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Starfinder GM Core

Starfinder GM Core

Our Price: $69.99

Preorder expected August 2025

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Unleash your imagination, creating new galaxies and tales with the Starfinder GM Core for Starfinder Second Edition! This comprehensive 264-page rulebook gives Game Masters everything they need to craft thrilling tales of adventure, from a single-night’s scenario on the mean streets to complex epics spanning years. Within these pages you’ll find clear guidelines for creating new hazards and alien creatures, tools to design challenging, balanced encounters, and rules for rewarding characters for the dastardly challenges you array before them! Starfinder GM Core also contains rules for quick-to-run cinematic starship combat and dynamic hacking rules!

Starfinder GM Core is the second core rulebook for the Starfinder Second Edition RPG! Along with the Player Core and Alien Core, these books provide a new foundation for the future of tabletop gaming!

Starfinder GM Core includes:

  • The rules needed to run a game of Starfinder, including guidelines for creating challenging encounters, determining success, and giving out rewards.
  • Advice aimed at making you an incredible Game Master, along with tools to ensure you and everyone else at your table has a safe and enjoyable experience.
  • Guidelines to help you create your own content, from campaigns and adventures to hazards and monsters.
  • Rules subsystems to help you handle a wide array of game situations, including rules for chases, cinematic starship combat, research, hacking infiltration, and more!
  • A guide to the Pact Worlds and wider galaxy, with a look at several important regions, and an exploration of the wider cosmos!

Written by: Jessica Catalan, Thurston Hillman, Jenny Jarzabski, Mike Kimmel, and Dustin Knight.

ISBN-13: 978-1-64078-699-8


Available Formats

The Starfinder GM Core is also available as:

Note: This product is part of the Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscription.

Product Availability

Preorder, expected approximately 3 Sep 2025

Are there errors or omissions in this product information? Got corrections? Let us know at store@paizo.com.

PZO22002-HC

See Also:

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Paizo Employee Sales & eCommerce Assistant
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Announced for September! Product images and descriptions are not final and are subject to change. :)

Nice! And Alien Core!
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

This guy evokes Grand Admiral Thrawn if he was Azlanti. I love it!
2 people marked this as a favorite.

I'm interested to know how different the setting section in this is from Galaxy Guide.

Are the general guidelines & advice identical to the Pathfinder GM Core? I've noticed some difference such as "Cinematic Starship Combat" but as for most of everything else, is there going to be a lot of overlap?
Paizo Employee Community & Social Media Specialist
3 people marked this as a favorite.
Yrrej86 wrote:
Are the general guidelines & advice identical to the Pathfinder GM Core? I've noticed some difference such as "Cinematic Starship Combat" but as for most of everything else, is there going to be a lot of overlap?

Hey there, Yrrej86! I asked the team, and they said there's a bit of overlap, but a lot of the material is new. Subsystems like Victory Points and Chases remain the same, with some added Starfinder examples and advice for running a scifantasy game, but there are entirely new sections as well that deal with things like hacking, cinematic starship combat as you mentioned, time travel and mixing Pathfinder/Starfinder content, new futuristic vehicles, and more!

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Maya Coleman wrote:
Yrrej86 wrote:
Are the general guidelines & advice identical to the Pathfinder GM Core? I've noticed some difference such as "Cinematic Starship Combat" but as for most of everything else, is there going to be a lot of overlap?
Hey there, Yrrej86! I asked the team, and they said there's a bit of overlap, but a lot of the material is new. Subsystems like Victory Points and Chases remain the same, with some added Starfinder examples and advice for running a scifantasy game, but there are entirely new sections as well that deal with things like hacking, cinematic starship combat as you mentioned, time travel and mixing Pathfinder/Starfinder content, new futuristic vehicles, and more!

I appreciate this, thank you! The mixing Pathfinder/Starfinder content seems intriguing.

Paizo Employee Community & Social Media Specialist
1 person marked this as a favorite.
Yrrej86 wrote:
I appreciate this, thank you! The mixing Pathfinder/Starfinder content seems intriguing.

You're very welcome, and we hope you like it!

It is 1000% what the majority of the SF1e games I've run have involved. Turns out sinspawn don't react well to directed energy weapons or 12-gauge slugs.

We never managed to get to the point of if a dragon could shrug off vehicle mounted railguns but that was definitely in the plans.
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I just noticed something. The print versions of the Starfinder 2e core books is 10 dollars more than the Pathfinder 2e Core books. I guess Paizo's done holding the line on the Core for this new system? I'm not gonna say it's not understandable but it is disappointing. It won't affect me personally because I intend to purchase PDFs but keeping the prices low on the entry level books always struck me as a really great move for letting people get into the system easier, something I'd argue Starfinder needs more than Pathfinder did.
4 people marked this as a favorite.
DMurnett wrote:
I just noticed something. The print versions of the Starfinder 2e core books is 10 dollars more than the Pathfinder 2e Core books. I guess Paizo's done holding the line on the Core for this new system? I'm not gonna say it's not understandable but it is disappointing. It won't affect me personally because I intend to purchase PDFs but keeping the prices low on the entry level books always struck me as a really great move for letting people get into the system easier, something I'd argue Starfinder needs more than Pathfinder did.

Over the last two months, printing expenses jumped more than 50%. I hate saying it, but this is probably what keeping prices low looks like now.

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