With the discovery of an uncharted, resource-rich, and uninhabited planet in the Vast, several factions begin a joint settlement effort, and the heroes are given the chance to be the scouts and administrators of one such charter. As they explore the surrounding wilderness and grow their new settlement, they must contend with all manner of problems, from wild animal attacks to dissatisfied settlers. And the planet holds mysteries beyond counting!
"Planetfall" is a Starfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for four 1st-level characters. This adventure begins the Horizons of the Vast Adventure Path, a six-part, bimonthly campaign in which the heroes are at the forefront of exploring and charting a world filled with mystery. This volume also includes a new system for expanding a fledgling settlement on a new planet, a player's guide, and a selection of strange alien creatures.
Each bimonthly full-color softcover Starfinder Adventure Path volume contains a new installment of a series of interconnected science-fantasy quests that together create a fully developed plot of sweeping scale and epic challenges. Each 64-page volume of the Starfinder Adventure Path also contains in-depth articles that detail and expand the Starfinder campaign setting and provide new rules, a host of exciting new monsters and alien races, a new planet to explore and starship to pilot, and more!
Basics- INTO THE UNKNOWN! Settle a planet and fend off the wildlife AND the friends you brought along the way in this Kingmaker in Space adventure!
Mechanics or Crunch- This adventure focuses on building and exploring a location. The problem with this and most other RPGs of this kind is randomness. Each hex has a random chance to happen there unless something is scripted. This problem can lead to you having way too many encounters to the point the book even says reduce the experience the players get. That feels a bit cheap. Couple that with the fact that there are only eight random encounters means players can get bored quickly with the encounters. There are scripted events and locations that do make things more fun, but be aware! It’s fun, but it can get a bit same-y for the fights. Most of the fun comes from the social and that is done well, but if a party just makes all murder hobos which are excellent in the bush, they will get decimated in town as they will be out maneuvered at every turn by the people they came to lead! 4/5
Theme or Fluff- Just like in the crunch, the story can get same-y if you are not careful. Depending on how players handle the world, they can spend tons of time just running around in circles exploring the same hexes again and again if they are slow. The town encounters and managing all the NPCs is the bulk of the story in this one. There is some toward the end showing the world is more than it might have seemed, but most of the time there is just town and other local claims to deal with as the bulk of the story. It’s fun, but this is an intro game that will help power level the characters more than dig deep into the story. 4/5
Execution- PDF? Yep. Hyperlinked? Yep. Solid Art? Yep. Good layout? Honestly yes. Paizo does books and adventures well. Paizo was a publishing company before an RPG company, and honestly that experience shows in a clean book that is easy to read. 5/5
Summary-There is a reason players wanted Kingmaker in space. You build a location and make it shine! This book sets the foundation for that, but like all foundations it takes time to set up. This one is a bit slow and honestly needs an expanded random encounter table as eight separate things is just not enough. Give me 20 or give me more set encounters in each place, even if they don’t advance the story! That right there would lift this WAY up in the ranks as even my players had almost memorized what the D8 meant for the coming encounter! The story that is here is fun and my players quickly learned to love and HATE some NPCs. That makes me happy as a GM. It goes almost without saying that I love Paizo’s bookmanship, so top marks there. It’s a good adventure that just needs a bit more for the random to keep things a bit more entertaining. 87 %
First thing here is that I have played this module as a player with 5 other Players and completed it.
I am currently GMing 3 other groups through this module right now, 2 just starting and one at the tail end of finishing it, so this is no read (not run or play) then post a review ASAP kind of thing. Those leave a lot to be desired I think, for me anyways, or those terrible one liners, "great fun" or "to hard" or one I just saw posted "stay away from".........
With that, I strongly beleave that as Paizo listened to us and gave us our "Kingmaker in Space" AP, it will get a full 5 stars from me (at least this starting module) from the get go, but it might not be for everyone, depending on the group and the GM specifically.
