Jason Tondro's page

Thats really cool sounding. Is it mostly for DMs then and not many player options? or is it more than just GM setting/modifying content and features items. classes. etc for player side as well?

Galaxy Exploration Manual has options for every class! Plus gear, spells, feats, player background options, and a whole lot more. The Samdbox Adventures chapter is aimed at GMs, but players are gonna love this book.

That error concerning the time it takes to communicate inside a star system has, in fact, been bugging me for about a year, long before any of you could read it. But nothing I could do about it except say, yep, you’re right.

I’m GMing Fly Free or Die via play-by-discord (still in part one) and some interesting things came up, so I’ll share...

This sounds like a great game! Thank you so much for telling your story, and I appreciate your observations. I think you’re right, that sidebar about downtime activities should acknowledge the PCs won’t be able to use most of those options till volume 2! Great point.

I'll see what I can find out for y'all.

With it being holiday season, I thought a thank you was in order to the team that developed this incredible game. ...

Every day I am grateful that I get to work in a creative position on a delightful game that so many people play. Thank you so much for your kind letter! Although I am still relatively new to the team—I've only been here over a year—I'm proud of my contributions to Starfinder, and I'm so glad you, and your 5-year-old!, enjoy this game.

It’s a boxy looking ship. But personally, I love it. One person described it as a Volkswagen Bus in space, and they’re not wrong. It’s a ship for working people.

We’ve been wanting to create self-contained one-book adventures to Starfinder for a long time, since before I joined the team. It’s a big gap in the line. I mean, imagine you’re in the game store and you have the core rules in your hand (hopefully the pocket edition, cause that thing is sweet), and you’re like, okay, I need an adventure. But I’m not sure my group is gonna go for a six month commitment. Or maybe I want to just buy one good model self-contained adventure so I can use it as a template to write my own. There’s not really anything for you! Well, now there will be.

Oh, and one last thing:

So this is the adventure where the Junkmaster Technomancer shines! All the junk spells!

You are gonna love this adventure. LOVE. IT.

I'm a session away from finishing up a 5e AP with my hometown friends. I was hoping to move the group to a Starfinder AP next. I've had an itch to run a sci-fi adventure for so long now. So I'm wondering what APs everyone has played and enjoyed. Or what your overall experience with the system is with homebrew adventures.

I don't think I'll be running Dead Suns mostly so I don't spoil anything for myself on A&A!

First off, welcome to the community, and I hope you try out the game and enjoy it.

My favorite AP before this month was Against the Aeon Throne. It's 1st level (so you can dive right in with new characters), it's only 3 volumes (so it's less of a commitment), it's got great bad guys and set pieces (the colony world of volume 1 and the prison break in volume 2 are especially good), and it's in print and supported on Virtual Table Top. Now Fly Free or Die has come out, and I've been working on that for a year, so of course that's my favorite. But you will have to decide for yourself! Dawn of Flame is also a long time fave, as I like the supporting cast and the effreet adversaries a lot.

My own weekly Starfinder game uses a homebrew setting. I have a large group, and some of my players really embrace Starfinder as "Pathfinder in space." They just want to shoot goblins with their plasma rifle. Others are more into social RP, and I think they'd have fun in any game as long as their friends are there. The biggest obstacle for my players has been, as someone else noted here, the very long shopping lists. All the weapons and armor and other gear can be frankly overwhelming. About half my players don't like to loot bodies, track credits, or shop at all. There are a bunch of different solutions for that problem, but that's a bit off topic.

But that's a small issue in a game which I find otherwise pretty strong, and getting better all the time. The options in Character Operations Manual (which came out right around the time I became a developer on the game) were a huge boon to me and my players, and future releases like Galaxy Exploration Manual and Tech Revolution are gonna support more and more play styles, genres, and characters.

Your campaign may vary!

Kudos to our art team for making these maps happen. I am so glad you like them!

Thank you Jason Tondro for clarifying that. My question is answered and I look forward to the bounty hunters going after the PCs.

