In the wake of the upheaval to interstellar travel caused by the galaxy-wide Drift Crisis, countless new worlds await exploration by eager and opportunistic starfarers. Ports of Call, the latest hardcover resource for the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, presents 10 highly detailed spaceports and settlements across all of space, from Drifter’s End on Absalom Station to the rebuilt megacity of Izadamar in the Scoured Stars to the to the wonders of the theme-park planet of Golarion World! Other featured locales include a collection of warships called the Bastion that protects against the insectile hordes of the alien Swarm or the starship port of Skydock on Verces. Each location provides area maps, regional overviews and customs, local character options like equipment and spells, copious adventure hooks, and more, offering a huge selection of interesting sites for stopovers or long-term stays.
Along with all this, Ports of Call also features:
An overview and poster-sized map of the Starfinder galaxy.
New rules for easier and faster hyperspace travel along Drift Lanes, a new phenomenon coming out of the Drift Crisis
Four new player character species, including giants, sentient oozelike selamids, the gaseous thyrs, and the reptilian xulgaths of Lost Golarion.
Expanded downtime rules, new starship options, a cargo subsystem, new NPCs, a score of new side job adventures, and much more!
Written by: Kate Baker, Brian Bauman, Jessica Catalan, John Compton, John Curtin, John Feil, Sen H.H.S. Joan Hong, Jenny Jarzabski, Jason Keeley, Dennis Muldoon, Hilary Moon Murphy, Chesley Oxendine, Emily Parks, Joe Pasini, Jessica Redekop, Paul Scofield, Shay Snow, Kendra Leigh Speedling, Alex Speidel, Jason Tondro, Andrew White, Shan Wolf, and Isis Wozniakowska
ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-514-4
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
The overall writing in this book is rather good if it's topic is something that interests you. It definitely isn't the sort of book I'd consider a must-buy because of it's narrow scope, but would normally be still something I would recommend.
Unfortunately I know I can't really recommend the pdf too heavily because of one of the great qualities of a paizo book is being immensely left down here. While the individual pieces of artwork in book look as though they were designed with the same level of skill as any other Paizo book, that something went wrong during the creation of this book that has lead to all of the art being compressed, giving all of the art a glitchy appearance.
With small pieces of art this is less noticable, but with any artwork of some size or detail it becomes rather unpleasant to look at. This is especially true with the chapter opening art and the artworks for the titular Ports. If Paizo went back and fixed this book, I would definitely be raising my rating, but as is I can't see myself giving above a 3 for a book that just has blurry messes for what would normally be gorgeous artworks if not for however they handled incorporating the artworks in this book.
From photos I've seen, it looks like the art might be fine in physical copies, but cannot confirm as I only have the pdf.
This was a great book- lots of adventure hooks, lost of interesting places to set a campaign in. Still want some actual adventure content though.
The map...lets leave aside that fact that it doubles down on how small the galaxy feels in Starfinder to the point where Drift Lanes feel kinda pointless. I haven't thought about my astrophysics degree in literally years outside of some coding stuff I still use. Looking at this map took me right back to 3rd year Galaxy formation and Stellar Lifecycle modules.
That's not how galaxies work. That's definitely not how galactic collisions look. HOW BIG IS THAT BLACK HOLE?! It's HUNDREDS OF LIGHTYEARS ACROSS?! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH MASS THAT WOULD TAKE?! IT WOULD OUTWEIGH THE REST OF THE GALAXY BY SO MANY ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE I CAN'T EVEN THINK!
Also it just looks more like a nebula then a galaxy.
Stuff is spread haphazardly, with very little regard for anything that makes sense. (if the Veskarium is near space, then most of the galaxy is near space)
Starfinder's Ports of Call simultaneously shows off the innovative and creative spark that has pushed Starfinder beyond simply being a between-editions flash in the pan idea at Paizo while also highlighting some of its frustrating editorial choices and its struggle to present an AAA product on a reduced budget because of the obvious favoritism for Pathfinder 2e by its corporate owners.
Before I start, I would like to also note that the PDF version of this has had some of the worst typographical errors I've ever seen, with whole chunks of words ripped out. Probably some formatting issue from a copy and paste that never got corrected.
