K. Easy enough. Sorry about that one.
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Am I the only one who's fuzzy on how it all works? Do I need to add the products I don't "start with" to my cart? Where will the option be to pick everything up at GenCon? I'll always just be charged whenever a product is released? Is there a schedule that will let me know when that will happen? I did read the FAQ, but don't feel it answered these questions. EDIT: Also, why are all the SFS materials PDF?
Sorry for creating a little confusion there, everyone. I was referring to the examples in Archmage's Google Doc, not anything in First Contact.
Just so you know, Archmage, you've saved my free RPG day! Sample character sheets! I had no idea!
Excellent advice. I'd actually enjoy that quite a bit. Thanks!
Exactly. I'm afraid I'm a bit disappointed. Not to judge Paizo or their workload, or how complete things were at the time the content of First Encounter was decided, but I have no idea what to do with it. I don't have the time to convert the monsters to PF and become familiar enough with a module to make them work, but I've volunteered to "run" SF at my local store's FRPGD event. (That may sound like a cop out, but I'm 38 years old with 5 kids, working full time and taking 4 credit college classes. I don't have the time). I was really hoping for something to run with, but all I can do is show interested and excited folks some monsters, one of which is a space goblin? They're going to be more disappointed than I am. Maybe I should try to pass the gauntlet.
My first character's background includes a deep hatred of the Ysoki, as he was embroiled in conflict with a Ysoki gang which ended very badly for him and his best/only friend. Can't wait to see how that gets handled ;) Not quite the same as simple disgust with rats in general, though.
I have an event that conflicts with this seminar but I'm excited to hear about it. I'll just have to get it second-hand. Same here, dangit! I'm agonizing over whether to go to the seminar (which is now scheduled for Saturday at 4PM) or to the Gamers premier. Anywho, if you haven't checked out the Kingmaker Kickstarter, you should!
"Computer, is there a replacement beryllium sphere on board?"
Hm. Watch Star Trek and The Expanse. Read Ender's Game or The Spinward Fringe series. Those should give you some ideas.
TL being Target Lock would make sense in the defensive block if it's the DC for acquiring a lock on it. (Duh on me if this was obvious to everyone else...) Critical Threshold does make sense and was indeed in the playtest video, as was shield function. DT I don't recall, but Damage Threshold also makes sense. It could represent the hull strength of larger vessels, sort of like a DR rating. But then what good is "mk 2 armor" if it provides none? I also wonder if the "Modifiers" are the ship's innate skill ratings, perhaps for an auto-pilot or some such. For the "CREW" stats, could that mean that the pilot gets a +7 to computers if they have at least one rank in it already, and +11 to Piloting if they have one rank in it? That makes sense to me given the maneuverability rating and the ship's write-up. And the Pilot gets +5 to their gunnery skill with no prereq's...
:o Holy crap I'm shaking in my space-boots! Ship stats!
OKokok does anyone know what TL, DT or CT are? What's the significance of the PCU rating? How is power consumed? How are the "Modifiers" applied? What do the "CREW" stats (and X ranks) mean? Does "perfect (turn 0)" mean the ship can turn with every hex it moves through? IS IT AUGUST YET?! How 'bout now?...
Usually with a big release like this, Paizo does sometimes sell out, but not until late Saturday or sometime Sunday. Expect long wait times on Thursday.Yes. And each morning usually begins with lengthy lines to get in to the booth, but by early afternoon, you can usually walk into the booth at your leisure. Thanks for the warm fuzzy! This will be my first time, and my wish list is currently slotted almost exclusively with SF events! Partly because I'm a little overwhelmed with all the other options and figure it's a good focus, but mostly because I CAN'T FREAKING WAIT FOR THIS GAME!!!
This'll be my first GenCon as well, but I'm not awesome enough to attempt volunteering. You guys are crazy and awesome! I'll be there Thurs-Sat. Here's my wish list so far. Things are redundant to ensure I get a spot. Starfinder Society: Quest Pack #1:Into the Unknown Thursday 8:00 AM 5 hrs
Starfinder Society: #1-00: Claim to Salvation Friday 8:00 AM 5 hrs
Hickman's Killer Breakfast Saturday 9:00 AM 2 hrs
Mostly SF, obviously, with some Shadowrun and board gaming for variety and finishing off the trip with a comedy Saturday. By the way, if you haven't seen The Gamers or their related series, you are missing out!
