A Talk About Cooperation

Saturday, May 27, 2017

There are three important duties for every Pathfinder field agent: Explore, Report, and Cooperate. These tenants remain a core foundation of the Starfinder Society organization. Today, I want to talk a little bit about cooperation, specifically factions and how they fit into the Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild.

Every good Starfinder knows the importance of working together with fellow field agents. Engaging in some 'jolly cooperation' is fundamental to a successful mission. Factions in the Starfinder Society build upon this concept. Each faction is a distinct organization that operates within the Starfinder Society, with each faction pursuing independent goals while aiding the Society's overall goals of exploring, reporting, and yes, cooperating. You're probably familiar with this model if you've ever had a character in the Pathfinder Society Roleplaying Guild.

So what makes factions in Starfinder Society different? Well, I'm glad you asked!

Fame and Reputation

There are two important scores for every Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild character: Fame and Reputation. Fame is a collection of points that represent overall good standing within the Starfinder Society and can be spent for goods and services (similar to Prestige Points in Pathfinder Society). Reputation is a growing score that is never spent and instead represents the character's standing with the various factions within the Starfinder Society. The higher the Reputation a character has with a faction, the more services (read: tasty tasty rewards) become available for that character to spend his Fame points on. Building a character's Reputation across factions is an important way for the character to call in special favors, such as requisitioning an enhanced starship component or getting some publicity to reap greater rewards from a Day Job check.

Huh, wait a second, I said factions, as in plural! That must mean...

Illustration by Pavel Rtishev

One Character, Multiple Factions

Characters in Starfinder are not tied to one specific faction. Instead, characters are encouraged to branch out and dabble in assisting different factions. Each time a character assists a faction, or champions them as part of ongoing operations, that character earns Reputation. This doesn't stop a character from fully dedicating herself to one of the Starfinder Society's five starting factions. In fact, focusing on a single faction is still a very viable way to progress a character.

Branching out over multiple factions allows characters to reap the rewards of those factions. A character with ties to the Dataphiles—one of our previously announced factions—might earn enough Reputation to gain the assistance of a 'digital imp' program that acts as an ally able to perform various computer-related tasks. Another character might dive into another faction and earn the ability to requisition important starship components in preparation for an upcoming starship combat encounter. A character who dabbles with both factions could earn both benefits, but miss out on other available bonuses at higher tiers of Reputation with each faction.

For those of you worried about accessing essential rewards; maybe a raise dead so you don't die (or stay dead), or something to cure that awful space leprosy you contracted... well, we've got you covered! While all factions have individual Reputation scores to track, there's also a list of services available to 'All Factions', gained at certain thresholds of Reputation. Unlike the thresholds tracked for individual factions, the 'All Factions' Reputation threshold is determined by totaling your Reputation across all factions with which you have Reputation. So a character with 15 Reputation with Dataphiles and 20 Reputation with another faction, would be able to spend Fame on anything available on the 'All Factions' list with a threshold of 35 Reputation or less.

Championing, Faction Boons and Faction Missions

So this brings us to our last point: how do I gain Reputation with a faction?

As part of character creation, every Starfinder Society Roleplaying Guild character gets to select a free 'champion boon' from a faction of her choice. This boon is a faction boon—we'll be talking more about boon slots in a future blog, but for now just know that you can only have one faction boon slotted per scenario. The champion boon allows the associated character to collect Reputation during the course of a normal scenario. So if you gain 2 Fame during the course of the upcoming Starfinder Society Scenario #01-02: Fugitive on the Red Planet, then you'll get 2 Reputation with whatever faction champion boon you have slotted.

Want to get more faction champion boons, so you can pick-up Reputation with other factions? You sure can! Every faction has the ability to purchase a champion boon between scenarios for a low Fame cost.

But what about faction missions? Pathfinder Society has entire storylines involving its factions. Will Starfinder Society have these too? Yes, yes it will! Not only will faction missions contribute to the overall storyline of a faction, but these missions will also award additional Reputation rewards, beyond the Fame and Reputation of a standard scenario, but ONLY with the associated faction. This means that it could be very likely that if your character is championing one faction, he might end up with some scattered Reputation among other factions as a result of playing scenarios that are faction missions. In fact, the first faction mission will be one of our Gen Con releases, Starfinder Society #01-03: Yesteryear's Truth, which is a mission related to the...

Oh, I can't say the name of the faction? Seriously?

*feels John and Tonya glaring at me as I try to spill all the Starfinder Society beans*

Organized Play Lead Developer's note: *John gives Thursty the stink-eye*

Fine! Maybe we can save exactly which faction for another blog post.

Well, thanks for listening (er... reading?) this post. I'm excited to hear all of your thoughts on Starfinder Society factions as described here and what sort of role you hope to see them take in our shared campaign. Please, post in the comments and let myself and the rest of the Organized Play team know!

Thurston Hillman
Starfinder Society Developer