Driftbourne's page

SITZKRIEG! wrote:

I've only been following peripherally basically coming here to the Paizo Starfinder front page and forums monthly to see if a new playtest packet is out. Have they confirmed a second packet with the missing classes/ancestries/etc? I'm glad as I was really looking forward to seeing the changes to the mechanic.

In another forum thread, Maya Coleman confirmed that the Technomancer/Mechanic playtest (fromally known as the Tech playtest according to the Playtest site) will begin on April 21, barring unexpected delays I suppose.

The title on the page says "Tech playtest Loading" But the descriptions called it the "Starfinder tech class playtest."

I'm wondering if this playtest will include other things from the Tech Core book, I think new gear and spells might be included, but really curious if any new ancestries will be. Crosses fingers for SROs and holograms...

Driftbourne wrote:

I'm really excited about the "Starfinder Galaxy Guide" but I hope SF2e doesn't have a separate line of setting books like PF2e does, the extra cost of the Lost Omens setting PDFs is one reason I stopped buying PF2e books and switched to SF1e.

I could be misunderstanding you but OG Starfinder rpg has been doing that: The Pact World, Near Space, Drift Crisis, and Ports of Call.

The Pact World, Near Space, Drift Crisis, and Ports of Call are all the same price scale, as the other Starfinder rule books, same book spine design, and use the same subscription.

To be fair to PF2e I should say that when I switched to SF1e the Starfinder PDFs were only $9

we have expectations of things like hunting for your own food, making camp, and talking around a campfire.

I've eaten more food in Starfinder than in Pathfinder, I make popcorn during starship battles, eat sports protein bars (field rations) during 10-minute breaks, or eat protein bars to help with stress when I have bad luck. In Starfinder you're more likely to be offered strange food that might make you sick. In a scenario we encounter fresh cheese my ysoki character had his cheeks full the whole adventure and tried to get more cheese as part of any social encounter.

The end of scenarios can be turned into happy hour where the party goes out for pizza and drinks. If you want to have happy hour around a campfire you can go to a VR arcade.

Hunting for the right food involves skill checks to find a restaurant on the infosphere. Showing up without reservations can also be its own encounter, as is dealing with angry chefs.

In Starfinder, about the only time hunting and eating around a campfire feels like it does in PF2e is if your starship crashes...

Driftbourne wrote:

Recently I was in a Starship combat that went 9 or 10 rounds. We only had one gunner using broadside, which left everyone else with fairly obvious and repetitive actions. This actually made the turns go faster. What ended up happening was that everyone had fun gotting involved in taunting the Corpse Fleet ship to the point that the Corpse Fleet likely has wanted posters for us...

I was that gunner! :D

I will say that the PbP format did make that combat more fun than most of my in-person experiences. When there is a stricter time limit, it just feeds into the players' frustration that the combat is dragging, because it's taking time away from doing more fun stuff.

Qimok attacks!

That's a great point about PbP vs in-person. I haven't had a chance to play Starfinder in-person yet, but I did play some Pathfinder Society person in which we were frequently racing against the clock to finish games before the store closed. There's no way I'd have time to make custom t-shirts for the whole party in an in-person game. To make the t-shirts I had to reread the entire ship combat several times looking for the best quotes from everyone.

It sounds like for SF2e all scenarios will be 2-3 hours long that's helps with the time pressure, but if Starship combat doesn't play faster it could take up most the time of a scenario. Cinematic Starship Encounter rules being similar to complex hazards sounds promising, I'm also hoping the full starship combat rules end up being closer to the normal combat rules.

I still start to laugh every time I read “Eat our shed fur!” one of the best lines ever!

It was a pretty good paragraph though!

You could sell autographed copies of it.

I don't know the total word count it turned into, but there should be a Paizo statistic saying "One paragraph is worth (insert word count here.)"

The next SF2e free RPG day adventure looks like it will take place on a starship, Sounds like it involves fighting pirates on the ship while it's also being attacked by the Corps Fleet. Starship rules will likely not be out by then but it could use the new Cinematic Starship Encounter rules. I think it would be interesting if we ended up having to fight aboard the ship and deal with an attacking starship at the same time, that would certainly give everyone something to do.

Battle for Nova Rush .