Anyways --
Let's break it down.
Chapter 1 - Traveling the Galaxy
The Galaxy - Some interesting high level stellar cartography about some of the major areas of the Pathfinder/Starfinder galaxy. Nothing that really jumps out, a lot of very vague 'hooks' that could afford to expanded on.
The Map - Ugh. More on this later.
Drift Lanes - Two steps forward. One step back. The idea of Drift Lanes is great, but it is ridiculously undercut (and the Drift Crisis itself sabotaged) by the very first paragraph in this section: We're back to 1d6 days to Absalom, 3d6 to Near Space, and 5d6 to the Vast. So regardless of where you are in the galaxy, it's still 1-6 days to get back to Absalom, rendering Drift Lanes near-irrelevant. At least you tried!
The Conqueror's Path drift lane doesn't actually seem to cross Kehtaria's path?
Galactic Adventuring - If you're new to Starfinder, the GMG probably explains the various adventures you can have in Starfinder better than this section.
New races
Giants - Nice! I especially love the Fire Giant - armor penalty reduced, fire resistance, AND a 10 foot reach!
Selamids - Weren't these guys in Dead Suns? I"Ve been playing this game too long.
Thry - cool I guess
Xulgath - Huh, interesting Darklands race to choose to bring into SF.
Expanded Downtime - There are some good choices here. I was especially happy with Divinity, which allows a mechanical method by which to bestow blessings on pious characters. Cook Feast and Mech Systems Diagnostics are both good. And Starship System Diagnostics. Can it wait for a bit, Shepherd? I'm in the middle of some calibrations.
Ship Systems - What's an Arcane Rail? Seems like they just out and out didn't bother describing it. Is it like an arcane railgun? What's a Hawser?
Chapter 2 - Ports
Anduwar - Love it. Great addition to the galaxy. Glad to have the Giants decide on a place to call home.
Giant Feats - Definitely focused on combat maneuevers and STR but since I play a lot of those characters I didn't mind. Situational as always.
Atuity - What the Hell's going on here? Azlanti don't treat with the Vesk. They blew away the last colony they ever put up near them and asked questions later. What's with the kinder, gentler non-racist Azzies? Yeesh. Boring. I guess if you wanted Cold War Berlin/Denver in Shadowrun spy intrigues it makes an interesting locale. Otherwise forgettable.
Drifter's End - There is a vocal minority of Starfinder players who just don't want to leave Absalom Station, and this is the place for them.
Golarion World - Did I catch some of the in-character dialogue referring to theme park employee as "cast members"? Someone at Paizo is in love with The Mouse™. Yeccchh. If you've got theatre kids who love to pretend to have enough money to go to the Galactic Starcruiser at Disney World, this is the place for you. Or alternately if you have Pathfinder players who constantly remind you about how Pathfinder 2e has a three action economy. Imagine the hilarity at the table of Starfinder characters breaking the 4th wall and grumbling about how they miss Golarion World's 3-action-economy and ORC licensing! Wackiness ensues!
Izadamar - If you care about the Scoured Stars, great. If you're not into Starfinder Society drama and history, skip.
Jhavam - One of two university locations, and the more original of the two.
Outpost Zed - an oldie from Against the Aeon Throne. I'm okay with this legacy content (especially because it has a couple of new pieces of art). Definitely a section to read if you haven't played Against the Aeon Throne and want to. Though apparently its maximum item level went way up?
Precipice - One of the glaring examples of the creative bankruptcy that is rampant in Paizo's writing staff of late. Paizo staff LOVE to take an existing location that is held by an oppressive, evil race, liberate it between splats with no thought about the geopolitical repercussions involved, and then brag about how they've "fixed" a problematic aspect of Golarion on Twitter instead of coming up with something uniquely theirs.
Oh, an apartheid city held by an evil, oppressive snobby group that's now a freeport pirate town? Yeah I think I remember seeing that in Pathfinder 2e recently. What the Hell is this even doing here? Can we please leave the Pact Worlds and go elsewhere? And even if you needed two major ports to be in the Pact Worlds, why this one? What is the Diaspora asteroid belt? Chopped liver? You could've done a nine page spread on Broken Rock instead. Snazzy art though.
