Stay Alert, Holy Plasma Cannons Ahead!

Sunday, May 28, 2017

PaizoCon manages to land on near-perfect holiday weekends with bright and glorious sunshine making the first signs of summer at the forefront of minds in the Pacific Northwest. And as we all know, that means that convention season has begun—with local cons, big ones, and the Best 4 Days in Gaming (Gen Con) looming around the corner! I'm taking a few minutes here at the nice and quiet (and empty) Paizo offices to give those of you who didn't make it out the PaizoCon 2017 Preview Banquet last night a glimpse of some of the fun you can expect this summer (and beyond!).

Last year you might remember we announced something pretty big, and we didn't mess around this time: Starfinder is coming! Space guns blazing, the massive Starfinder Core Rulebook was in the spotlight of the preview banquet. Lots of information came at us at lightspeed (and Jason Keeley made a truly amazing and landmark entrance with a provisional copy of the Core Rulebook), and I'm even still processing them all, but here are some key things of note:

• All seven iconics and the core races were introduced by Senior Developer Rob McCreary, and you can expect the series of backstories and class introductions on the Paizo blog to resume soon after we wrap up the show.
• Each race receives a detailed write up with a plethora of options and ideas for player chracters, with pretty gorgeous introductory spreads.
• Each class gets a similar treatment in the Core Rulebook, with easy to reference features and statistics to flesh out your own custom build. What I really like about each class writeup are the character theme options in the back of each class section to give you a place to kick off your next character idea. The preview last night featured operative class samples like the hacker, investigator, theif, and trailblazer.
• Development Coordinator Amanda Hamon Kunz gave us a look at character creation in Starfinder. This chapter has it all! Whether you're an RPG veteran, or a casual player like me, you will find ways to get your character up and running with an intuitive building process as well as prebuilt options to pick up and go.
• Did we mention that yes, you can magic missile in space?
• What about a spell to summon a swarm of nano-bots to do your space-magic bidding?! 'Cause yeah, we did mention that ;)
• Developer Owen KC Stephens abated concerns about the hanging question regarding goblins. in. space. Yes, they're there, and they've got laser guns.
• Did we mention weapons? Because this is just one spread of the guns available in Starfinder.
• Editor Jason Keeley covered some of the information regarding starships. The chapter covering them has rules for engagement, stats for prebuilt ships, and rules for building your own craft.
• And what point is there in having a ship to get around without being able to travel to new worlds and get caught in alien traps? The Game Mastering chapter provides resources for your next campaign. Let's just hope your players are resourceful enough to escape certain sticky situations, like, say... escape a certain trash compactor.
• To wrap up, Creative Director James L. Sutter gave us all insight into how the system that Golarion previously occupied has evolved since the planet's mysterious disappearance so long ago. The chart of the Pact Worlds system includes worlds familiar to you if you've played Pathfinder before, but with notable exceptions, such as the replacement of Golarion with the huge center on Absalom Station and the Idari, making its way around the Pact Worlds' sun. Each planet has a two-page spread devoted to it in the Core Rulebook.
• Hellknights in space!
• ... the Azlanti Star Empire.
• A number of familiar gods are still part of Starfinder's pantheon, but there are some new notable additions, such as Nyarlathotep.

A few months after Gen Con, when the Starfinder Core Rulebook will officially release, the Alien Archive will provide GMs and players with a number of new aliens and monsters to expand their world. There are aliens that you can play as, enemies to defeat, and the cute cuddly lil guys seen at the bottom of the final cover seen below!

Alien Archive takes a departure from the Bestiary volumes released for the Pathfinder RPG, as it will include options specific to the aliens found within such as equipment, spells, and more. Meaning that there is something for just about everyone within its pages.

After the Starfinder portion, Erik gave us a look at what is ahead for Golarion a few some many years before. The just-announced War for the Crown Adventure Path begins in February 2018! War for the Crown is a Taldor-centric campaign of espionage and intrigue where your heroes decide the fate of the nation. This next Adventure Path is being coordinated by mastermind Developer Crystal Frasier! Stay tuned for more details about this Adventure Path this summer.

So, the PaizoCon Banquet is generally where Erik goes up and mic drops a brand new Pathfinder RPG hardcover, but! We're not quite ready for that at the moment. Instead, he unveiled two new final covers...

And the brand-new shifter iconic character for November's Ultimate Wilderness...

The new shifter class is best described being to the druid as paladins are to clerics. Oh, and they can get claws. EVERYONE GETS CLAWS! While the shifter gains access to a number of animalistic aspects, it scales until it receives the capstone ability to simultaneously access 5 of these at one time. Imagine it now: a part bear, part owl, all mighty mean clawing machine!

PaizoCon would not be the show it is without our Organized Play programs. Organized Play Coordinator Tonya Woldridge and John Compton introduced us the upcoming Pathfinder Society Roleplaying and Adventure Card Guild seasons, which for the first time will be intertwined and following the same storyline. You can look forward to the launch of Faction's Favor in two and a half months at Gen Con 50.

We also have a new program launching at Gen Con to support Starfinder. The Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild begins with the Year of the Scoured Stars. A disaster has befallen the Starfinder Society, and it's the role of you to rebuild the organization and determine its future. If you missed it, Starfinder Society Developer Thurston Hillman detailed some of the finer points for the upcoming program on the blog yesterday afternoon.

I mentioned our amazing and illustrious crew of Venture-Officers above, and it goes without saying that these folks are some of the coolest people I've had the pleasure of meeting and working with. This years' Volunteer of the Year award was presented to Venture-Lieutenant, David Jacobson, for all of his hard work in the Pathfinder Society Adventure Card Guild, and coordinating with the Paizo and Lone Shark teams to make the Adventure Card Game thrive. Please join us in congratulating David and thanking him for all of his contributions to the ACG!

The latter half of the presentation covered a number of our licensed projects, including: Pathfinder: Kingmaker, Pathfinder Adventures, Pathfinder Battles, Syrinscape SoundSets (which are going to be available in retail stores this summer!!!), a newly announced digital CCG with 37 Games, and so much more! I defer to our expert Director of Licensing, and there will be an updating covered everything we had the opportunity to show off this coming Friday!

If you are at PaizoCon right now and have a spare moment, check out the Delve tables, where we've switched to showing off Starfinder! I'm going to get on the road down to SeaTac and meet y'all there! Have an excellent weekend, and we'll see you on the other side!

Chris Lambertz
Community & Digital Content Director