John Mangrum's page

On a similar note, will 1-98 Into the Perplexity ever be released in PDF?

Doubtful. (Thurston Hillman discusses 1-98 in the thread below.)

https://paizo.com/threads/rzs2v6qw?Reportable-but-not-obtainable-Starfinder

I have no inside info, but my guess is that it'll be released after Origins (June 12-16).

Quick but big lore question regarding the Year of Scoured Stars:

Kishmo:

It's purely a lack of personal time of late that's prevented me from posting my own "P.A.Q." (Personally Asked Questions) about some of the big lore from this season, so put me down as well as wanting a big lore dump from Thurston. The one element in particular I have a lot of questions about (which I'll save for the GM Discussion subform, when I get a chance) is the Godwall itself...

Whoa.

Any news?

ETA 16 minutes later: Aha! Just went through.

John Mangrum wrote:

And over in Starfinder Society (avoiding spoilers), there's a budding romance going on between two recurring NPCs of seemingly disparate species that no one bats an eye at.

I think it's adorable.

Very, very true.

I get the sense that romantic pairings between bonded ryphorians and dragonkin are pretty uncommon, but not unknown.

And over in Starfinder Society (avoiding spoilers), there's a budding romance going on between two recurring NPCs of seemingly disparate species that no one bats an eye at.

Level 21, right! Meant to say that, not 41.

If anyone wants my own headcanon:

It seems to me that Sparks is located at the "base" of the Spike, cradling the Starstone Reactor close to the heart of Absalom Station. While Sparks may extend downward at the core of the Spike, around the reactor it also expands to the Spike's exterior to incorporate starship drydocks.

(Of all the Spike districts, Sparks also has the highest security and seems to rub elbows with the wealthy most often.)

Below Sparks, we head into Downlow, the middle-class district that's been "gentrified" from the slums of the lower districts. Wealthier folks from the Eye and the Ring still come down here, even as they turn up their nose, but security grows thin.

Finally we head into Botscrap and Conduit, which could be arranged any which way; both have problems with creatures creeping up from the Ghost Levels, both are neglected industrial slums, etc. One could easily make the case that Botscrap could sit above Conduit, or vice versa, or that they could be entwined around each other in a 3-dimensional maze. Dunno!

I posted a version of this over in the Starfinder forum, where it promptly died a red shirt's death, but maybe over here, where Absalom Station plays a much more central role, some folks will have thoughts.

At any rate:

Has anyone put any thought into the geography of the Spike? At least, where the various neighborhoods (Botscrap, Conduit/Pipetown, Downlow, and Sparks) are in relation to each other? I ask because in SFS we have a number of scenarios that take place in full or in part in the Spike, including one where the exact time needed to move between the Lorespire Complex and a specific location in Sparks is important.

So far, it seems like we have a dribbling of details (the Spike consists of hundreds of levels, the Ghost Levels are apparently concentrated in the bottom half, which then suggests (since Level 41 is inhabited) that the levels count from the Ring down to the gravity generators at the tip, etc.), but personally I could really make do with a side-view map of Absalom Station.

So, anyone know of any obscure data drops about the Spike, or have any headcanon?

Has anyone put any thought into the geography of the Spike? Specifically, where the various districts of Downside (Botscrap, Conduit, Downlow, and Sparks) are in relation to each other and the Ring?

(It seems to me that Sparks may be at the "top" of the Spike, nearest the Ring & Eye, but beyond that it seems to be anybody's guess.)

I assume the thought behind it is that the Master of Stars is such a technological patchwork that it's filled with incompatible systems (even to a degree after the refit). Power up a Pact Worlds standard Drift engine in that ship, and three other systems that came from the Vast go down. Replace them, and now no one on Deck E is getting hot water. Etc.

I imagine chasing down these cascade failures is what Fitch and her team has been up to for most of the last 2+ years, and now it's down to "We have a war coming, we've found a Drift engine that can finally get everything online, or we can go back into drydock for another three months to replace this, that, and the other. Hell with it, get me that Drift engine."

Seconding the thanks for fixing the images in the last two issues, but must note that the map of the Excoriation Combine Jezail in the inside back cover of SFAP#14 still needs help.

I've noticed that the PDF was updated to fix the over-compressed images (Thanks!), but the inside cover map of the starship is still undersized. (It's the only undersized image left at this point.)