Deep Delver archetype - Niche content at best.
Shulgi Station - A gateway to the Astral Plane. If you don't know what that is it's because Paizo has not spared more than a dozen words on describing it in Starfinder. Loved the art of the Embri Hellknight. A few good spells though. Theatre kids LOVE Capricious Cats!
Uzodia - The other of the two university locations, and the unoriginal of the two. It's just the Magaambya, in space. Right down to the aesthetics! Way to step out of Pathfinder's shadow on this one. Paizo also LOVES to take one 'good progressive allyship' idea and just run with it, shoving it into a setting whose lead designers have constantly insisted don't want to be in Pathfinder's shadow. Lazy and pandering. Pf2e fans are STILL not gonna play SF, sorry.
Other Ports - Hit or miss. Mostly meh. Some of the better ones are below.
Bulwark - Now here's the kind of sci-fi content I'm here for. It only gets two pages, but that's okay because I have a sneaking suspicion it'll play a part in the new AP coming after Scoured Stars. Still, it could've gotten a 6 page spread with the potential here.
Skydock, Locus-1, Gaskari - Playing the greatest hits. Don't really think they warranted their own write-ups. Locus-1 is NOT that interesting.
Ternia - Oh that's really cool Glabrezu art...waitaminute, Starfinder doesn't even HAVE statted Glabrezu, and never will thanks to the OGL controversy!!! What kind of a tease is that?!
Accord/Magic/Religion/Tech ports - Paragraph-sized hooks for dial-a-space-station. This could have been done using the GMG.
Chapter 3 - Travelers Toolbox
Cargo Subsystem - This was meh in FFoD and it's meh here, because it's just been copy/pasted and hasn't been overhauled since Jason Tondro's initial pass. Sad.
Trader NPC's - Cool if you need them I guess
Jobs - Interesting, but with Drift Crisis there's PLENTY of adventure hooks swimming around out there, so I'm not sure these were needed. Would have liked more focus on the books itself.
THE MAP
Okay, let's talk about the Map. This will probably be the only starmap that will ever be released for Starfinder, so it's sad that it's so underwhelming and stuck mainly to places listed in the book, with a few exceptions. I bought Embers of the Imperium for Genesys this same month and the galaxy map in that book is CRAMMED with locations, every single inch.
Would it really have been so hard to pick some random spots in the empty spaces to place some of the famous locations from the various AP's that have been released? Suskillon? Weydana? The GATE OF THE TWELVE SUNS of Dead Suns, maybe?! Nope. Nope. Nope. All they had to do was throw darts at a sketch on a map or something and couldn't be bothered. What a huge middle finger.
Four new player character species, including giants, sentient oozelike selamids, the gaseous thyrs, and the reptilian xulgaths of Lost Golarion.
Interesting how selamids are getting a reprint. I suppose it's safe to assume the other Dead Suns species aren't going to be updated in the combined version?
Also, playable giants? I'm very interested to see how those work but it's definitely a niche that isn't being served.
My gut tells me (i.e. if precedent holds) it'll be the Galactic Trade rules from Fly Free or Die, possibly revised and/or expanded to a slight degree.
Tondro said that the original design doc was a lot longer than what the page count in FFoD allowed for. If it's an expanded reprint I'll certainly be happy because I love the system and would love to see more done with it.
Wow, four new species to play with. And the best for me, the whole map of the galaxy!! At least :) Can't wait for the book.
Just a simple question, is the map going to be present inside the book with a bit of explanation of the different regions/empires/factions?? That would be awasome.
Pathfinder Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
So, obviously I'm super thrilled we're going to be getting a galaxy map for Starfinder (like, super thrilled), but, guilty admission, possibly my most favorite thing announced just now for this book is playable Xulgaths. I've been playing a shapeshifting Astrazoan who switches between alternate identities, the most frequent of which being this undead xulgath named Father Eroboam. I've had so much fun with this character, and getting a little rules and lore guidance for them is going to be so nice! Never expected these little buddies to get the spotlight like this, or even make an appearance.
