What sci-fi universe will Starfinder be most similar to?

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

MMCJawa wrote:

Do you like Star Wars and want a crossover with Golarion. Then all the Star Wars planets and such are out there. Do you prefer Star Trek? Okay the Federation is out there.

And if you really want to annoy James Jacobs, you mention Dr. Who.

[thejeff]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Grimcleaver wrote:

From James Jacobs in response to my crusty old post Holy Crud Golarion is in the Same Cosmology as Earth.

James Jacobs wrote:

To further freak folks out... we also assume the Material Plane is big enough not only for Golarion and Earth... but for pretty much ALL campaign settings. For all RPGs. And for all books and movies as well. The planet Vulcan's out there somewhere, as is Narnia and Middle Earth. In some cases, time AND space separates these lands from Golarion, but in some cases only space separates them.

And all of those worlds are contained in the Material Plane, which is a speck at the center of the elemental planes, which are combined to a speck in the center of the astral plane, which is a speck at the center of the Outer Planes.

I've never liked that idea. For some things it works. Others have such differing cosmologies that it just doesn't make any sense.

Hell, some settings have different setups of "Prime Material Planes" or alternate realities or Shadows or whatever you want to call them. How do those fit together?

Sure. For a lot of things you can easily make it work, but I really don't like it as a general rule.

Keep in mind the following two things.

1. Cosmologies are really BIG THINGS. Now imagine the biggest thing you can. Nope, you're still not close enough. Now imagine the smallest thing you can and put it to the left to that big thing from before. That little thing on the left is that big thing you were thinking about earlier. In essence while everything you can possibly imagine may be in that cosmology, there's nothing that says that any two things are going to be close enough to ever notice each other. Golarion and Earth 1908 being an example.

2. James Jacobs likes to say things that make persnickety people's heads explode.

3. There was once a magazine called Omniverse organised around...

1) As I said, for a lot of things, you can easily make it work. Golarion & Earth in 1908 are a fine example of that. As you say, often people in one setting wouldn't know anything about others.

But what the people in the setting know isn't all we know about the setting. We often have the word of the author telling us about the cosmology. Case in point: We know because James Jacobs told us, that Golarion is "in the Material Plane, which is a speck at the center of the elemental planes, which are combined to a speck in the center of the astral plane, which is a speck at the center of the Outer Planes." And we know that all RPGs, books and movies fit in that Material Plane, separated only be space and in some cases time.
That's a big cosmology, but a pretty simple one. It's clear and well defined. But how does it cover settings that are explicitly organized differently. IIRC, D&D at least in some versions, had the same basic set up of Outer planes, Astral & elemental planes, but placed its various worlds in different material planes instead of in different places in one material plane. Tricky to tell the difference from inside, but we've been told by the creators how it works. Similarly with all the other fictional examples of alternate realities, different planes, Shadows or what have you. To jam them into one realm only divided by space & time, you have to decide the creators are actually wrong about how their own world works. Amber is not the one true world of which all others are but Shadows. There was not a multiverse that was recently destroyed by the Beyonders and recreated by Franklin Richards and the Molecule Man. Each of those is at best a tiny (if still infinite) corner (or a set of such tiny corners) of a single infinite plane - separated only by space (and maybe time) despite what the characters involved believe and what the author told us.

2) That much I can accept.

3) Omniverse specifically refers to multiple universes - in fact to the set of all such cosmologies. Multiple multiverses.
Very different than this conception, which reduces things even farther than standard multiverse (or set of material planes) do.

[Gilfalas]

thejeff wrote:

Infinite space->Infinite slightly varying copies of Earth.

Of course, Marvel itself has alternate realities - in fact, they recently destroyed and then recreated all of them, which doesn't seem compatible with Golarion's cosmology.

Both Marvel and DC have done this semi regularly. After a decade or so, once they have written their characters and stories into corners, they hit the big old reset button and start from scratch. Each has probably done it at least 2-3 times since the 80's.

As for how the Kelvin Star Trek and Roddenberry Star Trek settings BOTH can be in the Golarion Prime Material plane (and everything else too) I give you SCIENCE! as an explanation:

Space.com wrote:

Infinite Universes

Scientists can't be sure what the shape of space-time is, but most likely, it's flat (as opposed to spherical or even donut-shape) and stretches out infinitely. But if space-time goes on forever, then it must start repeating at some point, because there are a finite number of ways particles can be arranged in space and time.

So if you look far enough, you would encounter another version of you — in fact, infinite versions of you. Some of these twins will be doing exactly what you're doing right now, while others will have worn a different sweater this morning, and still others will have made vastly different career and life choices.

Because the observable universe extends only as far as light has had a chance to get in the 13.7 billion years since the Big Bang (that would be 13.7 billion light-years), the space-time beyond that distance can be considered to be its own separate universe. In this way, a multitude of universes exists next to each other in a giant patchwork quilt of universes.

With INFINITY to work with, you get all the things.