Positive +
* 1st Starfinder hexploration AP!!
* 25 named and interesting NPC Colonists to get some fun RP and interaction with
* Interesting events/encounters inside your Colony and out in the alien hex wilds the players will have to run into/deal with
* Building your very own space Colony subsystem`
* Multiple Factions that also have charters on this new world besides yours and you can choose from a list of official sponsors for your own Admin group
* Nice and colorfull Hex map
* A large variety of situations one can run into, not always solved by a laser blast :)
Needs work -
- Instead of a session 0 to just talk and make mechanical decisions with no player agency or NPC interactions, a much more organic approach would have worked much better. I had the party start in their nice Colony exploration ship in their bunks sleeping just before hitting orbit (nice to use maps provided in the AP is'nt it).
Then a couple of the named colonists woke 2 of them up with some hard won pointers. Then tipped off a meeting is to be held by their sponsor rep in an hour so get the other Admins up and have it all set up to score some points with this person from the get go. Worked wonders for character intro (as they were to busy with prep before hitting dirtside and just knew the other Admins (players) names only.
- The random encounters needed a lot of work to make them interesting, even using GEM was not much help. Elementals were just to bland so to spice it up a LOT more find interesting. Picking interesting creatures, weather effects and colony related encounters (IE a mis drop of supplies to gain resource points and items.
-To many empty hex's for my taste, and the placement seemed pretty strange til I picked up that there was to be an underground river system that was scrapped before final release (Thanks again Hilary for our forum chats!!).
- Admin (Party) motivation can be lacking at times so it takes a strong GM to guide them (ala Ezrand the sponsor rep) to keep them on pace for whats going on, building your colony and so forth.
- Wish there was more contact with other charters as that sets up other modules in the future quite well and not so out of the blue.
- No colony map.
- Credits can be hard to come by so every creature remains could be bought by dear old Ezrend for the parties Sponsor, and he could very well hand out bonus pay for discoveries made. That was a pretty glaring oversight not to have these things spelled out for credits and UPB rewards.
Overall I had a great time as a player in this and I am also having a blast GMing it for other groups. Just know that your GM skills might be put to the test to get the fullest out of this adventure for you and your group.
Great first module in the Horizons of the vast AP, do yourself a favor and pick this up if this theme type interests you and your players. Leaps and bounds above where we started with Dead Suns AP!!
You have to do a lot of improv to make this entire AP line work. There were some pretty serious "how do people live day to day" questions that went unanswered until later AP's or even completely unanswered.
Some of the encounters can be a bit rough, but that's nothing new for a starter AP. I felt the loot was a little sparse, especially if parties choose to flee from random encounters or skip optional events.
Speaking of which --- if you do EVERYTHING in these AP's, your group will be overlevelled, without fail. You either embrace this, or you'll need to cut some of the content.
In addition - vehicles are easily procured and give you 6 actions per day. This can result in serious incongruous expectations between how many hexes developers expected you to get through per in-game month versus how many you'll actually get through. I am consistently finding that my group has spent less-time on planet than the AP expects, so sorta like the Kingmaker CRPG (ironically!) you may have to spend time "catching up" and having several months go by of nothing but charter turns with no activity on the part of the players.
Finally - specific to AP 1: radiation in Starfinder is pretty nasty at low levels. Poison damage is mandatory even if you pass your save, and acute radiation exposure is a poison. Unless your players get clever with a couple of the encounters and "kite" enemies, they may have an unpleasant time at level 2 or even level 3.
Not to say I'm necessarily endorsing the approach of paving a new parking lot with orbital bombardment, but in that if there's nothing actively preventing it aside from morality & caution, then there's nothing actively preventing it so the possibility is going to need to be addressed.
We can argue about what we should or shouldn't do, but it's naïve to think that no one's going to get the idea in their heads and try it whether you think it's an ethical thing to do or even a good idea or not, and the AP should be prepared for this.