Recently I was in a Starship combat that went 9 or 10 rounds. We only had one gunner using broadside, which left everyone else with fairly obvious and repetitive actions. This actually made the turns go faster. What ended up happening was that everyone had fun gotting involved in taunting the Corpse Fleet ship to the point that the Corpse Fleet likely has wanted posters for us.

Before the shooting started we had tried to distract the Corps fleet by inviting them over to watch a movie. When our gunner had a great first hit I suggested the sequel to the movie be named after him. That's when I made popcorn in the middle of the battle treating the gunner's turn like I was watching a movie, and got overly excited whenever he hit. Needless to say, the ship was a mess by the end of the battle.

One of the crew suggested getting "I fought the Corpse Fleet and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" t-shirts, so at the start of the next mission, I bought all the crew that t-shirt with a custom quote on the back using one of their taunts. My favorite was from the skittermander in the party whose best taunt was “Eat our shed fur!”

Although I have fun with the SF1e starship rules, I would like to see improved starship rules in SF2e so more people enjoy them, but my shirren character is most concerned with what popcorn options will we have in SF2e...

I broke down the list of rules we know of spaced out to make it easier to read. If I missed anything let me know.

The social encounter below is played out over the course of 6 social rounds.

The PCs must succeed at four skill checks against an NPC to earn influence over that NPC.

Repeated tactics lose their effectiveness.
Each attempt to use a skill that has already been used to attempt to influence an NPC (successfully or not) incurs a cumulative –1 penalty against that NPC (to a maximum of –3).

Repeated failures run the risk of offending the guest;
after three consecutive failed checks to influence a given NPC using the same skill, that guest is no longer interested in speaking with the PCs and cannot be impressed.

Each PC can attempt one check to influence a single guest during each social round.

A PC can use her action for a social round to attempt a skill check to aid another PC in place of attempting a skill check to influence the NPC directly.

If a PC is not sure what kind of check to attempt,
she can make light conversation in lieu of attempting a check for that round, learning something about the NPC’s background, interests, or personality to gain a hint of appropriate skill checks to attempt to influence that individual.

PCs partaking in such “small talk” can attempt a Sense Motive check to learn an appropriate skill to influence the NPC with.

For every 5 points the PC exceeds the Sense Motive DC by, she learns one additional skill that can be used to influence the NPC.

DMurnett wrote:

As a big Barathu fan I completely disagree that they need increased land speed; With Merfolk there's precedent for 5 foot land speed ancestries with worse primary movement speed types than flight, with the introduction of the Traversal trait as detailed in the wrap-up blog post relying on exclusively flight will be more viable, and in general I would argue having to deal with the weaknesses of flight (no step, action tax when hovering, etc.) is a fair tradeoff for its strengths (and can be circumvented with Adaptable Limbs anyways). I don't want the strength of Barathu's flight to be diluted by making their ground speed stronger.

I feel the same way about quite a few pieces of feedback here- "you've correctly identified a problem, but I either don't understand your proposed solution or think it doesn't address the bigger issue".

traversal trait. This new trait mostly applies to player-facing rules that reference Stride. When it applies, traversal allows the use of alternative movement types (burrow, fly, and swim) to be used in place of land Speed, akin to how Sneak works. Expect to see this greatly impact some abilities used by the envoy and solarian (to name a few).

Disembarking the Starfinder Second Edition Playtest .

We don't have the final text for the traversal trait, but it does look like it solves a lot of issues. What do you consider the "bigger issue?"

Hack into an older VR Operating system and you have to rebuild your character in Starfinder 1e :D

The opposite works to going from Sf1e to SF2e The newer VR Operating systems are faster which is why you get 3 actions.

Another option is to use PF2e as a VR world or video game in which someone hides secret information that you have to find by playing the game.

Speaking of hacking, I hope that we get a subsystem for exploring cyberspace a la Shadowrun. It's something I expect to show up in an adventure rather than a rules book, but it'd still be fun to run cyberpunk jobs and have a more detailed hacking system for groups who like that kind of stuff.

I think the easiest way would be to use hazards for hacking challenges in virtual reality-type cyberspace where once you are in you can still use normal rules.

One way to make cyberspace feel different than normal play is to have the PCs make new characters or use pre-gens to be their avatar in cyberspace, or use the same character but let them pick new equipment. While in cyberspace the PCs could even be playing at a different level than they are in the real world, or maybe even use the PF2e Mythic character rules when in cyberspace.