I seriously can't wait to get my hands on this book. Drift Crisis has been an absolute blast so far, and we're still on book one! Quality of Starfinder books lately feels like it's hitting renaissance! I only wish I was GMing so I could read the APs all the way through myself. Seriously, thanks for the awesome toys, Starfinder devs! You people are the best.
Four new player character species, including giants, sentient oozelike selamids, the gaseous thyrs, and the reptilian xulgaths of Lost Golarion.
Interesting how selamids are getting a reprint. I suppose it's safe to assume the other Dead Suns species aren't going to be updated in the combined version?
Also, playable giants? I'm very interested to see how those work but it's definitely a niche that isn't being served.
Sidenote, I suspect this is because they figured out they should introduce/detail ooze species then realized they could expand on species that already exists in starfinder
My gut tells me (i.e. if precedent holds) it'll be the Galactic Trade rules from Fly Free or Die, possibly revised and/or expanded to a slight degree.
Tondro said that the original design doc was a lot longer than what the page count in FFoD allowed for. If it's an expanded reprint I'll certainly be happy because I love the system and would love to see more done with it.
Ug. I was hoping for a slightly more realistic cargo system. Starfinder cargo capacity is hilariously tiny; the largest crb starfinder freighter would have trouble filling an average Target. Any Amazon warehouse probably does more business in a single day than an entire colony freighter.
Pretty small annoyance, all things considered, but it takes me out of the game every time I come across it.
So, have you seen a 40' fuel tanker truck or railcar?
That has an equal cargo capacity as one of the tankers starships. Heck, let's be generous and assume a tanker can haul double that, that one of these 40' tank cars is equal to a single cargo hold. But going off the capacity of cargo holds as described in the CRB, you aren't fitting much more than that.
It's a game, not a simulator, so this is definitely not something I would want them to prioritize over game mechanics, but like I said it takes me out of the game every time I think about it.
Edit: All that would take to make me happy is some descriptive text that bays get bigger as your ship does, so the capacity of a large bay is twice that of a small bay, or something like that. No real need to put rules text on it, but adding something to this chart would be a good place to do so:
"And after I made all those Path--er--Starfinders do all that cover work to obscure my true home world evillaugh.exe: NOT FOUND!Majesticevilpose: NOT FOUND!"
PZO7121 Starfinder Ports of Call has been finalized!
Back cover text:
AT HOME IN THE STARS
Every galactic adventurer needs a place to call home—even if only until their starship is fueled for the next journey. Explore 10 major port cities full of adventure and intrigue, from Drifter’s End on Absalom Station, to the chasm city of Precipice on distant Apostae, to the theme park planet of Golarion World. Learn about smaller ports as well, like the collection of warships known as Bastion that protects against the Swarm or the starship port of Skydock on Verces. Along with all this, Ports of Call also features:
— A map of Desna’s path, the Starfinder Galaxy.
— Loads of player options, including four new species.
— Expanded downtime rules, new starship options, a cargo subsystem, new NPCs, side job adventures, and much more!
Maybe I missed it, but will there be info on creating your own port-of-call?
In addition to the settlement design guidelines on pages 405–407 of the Core Rulebook, this book explores four different roles a settlement might take for your campaign: Gateway, Destination, Resource, and Base.
I'm curious if this book also talks about Drift Courier Network, because that is other thing of Drift Crisis conclusions articles from the book I want to come true :'D Because it really is silly how hard it is to send communications to nearby worlds
I'm curious if this book also talks about Drift Courier Network, because that is other thing of Drift Crisis conclusions articles from the book I want to come true :'D Because it really is silly how hard it is to send communications to nearby worlds
Well, know I know my Skittermander Freight Pilot (who definitely is not basically a sentient mullet hairdo revhead) has lots of work! Hooray for all the freight pilots hauling snail mail!
I'm curious if this book also talks about Drift Courier Network, because that is other thing of Drift Crisis conclusions articles from the book I want to come true :'D Because it really is silly how hard it is to send communications to nearby worlds
Although the Drif Crisis book has a tone of options and homebrew advice for running the drift crisis storyline however you like. I'd likely assume anything in the Drift Crisis book that got a stat block is true.