I can definitely see an argument for doing it although I don't personally agree, but based on my experience with Paizo APs I think its more likely they'll just not give you a ship until later in the story once the initial exploration phase is over. Of course we could then debate endlessly about the reasons for this and how plausible or not that is but at that point I don't think anyone would be convinced from their personal beliefs on the matter.
Not to say I'm necessarily endorsing the approach of paving a new parking lot with orbital bombardment, but in that if there's nothing actively preventing it aside from morality & caution, then there's nothing actively preventing it so the possibility is going to need to be addressed.
We can argue about what we should or shouldn't do, but it's naïve to think that no one's going to get the idea in their heads and try it whether you think it's an ethical thing to do or even a good idea or not, and the AP should be prepared for this.
I can definitely see an argument for doing it although I don't personally agree, but based on my experience with Paizo APs I think its more likely they'll just not give you a ship until later in the story once the initial exploration phase is over. Of course we could then debate endlessly about the reasons for this and how plausible or not that is but at that point I don't think anyone would be convinced from their personal beliefs on the matter.
Well my point is that anyone's personal beliefs on the matter are irrelevant to the fact - and I'm going to call it a fact - that if it's an option, someone is going to try it. regardless of whether or not anyone else thinks it's a good idea
And obviously an adventure path with a limited page count can't account for every possibility that players could come up with, but I feel that this is one worth addressing in some form or fashion. Whether that's structuring the adventure in a way that either prevents it from happening; i.e., not giving them a ship or insuring the ship they get doesn't have the ordinance to do it, or otherwise structuring the adventure in a way that bombing the planet from orbit won't actually cause that many problems, or providing the DM with advice of what to do in the scenario.
That's all I'm saying. I'm not condoning it or condemning it, I'm just acknowledging that if it can happen, it's going to happen at someone's table, so the possibility needs to be either eliminated or accounted for.
I just wanna build a space colony and deal with what assuredly will come with it. Animal attacks, 'alien' invasion, the demonic hellspawn that accidentally teleported onto the planet, the corporation that's hell bent on stealing the planet's resources out from under you, spies that infiltrate and try to destabilize your colony in an attempt to unseat you from power, and of course the giant and evil creature(s) that happens to live inside the planet that you accidentally wake up.
Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't realize that we can't have higher aspirations in this fictional game with technology and magic..
Your aspirations do not really matter.
You want to keep the environment intact? Don't colonize it.
But if you do it is guaranteed that they will not create a primitive society there which lives in harmony with nature, but a high tech society with all the environmental destruction that entails, even when they want to be ecologically friendly.
It's not actually that difficult to design ways for this not necessarily to be the case, and I do hope this AP has a reasonable amount of thought go into such ways.
It's not actually that difficult to design ways for this not necessarily to be the case, and I do hope this AP has a reasonable amount of thought go into such ways.
The more I think about this, the more convinced I become that environmental impact could easily be a non-issue.
Starfinder canonically has compact fusion reactors, which drastically reduces the environmental impact of power generation. Generation starships have canonically worked in the Starfinder universe, which means there are species that have mastered long-term sustainable closed-system food production in relatively small spaces, so agriculture does not have to devastate large amounts of the environment either. Advanced genetically engineered algae are mentioned in several places in the Pact Worlds, which implies that large-scale atmospheric CO2 sequestration via oceanic algal rafts should be possible if they need to counter global warming, as a sort of relatively minor terraforming (this is a technology we have all the technical capacity for today, though it would need a good bit of large-scale testing and refinement). Space elevators such as the one on Verces mean that one does not always have to disrupt a planet with the consequences of large-scale spaceship take-off and landing.
Of course, a lot depends on what resources the PCs have available particularly early on; almost all of the Starfinder universe is much less economically post-scarcity a setting than its tech level could in theory allow, and I can quite see how the kind of adventures and challenges that fit in the spread of genres Starfinder adventures cover do not necessarily fit with triumph through post-scarcity logistics. But I would hope that any reasonably informed Pact World adventurer should be aware of this scale of technological approach, even if they do not have it to hand in their situation, and that acquiring it should be a reasonable goal at the level of whatever this AP's equivalent of Kingmaker's kingdom-building is.