I hope was see the return of the Junkomancer sooner than later too, it's a fun flavor on Technomancer.

Now that PF2E is more open to having constructs and such be playable, I could easily see more construct ancestries. My hope is that SRO gets broadened to encompass other kinds of machine as well, like anacytes. I'm not sure if there is enough difference between an SRO and an anasyte to require two different ancestries outside the anacyte's solar recharging and shortwave communications.

I'd love to see playable SROs, especially with ancestry heritages SROs should be able to cover almost any type of non-android non-hologram droid/robotic character in any Sci-Fi movie or book. Heritages don't take up much room compared to a full ancestry, so could be easy to add more later in other books, APs, or scenarios. This would be the quickest way to explode the population of the droid Cantina. In the case of anacytes, that could be done with multiple SRO heritages.

For PF2e I think leshies are a good example of this. Leshies have 12 heritages so far and I could easily think up half a dozen more.

Another use for having lots of different types of SROs is they would make great hirelings in Starfinder Society.

For me the question is between Androids, holograms, SROs, and their heritages, is there some form of sci-fi tech-based ancestry that these 3 don't cover? Mixing tech and Magic "might" be where new ancestries are needed.

I'm playing in one of the playtest adventures right now, and the GM at one section told us as long as everyone is having fun you can stay here as long as you like, that's not something I'm used to hearing in organized play scenarios, it's a nice change of pace, I'm thinking we can get at least 2 or 3 days out of that location.

Really depends on the group, there's always downtime when drift traveling. I've played in groups that just skipped to "and you arrive at your destination." I've been in other groups that use that time to do a lot of role-playing between the PCs. In one game The GM let the party take a vacation and go to Song Bird Station to see a concert.

At least in Starfinder Society scenarios there rarely is a need for an 8-hour rest.

The spell slot recharge mechanic in Starfinder is "Cast Gun" I've come close a few times but I have never ran out of spells in Starfinder.

You are right about how travel is so different from what it is in PF2e, but that's also why PF2e has huge books covering just one area of some continent, whereas SF has lots of locations with less info because there is no need to connect all the dots to get from point a to point b. Also, travel is less interesting in SF because having environmental protections takes a lot of the survival part of traveling over land.

Driftbourne wrote:

We know both the Pact Worlds and Veskarium will see some change but will mostly be intact so I'm curious how much of the Pact Worlds and Near Space books stay relevant in Sf2e.

I would not be surprised if the Pact Worlds and Veskarium got their own dedicated books or even setting books fleshing out each planet within them.

I mean, after all, not everyone playing SF2e will be familiar with material from SF1e.

We know the Pact Worlds is getting covered in both the Player and GM core, one side of the Galaxy Guide map is the Pact Worlds so I'm sure there will be some Pact Worlds info, so hard to tell what more info on the Pact Worlds is needed until we see all 3 of those books, But that should be enough for new players to get up to speed on the Pact Worlds. From the sound of the first 2 adventures we know of it sounds like individual planets within the Pact worlds might get deeper coverage in adventures.

I think we'll see the Veskarium get covered again when the Vesk Azlanti war gets an AP My guess is that war will be a big year-long event like the Drift Crisis was.

I'm hoping we find the shirren home world or at least find where it's located, it's my shirren character's long-term goal to find and retake the shirren home world from the swarm. We got to see swarm space on the galaxy map in Ports of Call, so it seems like a more reasonable goal now, hopefully SF2e fills in some details.

I'm hoping SF2e has a book that covers areas like Swarm Space, the Tabori Cluster, and the Kazmurg's absurdity. You can't name something an absurdity and not expect me to want to find out what that is...

I really would like some new stuff- for instance, id absolutely love to see the Veskarium get fleshed out and emphasized a lot more. The core rulebook has created a really fascinating trifecta of having Pahtra, Vesk, AND Skittermanders be core.

Id really like to see new stuff about the dynamic between these three species. I wanna hear more about how Pahtra music affects pop culture, or find out about entirely new cities on Pulonis we've never been to.

I'm also very interested in the Pulonis rebellion, I played rebel Pahtra in the playtest. I'm hoping that Pulonis rebellion also backs by or supports the Atuity independence movement.