JonGarrett wrote:

Well, we can safely rule out Firefly. d20 just does not lend itself to being the underdogs...

Firefly is just Starfinder E6 with no magic and weak Psi right? ;)

[Distant Scholar]

Gilfalas wrote:

As for how the Kelvin Star Trek and Roddenberry Star Trek settings BOTH can be in the Golarion Prime Material plane (and everything else too) I give you SCIENCE! as an explanation:

Space.com wrote:

Infinite Universes

Scientists can't be sure what the shape of space-time is, but most likely, it's flat [...] and stretches out infinitely. But if space-time goes on forever, then it must start repeating at some point, because there are a finite number of ways particles can be arranged in space and time.

OK so far (given the assumptions) ...

Quote:

Space.com wrote:

So if you look far enough, you would encounter another version of you — in fact, infinite versions of you.

[bad Darth Vader]Noooooo![/bad Darth Vader]

Gilfalas wrote:

With INFINITY to work with, you get all the things.

Also, no. Infinity need not work that way.

For the second point, one can have infinitely many even numbers, and none of them will be odd.

For the first, just because something has to repeat, does not mean that everything has to repeat. In fact, if one accepts the Big Bang Theory of universe creation, most of the repetition will be repetitions of ... nothing.

Bad, space.com. Bad.

[thejeff]

Gilfalas wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Infinite space->Infinite slightly varying copies of Earth.

Of course, Marvel itself has alternate realities - in fact, they recently destroyed and then recreated all of them, which doesn't seem compatible with Golarion's cosmology.

Both Marvel and DC have done this semi regularly. After a decade or so, once they have written their characters and stories into corners, they hit the big old reset button and start from scratch. Each has probably done it at least 2-3 times since the 80's.

Side note, but I don't believe Marvel has done so before. They've rewritten limited bits of continuity, but never this kind of whole line reset button. DC has done it multiple times, starting with the first Crisis (or arguably, starting with the Silver Age).

Of course, nothing ever actually starts from scratch when they reset. Popular characters tend to keep their history.

But that's all tangential. Neither the Marvel nor DC cosmologies (in any reboot I can think of) are compatible with this Golarion Prime Material plane. DCs are described as existing at different vibrational frequencies, which was how Flash could jump between them, but doesn't match the infinite space concept of universes.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

The key thing to keep in mind is that Starfinder is not going to be a SciFi game. So if you're looking for Star Frontiers, Star Trek, or a hard sciencey game.... you're boarding the wrong starship.

What it's going to be is a space flavored fantasy world. While it will have lots of tech, and space, it's also going to be heavily grounded in the same kind of fantasy that Pathfinder laid stakes to.

So in truth, the answer to the OP's question is none of them. But since Starfinder will also have an equally heavy if not more so sciencve flavor to it, it's not going to be a fantastick setting the way Spelljammer was.

IF anything, it's essentially going to be a standalone expansion of Distant Worlds.

[Gilfalas]

Distant Scholar wrote:

Also, no. Infinity need not work that way.

For the second point, one can have infinitely many even numbers, and none of them will be odd.

I don't know your scientific credentials so for all I know you could be correct. But for know I think I will side with the rocket scientists and theoretical physicists thanks, hehe. ;-)

We are talking INFINITE SPACE. By definition infinite means any and all possibilities happen. As evidence by quantum mechanics, the rules of the universe can break down and change depending on scale. Quantum physics shows us that on the small end. I am sure we have a long way to go to understand it on the infinitely large end.

[Steve Geddes]

Gilfalas wrote:

We are talking INFINITE SPACE. By definition infinite means any and all possibilities happen.

Although true, this is commonly misunderstood. The existence of constraints means that some "possibilities" we might imagine do not actually happen in an infinite space. As you say, we have a long way to go before we understand the entirety of the laws of physics (which essentially act as the constraints limiting what can exist).

A simple, numerical example is to consider the infinite, never repeating, decimal expansion:

1.23112233111222333111122223333....

It is infinite yet we never see the easily imagined sequences 321 or 312.

[Grimcleaver]

thejeff wrote:

1) As I said, for a lot of things, you can easily make it work. Golarion & Earth in 1908 are a fine example of that. As you say, often people in one setting wouldn't know anything about others.

But what the people in the setting know isn't all we know about the setting. We often have the word of the author telling us about the cosmology. Case in point: We know because James Jacobs told us, that Golarion is "in the Material Plane, which is a speck at the center of the elemental planes, which are combined to a speck in the center of the astral plane, which is a speck at the center of the Outer Planes." And we know that all RPGs, books and movies fit in that Material Plane, separated only be space and in some cases time.

