John Warren's page

I have gotten THREE now, and I hate it. It's a waste of paper. I have zero use for it. It literally goes directly into the trash, and I HATE that.

Is there a way we can opt out of getting these in the future?

Golarion isn't earth and might have developed jeans/baseball caps at some point over its massive history that might conflict with the order of how they were invented in our world.

Well, that's a good point. Still feels odd to me to see a baseball cap in a fantasy RPG, but it seems like these days people care less and less about that kind of thing.

Also that might be a different lumberjack in the festival than Dingo Dray, the rest of his named pictures have a pretty consistent look that's different from the chapter opening picture.

Hmmm... I guess that's possible. The lumberjack in the other two pictures also has a beard, a red flannel shirt and suspenders, but a different hat. Dingo's hair is redder than the guy in the chapter opening illustration. I still think it's supposed to be him though. :-)

This is not a big deal, but my players were confused by the fact that Dingo Dray seems to be wearing a baseball cap in the illustration at the beginning of chapter 4. Kind of looks like blue jeans, too. Is he a time traveler?

What happened to Dead God's Hand? It seems to have disappeared.

While there was undoubtedly both internal groups and some external groups that ran the Playtest going level-by-level with the same characters, I think that the lack of this option was perhaps an oversight for the Playtest. People don't get a chance to learn the rules or grow with their characters. This slows things down - to the point that one 9th level encounter took over two hours because my players in the Skype group didn't know what they could do.

Yes, this was a big problem for my group, too. We've only just finished part 3, but the players are really struggling to keep up with all of the rules and what their various abilities do. There's a LOT of stopping to look things up, which is not ideal.

I can't imagine what it will be like if we endure until part 7 and everyone is running level 17 characters.

I have to agree that the new rules sometimes feel like a big pile of new subsystems. I cringed a little bit when the 1.4 update came out and it was announced that the problems with Ancestry would fixed by adding Heritage. Heritage addresses a concern that one of my players had expressed about the new system, so that's good. I just fear all the fixes adding more little subsystems on top of the other subsystems.

That said, I have become obsessed with the new game, and I want it to be a success. I have created more characters for this system than I have for any system since AD&D. Character creation is slow the first couple of times, but it gets much faster with practice.

On a different topic (but something also mentioned in this blog post), I enjoy giving feedback via surveys, but some of the questions are frustrating. Several times I wanted to pick an option that was not available or to be able to choose "n/a" when it was something I didn't feel strongly about, and not all of the questions allow that.

Likes:

1) Action economy
2) Critical successes and critical failures. This is one of the few things that I find genuinely fun about the new rules.
3) Despite all the things I dislike, the game is still fun to play. I wasn't sure if I would like it after reading some of the messageboard posts, but my group had a great time.

Dislikes:

1) Shields as currently implemented. Shield users having to stop between every combat to remove dents seems like it will get old very, very quickly.

2) Resonance points. I read a potion description the other day, and realized that a character could very easily use up all that day's points using the ability granted by a single potion. That just seems wrong.

3) There are just too many complicated subsystems and too much bookkeeping for me.

Still More Dislikes

4) There is no character class that would be easy for a new player to play. If you've been playing RPGs for a long time, it's easy to forget how confusing things can be for new people.

5) Skills. Why is someone who is trained in a skill only 10% more likely to succeed than someone who is untrained? Seems silly.

6) The + Level stuff for reasons that others have already mentioned.

7) This is the nitpickiest complaint of all, but I don't like the Action symbol. It looks like it is made of two parts, and the first time I saw it, I thought that symbol meant something that takes two actions. The symbol for "two Actions" is made up of three pieces, and the symbol for "three Actions" is made up of four pieces. Maybe I'm the only one that feels this way, but it would be so, so easy to use a different symbol that was easier to decipher.

I'm glad you guys are reconsidering Resonance Points. I'm a little concerned about the amount of time you have to come up with a new fix and test it before the final book has to get sent to the printers.

I had a lot of time to read messageboard posts before I finally got to run my first playtest session last night. We actually had a lot of fun, which I didn't feel was guaranteed going in.

So, I am hopeful that you can find some good fixes for the buggy parts of this edition (like shields!) in the very, very short amount of time you have.

My main complaint is that this seems to be a game for people who love bookkeeping, and I don't personally find bookkeeping fun.

Thanks for listening.

Thanks, Vic, for the regular updates! I really appreciate the regular communication.

I BEG you guys to do something different next year when the real book comes out. If you want people to pre-order, you have to give them an incentive to do so. This is the opposite of an incentive.

I stopped by a local game store on Saturday and they had everything (hardcover, softcover, leather cover, maps, adventure). My mail carrier disappointed me again today. :-( Having PDFs to read certainly helps, but it is frustrating.

I know having a big blowout launch at Gen Con is the industry standard thing to do, but why not ship pre-orders a week early? Would it really hurt anything?

At any rate, please please please please please please consider doing something different next year.

Thanks for listening.

Any chance of the Starfinder Adventure Path going monthly?

I would like to see an AP that does not assume the PCs are part of the Starfinder Society. It's such a lazy way to give the PCs a motivation for undertaking an adventure, and lots and lots players don't want their characters to go this route.

I feel like most (with a couple of notable exceptions) of the Pathfinder APs are easily playable by characters that aren't part of the Pathfinder Society.

I was very disappointed that Dead Suns doesn't even have a "What if the players don't want to be part of the Starfinder Society?" blurb anywhere.

For a Pathfinder game, I'm comfortable enough with the setting to work around a badly-written adventure and help the PCs figure out why their characters would take on this mission. I'm not as comfortable doing that with a brand new game like Starfinder, but I guess I'll figure it out.

I got The Hellfire Compact in the mail today, and reading through the summary of the adventure path, I've decided this one is not for me, and I'm going to suspend my subscription. Maybe I'm too old or square; I just don't understand the appeal of some of the content.