So do the "Into the Unknown" events include all the scenarios listed as "1-0X?" Or is it something distinct? So that's a "no, they do not?" And as a follow-up, then, is that five hour time frame realistic, or exaggerated? That's a hell of a lot of time to commit to SF for a first-time GenCon'er. Not that I mind, I suppose, it just seems excessive.
So do the "Into the Unknown" events include all the scenarios listed as "1-0X?" Or is it something distinct?
Best. Thread. Ever.
I agree, as someone who plays all the PACGs, having an STARFINDER card game at launch or close to it would do wonders. It would give people a change to get in on the ground floor, open up new territory for new mechanics, and it could be a crossover if it was like IORN GODS adventure path. You would get the new starfinder fans on board AND those that do the current adventure paths or play the current fantasy themed PACGs. Agreed. I've been poking away at the Runelords card game for a couple years now, and don't know if I'll get into the other sets, being so behind. It's the same for me with Android: Netrunner. I got the core deck and love it, but there are so many expansions it's rediculous and I'm never going to buy any. Lo and behold, Terminal Directive was just released this month, which introduces a campaign to the game and works with just the core deck. I'm all in. A Starfinder card game could have the same effect with Pathfinder card game fans. It certainly would with me, just as with StarFinder itself. I'm never going to expand my Pathfinder source collection past the three or four books I have now, but getting in on the ground floor of StarFinder and looking forward to its much more managable release schedule ensures I'll be a subscriber. Do that with the card game and you'll hook all the others like me.
I'm with you, but I'm pretty sure nothing has been mentioned as of yet. I'd think Paizo want to get some traction on the RPG before branching into any such spin-off product. At least they can count the two of us for demand once that happens.
Or how about a tiered contract? The more you pay, the more aware your reanimated self will be. It could be marketed as a form of immortality. Who doesn't want that?
Not necessarily. Especially if the contract includes care for one's family into the future. It's probably even a trope.
Awesome. I can't stop saying "electroencephalon." I imagine an Eoxian army would be absolutely unstoppable. Every battle would only swell their ranks, regardless of which side won. Kinda like Game of Throne's white walkers.
"Take your favorite fantasy RPG to the stars! Set thousands of years in Pathfinder's future..." Even if it's a stand-alone game that can be played without any Pathfinder materials there is some connections implied in the very first sentence. They take about taking "Your Favorite fantasy RPG to the Stars" this being Pathfinder. They also state it is set in the far flung future of Pathfinder. I mean it's hard to call it detached after stating the connections quite directly. Click on the star finder image if you want to see it yourself. I don't really call this speculation. [sheepish]Well, there is that.[/sheepish] It does still seem that the more info is released the more differences come to light, and the correlation of rules, classes, and mechanics becomes more removed. Yet attempts at direct comparison thereof persist. Again, no offense to the OP, but no, it appears we cannot "just shove [Pathfinder mechanics/classes/creatures/whatever] into this game," (even though yes, the PF core races and some conversion methods are included), or even make relatively direct comparisons between them and SF's. Some things are just completely different; even though the two are related historically, they are not necessarily mechanically. I hope that makes more sense. The Starfinder flavor text is just that. It's a sales pitch meant to attract us PF fans, not to indicate that SF is a direct port of PF "in space." I'll repeat, it seems that the sooner one gets that idea, the better off they'll be in accepting those differences.
Apologies to the OP for replying to his question with a rant. I grow weary, is all. Not your fault.
There are an awful lot of people here who are having a very hard time coming to grips with the fact that Starfinder =/= Pathfinder. The sooner you do so, the better off you'll be. At least that's what I'm getting from what little Paizo is actually saying, and more so as more information about the game is released. SF is not PF, is not meant to "expand" PF, or even be an eventual continuation of PF. It is an entirely separate, unique game that just happens to be set in the same universe as PF, with little to no correlation to PF otherwise. That's the very reason for "The Gap;" to maintain absolute isolation between the two games while preventing the one from invalidating or overtly influencing the other. In other words, to isolate SF from PF as much as possible. That's how I'm approaching it in the meta, as it were. Edit: What I mean by "what little Paizo is saying" is that I wish someone from Paizo would come out and say what I just said. I wish people would stop making speculative comparisons and treat the two as mostly unrelated.