First one is in volume 2, and he’s a doozy!

Eline Reisora keeps the theft of the Oliphaunt secret because loss of the ship would ruin her career and, because she is a Kalistocrat, her eternal life. She sends bounty hunters and assassins after the PCs to get the ship back, so she can bring it back to the Horse Eye Orbital Plate in time for the EJ Corp Board of Directors to see it pass its tests on time (or at least, not so far behind schedule that she gets in trouble). The Oliphaunt is simply never reported as stolen.

This is not a "criminal AP." If we judge it according to that standard, it's going to fail. What kind of AP is it? It's an AP about working class characters who believe they should get an honest day's pay for an honest day's labor. Sometimes, they don't have enough money to pay the bills, and on those days, they have to make some difficult choices. Sometimes they have to do things they don't like. But they're not flying from planet to planet to "do crime," and honestly, I think what they want more than anything is just to be left alone. And that's harder than it sounds, as I think a lot of us understand from just living in the world.

Your campaign may vary.

I'm very happy to report that these problems have been addressed. If you have already purchased Starfinder Adventure Path Fly Free or Die, volume 1: We're No Heroes, download an updated copy. The text is now searchable and selectable, and you will get a separate PDF with all the maps in high resolution.

We'll keep this format through the rest of Fly Free or Die.

Enjoy everyone! And thank you for your patience.
Sincerely,
Tondro

@Jason How will it be announced? Email to all owners? DM? This thread?

I don’t know, but when the fix is in, I’ll tell y’all about it here, in addition to whatever official channels it goes out on.

Added by one of our adventure authors, Kendra Leigh Speedling!

Somehow, I don't think you're supposed to agree with the person who acknowledges that destroying the indigenous people's cultural sites would be downright evil and then goes and enables it anyway strictly for personal profit. That's a pretty textbook example of an evil act right there.

*clears throat*

This.

Well, it’s as official as I can make it, anyway.

This is the music I listened to while I brainstormed this Adventure Path, outlined it, and recruited authors. I asked my authors what they were listening to, and added that. Then when they turned in their manuscripts and I did the work of development, I listened some more. There’s a lot of themes here, I’ll let you decide for yourselves. But over the last year, every song on this list went into this AP.

Fly Free or Die

We are working on it. I found out about this myself only yesterday, but I checked with folks above me in the chain and they already knew and were working on solutions. I know this is a hassle, but I really appreciate your patience. We got you fam.

OK, first off, I can't wait to see your mini!

The Oliphaunt is on the cover of volume 2, Merchants of the Void, and has full exterior art there and also maps of all decks. But volume 2 is not out yet. Give us a few weeks, and you should get everything you need!

Well, this doesn't have any real-world parallels that are being drawn from. Nope, not at all, completely fantastical.

In fact, I wrote this on Columbus Day.

Leo Glass wrote:

Shisumo wrote:

What Company would that be?

The nickname for the company the PCs start the AP working for is "the Company." :D

So it's Weyland-Yutani?

I'm not saying you're wrong.

Everything about this AP is what I've been wanting since the release of Starfinder. I am VERY excited!!!

I'm glad! I just got finished developing this adventure and I think you are really gonna like it. Christopher Wasko did a fantastic job with a tough assignment.

Many other people have given a lot of advice here. I'm coming in late, but I'd like to help if I can.

Outlines: I have always gotten a lot of mileage out of a good outline for a project. Every outline is different, and you outline for yourself, so there's no one way to do it. But the point of the outline is to break the project up into small, digestible sections you can tackle one at a time, and maybe not in chronological order, as you get inspired by good ideas. Consider making an outline. Make it work for you.

Maps: I get a lot of inspiration for my adventure by drawing and changing the map. The physical layout of the adventure is what makes it unique at the table. I mean, everyone's done the base invasion or the sewer crawl. But every base invasion is different because of the specific layout of the base and the unique way creatures move around inside it from one room to another. So I encourage you to do your maps early, and keep revising them, and look to them for inspiration.