That's a big cosmology, but a pretty simple one. It's clear and well defined. But how does it cover settings that are explicitly organized differently. IIRC, D&D at least in some versions, had the same basic set up of Outer planes, Astral & elemental planes, but placed its various worlds in different material planes instead of in different places in one material plane. Tricky to tell the difference from inside, but we've been told by the creators how it works. Similarly with all the other fictional examples of alternate realities, different planes, Shadows or what have you. To jam them into one realm only divided by space & time, you have to decide the creators are actually wrong about how their own world works. Amber is not the one true world of which all others are but Shadows. There was not a multiverse that was recently destroyed by the Beyonders and recreated by Franklin Richards and the Molecule Man. Each of those is at best a tiny (if still infinite) corner (or a set of such tiny corners) of a single infinite plane - separated only by space (and maybe time) despite what the characters involved believe and what the author told us.

2) That much I can accept.

3) Omniverse specifically refers to multiple universes - in fact to the set of all such cosmologies. Multiple multiverses. Very different than this conception, which reduces things even farther than standard multiverse (or set of material planes) do.

I think I see what you're getting at here, and for me at least, that's a big part of the delight I have in Starfinder as opposed to Pathfinder. Back with Pathfinder we had all this cool potential crossover stuff, but with an astronomically small statistical chance of any of it ever crossing over into Golarion, much less that more than one would--not to mention that the "good stuff" in most of these settings is still centuries to millenia away (assuming Rasputin era Earth is Golarion's present day).

But now time has passed. The AI god has given out FTL and I get a chance to tell those stories with my group about how those things connect. I'm not really daunted by that stuff--I love the interconnections.

That Narnia and Middle Earth are sections of Earth's First World, the aboriginal idea of Dreamtime. Or what the old World of Darkness called The Umbra. That's fascinating to me. And in the Fallen Lands (the core setting for 4e) that's same realm is known as the Feywild.

I love that Orcus was a god worshipped by the Romans in our world and there's a fun connection there, or that the fate of Golarion might well be that Takhisis whisked it away to rule over it.

Looking at real world maps of our Galactic neighborhood and going, y'know that one's probably the "galaxy far far away" and that over there is probably where Dragonstar happens. That's fun.

Trying to puzzle out how the Dark Tower connects to the Infinite Staircase connects to the Ways from Wheel of Time. That, for me, puts Starfinder on the map as something special.

And if I get too urked about what's being done to other people's settings I look at it like this: The *real* Amber is no more damaged by being connected to the Golarion cosmology than the Cthulhu mythos is. The pretext of the setting is it's a mashup of other settings. That's where my/the fun is! The other settings are still fine and you can freely hop back and do a Star Wars game and find that there's no Golarion there at all. Stuff said about the Material Plane in Pathfinder is only true of the Material Plane *in Pathfinder*. Once you get outside the Paizo created universe of products, things go back to normal.

[Grimcleaver]

Historical stuff is a little hairier, but only a little bit. Both Wheel of Time and Amber (but other settings too) have an idea of mirror worlds where things turned out differently and sometimes spawned whole vastly different universes within universes (heck Star Trek even has that "Spock with a goatee" alternate universe). Stephen King's setting explores the same phenomenon across the novels Desperation and The Regulators as Tak invades different iterations of a similar but different Earth. Marvel made a mainstay of this sort of thing back in the day, with their main universe being Earth-616 and all it's various continuity errors being results of peeks into other "mirror" dimensions.

Mindtrip: what if what's going on in all of those stories was the same thing! Some underlying truth connecting all fictional universe? Enter Starfinder!

[gustavo iglesias]

Let's see if I can explain what I mean, with a better example, rooted in real world:

The God of the Christians, and the Olympian Gods, can't coexist. The God of Christians (and muslims and jews) is, by their own myths and beliefs, the only one god that exist. Therefore, it excludes the possibility of other gods. It also excludes, of course, the possibility of Pharasma being the one who rules over souls, and other stuff.

IF Earth, including Bible era, exist in Golarion, either the God of Christians is not the only god (and then, he's not the God of Christians but a facsimile), or he is the only god, and then Zeus, Thor, the Orishas or Pharasma are just a big lie or dudes impersonating as gods.

That's just an example of how some universes can't coexist. Some universes can, many universes could, but only if those universes have fake mythologies or if their own creation myths are not true. We can, of course, take that route: we could decide that the bible is not true, and the olypmic gods are real gods, or the other way around. We can bassically adapt any one of them to our Starfinder. But *all* of them, it's not possible unless we decide that the creators of those universes didn't really know what was happening in their worlds.

[thejeff]

Grimcleaver wrote:

think I see what you're getting at here, and for me at least, that's a big part of the delight I have in Starfinder as opposed to Pathfinder. Back with Pathfinder we had all this cool potential crossover stuff, but with an astronomically small statistical chance of any of it ever crossing over into Golarion, much less that more than one would--not to mention that the "good stuff" in most of these settings is still centuries to millenia away (assuming Rasputin era Earth is Golarion's present day).

But now time has passed. The AI god has given out FTL and I get a chance to tell those stories with my group about how those things connect. I'm not really daunted by that stuff--I love the interconnections.

