Free RPG Day—Awesomely Alien

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Free RPG Day is just around the corner this Saturday, June 17th! There a tons of participating locations, so check out the program's event locator, join in the fun, and grab a copy of Paizo's Free RPG Day offerings while supplies last. Last month we met the new promo character Reepazo, so today I'd like to present two other prizes: the new Starfinder First Contact and a special Chronicle sheet that you can earn by playing anytime between June 16th and June 25th.

First Contact is an exciting first look at both the Starfinder rules and its setting, presenting 12 different creatures (including 4 different playable races). There's a lot of great content here, and I reached out to the authors to share some of their favorite parts.

Illustrations by Johnny Marrow, Kiki Moch Rizky, and Crystal Sully.

James L. Sutter: Art-wise, I think my favorite piece is the security robot. I love the sleek futuristic flavor that's part Mac Store, part Prince Robot from Saga, and part classic droid. But a lot of the monsters in here are things I've been waiting to see in print for years—both the ellicoth and the haan started life as brief name-drops in Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Distant Worlds, and now here we are at last. I particularly enjoyed writing about the orocoran ichor lords—it's high time Aucturn got some native inhabitants!

Rob G. McCreary: The bone sages of Eox were first introduced back in Pathfinder Adventure Path #14, and in Pathfinder RPG they were most easily represented by liches. For Starfinder, however, we wanted to update the lich to the science-fantasy future, and thus the necrovite was born. So what makes a necrovite more than just a space-lich (other than a cooler name, of course)? Three things: technomancer AND mystic spells, the Eoxian wrackstaff, and an electroencephalon (because a necrovite has to store her soul somewhere, after all).

Jason Keeley: It was a bit of a no-brainer that goblins would be in Starfinder. As a bit of a joke, I wrote them up as "space goblins" for the playtest and gave them cobbled-together laser pistols that tended to blow up in their own faces. It turns out people thought that was funny enough to make them canon with First Contact. And the art, with their bandaged-up bubble helmets, really helped seal the deal!

John Compton: Starfinder's been a great chance to flesh out the many weird aliens Paizo—quite often James L. Sutter—has name-dropped, but it's also an exciting opportunity to create entirely new creatures. My assignment for First Contact included "New plant monster (Castrovel)" and the directive to "Make it weird and awesome." I knew I wanted a plant that wasn't a low-mobility ambush predator, and at the time I was fixated on invasive species like kudzu. What resulted was the ksarik, a ferocious carnivore that absorbed psychic energies and evolved from fairly mundane corpse blossoms into aggressive quadrupeds that can absorb others' genetic material in order to take over their ecological niches. I'm a sucker for dorsal crests, and if you look closely, you can see the eyestalks projected to either side like a hammerhead shark.

Be sure to look at First Contact for a first taste of what's to come in 2017 and beyond!

Even though there's not a new adventure featured for Free RPG Day, we want to encourage you to get out and game together. In fact, we've made a unique Chronicle sheet for the event. If you're playing a game any time from June 16th to June 25th, you can earn a copy of this sheet—just one per participant, no matter how many times you play. In fact, consider printing off some extras to hand out at whatever event you're a part of so that others can join in the benefits. Everyone gets the first boon, which allows the chance to replay (or "re-GM" for credit) one of the past Free RPG Day modules one time, and while it's certainly the spirit of this reward to use that boon for Free RPG Day this year, you're welcome to hold onto it for whenever you need it.

If you play in a Free RPG Day game—that's a game hosted by a location participating in Free RPG Day 2017—you also receive the Tome of First Contact boon. Just as you're getting a first glimpse at what Starfinder has to offer, so to has one of your characters found a wondrous bestiary filled with alien beasts and otherworldly people. Reference it to get an edge when facing creatures from beyond Golarion, and above all, enjoy Paizo's contributions to Free RPG Day 2017!

Download the Free RPG Day Chronicle sheet!

John Compton
Organized Play Lead Developer