Long-Range Sensors Picking Up New Adventures!

I think this also has nice side effect of allowing planet themed adventures.

Like there are two things with APs that prevent that: Almost every ap part needs at least one starship combat because starships are base assumption of the system and you can't have whole ap stay in single planet because of the traveling nature of Starfinder. So even when you have AP book taking place in single planet, it still needs to be tied in with overall plot rather than being themed around the planet itself.

So like, when in Dead Suns you visit castrovel or eox, it isn't the "castrovel themed adventure" or "eox themed adventure", its "you visit castrovel/eox to pick up clues on next place to visit". In standalone adventures you can have whole adventure take place in single planet and focus on that flavor itself since its the main plot rather than set dressing for overall plot :D

In case that doesn't make any sense, think of it in this way: Lot of codex of the world planet articles are kinda similar to new planets in star trek episodes. They each have strong theme and plot of what is happening on planet(or hat as they call them ;P), so when you feature the planet, you want their theme to be the main plot. But in seasonal story arc, without space for filler episodes, all the plot elements have to be tied together, so in APs you don't have time for "star trek episodes" as whatever you do on the super flavorful planet has to be sidelined for the main plot's themes instead. As concrete element, if you would feature standalone adventure about Damalko, then you want the story to be all about damalkans and colossi, but if adventure about Damalko was in Dead Suns ap, then story would be about following trail to Damalko, finding next clue while you probably fight few creatures themed to Damalko around and maybe help some locals on the side way.

(I dunno if my logic there makes any sense either but I'm happy either way about standalone being a thing xD)

You can have starship combat without traveling between planets -- just give the PCs planetary defense responsibilities that sometimes requires them to defend the planet they spend most of their time on. Their usual mission would be to go after the mothership of an invading fleet that stays just outside of range of the planetary defenses.

The party ship would not even require a Drift Drive, so it could use that extra space for better combat abilities -- an interesting design/balance challenge for whoever develops that AP.

Wouldn't be really exciting standalone adventure if it contained not so plot important filler starship combats :p

Like yeah, I get it you could still have starship combat in standalone adventures easily, but it make you feel like "oh, this is here just for sake of having starship combat without other relevance"

Did you ever see an old sci-fi show called UFO? It was mostly set on Earth, and few in the cast got farther out than the Moon, but there was plenty of space combat. That space combat definitely wasn't filler.

YES! FINALLY! I am so looking forward to Starfinder standlones, THANK YOU SO MUCH (take my money)!

Wzrd wrote:

Aaron Shanks wrote:

rknop wrote:

How will this new line interact with subscriptions? Will it be a separate subscription, will it be part of the AP subscription, or something else?

These adventures will be standalone and not part of their own or another subscription, at least for now.

I would prefer if they were part of a subscription. Mainly due to the free PDF I get when you subscribe. If I now need to purchase the print and the PDF separately, I will most likely just pick up the PDF since I find that format most useful when it comes to adventure material.

Since the APs will be moving to a every two month schedule, couldn't these new adventures just slot in to the months that don't have a Starfinder AP?

Understood, but that’s not quite the product release plan we have for 2021. Great to hear of your enthusiasm for PDFs. More soon!

PDFs, PDFs all the way. I know paper is cool and nice to have a hardcover core manual, but honestly I have no need for paper stuff. All my games are digital (Foundry VTT, or Roll20) even the in-person ones, apart from dice and sheets. Plus I live in Spain so I play with non-English speaker friends who would only buy the locally translated versions of the manuals anyway. That's why I have no use for paizo subscriptions.

I would gladly sign up for digital only subscriptions though, if they existed!

I am so excited for these new standalone adventures, and would love a chance to subscribe! Also I am a huge PDF person, and would do PDF only subscriptions if they were available.

Hmm

My life has been very lonely and sad since the Covidian Outbreak, so I greatly anticipate the arrival of my rulebooks when they come up on Subscription, and would be interested in arachnid/arachnid analogue-free bimonthly adventures in print -- I have a very hard time reading .pdf.

So to some degree we are figuring out this business as we go along, and will make shifts and changes to accommodate our observations.

Thanks for your support of Starfinder! Amazing things are just beyond the next Drift Beacon! :)

So - the only reason I'm concerned about a lack of monthly AP's is because I buy the AP's religiously regardless of whether I'm going to play them because they often have useful other things (new class feats, equipment, planets, 3-4 page gazeteers on Starfinder organizations) that are very useful even if you're not going to run the adventure. I would hate to lose out on these since SF currently has a shortage of setting books, besides Pact Worlds & Near Space.

Erik Mona wrote:

So to some degree we are figuring out this business as we go along, and will make shifts and changes to accommodate our observations.

Thanks for your support of Starfinder! Amazing things are just beyond the next Drift Beacon! :)

So - the only reason I'm concerned about a lack of monthly AP's is because I buy the AP's religiously regardless of whether I'm going to play them because they often have useful other things (new class feats, equipment, planets, 3-4 page gazeteers on Starfinder organizations) that are very useful even if you're not going to run the adventure. I would hate to lose out on these since SF currently has a shortage of setting books, besides Pact Worlds & Near Space.

I assume that trend will be continued in the interim material, but I'm not sure if that has been explicitly stated or not.