That Narnia and Middle Earth are sections of Earth's First World, the aboriginal idea of Dreamtime. Or what the old World of Darkness called The Umbra. That's fascinating to me. And in the Fallen Lands (the core setting for 4e) that's same realm is known as the Feywild.

I love that Orcus was a god worshipped by the Romans in our world and there's a fun connection there, or that the fate of Golarion might well be that Takhisis whisked it away to rule over it.

Looking at real world maps of our Galactic neighborhood and going, y'know that one's probably the "galaxy far far away" and that over there is probably where Dragonstar happens. That's fun.

Trying to puzzle out how the Dark Tower connects to the Infinite Staircase connects to the Ways from Wheel of Time. That, for me, puts Starfinder on the map as something special.

And if I get too urked about what's being done to other people's settings I look at it like this: The *real* Amber is no more damaged by being connected to the Golarion cosmology than the Cthulhu mythos is. The pretext of the setting is it's a mashup of other settings. That's where my/the fun is! The other settings are still fine and you can freely hop back and do a Star Wars game and find that there's no Golarion there at all. Stuff said about the Material Plane in Pathfinder is only true of the Material Plane *in Pathfinder*. Once you get outside the Paizo created universe of products, things go back to normal.

I guess. I'm not sure I see the need for Starfinder for most of that.

We've already seen travel to Earth by magic. Starfinder gives us fun space adventures, but you can already do the crossovers if you want to. No need to wait for "statistical" chance - which is far more than astronomically small anyway, given that we're now talking infinite space rather than just mind-boggling big space. Make it happen. Come up with a reason.
Magic's generally more flexible for this kind of thing anyway, rather than travelling intergalactic distances in space. Once you've established one "Earth" in its own Milky Way galaxy, in the Virgo Cluster and the Laniakea Supercluster, how far do you have to go to find all that duplicated for the next alternate Earth you want? Out of our local (13+ billion lightyear radius) universe entirely? And through or past how many others to reach the one you want and find the one planet or even galaxy within it?
Alternate realities or parallel planes make it easier, if you ask me.

I do prefer the idea of places like Narnia & Middle-Earth being "First World" to them just being planets out there in space somewhere - though I still think the essentially Christian nature of both keeps them from working well stuffed into other cosmologies.

There's certainly fun in playing with such cosmologies. I'm mostly not fond of the idea of using a single plane with infinite space to do it. When you start trying to reconcile fictions with different approaches to alternate realities it gets even trickier.

I also really don't expect Starfinder to deal with this kind of thing any more or better than Pathfinder already does - other than give you better rules for the more science fictiony settings you cross over into.

[MMCJawa]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

The key thing to keep in mind is that Starfinder is not going to be a SciFi game. So if you're looking for Star Frontiers, Star Trek, or a hard sciencey game.... you're boarding the wrong starship.

What it's going to be is a space flavored fantasy world. While it will have lots of tech, and space, it's also going to be heavily grounded in the same kind of fantasy that Pathfinder laid stakes to.

So in truth, the answer to the OP's question is none of them. But since Starfinder will also have an equally heavy if not more so sciencve flavor to it, it's not going to be a fantastick setting the way Spelljammer was.

IF anything, it's essentially going to be a standalone expansion of Distant Worlds.

Actually I don't know if we can say where exactly Starfinder will fall out in that continuum. There have been hints that magic will probably not be as important in the new game as it is in Pathfinder. There is a pretty broad continuum from mostly Hard science fiction like Alistair Reynolds to things like Farscape, which had straight up magic users or Star Wars with it's Force.

And I do have to kind of chuckle at the idea that Star Trek is "hard science fiction" almost everything in that show is handwavium and no different from magic.

[thejeff]

MMCJawa wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

The key thing to keep in mind is that Starfinder is not going to be a SciFi game. So if you're looking for Star Frontiers, Star Trek, or a hard sciencey game.... you're boarding the wrong starship.

What it's going to be is a space flavored fantasy world. While it will have lots of tech, and space, it's also going to be heavily grounded in the same kind of fantasy that Pathfinder laid stakes to.

So in truth, the answer to the OP's question is none of them. But since Starfinder will also have an equally heavy if not more so sciencve flavor to it, it's not going to be a fantastick setting the way Spelljammer was.

IF anything, it's essentially going to be a standalone expansion of Distant Worlds.

Actually I don't know if we can say where exactly Starfinder will fall out in that continuum. There have been hints that magic will probably not be as important in the new game as it is in Pathfinder. There is a pretty broad continuum from mostly Hard science fiction like Alistair Reynolds to things like Farscape, which had straight up magic users or Star Wars with it's Force.

And I do have to kind of chuckle at the idea that Star Trek is "hard science fiction" almost everything in that show is handwavium and no different from magic.

I wouldn't call Star Trek "hard science fiction", but that kind of technobabbly handwavium is a far cry from having actual PC/protagonist PF-style casters. It plays a far different role in the game and the setting. Works by technological rules, even if the science isn't good.

Some of the things they ran into might fit the role better.
Or even from Star Wars Jedi - which I suspect is a far better gauge of where they're aiming.

