Tim Emrick's page

I haven't run this yet, but will be in a few weeks. When I run PFS and SFS, I typically use a combination of PF/SF pawns and LEGO (both minifigures and brick-built monsters), depending on how good of a match I can get with either method, space required to transport, and how much time and inspiration I have to build minis.

At the moment, my minis for this scenario include tiny brick-built plasma penguins (replacing the motley bunch of LEGO birds I originally pulled from my collection) for the first fight, and SF1 vlaka pawns for the second. I made float tokens by printing smaller copies of the art and attaching them to card stock to make fold-up minis. Those pawns fold flat, so easily fit into a pocket in the binder with the scenario. If I have enough time and inspiration before game, I may try building LEGO models for the floats, but those would take up a lot more space in my gaming bag.

I'm also a little iffy on trying to do the Odyssey as a single movie (as near as I know, he's only doing the one). To me, in order to do the story justice it'd have to be either a 2 or 3 part movie, or a TV series.

The movie will almost certainly put wildly differing amounts of emphasis on different parts of the story than the original did. To start with, the voyage up until Calypso's island is all told in flashback, and only fills 4 out of 24 books in the original epic. Similarly, the Trojan Horse only gets a very brief mention. But clearly, those are scenes that moviemakers will want squeeze as much spectacle out of as they possibly can. The other 20 books all take place in the last year of the ten that it takes Odysseus to get home. There is a lot here that can easily be condensed, starting with the first four books, which follow the now-grown Telemachus as he sets out on his own quest to find word of what happened to his father, and the last 8 or 9 books, which are devoted solely to events once Odysseus finally returns home (an essential endcap to the story, but only a few episodes out of many in the full arc).

For Homer, the human-scale homecoming was far more important than the highly fantastical wanderings, which is why it gets so much more space in the epic. (And the Iliad is even more extreme in its focus on "The Wrath of Achilles" episode from the 9th or 10th year of the war.) To fill out the story of either of those decades in the lavishly detailed way that modern audiences raised on streaming series clamor to see, you would have to draw from numerous lesser epics of the time, fill in the blanks yourself, or a mix of both. But that kind of long-term project is also a gigantic gamble, which is rarely (if ever) guaranteed to be supported through to the end. So instead, we get things like this and Troy, which try to craft a "good parts version" that will fit into only 2-3 hours. But if Nolan's Odyssey is even half as good as Troy, I'll be well pleased.

Most of my experience with this has been with Society play, and mostly it's done in the interest of time. For example, if the party has taken out all the significant opposition during a fight, but some minions who pose no real threat remain, the GM might handwave the mopping up in order to avoid boredom and to have more time for more interesting content later on.

I can think of one PFS scenario where I handwaved an investigation where the party had to make multiple Diplomacy checks to gather information. (It was an early season adventure, so such challenges tended to be klunky, with everything locked behind Diplomacy checks to gather information.) I knew that one PC was highly invested in Diplomacy, and would have made every single check on a roll of 1. So I simply provided the information and gave the party some time to discuss it and their next steps before we moved on to a more interesting scene.

My odyssey through the Pathfinder Tales line has reached City of the Fallen Sky, by Tim Pratt.

Many players (myself included) dread any scenario involving Numeria or the Technic League. This book's main antagonist a great example of why.

I think I first heard about Pathfinder through ads in Dragon. I downloaded the beta rules, but never got around to playing it until 2013. I'd been running D&D 3.5 for a full decade at that point, because I never liked 4E enough to GM it. I made the change to PF in large part because I was using Green Ronin's Freeport setting for a 3.5 campaign, and they had announced that their next setting guide would use PF. My family and another couple in the group relocated for work in mid-2013, which allowed us to continue the campaign after a long hiatus, and I used that time to convert the campaign. That game continued for another year or so after that, so we counted that a success, and PF1 was solidly our new system of choice.

A year or two later, we all got into PFS, and from then on, the majority of our gaming was Society-related, though we still did occasional homebrew campaigns and one-shot modules as well.

Java Man wrote:

2005? Get off my lawn yah dang kids!

I can shout that now to the kids of the kids I first told to get off my lawn.

Same here. The alias I'm posted under is the one I created for whenever someone makes me feel ancient for being a TTRPG player since 1984. :D

My kids were born in 2004 and 2005, and both have been playing TTRPGs from a young age. The elder one has been GMing PFS 2E since Season 2 or 3, I think, and now GMs SFS 2E, too.

From tonight's SFS2 session, during character introductions:

Skittermander PC: "I just joined the Starfinder Society yesterday, and I'm already being sent on my first mission!"