The Veskarium is already the 2nd most fleshed-out star system in SF1e so not sure how soon Paizo will make a new book to cover the Veskarium in as much detail as we did in Near Space again, but the Pulonis situation is a big change from SF1e so I suspect we will get more on Pulonis in the Galaxy Guide. We do know that the Veskarium will be at war with the Azlanti Star Empire, and we don't have a setting book for the Azlanti Star Empire. Atuity is another location that was set up in Ports of Call for a location for a future proxy war between the Vesk and Azlanti, We saw the start of that in the playtest Empires Devoured. So I'm wondering if we will get a setting book covering the locations involved in the Vesk Azlanti war if so the Veskarium could be covered again in there.

We know both the Pact Worlds and Veskarium will see some change but will mostly be intact so I'm curious how much of the Pact Worlds and Near Space books stay relevant in Sf2e.

I agree with BotBrain, the biggest difficulty of the system is not dealing with "new" players, but primarily is making the "new" players forget their old systems, along with their addictions to acquired assumptions.

I agree and I think there are a couple of sub-categories of this too.

1: Players that assume the rules and tactics are the same, so didn't read the rules. This player might learn from their mistake given time.

2: Players that try to recreate their character from another game and expect it to play the same way. This player is setting themself up for failure if they are not willing to accept change.

3: Players that want to optimize everything, but don't realize what is optimized in one game is not optimized in another. This can be a hard change for players who are used to optimizing being all about their character with no consideration for teamwork.

4: All of the above.

The Player Core playtest is over, the playtest for the classes in the Tech Core starts towards the end of April

playtest guideline

Players should avoid using Pathfinder Second Edition ancestries, backgrounds, classes, equipment, and feats that aren’t explicitly included in the playtest. Note that most of the skill feats and some class feats from Pathfinder Player Core have been included in the skill feat tables and are part of the playtest. Spells should be selected from the Playtest Rulebook and Pathfinder Player Core. While these options are available, we encourage players to try the new feats and spells from the Starfinder Playtest Core Rulebook to provide us with new data.

from Starfinder Playtesting Overview.

More playtest info here starfinderplaytest .

It might be too late for core class and ancestry feedback, but the adventures and scenarios are meant to be playable after the playtest so feedback on them could still help with errata for them.

Some thoughts from playing in live-in-person organized play games. This assumes the GM and at least one player is experienced, this also assumes just teaching the basics.

In organized play sometimes you only have 5 or 10 minutes to help new players, opinions like caster or rouge suck aren't helpful with that. What is helpful is some reference handouts with a list of actions, a list of condition or condition cards, a list of exploration activities, and a list of common teamwork tactics, such as flanking. In a live in-person game if you have 2 martial classes that are likely to be flanking a lot have them sit next to each other it's easier for them to plan tactics without interrupting the whole table. Having new players sit next to experienced players helps too

If you don't have time to stop the game to teach common tactics like flanking or taking cover, have the opponents in an easier encounter use them against the PCs.

In organized play, if you are worried about party optimization, let the new player play what they want, especially if they took the time to make their own character in advance, and let an experienced player switch characters or play a pre-gen if needed. I always bring several characters to games just for this reason. For organized play I consider a party to be optimized if there is at least one melee character and someone that can heal.

For news players, when possible play an adventure or scenario meant for new players, where each encounter focuses on teaching one game element at a time.

Quote:

Ysoki

- Cheek Pouches are currently useless as they do not alter hand economy, bulk limits or even make the items in them easier to hide.

Squeek preach it! Make cheekpouches usefull again

When playing a Ysoki get a number of free rerolls = equal to the number of d20s the player can fit in their cheeks and still be able to talk. Call it the putting your merch where your mouth is reroll

I was thinking something like a fossilized gord leshy or a rock poppet, that could use pebbles as a mini. Although a fossilized leshy would likely be a type of undead, and I can't say rock poppet without singing,

"And there they saw a rock
It wasn't a rock
It was a rock poppet
Rock poppet
Rock poppet
Rock poppet
Rock poppet"

Using that example, Primal would cover space as well.

Now we just need a playable rock ancestry

Technomancers could be anything, some followers of Triune could be divine Technomancers. Strange or forbidden tech mixed with magic for occult Technomancers.

I hope we see the return of the junkomancers too.

Grimalki +1
Anock -1

No aids allowed, so I don't think we have other options.