Also, on an unrelated point, the description of the AP and this first chapter is reminiscent of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, which is a thought I find very appealing.
It's not actually that difficult to design ways for this not necessarily to be the case, and I do hope this AP has a reasonable amount of thought go into such ways.
The more I think about this, the more convinced I become that environmental impact could easily be a non-issue.
Starfinder canonically has compact fusion reactors, which drastically reduces the environmental impact of power generation. Generation starships have canonically worked in the Starfinder universe, which means there are species that have mastered long-term sustainable closed-system food production in relatively small spaces, so agriculture does not have to devastate large amounts of the environment either. Advanced genetically engineered algae are mentioned in several places in the Pact Worlds, which implies that large-scale atmospheric CO2 sequestration via oceanic algal rafts should be possible if they need to counter global warming, as a sort of relatively minor terraforming (this is a technology we have all the technical capacity for today, though it would need a good bit of large-scale testing and refinement). Space elevators such as the one on Verces mean that one does not always have to disrupt a planet with the consequences of large-scale spaceship take-off and landing.
Of course, a lot depends on what resources the PCs have available particularly early on; almost all of the Starfinder universe is much less economically post-scarcity a setting than its tech level could in theory allow, and I can quite see how the kind of adventures and challenges that fit in the spread of genres Starfinder adventures cover do not necessarily fit with triumph through post-scarcity logistics. But I would hope that any reasonably informed Pact World adventurer should be aware of this scale of technological approach, even if they do not have it to hand in their situation, and that acquiring it should be a reasonable goal at the level of whatever this AP's equivalent of Kingmaker's...
You are still forgetting the basics.
The colonist need houseing which automatically means clearing large tracks of land. And not only the surface, for things like sanitation you need to dig.
Logistics and transportation is also an issue. Even when you use hover vehicles exclusively you need landing/parking space for them.
And you need industry. First simply to provide jobs for the population and also to make the colony self sufficient to an degree. If the colony would need to import everything without providing anything in return there would be no need for a colony in the first place. You could simple build a space station in the Pact System or settle on a Pact World if you just wanted living space.
And an industry needs resources which need to be extracted and there will likely also be waste both from the industry and from the people to take care of.
It will likely be more eco friendly than similar processes in the real world, but it would still have a big impact, much more so than clearing a space near a interesting site to land directly instead of trekking through wilderness.
I’m very glad Starfinder is more Space Opera and less simulationist, personally.
That might not be to everyone’s tastes but i much prefer spaceships that zoom, an economic system that’s quick, easy and focussed on game balance and abstracted weapons regulation to anything remotely realistic.
It feels to me like you are still assuming "basics" closer to contemporary RL than to what is established or implied in the Starfinder universe.
Quote:
The colonist need houseing which automatically means clearing large tracks of land.
Only if for some reason they want to or have to build out rather than up.
Quote:
And not only the surface, for things like sanitation you need to dig.
Another issue which has clearly been solved in a long-term sustainable way with relatively small space usage given the existence of successful generation starships; feeding your organic waste back into your farm tower seems the obvious solution here.
Quote:
Logistics and transportation is also an issue. Even when you use hover vehicles exclusively you need landing/parking space for them.
I am pretty sure the concept of the multi-story car park is still available to them.
Quote:
And you need industry. First simply to provide jobs for the population
An assumption which depends on the purpose and political perspective of the colony.
Quote:
and also to make the colony self sufficient to an degree. If the colony would need to import everything without providing anything in return there would be no need for a colony in the first place. You could simple build a space station in the Pact System or settle on a Pact World if you just wanted living space.
And an industry needs resources which need to be extracted and there will likely also be waste both from the industry and from the people to take care of.