Me: "This is what happens when they don't give us Starfinder Society Lore for free."

Wouldn't PF2 classes being options unlocked via whatever their play credit system is called an ideal solution?

I believe that the OP staff have indicated that more PF2 content will come online eventually through boons, but we'll have to wait and see what kind of timeframe that involves.

IMO, one of the biggest arguments for not opening the floodgates between the two OP campaigns immediately is that SF2 is new for ALL GMs right now, even the ones who have run PF2 for years. In a home game, the GM has more control over how much material from the other system to allow, and playing with the same people long-term makes it easier to know what those PCs are capable of and how they work. But in OP, every session is potentially an all-new mix of players and PCs. Give everyone some time to learn SF2 as its own thing before you start to ease in the non-native stuff.

Conversely, not all PF2 GMs will (or will want to) make the same effort to become familiar with SF2 content so they'll need time to adapt, too.

While I appreciate that the Frozen Tongues chronicle boon finally allows characters access to learn Russian, I was very disappointed that it's strictly limited to the character who received credit for that scenario. That means that any characters who previously played the older scenario featuring Russian immigrants can't acquire this boon because they're already out of tier for the more recent adventure. At least one previous language access boon (for Cyclops, from Season 1) opened up access for all your Society characters, so why doesn't this one?

Would this language access be a legitimate choice for a Bequeathal boon? If so, what rarity would it count as? (I'm guessing Uncommon, since regional languages are generally considered to be Uncommon?)

I know that Alex has said something to the effect that he prefers not to get involved in policing languages. But I still want a legal way for my linguist PC, whose diplomancy was mighty in that older adventure, to speak with her new friends in their own language.

This kind of connection reminds me of early Season 1 of SFS 1E, where just about every scenario had a teaser reference to something coming out a couple months later. Those throwaway bits never seemed to connect to much until I starting going back to run a lot of S1 for new recruits these past couple years. Suddenly, it seemed like they were everywhere, and I actually saw the majority of the connections! Naiaj "randomly" complaining about dealing with drow traders is the one that always comes to mind first, because both ends of that were among the first dozen or so scenarios I ever ran for SFS 1E.

Message sent!

I just acquired this adventure last night, so have done only the most cursory flip through it so far. However, I do have a few comments to make at this point. Much of this will be echoing things said here already, but bears repeating.

* The flimsy paper for the handouts concerns me, as it doesn't feel like it will hold up to extensive handling. Using the same card stock as the NPC and item cards would have been vastly preferable. I may try printing these from the PDF to see how that compares (or at least to have my own GM copy for reference and annotate as I read the adventure).

* I hope that the pregens are reissued in PDF form with text for their feats and special abilities, and the second page expanded to two pages for readability. Or that some saintly fan works up a text file for player reference so that I won't have to. My players are reasonably experienced (most of us played all of the playtest adventures), but lazy. If they didn't build the character themselves, and the sheet makes them look stuff up in a book, they often just ignore those option even if they're really useful. (Most of us also have corrected vision, so tiny print is tiresome.)

* I did find a temporary fix for the undersized second page of each pregen. If you own the PDF, print those pages on 11" x 17" paper at 150% scale. That will fill the page pretty much perfectly, and folding them in half works just fine.

* I hope that this adventure will be sanctioned at some point, even if it's just the sort of quick and dirty generic form that HMM has proposed. I bought the adventure in spite of the lack of sanctioning so that I'd have more material to get (IRL) experience as a GM with the new edition. However, my home group (me included) does prefer to get Society credit for the time they put into playing adventures.

* Apart from the purely abstract incentives of credit, this adventure also seems like a perfect back-story for introducing a khizar PC into Society play--especially if an ambitious player built their own khizar for this adventure instead of using the pregen. Getting credit to reflect that would be nice.

* I would have preferred pawns to the tokens, but I do anticipate using some of these for my other SF2 games. They're a good size for Tiny and Small creatures when used beside pawns or conventional minis. (And if they fit into pawn bases as some have said, even better--I can use colored bases to distinguish them rather than their tiny printed numbers.)

* I was a bit disappointed that the flip-mat wasn't laminated, like Paizo's other flip-mats are. It would probably see more re-use in other games if it was.

* For the maps that didn't get a flip-mat, is there any chance of getting full-sized images so that those of us with access to large-format printers can print our own full-sized maps? (I know that's often done for OP scenarios that use flip-tiles, but I don't know how feasible it would be for something like this.)

That's all for now. I'm sure I will have many more comments once I actually dig in to read the adventure.