[MMCJawa]

Watching the clone wars animated series, I would love it if the setting was similar to that.

But I guess what I was implying with Star Trek is that the "hard science" doesn't really define that particular setting for me. It's more the spirit of exploration and optimism. Nothing associated with Star Trek to me is bound to "no magic" as some people seem to think. Hell they even have casters (various telepathic/psychic races) and "dieties" (Q, various other extradimensional beings/hyper advanced aliens).

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

MMCJawa wrote:

Watching the clone wars animated series, I would love it if the setting was similar to that.

But I guess what I was implying with Star Trek is that the "hard science" doesn't really define that particular setting for me. It's more the spirit of exploration and optimism. Nothing associated with Star Trek to me is bound to "no magic" as some people seem to think. Hell they even have casters (various telepathic/psychic races) and "dieties" (Q, various other extradimensional beings/hyper advanced aliens).

Star Trek varies tremendously in this by show. TOS had it's occasional space god. TNG is unabashadly magic disguised as tech, DS9 however, brought the franchise to a more down to "earth" gritty focus when it concentrated on it's political arcs. Enterprise was nearly a return to 50's style SF in it's hard metal approach.

[Grimcleaver]

gustavo iglesias wrote:

Let's see if I can explain what I mean, with a better example, rooted in real world:

The God of the Christians, and the Olympian Gods, can't coexist. The God of Christians (and muslims and jews) is, by their own myths and beliefs, the only one god that exist. Therefore, it excludes the possibility of other gods. It also excludes, of course, the possibility of Pharasma being the one who rules over souls, and other stuff.

IF Earth, including Bible era, exist in Golarion, either the God of Christians is not the only god (and then, he's not the God of Christians but a facsimile), or he is the only god, and then Zeus, Thor, the Orishas or Pharasma are just a big lie or dudes impersonating as gods.

That's just an example of how some universes can't coexist. Some universes can, many universes could, but only if those universes have fake mythologies or if their own creation myths are not true. We can, of course, take that route: we could decide that the bible is not true, and the olypmic gods are real gods, or the other way around. We can bassically adapt any one of them to our Starfinder. But *all* of them, it's not possible unless we decide that the creators of those universes didn't really know what was happening in their worlds.

I totally get what you mean. Here's my thing (and there's two parts to this): First, I don't think any of the paradoxes that keep settings seperate are as impermeable as you think. There's plenty of possiblity of having, for instance a Biblical era setting with both gods and God in them. That way, when Elijah kicks the butts of the priests of Bhaal, it's an actual victory (over the Lord of Murder from Faerun no less!). What if wanting followers to have "no other gods before Me" wasn't talking about made up gods that don't exist, or devil impersonating fake gods--what if it meant that there's real other gods out there, but not to worship them? A lot of games already posit this kind of world on their own. Scion is a big one--but there's lots of others, including the Marvel universe and the Supernatural TV show. So there's settings where it works--so use what's there.

Second, and I mentioned this already, but if you're worried about what the original creators would think, just look at it this way. Do you think H.P. Lovecraft would like the idea that all the creatures of his Mythos lived in Purgatory? Well Supernatural did that. So you think he'd like to share his Mythos with Doctor Who? Too bad. The doctor crosses over with Mythos stuff. Do you think the Dark Tapestry exists in anything H.P. Lovecraft wrote? No! The Paizo folks made that up. So really, you're changing the universes as written by their creators, the moment anything new happens in them such that their creators didn't really know what was happening in their worlds. And that's okay, because you can't hurt a mythos. They still exist in whatever form you want them to. They're like legends, hence the name mythos. You can play with them. It's the reason you can have elves and dwarves in a setting and the Tolkien police (or really the Norse Mythology police) don't bust in your door. All these settings really just exist to spark your imagination, so twisting and combining them together into something new can't hurt them. It just makes for a big fun meta-setting that you only pull out when you're playing Pathfinder. It doesn't make it true. The other settings still exist. Everything borrows from other things to exist though--Starfinder just happens to borrow from EVERYTHING.

[gustavo iglesias]

But the Dark Tapestry is exactly what I mean with borrowing stuff. Paizo is not making HP Lovecraft world a part of his world. There is no need for that. They just borrow the names, looks, and myth, and use them in their own way. You don't need a place called Dunwich and a place called Massachussets and someone called Wilbur Whateley to use Yog Shothoth. Your example above with Supernatural using part of the Bible Myth in their own way it's the same. They are using something called angels, and devils, and the Horsemen, and such. But they are not the angels and devils and Horsemen that we found in the bible. They don't go through the same myth, the apocalypse does not start the same way, there is a different creation story, the war among them is not the same, Supernatural Leviathans are not sea monsters like the Bible Leviathan...

It's pretty different to add or steal elements of a myth or a group of myths, than saying "myth X is part of this world, and myth Y is too, and both are fundamentally true, even if myth X says that myth Y can't exist".