Table vs Public: This seems obvious, but bears repeating. Writing an adventure for your personal table is a very different project than writing for the public, when you don't know what the makeup of the group will be or what the table dynamic is. You want to give groups meaningful choices, but you also don't have unlimited time and effort to write up every possible choice or outcome. Ultimately, you're going to have to present the adventure as you see it going, and then give the GM tools they can use to adjudicate the adventure when things go off the rails. Your GM will modify the adventure and players will not stick to the script; this is not a failing. This is a feature, not a bug. Embrace it, and don't be afraid to say something is "beyond the scope of this adventure" when you just don't have time to explain what happens if the PCs don't do what the adventure assumes they do.

Start Small: Build scaffolding for yourself. For your first adventure, consider something players could do in one night. Like, 4-5 encounters, a skill challenge, some RP and exploration. That's a bigger writing challenge than you think; indeed, this pretty much describes an OP scenario, which is your stated goal. I advice against outlining, mapping, and trying to write a big multi-session adventure for your first published work. You would be setting yourself up to fail, and we don't want you to fail. We want you to succeed!

Good luck and keep in touch. If you have questions, hit me up on twitter @doctorcomics

...I would LOVE to see an AP where the players are part of the crew of a larger exploration vessel which is headed to explore new worlds.

I, too, would love to see this AP. No promises, but we have talked about it!

A prison ship called Harrowstone? HMMM

I figured I would name it after a famous prison!

Thanks gang! This was fun to write. As soon as Moreland showed me the art I could pick from i was like, oo, give me Raia, I wanna write a Raia story!

I learned to write Starfinder adventures from Dead Suns, so I'm going to take your gracious compliment, Jeff, but also give credit where credit is due. I do think y'all are going to like Fly Free or Die, and please spread the word about it. I would love to get this book in front of some people who are new to Starfinder or maybe have Drifted (!) away from it over the last couple of years.

By the way, anyone curious about Fly Free or Die can Ask Me Anything about it on the PaizoCon Online Discord, which you can find HERE.

As Hammerjack suggested, I recommend giving most Azlanti ships Drift 2+. It solves the problem while also reinforcing the notion that Azlanti society has a higher baseline technology level.

How do you think the average person in Starfinder lives? What are his working conditions (and job options), how does he live, what is his general living standard, what sort of services can he use (health insurance, etc) and so on.

These are great questions and I would love to see a future product address them.

I'm very excited to see a classic Traveler-style sandbox (?) AP for Starfinder. Cool!

It’s as sandbox as I can make it, while still being an AP. I encourage GMs to modify the hell out of this thing, to give the players as much choice as possible. But in an AP with limited page count, I just can’t account for every possibility.

What levels does it go to?

This will be a 6-volume adventure path starting at 1st level, and the players should be 13th by the end. Devastation Ark will be out by then, so you can move right into that AP for endgame play!

That it comes out after the Starship Ops Manual I have high hopes for it.

You will definitely see some specific rules from SOM in this AP, though not necessarily in the first volume. Things like boarding, starship chases, etc.

CorvusMask: It is not a space pirate AP. It is a space trucker AP. As far as alignment goes, I expect most characters will be some version of Neutral, but important moral and ethical choices are an important part of this AP, so what you do and how you treat others WILL matter.

Toxicsyn: Yes! All three of those were influences (but there are a lot of other influences too).

Porridge: Yes! Chris Sims, former Starfinder Developer, wrote it; it's in the back of the first volume and includes new themes, gear, and player backgrounds to tie your character into the adventure.

Ask, and ye shall receive.

I'm already planning my "Vesk Space Trucker" Character's CB Handle. "Walking Suitcase" sounds like a good one.

We're all just going to call him Suitcase, so you may as well shorten it now.

Something that's been bugging me since Starfinder's release is that there isn't really a Theme called something like "Laborer" or something to reflect characters like this. ...

Where's the theme for PC's who all lift together?

I am working on something right now you are going to really like.