In Inner Sea Gods, the sidebars about the paladin codes (and antipaladin codes) of various gods provide some good examples of how this "alignment drift" can define a sect within the overall faith. (I can't recall if the main text discusses alignment-based differences between clerics or not.)

The only *god* of the big twenty who doesn't really 'speak' to me, in any of his alignment options, would be Rovagug.

I think with Rovagug's followers, regardless of alignment, their core beliefs boil down to something like this: "Rovagug is the strongest god. It took a large coalition of other gods to stop him, and even then they could only contain him, not destroy him. None of those lesser gods is worthy of worship. Sure, he'll eat the world when he gets free (and he will), but until then, we should be like Rovagug and take whatever we want without any rules to stop us." None of that encourages playing well with others, even other Rovagug cultists, so it's probably the least likely god for a PC to worship. It's kind of a miracle that the cult still persists! (In that way, it's rather like the cults of the less subtle demon lords--they somehow survive in spite of themselves, because the god/demon always welcomes new tools.)

As Vizzini said, go back to the beginning. ;-)

The pahtra entry in 1E's Alien Archive 2 says (on page 95): "Most pahtras are asexual, and a relatively small number of breeding couples bolster the population with litters of six to eight kits at a time."

My interpretation is that the majority of pahtra are asexual, but there are minorities of (genetically) male and female pahtra who are critical for the propagation of the species.

That doesn't address gender, but given Paizo's dedication to inclusiveness, it doesn't seem like a stretch at all to say that pahtra can identify anywhere on the spectrum of male, female, agender, genderfluid, etc., regardless of any potential reproductive role. It seems highly appropriate that their primary deity is a goddess of freedom!

Sorry, I just signed up, running behind, Mother passed away yesterday, it was a very peaceful ending, but dealing with the relatives is exhausting, they're leaving Saturday, so things should be less chaotic then.

Question, I'm playing the same pregen, do I get to use the credits from the last scenario with the pregen in this scenario?

Sorry about your loss.

Those credits go to the character you assigned credit to, once they reach the level that they can apply the Chronicle. The pregen doesn't have access to any part of that Chronicle, and just resets to what their character sheet says they have.

I haven't written a long bio for any of my RPG characters in many a year, but I do enjoy delving into setting lore for details to keep my PCs from being just like every other member of their class or ancestry.

My favorite SF2 playtest character was directly inspired by some of the new lore for 2E. He was largely a beat-stick (close quarters) vesk soldier, but he was also a borai and a worshiper of Zon-Shelyn, which gave him a rather unique outlook on (un)life. (And a memorable look, too: a brawny corpse lustily singing in battle, accompanied by the buzzsaw of his whirling painglaive.) His somewhat fraught relationship with still-living vesk made things that much interesting when I chose to play him in Empires Devoured.

Poppet(Muppet) barbarian with performance (drummer), and we have Animal in Starfinder.

He's still only 1st level, but I have a PFS2 poppet inventor based on Dr. Bunsen Honeydew. He'd probably work just as well as a mechanic in SF2.

"Hi-ho! Dr. Tindertwig Aubergine here at Poppet Labs, where the future is being crafted today! With me today is my faithful assistant, Beaky." (A clockwork owlbear lumbers into frame.)

Roll Taldor Lore or Pathfinder Society Lore to understand why Beaky is an owlbear. ;-)

In my limited experience with SF2 so far (playing through all the playtest adventures and running #1-00 a couple of times), the solarian performs pretty well in combat. Yes, its role boils down to "get into melee, and hit things a lot," but that's true of most PF2 martials as well.

In Empires Devoured, our party included a ranged soldier, a close-combat soldier with a reach weapon, and a solarian. The two soldiers could reliably damage multiple targets, but the solarian could do more damage against a single target thanks to higher Str and being photon-attuned.

In #1-00, where the players must play pregens, the solarian regularly shined in combat. Dae's solar weapon has reach, which meant that Nimbus Surge was triggered regularly when enemies closed to melee. They also have Shattering Weapon at 3rd level, which is a significant boost to damage output (and better than the playtest version).

Warped Savant wrote:

Strange Aeons = I wish I could've run this one, and the first book is one of the best I've read.

I've prep'ed all six books and it has its highs and lows. I'm working on tightening some of the connections and coming up with extra motivations.

Really what it comes down to is my wife (one of our players) finished "The Complete Works of Lovecraft" and wanted to play this AP next. So I was on the hook no matter what! :)
But I'm convinced any campaign can be a fun one with good players! I look forward to running it.