Looks like Oud has + 6 diplomacy
GRIM*! comes in 2nd with +2 untrained

once I used a really pretty pebble that I felt represented my character well.

That reminds me of something. I used to have a neighbor who made little people figures out of acorns and other seed or plant parts, that could be a fun project for leshys minis.

Although most of the original PF2e pawns are sold out you can still get the PDFs and print them yourself.

I've also seen some people hand-draw pawns, that can range from I know how to draw to just stick figures. Someone even posted a down load for hand-drawn pawns for a Starfinder free RPG day adventure.

Our local PFS group the GM used pawns and the players used minis, it made it easy to tell what side everyone was on.

The begginers box has a few PC pawns but mostly just for the pregens in the box.

As long as everyone can tell who is who anything can work. One of the players at our table made a clay figure that even had yarn for hair and a cloth robe. Another player used Lego people.

I had played D&D 1st through 3.5 and other TTRPGs for about 30 years with the same group of friends but had moved to a new state, and not played for a while. I had heard of PF1e but had never played. A friend got me into Magic the Gathering, and once I realized what a money pit that was I started to look to get back into TTRPGs. I figured WOTC had enough of my money so when I saw the PF2e core rule book in a bookstore I grabbed it, not even realizing that it had just been released.

If I had to point to one thing that caught my eye the first time looking at the PF2e Core Rule book at the store it was playable goblins!

I had never interacted with D&D or other gaming communities on the internet, so finding the Paizo website and forums was a big surprise, after feeling drained by WotC finding all the free RPG day adventures had me hooked. Around the same time, there was a PF1e lore humble bundle, so suddenly I had more content than 30 years of playing D&D Not only did PF2e look great Paizo was a company I could respect. Then I discovered Starfinder.

After 90% of my D&D games being homebrew, something that stood out is Paizo's setting and adventures are so good I have yet to get back to homebrewing.

I didn't know anyone else who played PF2e or SF. Someone on the forums found that out and invited me to SFS play-by-post. At that time I had not even considered trying organized play or play-by-post, now it's my preferred way to play. I did later find some in-person PF2e organized play which I also enjoyed, while the group lasted.

It's nice to find a great game, made by someone you can respect, with a great community.

They have mentioned also wanting that Cantina feel and wanting to get new alien ancestries out and playable as frequently as possible.

And it sounds like new ancestries will fit in with the book theme they are in, which should mean there will likely be additional lore, setting, and, equipment or other character options related to them.

Turning the characters in Andor into SF2e characters would be fun.

I'm wondering which playtest scenario or adventure might be the best to test the Technomancer and Mechanic. Any of them would work but wondering which one has the most tech-related interactions.

What excites me the most is it looks like Paizo is really going all in on the release of SF2e, by the time the Player Core is out we will already have 7 flip-mats, the 4 playtest adventures, 2 hard-cover books. With what else is coming at the release of the Player Core and shortly after SF2e looks to be set up for a great start. I don't remember if they have release dates yet but the Starfinder novel and Infinity deck being announced is exciting too.

But for me, the big question for April is, after actually printing last year's April Fools joke as a hardcover book, what will happen this year? Part of me thinks it's futile to try to outdo The Gap which is one of the best lore books ever not written.

Shipping, printing, and labor costs were all up before the trade war, the problem with the trade war is it's driving up the cost of living in general, even if the price of Paizo products doesn't go up my disposable income is down. The other problem is costs raised by tariffs don't benefit the customer or Paizo.

I think part of why Starfinder might be different from the Pathfinder setting books is that Starfinder setting books don't go into the same level of detail as say The Mwangi Expanse which covers one area of one continent in 312 pages, whereas Pact worlds each planet has 10 pages. Likewise, the most detailed cities in Ports of Call got 10 pages vs Absalom, City of Lost Omens has 400 pages. I think this is from us jumping around quickly in starships so we don't spend enough time in one location to justify a deep dive into a single location, or needing to know what's in between locations to get to them.

If I remember correctly I think one of the developers had said that the events in Starfinder Socity were the driving factor in Starfinde's timeline lore.

I don't think the quality of Starfinder books has been affected, but if I remember correctly the volume of sales did affect the overall page count of books. But that could change with SF2e being compatible with PF2e It does look like Paizo is going all in with a big launch for SF2e, so should be interesting to see what happens, but so far to me everything looks great.