The existence of assembly oozes has implications that to my mind make much of this a non-issue.
I’m very glad Starfinder is more Space Opera and less simulationist, personally.
That might not be to everyone’s tastes but i much prefer spaceships that zoom, an economic system that’s quick, easy and focussed on game balance and abstracted weapons regulation to anything remotely realistic.
I can sympathise with that generally, but for an AP that is being talked about as "Kingmaker in space" I am hoping that some congenially simulationist equivalent to the kingdom rules in Kingmaker might exist alongside the having-an-adventure level gaming.
(My tastes in space opera generally do run to the thinking-about-economics end of the genre, and there are many good authors out there who have fun adventures and solid/interesting approaches to economics both; Iain M. Banks, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ken MacLeod. So I don't see that level of solid world-building as in opposition to space opera adventures.)
I don't assume that because the Idari, a planetary "save our species" effort, has recycling technology that could be maintained for centuries because there was no choice with survival on the line that such technology is feasible or economical at subsistence colonization level.
Technology in use on the ISS doesn't tell us much about what's available to home builders clear cutting the Amazon rainforest.
It feels to me like you are still assuming "basics" closer to contemporary RL than to what is established or implied in the Starfinder universe.
Quote:
The colonist need houseing which automatically means clearing large tracks of land.
Only if for some reason they want to or have to build out rather than up.
Quote:
And not only the surface, for things like sanitation you need to dig.
Another issue which has clearly been solved in a long-term sustainable way with relatively small space usage given the existence of successful generation starships; feeding your organic waste back into your farm tower seems the obvious solution here.
Quote:
Logistics and transportation is also an issue. Even when you use hover vehicles exclusively you need landing/parking space for them.
I am pretty sure the concept of the multi-story car park is still available to them.
Quote:
And you need industry. First simply to provide jobs for the population
An assumption which depends on the purpose and political perspective of the colony.
Quote:
and also to make the colony self sufficient to an degree. If the colony would need to import everything without providing anything in return there would be no need for a colony in the first place. You could simple build a space station in the Pact System or settle on a Pact World if you just wanted living space.
And an industry needs resources which need to be extracted and there will likely also be waste both from the industry and from the people to take care of.
The existence of assembly oozes has implications that to my mind make much of this a non-issue.
Even when you build upward you need to lay a foundation and otherwise destroy the environment. Especially when the colony becomes successful. Do places like Tokyo or Mexico City look like untouched nature to you?
And a colony without industry is useless. What point would such a colony have? Breeding ground like a WH40K Hive City? Very ecological....
Those colonist need jobs which means industry. You can't keep a place running with just service industry.
And if there really is no industry how is the colony supplied? If everything has to be brought from the Pact System then there would not have been any reason to make a colony in Near Space in the first place.
I’m very glad Starfinder is more Space Opera and less simulationist, personally.
That might not be to everyone’s tastes but i much prefer spaceships that zoom, an economic system that’s quick, easy and focussed on game balance and abstracted weapons regulation to anything remotely realistic.
I can sympathise with that generally, but for an AP that is being talked about as "Kingmaker in space" I am hoping that some congenially simulationist equivalent to the kingdom rules in Kingmaker might exist alongside the having-an-adventure level gaming.
(My tastes in space opera generally do run to the thinking-about-economics end of the genre, and there are many good authors out there who have fun adventures and solid/interesting approaches to economics both; Iain M. Banks, Lois McMaster Bujold, Ken MacLeod. So I don't see that level of solid world-building as in opposition to space opera adventures.)
Yeah, I mean as default. I prefer a handwavy, dont think about it to much just roar through space, pew pew at baddies and talk to billions of species eithout pondering too much how lucky it is that no matter where you go, you always run into a level-appropriate problem that needs resolving.
I'm very much in favor of additive rules modules (I'd love to see some "simulate a business from corner shop to multi-stellar conglomerate" rules one day).