I'm a long-time Lovecraft fan, and fascinated by Robert Chambers' King in Yellow stories, so this is one AP that I would have liked to try running at some point. I own the first book, and am very intrigued about what I've read about the later parts. But two members of my home group were in an abortive Strange Aeons campaign that didn't finish book 1, and the adventure proved very frustrating for them, so I doubt I could ever get a run of my own off the ground (especially now that we play very little PF1 anymore).

The anacytes themselves make a distinction between VIs, which are not sentient, and true AIs, which are. In cases where a VI transcends its programming and becomes self-aware, the anacytes will treat it as a person, with certain rights and autonomy, instead of a mere machine.

There is a SFS 1E scenario which has a plot involving exactly such a situation.

In addition to that human ancestry feat, most multiclass dedications have a 4th-level feat that gives you a 1st- or 2nd-level feat from its class. And you can always take a lower-level class feat when you gain a new one. So there are many reasons for every class to have some 1st-level feats, whether they get one then or not.

I'm guessing that it was a decision made to reduce page count, but I dislike the fact that the Player's Guide and the first three adventures have much narrower page margins than was the standard in PFS1, SFS1, and PFS2. I'm a GM who regularly prints out scenarios and keeps them in 3-ring binders. A standard 3-hole punch clips bits of text when the margins are this narrow.

We had a couple of new players at Pathfinder Society this week. Among the many things that we explained were Hero Points and fortune effects. Later on, my wife had to explain how her campaign coin worked both the same and differently from those.

Then one of the newbies asked, "How do you get a campaign coin?"

While my wife was considering how best to answer that, I interjected, "Give your firstborn to the Society," and gestured with both hands at my 21-year-old son, who was GMing.

(And yes, they did get the serious explanation, once the other veteran players at the table could stop laughing.)

After each session, I will roll/calculate downtime activities, and add the session to a file I keep for each PC with a list of their chronicles and boons (with as abbreviated a summary of the latter as I can manage, for quick reference). Often I'll just write the chronicle/boon info at the end of the print copy I keep in the binder with the character sheet, and wait to update the digital file whenever the character levels up.

If the character has earned a chronicle boon, I'll print that out for their binder as soon as I can after the game is reported. Similarly, if the PC hits a new Reputation Tier, I'll go see what new boons they qualify for, and buy and print them. (I usually keep notes about what which boons are coming up next, so that I can minimize that shopping time when they get access. And I earn enough AcP that I'll usually buy most faction boons and hireling upgrades, whether or not I'm sure that they'll see use by that PC.)

I rarely plan out leveling or gear more than a couple levels in advance, but I usually have a couple items per character that I'm saving money to buy (even if it's just, hey, you're level 2 now, go buy that first rune). If the PC has enough to get one of those now, I'll go ahead and add it.

If the character has leveled up, I will apply those advancements as soon as convenient (right after game if I have time and energy, otherwise within the next few days). I'll make notes of those changes on the old print copy, and update the digital file (Hero Lab for PF1, fillable PDF for SF1 and PF2) either at that time or as soon afterward as I find time.

For most of my SF1 PCs and all of my PF2 PCs, I also keep a reference file with the text of feats, class features, magic items, spells, etc., copied and pasted from AoN, so that I don't have to constantly look stuff up during game. That gets updated when the character levels, or occasionally before then if they bought a lot of gear that needs to be added. (For PF1, Hero Lab handles most of that, but I declined to subscribe to their SF1 and PF2 models.)

I haven't tracked how much time any of that takes me, but I would guess that I rarely spend more than an hour of bookkeeping after any given session, unless the character leveled up or had other significant changes. In those cases, I'd estimate it can take me up 2-3 hours to update everything. Occasionally it takes longer, especially if I'm taking my time to peruse books for new gear and spells (but that's not pure bookkeeping, as such). But if I'm not shopping or leveling up, it's more like 15 minutes, at most.

My regular gaming groups try to avoid needing to level up during sessions, due to the time required. For an AP, if we know we're almost to a milestone, the GM might ask us to prep a higher-level version of our PCs ahead of time, so we can maximize playing time. A couple of times, I've played the same PC multiple times at a con and knew ahead of time that I would need to level them up between scenarios, so I did as much of that work ahead of time as possible (including preparing another copy of the character sheet at the new level).

Any favourite moments / modules worth mentioning?

(How many games are you in?)

(I'll try to answer your first question when I have time to look over the list of adventures we played and jog my memory a little.)

My gaming schedule looks like this:

- Tuesday evenings (monthly, online): Starfinder Society 1E. (This will include some 2E starting next month.)
- Tuesday evenings (other weeks, online): The round-robin PFS 1E group (now on hiatus).