So I rediscovered an old Stuart Gordon movie, Space Truckers, and it got me thinking: how do you imagine blue-collar workers in the Starfinder Universe? ... So what's a working Joe look like to you in Starfinder?

Stick with Starfinder for a bit longer, and I'll give you the answer to these questions.

Jacobs has been doing this a long time, and there's no better voice to speak on this issue than him. I'll add only this: sometimes, when planning an Adventure Path, that one volume where we go off to do something different is very much intentional and planned. As developers, our thought process goes something like this: "The players may get bored doing the same story six books in a row. Let's mix it up in one of these, give them a change of pace." Of course, we have to make it a good change of pace!

Think of these unusual volumes like the bridge in a rock song. It comes about 2/3rd of the way through the song, it's recognizably different than the rest of the song, but it still has the same underlying beat and it sets everyone up for the final stanza.

With Flamboni sisters we at least know there are two of them, but with Dwarven Throwers we don't even know names or how many there are ._. Like they apparently form ballista shape and throw each other so there has to be at least three dwarves as part of the trick?

There wasn't room enough on the inside cover to give all the details, so this is unofficial, but if you want to do what I did: there are four dwarves in the Dwarven Throwers act. Three of them form the living ballista while the fourth gets hurled through the air. They claim to be brothers, but in fact are not, and they use the names Nuthri, Suthri, Estri and Vestri. However, these names belong to the characters in the act, so if one of the dwarves drops out, gets injured, or otherwise replaced, the replacement would adopt the unused name.

Keeley and I are ensuring that every AP, starting with Attack of the Swarm!, has a Player Guide in the first volume of the AP. I can't promise we'll address all the concerns in this thread—as we don't want to spoil the adventures—but we can provide theme, class, and archetype advice, backgrounds that connect the PCs to important NPCs in the adventure, and gear/spell choices that will be especially appropriate. If an AP has a starship-emphasis, you're going to see a section pointing that out and encouraging the players to make a crew that works well together.

If you're doing a player's guide for yourself—and that's a great idea!—you can spoil the adventure to the exact degree you want to spoil it, and you can tailor the guide to the players at your table. If you know one person is really into subsystems, for example, you can point that player to a character that will really enjoy that subsystem. And you can introduce PC hooks to NPCs that you know you want to introduce or emphasize. And of course you can include any house rules.

So yeah, I love the idea of making a player's guide for your campaign. Not only for APs that don't have one, but even for APs that do, so you can customize the experience to the players at your table.

Hey everyone. Glad you're enjoying the adventure, and I want to briefly address the concern that "there's not enough NPCs, or not enough info on the NPCs we do have."

There's just not room for everything. Oh, I wish there was! We've got to get you through 4 levels by the end of this adventure, and that means a lot of encounters. There's the whole circus to establish, plus Abberton, the monastery, the Aeon Towers... there's a LOT to pack in!

But I did the best I could. First, you've got 6 circus acts on the inside covers. Some of these acts are discussed in more detail in Part One of the adventure where, for example, you learn about Axel, Elizia, and Mordaine and her assistant Hod. None of these characters have game stats, but you're not expected to be fighting them. Then, at the beginning of Part Two, we introduce the Sideshow of Everyday Marvels, which has its own cast of colorful circus characters, like the Bearded Man, the Dog-Faced Dog, and the Unjoined Twins. And there are other circus characters along the way, like Myron the dead ringmaster, and the Great Fortunato who—while dead—nonetheless give the circus a feeling of history, like it did not just spring into existence the moment the campaign started.

Now, obviously, your mileage may vary. You're going to want more info on some characters, and others you won't care about. You're going to introduce your own new NPCs—as you should! I 100% endorse Zapp's thread brainstorming more circus personalities!