Driftbourne wrote:

I'm really excited about the "Starfinder Galaxy Guide" but I hope SF2e doesn't have a separate line of setting books like PF2e does, the extra cost of the Lost Omens setting PDFs is one reason I stopped buying PF2e books and switched to SF1e.

As much as I understand and sympathize with you, Driftbourne, I actually want them to do that.

...Mostly as I fear that otherwise it would raise the price of ALL Starfinder 2e books...

As for what this line would be called... I think ''Drifting Age'' might be interesting.

I don't know. I know the "Lost Omens" refers to The Age of Lost Omens (i.e. Pathfinders current age after prophecy broke). Not sure what the current Starfinder era is called.

Is the price difference of lost omen books meant to offset the cost of PF2e rule books?

It looks like the SF2e Player Core is $10 more than the PF2e Player Core, but we don't know the page count on the SF2e book yet. The other possibility is that we're starting to see the effects of the trade war, or other rising costs.

Maybe a PDF + eggs subscription might help :)

Not sure SF1e even has name for the current age.

I'm really excited about the "Starfinder Galaxy Guide" but I hope SF2e doesn't have a separate line of setting books like PF2e does, the extra cost of the Lost Omens setting PDFs is one reason I stopped buying PF2e books and switched to SF1e.

Ok, Think I'll play Navasi, I'll need a day to get her set sheet set up. I got 6 games going so if you want to take a few days to look for a 4th player I don't mind waiting.

If we need to run another pregen to fill the party maybe Obozaya? I'm thinking a solider has fairly obvious actions making it easier to bot?

Outpost VIII Paizo forum games table that still needs players to get at least 4 players

SF2e
Rescue at Shimmerstone Mine Tier 15 (3 seats left)

SF1e
Fugitive on the Red Planet Tier 1-4 (5 seats left)
Inheritors of Gadrathar Tier 5-8 (3 seats left)
Secrets Long Submerged Tier 9-12(4 seats left)

There are a few other games that have 4 players but still have seats open too.

Outpost VIII signup sheet.

Just signed up I can bring either Pockets Operative 2 (not a great shot more of a fun fake safety inspector that can talk his way into any building.) or GRIM*! melee Evolutionist 1 video personality

My only character in this level range is in another game that won't finish in time for Outpost VII I can run a 8th level pregen, I'm waiting to see if we get a 4th player to see which pregen would be best to play.

A little extra encounter would be nice to have. But that's also extra pressure on the author to include them, something that they don't always have space/time for.

Given the limited about of development resources for these scenarios, which may already be loss-leaders from a direct product standpoint, I'd be disinclined to spend time producing optional content.

There's no need to write optional extra encounters for this. I used the optional encounter from Acts of Association as an example because it could easily fit in at the end of almost any other SFS scenario. All that would be needed to do is identify and make an approved list of encounters that easily fit in with the ending of most other scenarios.

The list doesn't need to include every possible encounter that would work for this, just finding a few would be enough. Since this would involve already or future published encounters the organized play community could be used to identify and submit a list of encounters that might be usable, and then someone at Paizo could just do the final approval.

I think it's because Starfinders have access to spandex and other flexible clothing that Pahtfinders don't have. Another possibility is that it's a side effect of spending too much time at zero-g, or for anthropomorphic species with fur if pictures of them were taken in zero-g causing their fur to stand straight on end. Hairspray could be used to make fur stand up all the time even without zero-g. If you ask a shirren I'm sure they could come up with even more options...

Good point. Looking more into this I just realized I've never played a series 2 quest in PF2e, they came out just a few months before the local PFS group here disbanded. Looking at the reviews maybe 2-3 hours is a good length. How would you feel about all PFS scenarios where series 2 quests? Not saying all PFS scenarios should be 2-3 hours long, I'm just courious since it sounds like they might be in SF2e.

Some more thoughts on adding an extra encounter if the game runs short. This would typically happen at the end, this is likely easier to do for Starfinder since the end is almost always returning to the Lorespire. It would be easy to add an extra starship encounter or cinematic starship encounter, these likely wouldn't involve using consumables. Another option could be there's a stowaway on the Party's starship to deal with, or some trouble at the ship docks when landing, in either case, the PCs would have several days rest before dealing with an encounter, reducing the need to use consumables. Something could go wrong in the Drift with time and any consumables used in the extra encounter reappear once the PCs leave the Drift.