- Wednesday evenings (weekly, in person at FLGS): Alternating PFS 2E and SFS 1E. (I GM most of the SFS.) We did some of the SF 2E playtest there, and will be adding 2E to the rotation at some point.

- Saturday afternoons (once or twice a month, online): My friend's homebrew PF 1E "Shards" campaign that I've mentioned here before.

- Saturday evenings (most weeks, in person): This is my main home group, consisting of me, my wife and kids, our two best friends and (sometimes) their kid, and sometimes one other friend whose schedule is more irregular. We recently completed the SFS 2E playtest adventures, and now hope to get back to Sky King's Tomb to finish Book 2 before the GM (my eldest) starts his fall college classes. (He commutes from home, but will have much less free time then.) I've also been running the SFS 1E Scoured Stars AP on weeks when our irregular player isn't available; hopefully we can resume that soon, too (next up is Chapter 6 of 12).

- Sunday afternoons (usually twice a month, in person at local libraries): PFS 2E.

- Irregular (usually once every month or two, online): A highly-alternate Buffyverse game that I've been playing in for 20+ years. We started with the Buffy/Angel Unisystem rules, but changed to modified Fate rules when we started up again a few years ago after a long hiatus, and now we're trying out a couple different systems for our new "next-gen" campaign in the same setting. (There is also some PBP role-playing in between live sessions.)

- And I'm currently in two PBP games on the Paizo boards (a PF2 module, and a SFS 1E 4-scenario arc), but I plan to take a long break from PBP when these finally wrap up.

That's kind of insane, written out like that, isn't it. I blame my wife for some of it; she's a V.C., so it's her job to promote Paizo OP. But you can see why I might want one of those days free again!

I won't be at GenCon, but I will be running 1-00 online a week or so afterwards. And maybe that or something else for my FLGS and/or home group later in the month, so that more folks can claim those PFS2 skittermander adoption papers.

Players have access to all options in any Starfinder rules source they own, regardless of rarity. Exceptions include any Unique items, and any options specifically restricted on the Starfinder Society Character Options page.

Excellent! Time for Showtime Joro to start planning their galactic tour...

Ouch, the timing of this could not be much worse, given the SF 2E release schedule. I'm very glad that my wife and I recently preordered several of those books.

Safe sailing through these troubled seas, mates!

I assume you'll be playing the level 14-15 tier? (17-18 tier feels like it would be too much of a jump)

Best of luck! I hope your group has fun.

12-13 subtier. We could have added in some additional Seeker-level stuff, but very little of it seemed to fit this campaign's theme, so we went for the quickest route to the finale. (I forget what subtier we played PTT at in our Giantslayer/Shattered Star/miscellaneous game with this same group some years back. I'm guessing 14-15.)

When I posted before, I'd forgotten that we had to push the conclusion off the couple more weeks due to scheduling.

And I must congratulate you, Alex, on your exquisitely designed test god. *Particularly* your third edict. :D

Our round-robin Torch/Shadow Lodge game has reached its capstone adventure, Passing the Torch. We're playing Parts 1 & 2 over two sessions each due to the time required for high-level combat, and will be concluding Part 2 his Tuesday night. We're playing Passing the Torch on "hard mode" because our characters are pretty effective for their level (12th), and we might never play these characters again after this, so why not? (It's all PFS play, so we could theoretically play them again if they survive, but probably not with this group, since this concludes the campaign arc we planned out.)

***

My wife has started running Menace Under Otari, the adventure from the PF2 Beginner Box. Our group are all experienced players instead of the novices the adventure is written for, but she's the only one of us who's actually played this adventure before. Because we don't need to learn the game, Part 1 only took about 3 hours of the 4-hour slot we'd reserved, and I'm guessing Part 2 will fit into that time, too. We may end up playing Trouble in Otari afterwards, which is a full-sized module.

Another result of not being first-timers is our bizarre party composition: instead of the four iconics provided, we have a strix bard (my PC), a strix rogue, a tengu druid, a kholo fighter, and a nephilim orc summoner. At least some of us plan to apply the credit to a version of our character to play in PFS (I certainly do). Wutuchillik is the first bard PC I've played since AD&D 2E, and I'm enjoying her.

***

I'll have to catch up on the "Sparks' game I'm playing in some other time, when I have more time to check my notes.

Et voila! You should now see the update under the Lost Omens: Ancestry Guide sanctioning.

Sweet! I've had a strix character concept in mind for a while now, but the steep AcP price tag had put that solidly on the back burner--until now.

(OTOH, I have three other PCs still at 1st level, so I've not sure I'm in a super rush to introduce yet another brand-new PC until at least one or two of those advance a level...)