Seconding the call for attention to the undersized images, which is now an ongoing concern and no longer limited to the maps.

I've more-or-less finalized a road map to include every scenario for my home group, split between two teams (who "crossover" during the two-multi-table events).

First team will reach 10th level (though this requires some slight reworking of two late-game scenarios to fit them in). Second team will be introduced when the first team reaches 6th level, and will go on to have their own subplot, running concurrently with the first team, before wrapping up at 5th level.

Yeah, I manually add ranges to all weapons when prepping stat blocks for my games.

(Side note: I also shift the Languages line up to the first block of stats and include Sense Motive after Perception on the Senses line, making that block the all-around "at first glance" section.)

Please cancel my subscription to the Pathfinder Campaign Setting. Thank you.

Are the hologram friends ziggy had described anywhere?

No, and so far to be best of my knowledge we don't know if any of them were rescued, either.

I'm still a long way off from running this one, but I was foolin' around and came up with a brief opening challenge from the SMoV Holo-Mecha. Still thinking about it. Needs musical accompaniment! :)

Hello, Songbird Station!

For the record I really enjoyed reading the recent scenario that gets Arvin out from behind the desk for a bit.

In my home campaign, because we chose to kick off with Into the Unknown before running The Commencement, Arvin is the guy who personally assembled a team of cadets in an emergency situation to investigate the event that kicks off ItU. Since they came back alive, he's very proud and protective of the team, acting a bit as their counselor on top of being their dispatcher.

(Also, a female player, whose character has started dating Orsis, an NPC from The Commencement, has recently noticed that Arvin's lips are pretty hot. What can I say, she likes those lashunta boys.)

Since they've finally gotten a working version of an online player up and running I also went in on the complete subscription and it's been a big hit with my players so far. Maybe it's all those years of Star Trek, but there's just something about incorporating even basic ambient audio like the steady hum of a starship or space station's engines...

In fact, an online convention ran a multi-table #1-99 here back in the fall. Just pop over to the Play-by-Post subforum and search for "Scoured Stars." As a GM who is likewise running this as a home game and trying to work toward an adventure I can't see till next summer, reading those threads was EXTREMELY useful.

"Also, if you've been following the ongoing Scoured Stars storyline..."

Is there a suggested or recommended play order to these in a way that keeps the story straight?

Order of release, basically. Some scenarios follow up on others and are called out as such.

Howdy all; I'm going to be running the Starfinder Society Scoured Stars scenarios for my home game, playing through, well, just about everything, eventually. For now, we've just recently kicked off and are most of the way through Into the Unknown.

We're playing in campaign mode, but as GM I'm not worrying about keeping it Starfinder Society Guild-legal. This frees me up to make some tweaks along the way! Obviously none of this applies to guild games, but if there are any other GMs out there following the same path, maybe my notes will be useful. (And I'm interested in notes from other GMs too!)

For the record, my campaign's PCs are a gang of misfits (who mostly wouldn't be allowed at convention games):

Please cancel my Pathfinder Modules subscription. Thank you.

(For the record, the above was originally written for the benefit of a player running an astrazoan PC from Castrovel. I intended to strip out all of the individual-specific language, but overlooked a bit here and there. Section 4e in particular should basically just say that you can assume you're familiar with all of the core races and common fauna from your home world.)

I had some idle time to overthink, and I ended up writing up my table rules for the astrazoan change form ability. While these are based in a literal reading of the rule (as well as the author's posted intentions), it includes my own extrapolations. Change form's limits are somewhat vaguely defined so I found myself with a lot to think about. I organized my notes into chunks to prevent myself from rambling in a stream of consciousness.

1. Change Form is an entirely cosmetic transformation, like an incredibly advanced form of octopus camouflage. When you assume a creature’s form, you look, sound, and feel just like it (assuming a successful Disguise check). I assume you can even alter your scent to a degree, though creatures with the blindsense (scent) ability might detect something off about you. You can mimic internal and external organs, and alter the organs you have, but (unlike change shape) you can’t actually create organs you don’t normally have. You don’t lose or gain any racial abilities while in an assumed form. Some examples of what this means:

a. You are naturally “squishy” but can selectively “tense up” parts of your body to closely mimic a bony skeletal structure. If someone grabs or frisks you, you’ll feel like you have a normal internal skeleton (but an x-ray would reveal otherwise). If you mimic a creature with natural weapons, like a vesk, your claws and fangs are still just relatively soft cartilage that only deals as much damage as a standard unarmed strike.

