to them.

Getting a STARSHIP to them is going to be much more effort, and we may not give you the way to do that in the core rulebook, but sure it's possible.
The GAP is all-encompassinging (otherwise people would just commune and find out what happened).


1 person marked this as a favorite.

did any dark folk survive? (aka: CAN I PLAY A CALIGNI?). *dragged out into the street and shot*


andygal wrote:
did any dark folk survive? (aka: CAN I PLAY A CALIGNI?). *dragged out into the street and shot*

It sounds like the ability to routinely travel at least in system was in place prior to the Gappening so there is at least a theoretical way for some Caligni to get off world. In setting i could see a Caligni outpost on a cold, dark asteroid somewhere off the radar of the rest of the Pact Worlds.

*imagining a cabal of Void kineticists silently steering their hollowed out home with "stealth" gravity manipulation*

which brings up another interesting point for me, in hard science a stealth spaceship is pretty much impossible given the heat difference between space and anything solid, let along solid and support livable standards inside it. I suppose stealth ships can exist in Starfinder though thanks to the fantasy side of things...


1 person marked this as a favorite.

You could run supercooled, superconducting liquid through conduits and capillaries between the outer hull of the ship and the insulating inner layer. The cooling system shunts the coolant through pipes snaking through a series of onboard Ring Gates. The companion rings are all located at home base. The pipes connect to thermal heat sinks submerged in vats of supercooled liquid which would be too bulky to install on the stealth ship. The mass transfer limitation on the ring gates is mitigated partially by having a lot of them functioning in parallel, and by attenuating coolant flow and letting the thermal energy itself propagate freely through the superconducting liquid and drawn out of the system back at home base. (The effect of thermal energy transfer on the mass transfer budget of the Ring Gates, while a nonzero quantity, is nevertheless negligible under normal operating conditions thanks to E=MC^2.)


Aside from your solution already relaying on techno-magic to transport waste heat off ship unseen, it would need a perfectly efficient coolant and ship construction material which somehow doesnt rob the interior living spaces and occupants of their thermal energy and then you still have to deal with light reflecting off the ship, traditional radar detection, and dealing with the light the stealth ship obscures by passing between the star and viewing ships.

It can be hand waved by magic though. because that is what magic does. :)


One way stealth might matter is in faster than light terms. If there are FTL sensors, they may depend on emissions other than heat (which propagates through space at the miserable crawl of light speed). Such superluminal emissions may be able to be suppressed using a 'stealth hyperdrive' or somesuch.


Heat sink outer hull, heavily insulated interior (a necessity on any ship), and a simple ion propulsion system. It will have a much lower thermal signature than a typical ship of its size.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I literally could not stop squeeing and dancing as I was reading the Game Informer article. Thank you, good sir, for renewing my Starfinder hype.

About the debuting at GenCon thing: will the Core Rulebook and the first AP be debuting at GenCon, or will there be live demos and such? If it's the latter, then I might actually go next year.


How many star systems will be featured in the setting (meaning explored in similar detail as the Golarion system)?


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Will the Iconics have last names? I know in pathfinder its less necessary, but in a future society where you get to know that many more people, you're definitely having a last name. Will we know Navasi's? Does Iseph have one? Would one of the alien races have the surname come first? All fun things! Is that something we'll see from the iconics?


2ndGenerationCleric wrote:
Will the Iconics have last names?

Suppose it really depends on the cultures they originate from? For example certain asian cultures on our world had a tradition of using the familial name first and the individual name second.

I could easily see the android race, for example, totally abandoning the concept of familial names all together, just like they abandoned the use of non applicable gender to highlight their racial difference from biological humanoids.

Perhaps a single name with an identifying ID number will be the new norm? I am interested to see the concepts that come from this.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

Another good one, I think: with there being 7 classes and 7 core races, is it safe to assume we'll see the iconics take advantage of that 1:1 ratio? Or will some races be used more than once for the iconics?

And on a similar note, any way you could tell us which class we'll see the iconic for next? Even just a hint


1 person marked this as a favorite.

We can probably guess the Swedish version of Starfinder will use the hen gender-neutral pronoun for Androids. What will be used in English? 'They'? (Although 'they' may sound 'collectivist' in English, in the context of Androids it can make them sound more 'Borglike', which is an unintended benefit.)

Creative Director, Starfinder Team

The Doomkitten wrote:

I literally could not stop squeeing and dancing as I was reading the Game Informer article. Thank you, good sir, for renewing my Starfinder hype.

About the debuting at GenCon thing: will the Core Rulebook and the first AP be debuting at GenCon, or will there be live demos and such? If it's the latter, then I might actually go next year.

Everything will be for sale AND there will be demos! :D


Probably a silly question, but: Starfinder Tales novels?


Waiting for the SF Development team to come back from their holiday rest and start answering more questions and dropping more hints. :)

/Summon James, Owen and Rob!


Sundakan wrote:
I think you still missed the part where the game hasn't been made yet .

It's in the process of being made.


Owen K. C. Stephens wrote:
FirstChAoS wrote:
Will the other planes of existence still be accessible? If so could you fly a starship their? Would their inhabitants know of the world before the gap?

Certainly the other planes still exist, and you can get to them.

Getting a STARSHIP to them is going to be much more effort, and we may not give you the way to do that in the core rulebook, but sure it's possible.
The GAP is all-encompassinging (otherwise people would just commune and find out what happened).

Thank goodness plane travel won't be in the main book.

501 to 550 of 803 << first < prev | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Starfinder / Starfinder General Discussion / Ask Gallant James S., Enduring Owen and Beloved Rob your Starfinder Questions Here! All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.