I read Distant Wolds a few years after reading Pact Worlds, and it was fascinating to see what had changed dramatically in the time between the PF and SF eras, and what was still largely the same.

I spent a year in grad school in Normal, IL (GDW's hometown) a couple years before the company went under. I tried Dangerous Journeys very briefly, in demos at the public library. It had some interesting ideas, but I found it overly arcane in its mechanics (a all-too-common tendency for Gygax's work). It felt like it was trying to be both D&D *and* GURPS, and fell flat on both counts.

I am very excited to play Final Assessment soon! I'll be playing this with my character who survived Scoured Stars Invasion at 1st level, and eventually helped kill Dhurus once she hit double digits.

Though that illustration does concern me. I have Sneaking Suspicions[TM] about what it means--some good, some bad....

I'm very much enjoying the Galaxy Guide so far, but have one major quibble: It badly needs an index! It's going to be hard to look up info on a specific world unless you can memorize what's in each genre category.

The majority of my PF1 experience has been with Society play, which is ill-suited to any romance plots directly involving PCs. I only gave a handful of my PCs anything resembling a lovelife, and that was strictly offstage during downtime.

I have been in a handful of non-PFS games where one or more PCs acquired a romantic interest, but as others have said, that's very much up to what the players want and are comfortable with. I'm currently in one homebrew campaign where my PC is the one with a romantic subplot. Our party rescued several acolytes of the cleric PC's god, and one, a half-orc, now travels with us to escape her racist hometown and learn from our cleric. She also hero-worships my half-orc fighter, who has been very protective of her from the start due to their shared outsider status. My PC has been careful to not take advantage of her, but they've grown closer over the past few months, and now with winter approaching, it was kind of inevitable that they started sharing a tent. And we mostly leave it at that.

I have been in campaigns where romance was much more prevalent, but most were in other systems. The kind of soap opera nonsense that could easily derail a typical d20 game is the meat and potatoes of (for example) the Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG.

Qimok is using Downtime to check a third box for Instructor for this scenario. This Chronicle gets him to 7th.

Fare thee well, Jek! Hope you see you around again sometime!

I'm currently reading a collection of Roman dramas, three plays each by Plautus, Terence, and Seneca.

Plautus's plots will feel familiar to anyone who's seen or read Shakespeare's comedies, because he was one of the Bard's favorite authors to plunder for plots and stock characters. (For example, "The Menaechmi" is the mold for the twins separated at birth and mistaken identity gimmicks Willy loved so much.)

I've only read the first of the Terence plays so far, but it was largely more of the same. So far, the book is Interesting because I've never read any Roman plays before, but these soap opera farces aren't my usual cup of tea.

I'm looking forward much more to Seneca's plays, which just from the titles (Medea, Oedipus, Thyestes) promise something more in the Greek tragedy vein. (I'm also partial to Medea as a character because I used her to very good effect in the Greek myth solo game I ran for my wife. Her hero quickly learned to hate and fear witches--but the truly legendary ones most of all.)

I started playing D&D in the mid-80s with Basic and Expert, then AD&D 1E. As 2E, 3E, and 3.5 came out, I readily adopted each new rules set as my go-to game. But 4E failed to grab me--it was the first edition that I wasn't excited to GM. So my group and I stuck with 3.5 for about 10 years, until we finally decided to try PF 1E. Then we pretty much left D&D behind--though I did frequently convert material from my sizable D&D library to PF.

My wife and I tried out PFS sometime during the next couple years, and that soon became a large percentage of our gaming. I had mostly run homebrew campaigns up to that point, but eventually got burnt out on the amount of prep work required, so organized play let me keep scratching the GMing itch for much less work.

When Starfinder came out, it took a little time to get traction in our area, but once it did (mid/late-S1 of SFS), that became a regular part of our diet, too.

Similarly, PF 2E faced resistance from many of our local regulars (including the store owner, who was perfectly happy to host it but decided it wasn't his thing after playing a few times). But between the end of new 1E PFS material and my wife becoming a VO, 2E soon vied with 1E for our game of choice.

Somewhere along the way, we tried out D&D 5E. I enjoyed it, both as a player and GM, but it just wasn't as robust as PF1 or PF2. My kids (who were teens at the time) got into it far more, and it was definiteky their (and their friends') game of choice for a few yesrs. But then the 6E OGL fiasco soured all of us on playing more 5E, or wanting to ever try 6E.