b. You are always Medium and, even more specifically, always retain the same mass/weight. If you’re in a smaller form (like a khizar, which is exceptionally gaunt), you’ve just compressed yourself; if you’re in a bulkier form (like a vesk) you’ve just swollen yourself up. (Astrazoans are generally fairly lightweight compared to humanoids of the same size, about on par with a slender lashunta; the heaviest astrazoan weighs notably less than the scrawniest vesk.) This isn’t something anyone can notice just by looking at you; they’d have to try picking you up first.

c. You retain your darkvision, compression, and rapid revival abilities even in assumed forms. If you wants to shove yourself through a narrow pipe, you can do that even a humanoid form. (It would just look like something out of the X-Files to an unwary bystander.)

d. You can create organs that look exactly like gills (or other unusual respiratory organs), but they aren’t functional. Likewise if you assume the form of an android or other creature that doesn’t need to breathe, you do in fact still need air. (Creatures with the full change shape ability can physically alter how they breathe.)

e. You can create extra limbs (I personally imagine an astrazoan twisting and reshaping its seven tentacles to form limbs, tails, wings, and even heads), but an astrazoan can only really focus on using two “arms” at a time. If you assume the form of a four-armed kasatha, for example, two of those arms are really just there for show. You can move them around, but they’ll just fumble around and drop stuff if you try to use them to wield weapons or use tools. (You can decide from round to round which two arms to “focus” on though, so it’s not like the same two arms are always just dangling.) Same goes for a prehensile tail, if you assume the form of a species that has that. (You can have a tail and swish it around just fine, it just can’t grab things. Unless you treat it as one of your two “arms” that round.)

2. There is absolutely nothing magical or supernatural about your change form ability. This means it cannot be dispelled, and divination magic like true seeing treats it as an (exceptionally detailed) mundane disguise—which means it’s very difficult to magically detect.

a. This also means that worn, carried, or wielded gear, clothing, armor, weapons, etc. never changes with you or gets absorbed into your new form (as druid wildshaping would do, for example). This is really only a problem with clothing and armor. When it comes to clothing, reconfigurable outfits (Starfinder Armory) are an astrazoan’s best friend. It’s a standard action to use change form, and a move action to reconfigure the outfit, so you can do both of those simultaneously in a single round. When it comes to armor, you can adjust any suit of armor to fit any assumed form with 10 minutes and an Engineering check. Shiftskin, a specific type of armor manufactured by reptoids, can change between two programmed shapes.

b. If you stay within the same species and general body type when you change form (changing from one damaya lashunta identity to another, for example) your armor and clothing will still fit well enough that it won’t impose any penalties. If you change into a different-but-similar race or body type (from a damaya lashunta to an elf or human, say, or a korasha lashunta) I might impose penalties as if you’d donned the armor hastily. Change form to any significantly different body type (a shirren, vesk, or something stranger) and your armor and clothing probably won’t fit at all without adjustments. In general, for an astrazoan PC, whenever you buy armor or clothing, you should note somewhere what form it’s designed for.

c. Along these same lines of thinking, I just have real trouble wrapping my head around the idea of cybernetic limbs being able to change form along with your organic bits. To try to be really clear about this, an astrazoan can have any kind of cybernetic augmentations they want, but if those augments are visibly obvious (like dermal plating or a prosthetic) they’ll always be obvious (barring additional disguise efforts). Biotech, on the other hand, is integrated into the recipient’s own genetics and physiology, so those augments can change form with you, and adaptive biochains can be used to duplicate any cybernetics. So basically, long story short, you can have any cyberware you want, but you should pay the extra 10% to get it as biotech if you don’t want it sticking out like a sore thumb regardless of your form.