Hey everyone. I'm the author of this adventure and I'm super proud of it. I sincerely hope you enjoy this AP and "The Show Must Go On." Ron and I did a developer/author chat about this adventure which is up on YouTube today.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQxkHLAT1e0

To celebrate the release, and to perhaps help anyone out there who is wondering "How does my character fit into the circus?", I'm posting 9 circus tricks for every class, starting with the alchemist.

https://twitter.com/doctorcomics/status/1218247246023557120?s=20

Ron and I had a great time talking about "The Show Must Go On" last Friday on Twitch, and that video uploads to YouTube today. During the chat, we had a question about integrating alchemists into the circus.

So I am creating 9 circus tricks for every class, starting with the alchemist! Maybe y'all will find some of them useful.

https://twitter.com/doctorcomics/status/1218247246023557120?s=20

1. That artwork is wrong, and the orbit of Triaxus is what astrophysics says it should be. Since the Sun in Pathfinder is called "the Sun", I'm assuming it has the same mass as our Sun for the equation linked above. So, with an orbital period of 317 years (10 billion seconds!), it gives Triaxus a semi-major axis of 46.4735 AU. If it had a fairly circular orbit, that would be relatively close to Pluto's furthest distance from the Sun (its aphelion). With an elliptical orbit, it means that the major axis (the longer distance across the center of the ellipse) is 92.947 AU, and at the perihelion (point closest to the Sun), Triaxus comes closer...

I just want to say this is super interesting. I love the way you describe the Triaxus "year," and what it is like at different seasons. Thank you so much for doing all that work!

Back on topic; a Starfinder update for the Wild Hunt, including Wild Hunt star ships.

This is a great idea.

Jason, did you have to make a whole host of new monsters for this AP or are we going to see a lot of the high level monsters from Alien Archives 1-3 in there?

Each AP volume has room for up to 7 new aliens in the back, but usually no more than 2 or 3 are actually in the adventure. So you can expect a few new high-level monsters in each volume, but the majority of the alien threats in the adventure will come from the hardback Alien Archive series.

So keep your eyes peeled for those tzitzimitls!

(I have no idea if there are any tzitzimitls in this AP.)

Keeley and I have been talking about very little EXCEPT this AP for months now! We're both stoked to finally be giving you all the high-level content you've been asking for... and which we have wanted to develop. We have fantastic authors working on this project, and we're designing it so your veteran PCs from other APs can slide right into this one.

The immediate question we're all wondering about is how high this is going...

I want to answer this question, but I should leave it to Keeley, who is out for the holiday and will be back soon. You won't be disappointed!

Look, I'm a simple sentient - I just want to be a casty-caster that has a pet black hole, okay? :D

What I heard is: we need to use the creature companion rules in AA3 to make a pet black hole!

It's probably a shapeshifted reptoid (or astrazoan), unaware of the cultural taboo.

This is exactly my unofficial canon for this scene.

Thanks for the plug, Hilary!

What excites me about this project is that we can reach people who otherwise will never learn about the game, who don't even know RPGs are a thing. Alexa also provides a way for new players who buy the book or the Beginner Box to play immediately, without having to find a group. Now, it's not the same thing as meeting up with your friends around a table, for sure. It's its own thing, not a tabletop RPG as we usually use the term. It's not going to be for everyone. But it can be cool for a lot of people.

And, honestly, this seems like the future to me. We have been using computers to assist our gaming for pretty much as long as we've had computers. It's only a matter of time before Roll20 and all those other tabletop simulators are supplanted by something with a verbal interface, where the GM has an AI virtual assistant that the GM and players can simply talk to, instead of having to learn an often-clunky-and-counterintuitive interface.

Imagine a setup where Rob McCreary, our Creative Director, writes a Starfinder adventure, and then that adventure is coded into Alexa or some other virtual assistant, and Rob records the GM audio. And now you can all have Rob as your GM. I mean, sure, it's not the same as having a living person there; you have to color inside the lines and participate in the adventure as it is written, unlike your living room where if you want to just ignore the plot, you can.

But that would be pretty cool, and I'm telling you, it's not as far away as you might think.

(And no, I am not telling the world we are working on that project. I just think it'd be cool!)