Drone Courier Network was basically just "they set up automated tiny starship drones with signal ultra engine to send messages faster than random large amount of days" which is just thing that would make sense even without drift crisis x'D
So, have you seen a 40' fuel tanker truck or railcar?
That has an equal cargo capacity as one of the tankers starships. Heck, let's be generous and assume a tanker can haul double that, that one of these 40' tank cars is equal to a single cargo hold. But going off the capacity of cargo holds as described in the CRB, you aren't fitting much more than that.
It's a game, not a simulator, so this is definitely not something I would want them to prioritize over game mechanics, but like I said it takes me out of the game every time I think about it.
Edit: All that would take to make me happy is some descriptive text that bays get bigger as your ship does, so the capacity of a large bay is twice that of a small bay, or something like that. No real need to put rules text on it, but adding something to this chart would be a good place to do so:
I decided that the starship system just did not work as written. It is fine for the small, adventurer sized ships but totally fails once you start getting into the bigger warships or freight haulers. I have not quantified it yet, but my solution was to look at the function of a ship, and it has the capacity needed to do that job. So a heavy freighter (size large) has a cargo hold able to hold the equivalent of 80 to 100 of the 40' shipping containers, and it also has 8 expansion bays so it can be customized. The carrier (size gargantuan) has a flight wing with 4 or 5 squadrons of size tiny craft, plus a pair of shuttles along with the crews necessary to maintain all of them and a flight deck crew to launch and recovery them, and then it has 10 bays for customization. And every ship size huge or larger has 1 or more small craft for moving people and cargo from planet surface to orbit.
But that's just me applying my real world experience to a fantasy game.
It's a game, not a simulator, so this is definitely not something I would want them to prioritize over game mechanics, but like I said it takes me out of the game every time I think about it.
I crunched the math on the cargo space on the ships and converted it back to ISO container sizes and yeah even the biggest ship is super small, we're talking a couple of moving vans worth of cargo space.
What was more concerning was that the largest ships jumping into the drift have about a 30% chance of becoming ghost ships as there isn't sufficient room for the required foodstuffs to sustain the crew, most will have starved to death during the trip. This is assuming you used all available cargo space for sustainment and nothing else.
The way around this was to use cargo space to hold shuttle bays, as a shuttle bay can fit shuttles that have their own cargo bays... cargo-ception.
Now the ONLY reason I care is because in SFS they give us these tiiiiiiiiny ships that can't fit our equipment.
Finally got my PDF and am excited to read through it! However, I’m worrying if my phone downloaded it weird because in the first 2 or 3 pages I’ve already seen 4 words missing letters. Anybody else or just me?
“Books like starfinde”, “This book explores four diffe ent”, “Reasons why traffi” “Almost definitel” .
I can’t download into my pic until midnight when I’m home but I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me.
Finally got my PDF and am excited to read through it! However, I’m worrying if my phone downloaded it weird because in the first 2 or 3 pages I’ve already seen 4 words missing letters. Anybody else or just me?
“Books like starfinde”, “This book explores four diffe ent”, “Reasons why traffi” “Almost definitel” .
I can’t download into my pic until midnight when I’m home but I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t just me.
There are a couple of references to "Starÿ nder" in the backmatter too. Did the PDF get hit with some sort of character encoding issue?
Regardless of the typos, I hope the writers check the comments. I’m loving what I see, whether it’s the cool new archetypes, the silly sodas, the nanites ability to devour people, there’s so much,
But I truly want to thank the writer who came up with the best spell in XFinder history. Capricious cats, which lets you summon invulnerable cats to sit on people and purr, or just annoyingly get in the way of enemies. It brought me a lot of laughs and my wife and I are obviously going to flavor it as our cats.
Regardless of the typos, I hope the writers check the comments. I’m loving what I see, whether it’s the cool new archetypes, the silly sodas, the nanites ability to devour people, there’s so much,
But I truly want to thank the writer who came up with the best spell in XFinder history. Capricious cats, which lets you summon invulnerable cats to sit on people and purr, or just annoyingly get in the way of enemies. It brought me a lot of laughs and my wife and I are obviously going to flavor it as our cats.