[thejeff]

Grimcleaver wrote:

gustavo iglesias wrote:

Let's see if I can explain what I mean, with a better example, rooted in real world:

The God of the Christians, and the Olympian Gods, can't coexist. The God of Christians (and muslims and jews) is, by their own myths and beliefs, the only one god that exist. Therefore, it excludes the possibility of other gods. It also excludes, of course, the possibility of Pharasma being the one who rules over souls, and other stuff.

IF Earth, including Bible era, exist in Golarion, either the God of Christians is not the only god (and then, he's not the God of Christians but a facsimile), or he is the only god, and then Zeus, Thor, the Orishas or Pharasma are just a big lie or dudes impersonating as gods.

That's just an example of how some universes can't coexist. Some universes can, many universes could, but only if those universes have fake mythologies or if their own creation myths are not true. We can, of course, take that route: we could decide that the bible is not true, and the olypmic gods are real gods, or the other way around. We can bassically adapt any one of them to our Starfinder. But *all* of them, it's not possible unless we decide that the creators of those universes didn't really know what was happening in their worlds.

I totally get what you mean. Here's my thing (and there's two parts to this): First, I don't think any of the paradoxes that keep settings seperate are as impermeable as you think. There's plenty of possiblity of having, for instance a Biblical era setting with both gods and God in them. That way, when Elijah kicks the butts of the priests of Bhaal, it's an actual victory (over the Lord of Murder from Faerun no less!). What if wanting followers to have "no other gods before Me" wasn't talking about made up gods that don't exist, or devil impersonating fake gods--what if it meant that there's real other gods out there, but not to worship them? A lot of games already posit this kind of world on their own. Scion is a big one--but there's lots of others, including the Marvel universe and the Supernatural TV show. So there's settings where it works--so use what's there.

Second, and I mentioned this already, but if you're worried about what the original creators would think, just look at it this way. Do you think H.P. Lovecraft would like the idea that all the creatures of his Mythos lived in Purgatory? Well Supernatural did that. So you think he'd like to share his Mythos with Doctor Who? Too bad. The doctor crosses over with Mythos stuff. Do you think the Dark Tapestry exists in anything H.P. Lovecraft wrote? No! The Paizo folks made that up. So really, you're changing the universes as written by their creators, the moment anything new happens in them such that their creators didn't really know what was happening in their worlds. And that's okay, because you can't hurt a mythos. They still exist in whatever form you want them to. They're like legends, hence the name mythos. You can play with them. It's the reason you can have elves and dwarves in a setting and the Tolkien police (or really the Norse Mythology police) don't bust in your door. All these settings really just exist to spark your imagination, so twisting and combining them together into something new can't hurt them. It just makes for a big fun meta-setting that you only pull out when you're playing Pathfinder. It doesn't make it true. The other settings still exist. Everything borrows from other things to exist though--Starfinder just happens to borrow from EVERYTHING.

I get what you're saying. You can definitely do that. And the genre police won't kick down your down and stop you. Though some of your own players might, if they prefer the thing you're crossing over with in a purer form.

It doesn't really bother me, as long as it's clear on the player level what's actually going on: This isn't really Tolkien's Middle-Earth, I'm drawing from it, but making major conceptual changes to fit into this other cosmology. This isn't really the Christian God, as we think of him, but an altered version that's just the God of the Jewish people, not the only creator.

Sometimes it'll work, sometimes it'll lose what people were actually interested in, in the process of adapting it.

As a side note, I'm much less bothered by the Cthulhu Mythos being used that way and I don't think Lovecraft would have minded in general either, precisely because it was used in exactly that way, in his lifetime and with his blessing. REH adopted bits of it into Conan (or Kull?) and other authors used it and added bits which Lovecraft in turn referenced in his works.

[Grimcleaver]

I think we're kind of all saying the same thing. I think it's a little more than adaption, since it's pretty much all of everything ported over in it's entirety into Pathfinder, but yeah: the source material doesn't stop existing as it's own thing just because there's another setting where it's claimed to be part of the same universe.

Porting Star Wars into Pathfinder, even the whole thing as completely and accurately as possible, doesn't port Pathfinder into Star Wars. Just because one source says there's a connection doesn't necessarily imply a two way connection--any more than all Mythos authors now have to acknowledge Supernatural and Pathfinder in their own writings.

That said, I'd say what Pathfinder is doing is a little more than borrowing from the Mythos. Other settings borrow. Dropping the name Necronomicon in Evil Dead is borrowing. Firestorm Peak borrows from the Mythos. Pathfinder has hounds of Tindalos, and Leng and freakin' Cthulhu. If you were to go from Russia straight over to Dunwitch and Massachussets I'm 100% sure they'd be there. Yog Sothoth sure is.

But that said, I think it works basically the same way. It's just a much more literal kind of borrowing--the kind where you borrow everything with all the characters and context. All of it.

[Lord Fyre]

Everyone is ignoring THE most important Science Fiction setting for any branch of Starfinder.