I agree it would be disappointing to play kingmaker without at least a passable attempt at simulation.
What spells from the spell lists can integrate nature and civilization to the point of minimalizing the colony impact? I really can't see any obvious low-level and widely available spells that accomplish this task.
Okay so while I did initially somewhat agree with Ixal - at least in so far as the notion of nuking the surface of the planet needed to be addressed in a manner more concrete than listing reasons why it shouldn't be done, I think this debate has gone afield of that to an extent & we're not striking at the core issue of what's actually being discussed.
So, to that end I'd like to ask Ixal with a few questions.
Do you play Starfinder primarily as a player, a DM, or just as a reader? Are the more realistic elements you apparently want in the setting things you want because you think they'd be fun challenges to overcome as a player or fun challenges to present your players as a DM, or is it simply a preference on the style of fiction you consume?
I'm going to stress that I do not personally think that either the harder or softer version of sci fi is inherently superior to the other. I think it's about preference & tone. So I'm not saying that you're wrong for liking/wanting more realistic elements in the setting. I'm not saying that incorporating them would make the setting worse. I'm also not saying that incorporating them would make the setting better, either. It's a matter of preference.
There's also no way to resolve this that would please everyone. There is no balance between these elements that is going to please everyone because the rules will always either be too loose for some people or too strict for others.
I also think it's clear at this point into Starfinder's development as a system & setting that these more hardline realistic world elements you seem to want are most likely not going to be the direction Paizo goes in.
So with all that said, I think the question for you is, do you put in the effort as a DM to incorporate these elements yourself? Or, as a player, do you bring it up to your table that you'd like it if these types of elements were incorporated & trust your DM to implement them well?
I apologize if this was all a bit presumptuous, but I see you voicing similar criticisms in a lot of threads & I don't know what other solutions to offer you.
Honestly I expect the biggest reason we won't see any discussion of using ship weapons to clear landing space is for space-saving reasons. It takes a lot less words to say 'the PCs can always find a clear landing zone' than it does to write about the options around using ship weapons to clear space and /or the alternatives. Ultimately a lot of the questions regarding environmental impact will probably be ignored/left as GM discretion unless it's specifically encounter relevant. I'm fine with it because in my opinion most of the issues can be hand-waived away by magic or future tech but I do get the appeal and honestly I expect there will be some pretty heavy modifications to this AP in a lot of groups.
Honestly I expect the biggest reason we won't see any discussion of using ship weapons to clear landing space is for space-saving reasons. It takes a lot less words to say 'the PCs can always find a clear landing zone' than it does to write about the options around using ship weapons to clear space and /or the alternatives. Ultimately a lot of the questions regarding environmental impact will probably be ignored/left as GM discretion unless it's specifically encounter relevant. I'm fine with it because in my opinion most of the issues can be hand-waived away by magic or future tech but I do get the appeal and honestly I expect there will be some pretty heavy modifications to this AP in a lot of groups.
Of course there won't be rules about the environmental impact of the colony. You would need to work very hard to ruin the environment in such a short time anyway.
I was just (negatively) surprised on how horrified some people were about creating a small landing space to save travel times when the focus of the AP is to build (multiple?) cities on possibly several planets.
So yeah, the entire point was that Paizo would hopefully think about the possibilities SF offers instead of reverting to PF style thinking and having the PCs travel on foot through the wilderness. And hopefully they also do not share the naivety displayed here about environmental destruction but have a more realistic picture of the impact of colonies so that they are not surprised when PCs blow up some trees to land directly at where they wanted to instead of running the gauntlet Paizo expected them to.
It will be interesting anyway how and if the adventure manages the options provided in the starship operation manual, namely VIs, so that you can have someone controlling the ship without a PC staying on board, and orbital weapons.