3. When you assume a form, you can remain in that form indefinitely. You retain your form even when asleep, unconscious, drugged, etc. That said, anything that affects your Charisma modifier (like Cha damage) would affect the effectiveness of your mimicry (since it modifies Disguise checks).

a. An astrazoan’s change form ability can withstand some very close scrutiny (you could probably easily maintain a relationship with a humanoid without your partner ever catching on), but on the cellular level, you’re pure astrazoan. Bioscans, blood samples, DNA tests, and similar microscopic studies can automatically detect that you aren’t the species you’re posing as (though note that most bioscan tech—like a hand panel to open a door—doesn’t actually “care” and is just measuring your hand print against stored biometrics). However, you immediately revert to your true form if killed, and any tissues or body parts that get severed also immediately revert to dead astrazoan flesh. (There are certain nasty weapons that can sever limbs with a critical hit, but keep in mind that an astrazoan’s hair in humanoid form is just fibrous extensions of their skin! A haircut would hurt, bleed a bit, and maybe even ding them for 1 or 2 Hit Points!)

4. An astrazoan can mimic any Medium creature they’ve seen. Although you’re best at mimicking aberrations and humanoids, your change form ability includes creatures like animals, constructs, dragons, plants (plant creatures, specifically), and even oozes, fey, corporeal undead, and some outsiders. Regardless of your form, you must have a contiguous anatomy, so no swarms or robots with limbs hovering near their body.

a. You can take the form of constructs (robots, SROs, etc.), but you’re still a fully organic creature. If someone tries to “unscrew the access panel” on your back, that just means sticking a power drill in your back and trying to pry off a hunk of your stiffened skin. If you’re cut, you still bleed. However, this does suggest that an astrazoan can mimic inorganic textures, so you can mimic a copied subject’s visible cybernetics, for example. Likewise, I assume you can mimic armor and clothing, but said clothing is always still just a cosmetic change to your skin. It can’t be removed or adjusted, doesn’t provide any actual protection, and is visibly fused to your “real” skin if someone looks closely at the edges. Mimicking clothing or heavily cyber-augmented creatures will probably negate some or all of your ability to ignore changes to major features on Disguise checks, so best to do it only when you must.

b. An astrazoan can produce bioluminescent cells, which allows them to mimic features like the glowing seams in an android’s skin, or even blinking lights on a robot or cyberware. The bioluminescence is dim, though; not bright enough to illuminate your surroundings. Conversely, an astrazoan can negate all the pigment in their body to make themselves slightly translucent, which helps them mimic oozes.

c. You can take the form of otherworldly creatures like fey, undead, and outsiders, but you can’t replicate—in video game terms—“particle effects.” If you mimic a fire elemental, for example, you can’t actually generate heat or flames, so you’re really just sort of trying to be a fire-colored, bioluminescent blob. Ditto for, say, a lich whose eyes are always smoldering; you can’t produce the smoke or a chilling aura.

d. You can’t mimic Large creatures, but you could mimic the young (Medium) version of a Large creature if you’ve seen it. You can’t mimic Small creatures either—you can try, but you can’t compress your body enough, so the results will be distorted and horrific. (Imagine a bulging replica of an ysoki with half an astrazoan slopping out of her back.)

e. It’s safe to assume that you’re very familiar with the physiology (if only on an instinctual level) of all of the Pact Worlds “core” races (androids, humans, kasathas, lashuntas, shirrens, vesk, and ysoki) as well as elves, formians, and other common fauna native to your home world. When it comes to other species native to the Pact Worlds, play it by ear. Anything from Near Space or the Vast you’ll need to see before you can copy it.

f. You can copy individuals you’ve only seen in passing or in recordings (like a 3D trivid projection), but the less data you have to work with, the greater the chance of error. For example, if you try to copy a passing guard to infiltrate some evil den, and that guard has a tattoo or a scar you couldn’t see because it was buried under his armor, then people who know that guard may notice if the distinguishing feature turns up conspicuously missing later. Likewise, you can’t mimic someone’s voice if you’ve never heard them speak. If you copy someone based on nothing but a mugshot of their face, you’ll be stuck with a default “average” physique for the rest of their body. Just in case it ever comes up: for deep, deep “undercover” work, a physical examination of the subject you intend to mimic is your safest bet. Long story short, if you’re working with limited information about a creature, you may incur a penalty to your Disguise check to mimic it.