I feel like this was overlooked in the Elf conversation...
And I forgot to mention how much I can't wait to play Raia Danviri! OMG Cyberpunk BA!
Where were you guys in the Navasi thread debacle?! Awesome. If the problem is that there has been a change to elves being more isolationist, I would argue that this is not the case. The elves in Pathfinder have largely been described as traditionally adopting an "isolationist" policy. However, in Pathfinder this policy is described as having had negitive impacts on the Elven communities, leading some Elven enclaves to break from their long held isolationist traditions. This reasoning helped to establish reasoning for elves existing as a prominent and core race, while retaining the flavor of elves as holding slight biases and high opinions of Elven tradition and superiority. The only break from this was the forlorn. The forlorn allowed Elven players to break from the Elven archetype of the haughty and naive mage/archer trope to that of a more solem and worldly adventurer. One who understands death and the consequences of time as they apply to the shorter lived races. Forlorn have known true loss. They have formed attachments as most elves would loathe to do, and they have payed the price for their experiences. In this way, Pathfinder was able to both maintain the trope, while allowing for a diverse range of character options. The elves of Starfinder need reason to no longer apply as such a core race to the Starfinder setting, but need to have been made so in such a way that a player can still feel that an elf in the wider setting of Starfinder can feel attached to the setting. I believe the forlorn of Starfinder fill that niche perfectly. They give the opportunity to represent a facet of Elven role play that plays off of their own personal perceptions of the wider universe, as well as the perceptions that their own race holds for them. How does a native Castrovelian elf see a forlorn adventurer. If such an adventurer can beat the solem knowledge that they will inevitably see their party die, would that be a success, or a willful acceptance ones of fate? I think Starfinder forlorn especially seem to be a brilliant race to role play off of. Think of the implications of the Forlorn on what will eventually become Elven culture. It seems likely that if they are the rebellious youth of the native, enclaved, xenophobic Castrovelian Elves then they may eventually outnumber those predecessors. What's more, they will likely become the SF universes representation of the Elves. They will not be xenophobic or isolationist, or likely even so superior, given how much they will have needed to depend on all the other, more numerous races that have comprised the crews they've worked with. They'd be the Chewbacca's of the SF universe. The isolated Elves on Castrovel will become their backwards, antediluvian ancestors.
I'm just chomping at the bit to get into the universe of SF. I've never played a PF adventure path, but have heard nothing but great things. If the SF stuff comes close to that standard, then it'll be an awesome intro. Is it August yet?
I've seen this mentioned elsewhere, and the short answer is no, you need not be concerned. I'm going too and plan to be there Thursday morning. Seems like that'd be the best time to be absolutely certain, but again it's ostensibly unnecessary. The question of picking up preorders at GenCon is as of yet unresolved, but also another discussion somewhere around here.
That invite link isn't working...
OK cool. TYVM.
OK, for us ignoramusi...ignoramuses...people who don't know what a 'discord' is...what the heck is it? I though this was a thread about internal conflict at Paizo.
The point is: Alien Archive entries need to double as both a bestiary as well as an Advanced Race Guide because it's very much a Science Fiction/Fantasy trope that there's a huge diverse universe out there. Thank you for getting this thread back on track. Good Lord.
Different games and approaches to the science fiction often yield different results. Games that want to incorporate an element of sensor technology often break stealth into a multiple skills - one for actually being sneaky around people and one for disabling the security devices that might notice you. For MegaTraveller, there was Stealth and Intrusion (or possibly Computer, Electronics, or even Robotic Ops depending on the nature of the obstacle) and for Mutants and Masterminds 3, there's Stealth and Technology to disable sensors. The stealth skills are usually based on some form of the character's gracefulness (Dex for MegaTrav, Agility for M&M), the technical aspects of defeating sensors usually ends up being an intelligence/intellect-based check. Another argument for separate tech skills, this time directly applied to the thread topic.
