Today is National Science Fiction Day in the U.S., so it feels a bit like a communal unbirthday for every author who writes weird fiction speculating about what might happen. I took a stroll around the virtual office to talk with some of my colleagues, who are science fiction authors and game designers themselves, and asked them to talk about their personal connections to sci-fi, their inspirations, and what kind of stories interest them.

The manuscript that follows is taken from but a single source, stored at Windsong Abbey. It is impossible to verify the authorship of “Fafnheir’s Lament”; the book in which it is contained also includes a bestiary and various tales of monster-hunting. If authentic, the lament—written in Skald—must have been copied and recopied many times over its ten-thousand-year history, potentially introducing scribal errors. Translation was further complicated when a fire broke out at the abbey centuries ago; an anonymous librarian saved the book, but not before the manuscript was singed along one edge. The damage was not extensive, but enough to make many passages difficult to read and some phrases entirely indecipherable. The edition presented here represents the best efforts of the abbey’s staff.

Paizo has a long history of supporting our games with robust adventure content: Adventure Paths, Organized Play scenarios, single volume modules, and more. All of these adventures have one thing in common: they have a clear story, and while every GM changes an adventure to suit their table, my role as a developer has been to give both GM and players a complete story with a beginning, middle, and end that rises to a satisfying finale. But what if that’s not the kind of adventure you like to run or play in? What if you want something more open… where the players can go where they want, making the story up themselves as they explore and interact with newly-discovered NPCs and mysterious creatures? What if you want to leave the “theme park” style adventure for something more like a “sandbox”?

Fly Free or Die is the newest Adventure Path for the Starfinder RPG. It’s a story about working class heroes. They’re not trying to save the galaxy, they’re just trying to pay the bills. But their former employer has hired assassins to take them out, and a crime boss has sent an army of bounty hunters after them, and things just go from bad to worse. Your heroes in Fly Free or Die are quickly going to figure out there’s only two things in the galaxy that aren’t for sale: integrity and revenge.

Eline Reisora knew an opportunity when she saw one. That’s how she’d gotten out of a grimy orphanage on Absalom Station and adopted by a rich family; it was why she’d busted her ass to graduate at the top of her class, and it was why she’d rejected a cushy position at her father’s bank for an EJ Corp middle-management gig. But after all her hard work and careful planning, here she was on Sovall’s Folly, a good-for-next-to-nothing jungle planet in the Vast. Officially her assignment was supervising medical research into the weird flora and fauna that made up this world’s biosphere; EJ Corp hoped to find a promising cure or medicinal that would rationalize the high cost of investing in this planet in the first place. Unofficially, she babysat scientists and occasionally accompanied a patrol, just to stretch her legs. And that’s how she’d gotten into her current situation.

“COLLISION IN THIRTY SEC...” Keskodai punched a flashing button and the ship computer fell silent, but the cockpit was still roaring from re-entry. From behind, he heard the shrieking of metal as the ship’s rear quarter twisted into collapsing fragments.