5. Since your transformation is entirely cosmetic, carries no altered abilities, and comes as naturally to you as flexing your muscles, I’m fine with saying that with a single use of change form (a standard action), you can change your entire body into a new form—or any portion of it. Want to “relax” your arm to turn a hand into a squishy tentacle poking out of your sleeve? No problem. (Maybe that’s the “astrazoan handshake.”) Want to freak someone out by suddenly having eyes open up in your kneecaps? Easy! While in your true form, want to quickly meld two tentacles together into the form of a humanoid head to talk in her voice? Fine. Basically whatever you want to do. But it’s an instinctual process; an astrazoan isn’t the Thing, so they can’t mix forms together. One copied creature (whether whole or in part) at a time. (No making yourself into a shirren with a vesk’s head, or swapping arms for legs, or having one humanoid identity’s head sprout out of another humanoid identity’s back so “they” can talk over each other.)

6. Normally, in Starfinder rules the DM rolls Disguise checks secretly for you, so you can’t automatically tell how well you did. For a “core” humanoid or aberration identity, as GM I’d house rule that you may take 10 when assuming that form, if you wish; it’s like slipping on an old sock. I would call for a check whenever you assume any other form, though. You can make very minor changes to a base form (such as altering the length or color of a lashunta’s hair or whatnot, but that requires a fresh Disguise check for the first day or two before settling into a take 10 result again. But remember that only people who are on alert actually make Perception checks to try to pierce your disguise. Most people—virtually everyone—just makes passive Perception checks (taking 10). In other words, most people have no reason to suspect alien shapechangers are in their midst and, even if they did, the average person really has no chance of beating an average astrazoan’s Disguise check.

I'm thinking of a simple house rule wherein if you have a recreational suite on your starship, then after any trip lasting at least a day, you gain a +1 morale bonus you may choose to apply to any one Will save you roll within 24 hours of disembarking, due to generally keeping your mind fresh and rested.

(Alternatively, for a touch more complexity, the +1 morale bonus could be applied to a saving throw determined by the kind of suite being used: Fortitude for a gym or similar exercise area, Will for a trivid den or similar passive entertainment area, or Reflex for a vidgame arcade or similar interactive entertainment area.)

Does Master of Disguise provide a bonus? Either way, it looks to me like the effects stack, but that you're also guilding the lily - an astrazoan isn't benefiting nearly as much from that exploit as other races would.

I agree that astrazoans can mimic specific individuals. In fact, as written, they can't "choose" their features without mimicking a specific individual, which is interesting in that a PC in my group has two female lashunta identities. (Seems to me one must have been "copied" from a "real" lashunta.)

What has me curious is non-organics. Can an astrazoan alter obvious cybernetics (such as a prosthetic arm) while shapechanged? If it *doesn't* have cybernetics, can it mimic a target's cyber-arm? Can an astrazoan mimic an SRO? I lean toward no in some cases but it's a gray zone.

John, I'm happy to discuss with you ways to make the scenario even more...tricky for the PCs, given that you're running it in campaign mode :D

Count me as VERY interested!

Fortunately, I'll be running this as a non-Society home game and thus can fudge things around.

I like the storyline to this scenario, but in both areas A2 and A5, the primary threat of the encounter is an inhaled hazard. Aren't these going to just be effortlessly negated by the environmental protections in the PCs' armor?

I'm new to running Starfinder, so maybe I'm overlooking something.

I got an email about an upcoming subscription that I don't have. Was this email sent in error?

Likewise.

In the campaign I'm setting up, we've generally accepted with a hand wave that the party icon is using most of her celebrity income on maintaining and upgrading the party's starship.

Speaking of which, question for Owen Stephens: Said icon is in a self-described "Hanna Montana" situation where her stage persona is a carefully crafted alter ego. I know the Starfinder Advanced Skill Guide has rules for creating secret identities, but can you say when that book will be released for sale?

Edit: Fixed title. (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1768030821/advanced-skill-guide-kicks tarter-for-the-starfinde)

Starfinder Adventure Path #7 introduces another doppelganger-like species in its Alien Archive, though we don't have any greater setting context about them (homeworld, etc.).

This isn't *entirely* on topic, but a more general question. I'm prepping to run Scoured Stars as a home game, and with 1-99 being so crucial to the overarching storyline, I'm really hoping to include it in the campaign (when it hits wide release). Any GMs out there with experience running Organized Play home games with advice about adapting multi-table scenarios?

Huzzah!

#1-20 and #1-21 still haven't unlocked for me. Specifically, they say "Will be added to your My Downloads Page immediately upon purchase of ["9" or "Sorrow" respectively]." The Ongoing Subscription page says the same thing.

I'm prepping a home campaign that will include an astrazoan PC, so I'm pondering a few things about this species.

