A Game of Boons

Thursday, June 29, 2017

Alright, it's time to start kicking these Starfinder Society blogs into hyperspee... errrrr, speeds you'd expect while travelling through the Drift! Today's blog is going to touch on two things that people frequently ask about: boons and new races in the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild.

Illustration by Maichol Quinto

Boons and Boon Slots

As previously announced in interviews and at our PaizoCon panel, Starfinder Society is changing up the Roleplaying Guild's handling of boons. Boons are non-standard rewards granted on the Chronicle sheets you get for completing Starfinder Society scenarios and sanctioned content. For all you Pathfinder Society veterans out there, the current boon system involves finding special boons on a Chronicle sheet and mentally keeping track of them throughout the course of your character's career. The existing system allows for a character to accrue a lot of boons over the course of her career, but it also requires a lot of tracking on the player's end. Did you remember that your second Chronicle sheet gave you a +1 circumstance bonus to negotiating with gnolls from western Katapesh? (John likes using that one as an example, a lot. He also wants me to remind Pathfinder Society players, that six seasons later, that boon is still relevant!)

To ease player record keeping burdens, as well as to give the development team some flexibility on ensuring that boons remain relevant throughout the campaign, Starfinder Society introduces boon slots. Each boon slot represents an available space in which a player can activate one of their earned boons; if you've slotted a boon, it's active for that adventure, and if you didn't slot one of your boons, it's dormant. Every Starfinder Society character has six boon slots, and each of which corresponds to a different type of boon. Most boons now include a corresponding boon type, so you can slot a Social boon into your Social boon slot, but not into your Faction boon slot. This means that with the exception of the occasional untyped boon, you'll only be tracking up to six boons during a session—not sorting through stacks of paper in the middle of the game.

In previous announcements, we've talked a little about boon slots, but today we're going to go over each of the six types of boons.

Ally: Ally boons are boons that represent an ally actively assisting the PC. This could be a temporary hireling versed in a specific skill, an ammunition porter, or even a less physical presence (such as the digital imp we discussed in our previous blog). Ally boons generally represent an additional 'body' on the team, or the presence of a creature that affects combat or general skill checks.

Faction: Every faction offers a boon that allows characters to champion that faction. Characters slotting these boons earn Reputation with the associated faction, effectively allowing the character to swap out what factions she works for on a scenario-by-scenario basis. The entry-level boon for a faction's referred to as the champion boon, and that can improve as your character gains more and more Reputation.

Promotional: Promotional boons are unique in that they often represent out-of-game acquisitions that translate to in-game benefits—Pathfinder Society veterans might think of this as the "shirt reroll" slot. One example of a promotional boon, would be a boon designed around bringing a Starfinder Player Character Folio to use at the table. If you're concerned about only being limited to benefiting from one promotional item during an adventure... well, let's just say there's a faction that has your back!

Social: These boons encompass agreements or alliances with in-game organizations or NPCs. For John's sake, this is where you'll slot that lovely ‘gnolls from western Katapesh' boon! A common example of a social boon would be forging a relationship with an organization, and in future scenarios that organization returns and reacts differently based on whether you've slotted this boon.

Starship: We sure have starships and starship combat in the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild. The starship boon slot allows characters to customize some of the standard hulls available to field agents. Expect a future blog post to touch on exactly how starships work in Starfinder Society.

When does a player decide to lock-in his boons for an adventure? Well, Starfinder Society scenarios, much like their Pathfinder Society counterparts, include mission briefings. Each briefing now ends with an instruction for the GM to inform the players to select their boons. This gives players some time in-game to select what boons they think will be most appropriate to the mission at hand, based on the information they received from the briefing. If you're wondering about missing out on slotting story relevant boons, don't worry! The boon slotting section of the adventure will also give GM a list of especially relevant boons from previous Chronicle Sheets, letting the GM know to inform the players that these boons could have a significant effect on the game if they choose to slot them.

Illustration by Hugh Pindur

New Races

The most frequent question I've heard about Starfinder Society—not counting head-in-jar joke questions—is how we'll be handling the multitude of available races. With the recent release of Starfinder First Contact and the announcement of the Starfinder Alien Archive, the Starfinder team is certainly delivering on its promise of adding a wide variety of playable races beyond the core seven races. So how will Starfinder Society play handle the ever-expanding list of alien species?

Oh... hmmmm... did I miss one of the boon slots? OH! Well, isn't that fortuitous timing! Let me just take a quick detour from this talk on alien species to fix that omission.

Personal: Personal boons represent a wide variety of special boons available in the campaign. Unique races, typically those found beyond the core races of the Starfinder Core Rulebook, commonly occupy this slot. The personal slot often requires associated boons (such as new race options) be permanently slotted, so that the slotted boon does not change on a scenario-by-scenario basis. However, this also means that characters with this boon slot available can use it for other purposes...

Well, that certainly explains a bit, doesn't it? Yes, non-standard species will be made available by permanently slotting that race's boon in the Personal boon slot. This doesn't mean that every new race will be immediately available for use. We're rolling out new races in a controlled fashion, such as through convention or special event boons, as well as through some unique new distribution plans that we're adding into the campaign. Not quite ready to go into all the details on how these boons will be released, but stay tuned for more info!

Ok, fine, I'll answer one more common question—only because you're all great fans. How will Starfinder Society handle the legacy races from Pathfinder? Can you play a halfling starship pilot, or a half-orc solarian? How does one get access to play legacy races? Well, here's a hint: Pathfinder Society has this cool thing called a "Regional Support Program" and Starfinder Society will have one too!

Alrighty, enough spilling of beans from my end. I need to get back to work before John and Tonya find out I've spent all this time on an extra-long blog post!

Thurston Hillman
Starfinder Society Developer