I can't disagree. Perhaps there could be room for something like the "etiquette" mechanic in Shadowrun to deal with that particular issue, where a character specializes in particular social/cultural/academic areas. It's used in Shadowrun for social interactions, but it could be applied to reflect the kind of refined knowledge required as it pertains here. It'd be more of a feat than a skill, which in our conversation also seems to make sense.
I agree with the obsolescence of knowledge skills in any setting in or post-information age. What should be abstracted for stealth should also be abstracted for knowledge, but the use of tech should be more rationalized. As I posted elsewhere, technology-based skills should replace knowledge skills IMHO. Each character in any space opera or sci-fi story had their areas of technical expertise, and that should be translated into SF. Instead of the generic "computers" checks we saw in the playtest video, there should be "Computers: Security; Engineering; Science; Communications; Databases; AI; etc." Again, IMO, this should be the impact of technology on game mechanics. Hell, if this isn't the case I may house rule it. It just makes sense.
Thank you for this! I agree about the music and had the same question. Reminds me of Stranger Things. Suppose it's a question for the folks at Nerds tho.
How much does tech hurt stealth in Traveller? SWRPG? Shadowrun? Hell, how much did tech hurt stealth in Star Wars? Stargate? The Fifth Element? Ghost in the Shell? All had their caveats, and all could be eviscerated from this perspective. All of your points would be valid in the realities of any sci-fi universe, but fortunately for Sneaky McSneak, neither Star Finder nor any of the other universes just mentioned are reality, and the arguments of reality don't need to apply. I would assume stealth still functions as stealth, just as it would in any other sci-fi setting.
It appears to be, yes. But it also appears to be more geared toward the playability of each entry.
Anyone but me love poking around the web for screensaver images? Have any that you think could inspire a SF character or setting? I came across this one today:
And this one has inspired what I'd like to be my first character:
Don't suppose there's a way to insert images in the forum? I don't see anything on how to do so...Image preview extensions work, at least...
7. Wearing a red shirt.
I am a complete n00b here, and this made me laugh. It seems to be the MO of a significant percentage of this community. Throw in the propensity to compare every piece of information released to how it compares to PF and that percentage triples. Jawa just made the most sense I've seen here to date.
Just don't look at their feet. What's with the nail between Quig and Navasi? Nitpicking aside, this is awesome. Makes me want to play Raia. Completely BA.
I instantly thought of this thread when I saw this!
Wouldnt a ship's life support going down still leave you with several hours of breathable air before CO2/O2 balance got bad enough to affect crew? As for power while i would expect a lot of power is being used in combat, are there any batteries or capacitors in use or is the full power draw coming straight from a generator to the guns? (Or if you want to get Trekkie with it, straight from the generator to the navigator's console and then out to circuit breakers and sub systems) In that case, and to make this a circular argument, what's the point of having critical hits damage critical systems? Crits should have consequences. Why am I apparently the only one who thinks this is so?
Maybe, but the ship's power and life support systems "glitching" would affect the crazy little thing's ability to shoot or breathe at all, which should have consequences, no?
Those both make a heck of a lot of sense. As a means of making exploration more exciting and dangerous though I would actually like it if FTL between systems was more difficult or not even possible. Indeed. I don't imagine it would be a stretch for a ship's communications suite to become damaged enough to achieve this. Speaking of which, I couldn't help but notice the GM's dismissal of critical damage to ship subsystems in the space combat demo video. Things like power and life support systems "glitching" seemed to have no effect whatsoever on subsequent rounds. It seems to me that the impact of such damage could be quite significant. It'd be easy to roll %'s for the resulting effects based on how many times a system has been affected by critical damage, but are there going to be rules for this? Say one critical multiplier = "Glitching:" 25% chance of inoperability/round; two multipliers = "Damaged:" 50% chance of failure lasting d4 rounds; three = "Failing:" 75% of permanent failure; four = "Destroyed." Every step would increase the repair check DC by say 2, and every successful repair could restore the system's operation and lower the multiplier effects by 1. Except for "destroyed," of course. For anyone who missed it, here's the demo.
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