Namely, since the astrazoan's change shape ability is extraordinary (and thus non-supernatural), I've ruled that unlike Pathfinder's druids, werebeasts, or the like, worn and carried gear doesn't change with them (nor is it absorbed, as with wild shape). I'm pretty satisfied with this ruling, and as it happens the player is looking to create alter egos with a deep clothes closet anyway, so all's well there.

But now I've gotten to pondering augmentations. It seems to me that if an astrazoan can't affect gear, it probably can't alter cybernetics as well. An astrazoan with a prosthetic limb is always going to have that limb sticking off of it somewhere! While I can see my way clear to hand-waving most biotech and magitech, I think I need to judge cyberware on a case-by-case basis.

Anyone else have any thoughts about this?

Thanks! I know all too well how much chaos GenCon can unleash.

I'm not a VA, but I am a subscriber who's also curious about when the latest two scenarios will actually unlock. It's odd to think that if I *weren't* a subscriber I'd have had them days ago.

I have had no shipping notice yet either. But it is only 4PM on the west coast right now so there still is more time.

For me it's pretty reliably "order notice on Thursday, shipping notice next Tuesday" give or take a bit. This month's an exception (and, coincidentally but unfortunately, the first time in years I've actually been eagerly awaiting that shipping confirmation).

Is it possible for the shipping/pdf unlocking to happen on a Saturday? It's not past 6pm on Friday EST and I doubt it's going to happen for me tonight.

I don't believe so. On the other hand, I did once get a shipment notice at 9:30 ET/6:30 PT, so there's a few more hours dangling before us yet.

(At this point, I'm just eyeing the approach of that street date and hoping, dubiously, that the PDF will unlock then even if the book hasn't shipped...)

In fact, during a Red Hand of Doom game I was running, the party's cleric basically solo'd a hydra that attacked the party. Using a bunch of skeletons with slings (1d3+2 slings). Just pelted the crap out of it with rocks until it fell down. It lasted only a couple of rounds.

That same hydra TPKed my party.

You've already come up with a solution, but I faced the same problem in my campaign -- a player announced that he wanted to retire his PC and bring in a new one *just* as the party was heading into Kakishon. I was able to plan for it, fortunately, but it took a lot of story wrangling to sort out.

So, for the record: In our campaign, the new PC was (is) born in Kakishon to a group of "adventurers" who were the last mortals to discover and activate the Scroll of Kakishon prior to Jhavhul's exile. The fairly extensive backstory to justify it all (which the player has since basically ignored, sadly) is that his parents went after the last known owner of the Scroll -- a massive blue dragon -- but were overwhelmed and forced to flee into the Scroll. When one or two members of their party attempted to "sneak" back out and never returned, the remainder realized that anyone who left Kakishon was probably popping back into reality literally at the wyrm's feet, so they were effectively trapped. And, soon realizing that they were trapped in paradise, they eventually settled down, giving birth to the PC and raising him to adulthood in the Pleasure Palace before Jhavhul's army suddenly burst in and went on a rampage.

Since I had to explain not just why a replacement PC was kicking around in Kakishon but also 10th level, I told the player his PC had fought a guerrilla war against Jhavhul's army of smoke and flame and the resurgent proteans (while essentially being shunned by Obherak), but when the tide turned against them, the PC was advised to escape death the only way he could: flee to the Serpent Isles, find the Golden Ram, and provoke it into turning him into solid gold. (In my campaign, I house-ruled that anyone hit twice by the Ram's breath weapon is petrified permanently until the Ram is destroyed.)

Cut to roughly 400 years later. The existing PCs enter Kakishon, slay the Golden Ram, and inadvertently restore the new PC to flesh-and-blood.

I also decided that the Clockwork General is (what's left of) the new PC's father. Hoping for a story hook there, but so far the player is actively resisting making anything of it.

Other possible PC ideas that I floated but weren't used:

* An ancient (but minor) enemy of Nex kept in stasis in the Pleasure Palace dungeons, to be released by Dilix to aid the PCs

* An abandoned and resentful descendant of Jhavhul's horde

The Impossible Eye came out in roughly the same time period as the City of Brass box set, originally published by Necromancer Games and sold by Frog God these days. (Link goes to Paizo store.)

TIE was written, if not to officially complement that boxed set, then at least to not knowingly contradict it.