For those of you that missed the Starfinder Society takeover of our Twitch stream yesterday, we packed it full of interesting information. For today’s blog, we recap some of the stream and then provide a bit deeper dive into Year 3.
Credit to Nathaniel James
We covered lots of recent announcements, including those of the first 5-nova GMs and the addition of Alex Speidel to the team as our Organized Play Associate. We talked about past sanctioning efforts and our expectation that we would announce future sanctioning at the beginning of a month. We also noted we updated the Regional Support Program for 2020 and that the program would function as it had in prior years. Thurston previewed the last few scenarios coming out in April and May (we will get product pages up for them soon):
- SFS #02-21: Illegal Goods by Joseph Blomquist (levels 1-4)
- SFS #02-22: Rasheen’s Reception by Mara Lynn Butler (levels 5-8)
- SFS #02-23: The Edge of Cadascon by Emily Parks (levels 3-6)
- SFS #02-24: Cornered Rat by Mikko Kallio (levels 9-12)
Credit to Mark Molnar
We also previewed the awesome art for the newest Starfinder Society spaceship – The Gorgon! This piece of art will be added to the ships portion of the Guide for Year 3. At this point, we intend the guide remain a printable pdf download, as we haven’t resolved the bugs on the Pathfinder (second edition) guide and don’t want to swap Starfinder Society assets until we have solved the issues. This news also applies to Achievement Points (AcP) for Starfinder Soceity. Thurston, Linda, and I keep evaluating the situation and will announce changes to either guides or AcP in our Thursday blogs. After meeting with internal stakeholders, we decided to move the Org Play blogs to Thursday to help workflow for Org Play teammembers. There may be days where this slips, but our plan involves posting most Org Play blogs on Thursdays (or sometimes even twice on Thursday!)
Before I turn the blog over to Thurston for an in-depth dive into Year 3, I want to once more amplify the call for volunteers that the Organized Play Foundation made last week. Offering games means lots of GMS/HQ volunteers and we still have spaces available for all the major conventions. You can find a list of rewards and the volunteer applications on the Organized Play Foundation website or in last week’s Call to Vol blog.
See you next week for previews of our montly Society releases!
Until then – Explore, Report, Cooperate!
Tonya Woldridge
Organized Play Manager
Drumroll please! The Organized Play Team is proud to announce the title of Year 3… The Year of Exploration’s Edge.
After two years of epic space operate fantasy in the Scoured Stars, followed by then our current year of battling against a social media smear campaign organized by a now rather infamous NPC, our third season (Technically forth, since Season 1 spanned two years) takes us to new frontiers. Exploration’s Edge is about getting back to basics as Starfinders and focusing on things that are at the heart of what it means to be a Starfinder. Obviously, exploring sites both old and new is paramount to the theme of this new season, but there’s a few other key elements changing in Exploration’s Edge, so let’s take a look!
First off, as previously announced on our Twitch stream and in a blog, Year 3 opens with a new First Seeker. Ehu Hadif guides the Society into its next phase of missions, and as someone focused on ensuring that the Society gets back to its roots of discovery and research, Ehu really drives a lot of this upcoming year’s core concepts. Along with a variety of faction missions associated with Ehu Hadif, the upcoming Starfinder Society Guide includes a new Second Seekers faction that provides all the boons and bonuses necessary to really champion the cause of the Society’s new leader. We’re looking forward to all the new (and old) characters who take up Ehu Hadif’s cause.
Credit to Beatrice Pellagatti
Next up, let’s talk metaplot. Over the course of our first two years of Starfinder Society, it has been clear that there’s a lot of players who’ve really enjoyed the expansive metaplots that weave their way through many scenarios, but just as many players like the episodic nature of the Starfinder Society. To change things up, we’re pumping the breaks on having one large overarching metaplot and are going to take this opportunity to try something a bit different. With the season focus of exploration lending itself much more to “missions of the month” rather than an expansive story, our plan for this season isn’t to have a single metaplot, but instead break things down into several multi-part scenario series.
Past multi-part stories needed playing in the order published to really participate in the story and we named them as such, for instance PFS 10-22 and 10-23: Passing the Torch series, which had a Part 1 and Part 2. For Year 3, the arcs are more thematically tied together than an A/B/C structure. They actually won’t be numbered by part. Instead, we structured the titles SFS 03-XX: Arc Title: Scenario Title. For organizers, this means you can schedule them in any order!
The Year of Exploration’s Edge will include three storyline arcs, each spread across a variety of levels, but most easily explained as low-level, mid-level, and (excitement) high-level story arcs. Without giving too much away on each of the story arcs, here’s a brief summary of what to expect:
Low-Level Arc (Tiers 1-4 + 3-6): What’s exciting about this story arc is that it’s predominantly going to be Tier 1-4 scenarios, making it the perfect onboarding series of adventures for new players. For our veterans looking to start up a new character, this arc is also going to be our first real deep dive into the worlds of Near Space, with some heavy influence by the Veskarium. With Starfinder Near Space just around the bend, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to really dive into this part of the galaxy.
Mid-Level Arc (Tiers 5-8 + 7-10): The mid-range of levels in Starfinder is where exploration into the unknown can really start to pay off in terms of narrative options, so this arc was the perfect opportunity to explore the Vast. However, in order to better coordinate with a certain upcoming product, one of the main goals for this story arc is to have the Society work alongside a corporation to test out a potential new starship hull. This also presents us with the exciting opportunity to use our Chronicle sheets to give PCs wider customization options for starships, and determine potential future designs used by the Starfinder Society!
High-Level Arc (Tiers 9-12 + 11-14): Though not the highest levels of the Starfinder RPG (we’re getting there), this arc is roughly the highest reaches most of our dedicated players will have PCs in the level range of—barring all your dedicated Adventure Path players out there! For our high-level story arc, we wanted to look back at the Pact Worlds, in particular some loose threads first seeded in early Season 1 and involving the Society’s past actions. With Hellknights on the prowl and a journey that goes from Verces to Eox, what else could be missing? Well, there’s one particular planet in the Pact Worlds star system we haven’t visited yet. Specifically, there’s a certain far-flung planetoid that might be utterly inhospitable to all but the highest-level characters... hopefully you’ll be ready to go there.
OK, so with all the fancy announcements about what’s happening in the Year of Exploration’s Edge, there’s one final topic to discuss today: the opening interactive special. Starfinder Society #3-00: The Last Bite, brings the story of Year of a Thousand Bites to climactic conclusion and serves as the opener to our third year. This Tier 1-8 interactive special has the PCs taking part in one last mission for outgoing First Seeker Luwazi Elsebo, working as a team to thwart the machinations of the mischievous ysoki known as Datch. Written by longtime Paizo author Jenny Jarzabski, this interactive is sure to have the PCs at the edge of their seats as they race to stop Datch from enacting her greatest scheme yet: plunging one of the Pact Worlds’ paramount institutions into chaos. Given the more “personal scope” of this year’s interactive, we opted to really focus on a set of Subtiers, making it easier on those GMs running our interactives. We hope the upcoming Season 3 high-level content accommodates those of you players out there who want to get your players gaming right away!
Come see us at upcoming events, where we can talk more about future plans for the Starfinder Society. Until then, let the hype for the Year of Exploration’s Edge begin!
Signing off for now,
Thurston Hillman
Starfinder Society Developer
Starfinder Society: Twitch Stream Recap and Year 3 Announcements
Thursday, February 20, 2020
