| AzSteveC |
Not a VA here, but I have run two free-form Starfinder campaigns, both of which ended up getting players to level 17 over 18 months of play (I am fortunate to have a player group that is pretty dedicated to playing weekly!)
GOOD
I am EXTREMELY happy with the idea of the action economy from PF2 making its way into Starfinder; I was hoping that might have been one of the elements of the extended books this fall.
BAD/WORRISOME
The idea of magic being ramped up to 10 levels and being compatible/transferrable with PF2 worries me; unless the background is very restrictive on allowing spell-casting characters, I have to wonder why would anyone ever bother inventing technology and sci-fi weapons. At first I looked at this as just plain bad, but realized that it CAN be controlled, but that would require some pretty direct thought and commentary in the new edition material to encourage such limits for a successful Starfinder campaign. I do recall any number of failed D&D-type games back in the day where DMs added technology and weapons without any thought about how they interacted with or could be justified in a high-magic setting, and I dont want the new Starfinder to cripple itself right at the outset by ignoring that issue
HOPE
I really really really hope the new edition is seen as an opportunity to pretty much replace the starship combat rules with something that is actually enjoyable for the players. As they stand, the starship combat rules COULD give each player things to do, but in reality there are only two crew positions that really matter, and the other players tend to jsut sit there and very occasionally roll dice when one of the two key players tells them to.
OTHER HOPE
This one just might be more my grumpy old-school self leaking out, but the concept of BCs to build or modify ships or even create missile reloads wipes out SO MANY opportunities for adventures and motivations. Why should a crew need to find money or esoteric spares if they can just have nanites build them? The vast array of options for building a ship or modifying it are amazing in Starfinder, and every player wants to do it, but it just feels like its too easy to do from a game/story perspective. I want my players to sometimes have to scrabble for money, or scrabble for some strange component, to do the needful to their ship. I do that when I am running the game but we did once have some issues when a new player joined our group who was insistent on doing things as written in the core rulebook - we corrected that with him but it just seems like such a wasted opportunity for other GMs running their own original content adventures and campaigns.