Star Munchkin!

[Gilfalas]

Grimcleaver wrote:

That said, I'd say what Pathfinder is doing is a little more than borrowing from the Mythos. Other settings borrow. Dropping the name Necronomicon in Evil Dead is borrowing. Firestorm Peak borrows from the Mythos. Pathfinder has hounds of Tindalos, and Leng and freakin' Cthulhu. If you were to go from Russia straight over to Dunwitch and Massachussets I'm 100% sure they'd be there. Yog Sothoth sure is.

It certainly helps that all works published before 1923 are public domain in the U.S. so anything Lovecraft wrote before then can be used free of charge (along with tons of other authors). That certainly makes their inclusion in ANY game infinitely easier.

[SAMAS]

Outlaw Star meets Mass Effect meets Xenoblade Chronicles(X).

[Richard Redmane]

Lord Fyre wrote:

Everyone is ignoring THE most important Science Fiction setting for any branch of Starfinder.

Star Munchkin!

I forgot Steve Jackson Games made an RPG based off of Munchkin... Gods help us all.

Anyway, getting back on topic, it was said in a couple panels and interviews that Starfinder is going to be more Star Wars instead of Star Trek or "Star Wars but more" overall. Exactly what that means, besides the obvious, I have no idea but it definitely sounds like fun.

I agree with the comparisons to Dragonstar and yes, yes I know the Dragon Empire was a big part of that particular setting. But the look, the feel... the comparisons to Dragonstar are fair ones to make. Dwarves in space suits mining asteroids for precious minerals, the wizard copying spells to a PDA, the fighter armed with a laser pistol and long sword... Dragonstar was the last game to really give us that sort of an experience.

[darth_borehd]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

The key thing to keep in mind is that Starfinder is not going to be a SciFi game. So if you're looking for Star Frontiers, Star Trek, or a hard sciencey game.... you're boarding the wrong starship.

I agree with your point. I think somebody mentioned Farscape and everything I heard about Starfinder seems to jive with that.

[rant]
I wish people would stop using Star Trek as an example of hard sci-fi. I like Star Trek, but I am also a fan of hard sci-fi and some occasional techno-babble does not make the story hard sci-fi. The difference between Star Trek and Star Wars is not hard vs soft but instead that Star Wars technology has become so mundane and ubiquitous to its characters that they no longer stop to explain how it works.
[/rant]

[Sleygon]

Two favorites:
WingCommander - would be a sizeable approach to space vessels.
or
.
.
.
Elite! Kick some Thargoid-ass... (and get one of these docking-computers as soon as possible)

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

darth_borehd wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

The key thing to keep in mind is that Starfinder is not going to be a SciFi game. So if you're looking for Star Frontiers, Star Trek, or a hard sciencey game.... you're boarding the wrong starship.

I agree with your point. I think somebody mentioned Farscape and everything I heard about Starfinder seems to jive with that.

[rant]
I wish people would stop using Star Trek as an example of hard sci-fi. I like Star Trek, but I am also a fan of hard sci-fi and some occasional techno-babble does not make the story hard sci-fi. The difference between Star Trek and Star Wars is not hard vs soft but instead that Star Wars technology has become so mundane and ubiquitous to its characters that they no longer stop to explain how it works.
[/rant]

It varies. TOS was considerably influenced by the shows of it's day, which had more blinkey lights, computers that made clankey typewriter noises. and so on. TNG was much more magic as technology, as transporters became replicators that could produce almost anything you desire by a simple command... dish of ice cream? Stradivarious violin? a holographic character that can outsmart an android? all at your whim. Enterprise tried to evoke a more 50's kind of atmosphere, whereas DS9 for the most part, had a lessened focus on tech in exchange for politics and cultural clash.

Hard scifi is a rare beast on visual media, the best examples were probably found in B/W Outer Limits and some episodes of Twilight Zone.

[thejeff]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

darth_borehd wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

The key thing to keep in mind is that Starfinder is not going to be a SciFi game. So if you're looking for Star Frontiers, Star Trek, or a hard sciencey game.... you're boarding the wrong starship.

I agree with your point. I think somebody mentioned Farscape and everything I heard about Starfinder seems to jive with that.

[rant]
I wish people would stop using Star Trek as an example of hard sci-fi. I like Star Trek, but I am also a fan of hard sci-fi and some occasional techno-babble does not make the story hard sci-fi. The difference between Star Trek and Star Wars is not hard vs soft but instead that Star Wars technology has become so mundane and ubiquitous to its characters that they no longer stop to explain how it works.
[/rant]

It varies. TOS was considerably influenced by the shows of it's day, which had more blinkey lights, computers that made clankey typewriter noises. and so on. TNG was much more magic as technology, as transporters became replicators that could produce almost anything you desire by a simple command... dish of ice cream? Stradivarious violin? all at your whim. Enterprise tried to evoke a more 50's kind of atmosphere, whereas DS9 for the most part, had a lessened focus on tech in exchange for politics and cultural clash.