I still play PF1, just not as much as I used to. Some of us locals who regularly GMed PF1 formed a weekly round-robin group (which went online during covid and has atayed there). We're be wrapping up our latest campaign in the next couple months, and I'm not sure if the group will continue. My wife and I also started playing in an old friend's PF1 homebrew game, but we're the two remote players in an otherwise in-person game, which can be challenging at times.

There is a lot that I like better about 1E and a lot I like better about 2E, and I'm not really sure how to articulate my reasons. I haven't yet GMed 2E, which is probably the longest that I've ever played a RPG without taking a turn as GM. But with SF2 coming out, I've decided to try running that early on, which means that--as my wife and eldest child put it--"then you can come run PF2 with us, too!"

There are still some 1E adventures that I very much want to play or run, but I can see that the end of my engagement with thst edition is looming on the horizon. Keeping two versions of two RPGs straight in your head is a lot of work, and probably not viable long-term.

Is there also a rework of the Organized Play systems in the works? A more maneuverable boon purchase system would be amazing!

This would be the single most welcome thing to happen in the parts of the Paizo site where I spend any significant amount of time, but it sounds like we will have to keep waiting a bit longer for that...

I forgot the +2 bonus to Perception we get in the complex thanks to Camily. So Qimok gets a 28!

Even if we have to adjust the armor for Borq, that's only a DC 24 engineering check for level 7 armor. Ears can easily take 10 to do that. Armor also becomes more effective against radiation at 7th level, in case that become relevant.

Qimok is pushing up against his encumbered limit, but a null-space chamber won't help him much, as it's mostly from his arsenal of weapons.

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.

Another element to think about is the fact that, as an inquisitor, you're a divine caster. In the default setting of Golarion, that means you serve a patron god, who will have certain expectations about your behavior. Depending on the campaign, that may just mean the basic rule of staying within one alignment step of your god. But there are also sourcebooks like Inner Sea Gods that go into more detail about the tenets of the faith and the role of its priests.

[I realize that this is the 1E forum, but the entries for gods in 2E do an excellent job of summing up the god's expectations in a few Edicts and Anathema. A look at those might help you find some ideas for that list of principles that you're looking for.]

Given your character's origins, would his patron be an archdevil, or the god of his mother's church? In either case, I could see literal "law" being a core concern for him. Laws bring order, but require study to understand properly. And those who understand the laws best also know how where the loopholes are, which they can legally exploit--which could promote more order overall, or make a mockery of it, depending on the circumstances.

I played a dwarf stonelord paladin to 14th or 15th level in PFS. Easily the best AC for his level of any PC I've made, because defensive stance without waiting to qualify for a prestige class is very good.

The two main challenges that I had with the build were:

1. You give up smite, which is a big part of a standard paladin's damage output. Mine never did as much damage as other martials of his level, but feats and weapon enchantments can help with that.

2. The action economy can take some practice to get used to, especially if you enemy doesn't conveniently stand still. You won't get as many mercies, but you want fatigue to be your first one so that can: move (break stance, become fatigued); swift to lay on hands (remove fatigue); standard to attack; then, next turn, swift to re-enter the stance if you're adjacent to a target. There is also an option at higher level that lets you take a 5-ft step without losing the stance.

It's taken a little over a year, but I finally marked off the last two boxes on my Game Store Owner boon last week. And that makes me curious: What kinds of characters have other Starfinder GMs out there applied this boon to?

My game store owner is Anohana, proprietor of Blue Shift Games on Absalom Station (portraits here and here). I very much used the boon as the starting point of her concept, and she's just reached 4th level (mostly through GM credit, but I have played her a couple of times, and hope to again at some cons this year).

I made her a samsaran vidgamer witchwarper. She routinely gets flashes from past lives, virtual realities, and alternate worlds, respectively, so occasionally gets a little confused about which reality she's operating at every given moment. But that rich array of experiences gives her plenty of inspiration for new game material. She's a member of the Advocates faction, because she sees playing games as an excellent way to help people bond with others, and escape from their own troubles for a time.

Anohana was born to lashunta parents on Castrovel, so had vestigial antennae, but did not actually possess telepathy until very recently, when she was finally able to afford a limited telepathy graft. She has also learned a couple of spells that duplicate innate lashunta magic, because her family identity remains important to her. As a samsaran, she matured and ages more slowly than the rest of her family, so she doesn't look much older than her nephew Query, who provides tech support for her store--and occasionally her Starfinder missions. (Anohona may be a vidgamer, but she's hopeless with any other tech.)