Bounties have the advantage of being already set up for player and character rewards. Having some bounties that are "on the way back something happens," would allow them to be almost seamlessly added to the end of any scenario or regular bounty. There could even be a repeatable bounty that covers multiple things that could happen on the way home. Another one could be "while at Absalom Station." Almost all the encounters in Acts of Association could be used as random encounters while on the station.

Similar things could be done for PF2 but would have to take into consideration for different types of travail like by ship or overland, and returning to various lodges.

The Infinity Deck was announced during a Paizo Live recently. It doesn't sound like an ACG it sounded more like a card deck usable for several games it's also an item in the game. Not sure when the release date is and it's not listed yet. Looks to have 65 cards in the deck.

I am currently playing in 2 games and signed up for 2 more for Outpost VIII I don't mind picking up a few more low-level games using characters I'm familiar with to help fill tables but making and playing a 15th-level from scratch would be more than I can manage at one time with the other games. I'm also new to Myth Weavers so need time to learn that too. I'm not a big fan of Discord so wanted to try Myth Weavers to see if how they play over there could give ideas to help us on the Paizo forums.

I've only signed up for Fugitive on the Red Planet so far one on the Paizo forums. I don't have any free high-level characters. I got enough free 1-2 level characters to join any table needing more players, but waiting until the end lets others sign up first.

I also signed up for the one-game Myth-Weavers just to try out that platform, it's only got one other person signed up and it's their first Starfinder game so hoping to get enough players to make that game happen.

Outpost VIII table still needing players for Paizo forum games

SF2e
Rescue at Shimmerstone Mine Tier 15 (5 seats left)

SF1e
Fugitive on the Red Planet Tier 1-4 (5 seats left)
Inheritors of Gadrathar Tier 5-8 (5 seats left)
Secrets Long Submerged Tier 9-12(4 seats left)
Duskmire Accord 9 Tier 1-4 (3 seats left)
Intro: Year of Era's End Tier 1-4 (3 seats left)
Clone Batch Catastrophe Tier 1-4 (2 seats left)

Outpost VIII signup sheet.

OceanshieldwolPF 2.5 wrote:

TriOmegaZero wrote:

We may get it with the new site and storefront rollout, assuming political and market changes don't torpedo it.

I remember and think about this from time to time. I haven’t heard anything new on this since…Jim Butler maybe? brought it up… some time ago? Has anyone heard anything recently on the new site/changes or new storefront?

Nah. My last memory is the same comms from Jim you mentioned.

That's the last I remember too. Besides the shopping subscription issues, I'm really curious how the new forums will affect play-by-post.

Starfinder Society Scenario #1-32: Acts of Association has an optional encounter you can run. I had not planned on running the optional encounter, but when the last combat ended quicker than expected thanks to the dice, it didn't make for an exciting ending so decided to run the optional encounter. As luck would have one of the players had some great failing forward moments, then in the end made the killing shot, making for a much more exciting ending.

In one of the Gen Con blog posts we learned some new details for SF2e organized play
Join Paizo Organized Play at Gen Con and Origins in 2025! .

Starfinder Society scenarios for Second Edition will be 2-3 hours long, and will cover a two-level range.

I support the idea of shorter scenarios, largely because I know how playing in a live game feels when you are rushed racing to finish a scenario before a game store closes. The downside of shorter scenarios is if the dice favor the PCs enough the game can be over quicker than expected, this got me thinking back to the optional encounter in Acts of Association, as a great way to be able to keep playing if you have more time left.

The optional encounter in Acts of Association could easily fit in with any scenario on Absalom Station or almost any space station, or easily reskinned for a city setting. This got me thinking if more scenarios had optional encounters, and we could use them in other scenarios, over time the pool of optional encounters would keep growing. Besides filling in for a session that ran short, this could be a good way to make repeatable more varied. Optional encounters could have tags saying what setting or environments they fit in.

One downside for me for shorter scenarios is there's less time to get into the story. Having more meta plots would be one way to deal with that, even if some of them were short two-part meta plots. With scenarios that are 2-3 hours long, groups that have more time could even play both in one session, another option would be scenario + bounty.

If you end up with extra time having the option to add an extra encounter, bounty, or a second scenario would fit almost any situation that comes up.

Waiting to see what other people are playing before deciding what character to bring.