Honestly I expect the biggest reason we won't see any discussion of using ship weapons to clear landing space is for space-saving reasons. It takes a lot less words to say 'the PCs can always find a clear landing zone' than it does to write about the options around using ship weapons to clear space and /or the alternatives. Ultimately a lot of the questions regarding environmental impact will probably be ignored/left as GM discretion unless it's specifically encounter relevant. I'm fine with it because in my opinion most of the issues can be hand-waived away by magic or future tech but I do get the appeal and honestly I expect there will be some pretty heavy modifications to this AP in a lot of groups.
Of course there won't be rules about the environmental impact of the colony. You would need to work very hard to ruin the environment in such a short time anyway.
I was just (negatively) surprised on how horrified some people were about creating a small landing space to save travel times when the focus of the AP is to build (multiple?) cities on possibly several planets.
So yeah, the entire point was that Paizo would hopefully think about the possibilities SF offers instead of reverting to PF style thinking and having the PCs travel on foot through the wilderness. And hopefully they also do not share the naivety displayed here about environmental destruction but have a more realistic picture of the impact of colonies so that they are not surprised when PCs blow up some trees to land directly at where they wanted to instead of running the gauntlet Paizo expected them to.
It will be interesting anyway how and if the adventure manages the options provided in the starship operation manual, namely VIs, so that you can have someone controlling the ship without a PC staying on board, and orbital weapons.
I do expect they'll think about starship travel, but the answer they give will probably be a simple sentence saying how many hexes a starship can travel in a certain amount of time, and the assumption will be that the ship can land unless stated otherwise. I think this is fine because I personally wanted Starfinder to be Pathfinder in space, and if I wanted more a more hard science fantasy I'd play a different RPG, but I do get that not everyone shares this view.
I do expect they'll think about starship travel, but the answer they give will probably be a simple sentence saying how many hexes a starship can travel in a certain amount of time, and the assumption will be that the ship can land unless stated otherwise. I think this is fine because I personally wanted Starfinder to be Pathfinder in space, and if I wanted more a more hard science fantasy I'd play a different RPG, but I do get that not everyone shares this view.
Unless you measure time in hours the answer to how many hexes a starship (or just hover vehicle) travels is "all of them".
I do expect they'll think about starship travel, but the answer they give will probably be a simple sentence saying how many hexes a starship can travel in a certain amount of time, and the assumption will be that the ship can land unless stated otherwise. I think this is fine because I personally wanted Starfinder to be Pathfinder in space, and if I wanted more a more hard science fantasy I'd play a different RPG, but I do get that not everyone shares this view.
Unless you measure time in hours the answer to how many hexes a starship (or just hover vehicle) travels is "all of them".
Assumedly yes, although there may very well be some limitations/roadblocks introduced to make it feel more adventure-y.
I don't assume that because the Idari, a planetary "save our species" effort, has recycling technology that could be maintained for centuries because there was no choice with survival on the line that such technology is feasible or economical at subsistence colonization level.
Technology in use on the ISS doesn't tell us much about what's available to home builders clear cutting the Amazon rainforest.
That strikes me as a false equivalence.
I think a closer comparison would be, if Venus actually was the tropical rain-forest of some early pulp-SF stories, how would the tech available for establishing a base there compare to what people have on the ISS?
Heck, give it a few levels and PCs can just HALO jump out of their ship and use various forms of flight to land without damaging the surroundings and again to re-enter their ship.
It’s not exactly a return to the initial approach (as on the off months of AP releases there’ll be a module) but it does mean a six part AP will take a year to release.
Speaking as a group playing through all of them, the change is great for us - gives us a bit of a chance to catch up as one AP every six months is a little quicker than we can play. Provided there’s enough adventures out there to keep us going, it doesn’t really matter how long it takes for an AP to come out. I wouldn’t start playing one until I had all six instalments anyhow.
There are 98 posts on this page and most of them are two guys fighting about why glassing a planet or even part of a planet is a bad idea and while I think dropping bombs to clear foilage is silly, I sort of want the whole argument to just sort of go away.
Having said that, love the look of this AP and hope it lives up the premise.
