It all started when Starfinder launched and John Compton (lead of Organized Play development at the time) kept threatening me with a “Time Capsule Boon” where he’d let Pathfinder Society Characters transition into Starfinder Society. It was something of the atomic bomb equivalent of threats to be uttered in the office. The idea of crossing the streams between the campaigns was ludicrous. LUDICROUS, I SAY!
Cut to a few years later: John had moved on to join the Starfinder team (ha, irony!), and the new Pathfinder Society developer, Michael Sayre, approached me with the historic line of “Hey, wanna do a crossover interactive?” Thus the idea of doing a crossover interactive between Pathfinder Society and Starfinder Society was truly born!
A few months later, during one of my in-person visits to the Seattle office, Michael and I got to deliver our pitch to both James Jacobs and Rob McCreary (the Creative Directors for both Pathfinder and Starfinder, respectively). Michael and I finished a whirlwind pitch that talked about time travel, navigating the Gap, and using the Maze of the Open Road to travel to far-off lands.
In the ensuing seconds, you could have heard a pin drop. The only real sound in the room was the formation of sweat on the respective brows of Michael and I, as our ridiculous pitch was hurled at our company’s two creative visionaries.
Then, with wide smiles, the two of them both joined in on the scheming! Dimension of Time, Hounds of Tindalos, Chronomancy and more were thrown at the wall as possible reasons and storyline elements for this outlandish plan, and the Organized Play Team had full buy-in from Paizo’s Creative Directors.
Of course, Michael Sayre would go on to great deeds in his current role as a designer for Pathfinder. That meant that a new lead would need to step in and help, which brings Jenny Jarzabski into the fold. Jenny heard the wild plan of a crossover special and she immediately took the figurative football and ran with it, deciding to tackle the story on her end!
So let’s listen to her explain what happened next...
Both illustrations by Przemyslaw Golab.
I’ve been tagged in! As Thursty said, this idea started before I joined the team, but I took over the narrative planning, and of course the development on the Starfinder side.
Obviously, this special is going to feel different from the ones you’ve played in the past. First of all, this is an epic crossover event that spans time, space, and two different rules systems and settings! That’s pretty darn exciting by itself, right? But that’s not all! When our unholy trinity—John Compton, Thursty, and myself—got together to talk shop and brainstorm ideas for how to make this special, well, special, we came to a unified decision. Almost all of our previous interactives have been world-shattering events where the PCs play big damn heroes trying to save the whole world. It’s a pretty cool way to frame an event, but after years of this, the devs were engaged in a race against ourselves to make each year’s special bigger and the stakes higher than the last. This is not a sustainable cycle. Quickly, we found ourselves (and many of the players!) burning out and feeling fatigue from saving the world year after year.
That’s why this year’s special won’t be about saving the world. This time, it’s personal. Based on notes from our brainstorm sesh, I crafted a heartwarming (or heartbreaking?) narrative in which the PCs can save a group of lost explorers. In order to experience the full story, you should play both the Pathfinder and Starfinder versions of the event. Now, if you’re not sold on the smaller-scale event, don’t worry. This plotline is epic—it involves a crossover between the Societies with both sides time traveling and battling extraplanar horrors, after all!
Telling you any more would bring us firmly into spoiler territory, but I look forward to the results of your efforts to delve into mysterious ruins across two timelines and save maybe not the world, but someone’s world. Well, maybe you’ll save the world, too. Multitasking.
Thurston Hillman
Digital Adventures DeveloperJenny Jarzabski
Starfinder Society Developer
Organized Play: Pathfinder & Starfinder Interactive Preview
Thursday, July 22nd, 2021