Because I don't know how many more new characters I'll be making for SFS 1E with 2E on the horizon, I am also loading up Anohana with as many boons as I can. Besides Game Store Owner and Samsaran Admittance, she also started off as the beneficiary of two boons earned by my high-level Wayfinder PC: Alien Allies (apply a race boon without using the Personal boon slot) and Forum Member (stat boost to a new 1st-level protege). With her Personal slot freed up, I was able to finally give someone the Possessed Augmentation boon that I received at my first SFS con game a few years ago. (You can see hers in her portraits.)

I've not played either an arcanist or a psychic, so can't speak about those. I've not played a wizard to high level in Pathfinder (my PFS diviner only ever got to 3rd level, so never got to start the harrower PrC I was aiming at for her).

I have played a sorcerer to 10th level and witch to 14th level in PFS. The sorcerer was primarily a blaster with a smattering of other spells (enchantment and summoning from his serpentine bloodline, and basic personal buffs like mirror image). He was almost more "diplomancer" than spellcaster, who acquired land and titles during his career--despite being a obvious foreigner (nagaji) in Taldor.

The witch was interesting because I gave her an archetype (white-haired witch) that gave up one of the class's signature abilities (hexes). The big challenge with her was keeping the hair schtick useful and relevant with only a half-BAB class. Around level 9 or so, she had finally learned enough potent offensive spells that she rarely ever used her hair in combat again except to provide flanking to others, and make the occasional AoO (both with hefty reach). She didn't really specialize in any particular kinds of spells, but her spellbook did end up having a few distinct groups of spells:

* "Fix this problem tomorrow" spells (remove blindness, remove curse, etc., and eventually even raise dead). With the exception of heal, she rarely prepared these unless she already had a patient to treat.
* Mobility (fly, overland travel, dimension door).
* Nasty tricks that she had experienced as the victim at some point (blindness, black tentacles, feeblemind) and was petty enough to want to try on others. These spells basically filled the save-or-suck hex itch for her.

For a (very slightly) less extreme example, I played a character to 20th level who had the Vital Strike feat tree and an impact earthbreaker:

3d6 base damage
×3 crit multiplier = +6d6
Greater Vital Strike = +9d6

= Total 18d6 on Vital Strike crit (plus 3x his considerable static bonus [>30] from Strength, enhancement bonus, and high-BAB Power Attack)

When I had to retire him, his average damage was around 80 hp per hit, or 180 hp with a crit.

I'm pretty sure a PF2 AP has you briefly meet some Contemplatives on Akiton - who's to say a few didn't decide to make the trip back to Golarion with those heroes?

Contemplatives have been part of PF since 1E. Distant Worlds, the gazetteer for the other planets in Golarion's solar system, includes the Contemplatives of Ashok in the chapter on Akiton and in its bestiary appendix.

On a side note, reading Distant Worlds for the first time a few years after reading Pact Worlds was quite fascinating! The Starfinder developers clearly used all that lore as starting points, but some worlds have changed MUCH more radically than others. (One example: The chapter on Apostae makes zero mention of the drow, so their dominance of the planet clearly dates to a much later period.)

The longest running solo player game I've run used BESM 3E. As with most RPGs designed for a group of PCs, there are a lot of factors to take into account with a single player (action economy, more gaps in skills, getting stuck if that one PC fails at a critical moment, etc.). But we've made it work, mostly by making her character fairly powerful on her own, giving her an NPC companion, and having many situations resolved through role-playing rather than fighting.

Trail of Cthulhu and Gumshoe have "Confidential" campaign books designed for one player and one GM, but I haven't played either version of either game. But from what I've heard on the creators' podcast, the saving grace of those solo games is that the base game system takes the approach that the PCs are highly competent at their professions, and always get the clue they need to continue to the next part of the story. Failure just means that progress comes at a higher price (expending more resources, getting injured, etc.).

The two most powerful ranged attack builds that I've seen in play were both in the same game, which went from 1st to 19th levels through a mix of two APs and a few high-level modules & PFS scenarios.

One was my wife's zen archer monk, which she didn't even put a lot of effort into optimizing--at least compared with the two compulsive min-maxers in that group. By the end, she could hit anything on the map, and it was nearly impossible to hit her or make her fail a save.

The other was a warpriest with an improvised thrown weapon build. I don't know the details of that build at all, just that magic items with higher CLs counted as higher-bonus magic weapons in their hands. So they carried a bunch of 1st-level pearls of power, because those are obscenely cheap for their high CL. And if they didn't need to overcome DR, or didn't think they'd have time to collect all their pearls after a fight, they just threw regular old bricks at the enemy.

In contrast, my melee-monster PC went the Vital Strike route, and frequently one-shot enemies with his impact earthbreaker. But those other two easily had him beat on DPS for most of the campaign, simply from their greater number of attacks per round.