Hard scifi is a rare beast on visual media, the best examples were probably found in B/W Outer Limits and some episodes of Twilight Zone.

And even at its least "hard" Trek isn't as much magic as Star Wars is.

A hypothetical Star Wars setting without the Force might be grittier and not have a bunch of the convenience tech stuff Trek does, but the entire damn series focuses on a mystical conflict between casters. It's fantasy with science trappings.
Trek is soft science fiction. That the tech is driven by technobabble not hard science doesn't make it magic. Pretty much any non-near future SF is magic by that definition - anything with FTL, for example.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

thejeff wrote:

A hypothetical Star Wars setting without the Force might be grittier and not have a bunch of the convenience tech stuff Trek does, but the entire damn series focuses on a mystical conflict between casters. It's fantasy with science trappings.

Trek is soft science fiction. That the tech is driven by technobabble not hard science doesn't make it magic. Pretty much any non-near future SF is magic by that definition - anything with FTL, for example.

To be fair, Trek is loaded with Gods that walk among men, Apollo (and the rest of the Olympian Pantheon), Multiple Qs and offspring, The Squire of Gothos and his parents, The Organians, (who apparently moved to a more fashionable or quiet neighborhood by the time TNG came around) The Traveller, and his demigod apprentice or Roddenberry avatar, Wesley Crusher, and the Dowd who eliminated an ENTIRE GALACTIC SPECIES WITH A SINGLE THOUGHT, No tech involved at all, among others. Star Wars never went down that particular road.

And when the Tech is driven by NOTHING other than technobabble, it's just magic with a new covering.

[KahnyaGnorc]

I always though of Star Wars as High Fantasy set in a technologically-advanced setting

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

KahnyaGnorc wrote:

I always though of Star Wars as High Fantasy set in a technologically-advanced setting

That's pretty much how I classified ST:Next Generation.

[Lady Bluehawk]

Um, just out of curiosity: why Earth 1908? The impression I always got about Golarion was Age of Enlightenment at most recent, with not as many guns or printing presses as we had in real life. :-/

And as far as infinite etc. cosmos go (and yeah, Marvel's rebooted several times; how many Fantastic Four #1s/Avengers #1s/X-Men #1s/etc. do we have to go through?), universe (Prime Material, Inner/Outer Planes, etc.) = one bubble; multiverse = foam. Somewhere those bubbles are going to touch...

(Grammar Police: "it's" is a contraction of the words "it" and "is," with the extra letters and spaces that were removed indicated by the apostrophe. "Its" is neutral possessive, like "his" and "hers" are gender possessives. "A ship's hull has its hit points..." etc. When in doubt, try replacing the problematic term with either "it is" or "his/hers" and see which one makes sense.)

Wow...James Jacobs hates pirates and Doctor Who? Hmph.

LB

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Lady Bluehawk wrote:

Um, just out of curiosity: why Earth 1908? The impression I always got about Golarion was Age of Enlightenment at most recent, with not as many guns or printing presses as we had in real life. :-/

Actually it might be 1917, anyway the reason is that one, and exactly ONE AP has a link between Golarion and Czarist Russia, but it's not exactly a highway throughfare. Presumably the link is with that era, because of Paizo's love of the classic Lovecraft setting. James Jacobs' first love is Victorian horror before fantasy.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Lady Bluehawk wrote:

Um, just out of curiosity: why Earth 1908? The impression I always got about Golarion was Age of Enlightenment at most recent, with not as many guns or printing presses as we had in real life. :-/

And as far as infinite etc. cosmos go (and yeah, Marvel's rebooted several times; how many Fantastic Four #1s/Avengers #1s/X-Men #1s/etc. do we have to go through?), universe (Prime Material, Inner/Outer Planes, etc.) = one bubble; multiverse = foam. Somewhere those bubbles are going to touch...

(Grammar Police: "it's" is a contraction of the words "it" and "is," with the extra letters and spaces that were removed indicated by the apostrophe. "Its" is neutral possessive, like "his" and "hers" are gender possessives. "A ship's hull has its hit points..." etc. When in doubt, try replacing the problematic term with either "it is" or "his/hers" and see which one makes sense.)

Wow...James Jacobs hates pirates and Doctor Who? Hmph.

LB

One because Jacobs isn't really big into hokey science fiction shows, and 2, because he's gotten really tired about the many readers on this board who keep pushing Dr. Who on him, despite his having made his preferences known. And to be really honest, Dr. Who gives science lip service at it's best.

[Lady Bluehawk]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

darth_borehd wrote:

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

The key thing to keep in mind is that Starfinder is not going to be a SciFi game. So if you're looking for Star Frontiers, Star Trek, or a hard sciencey game.... you're boarding the wrong starship.

I agree with your point. I think somebody mentioned Farscape and everything I heard about Starfinder seems to jive with that.

[rant]
I wish people would stop using Star Trek as an example of hard sci-fi. I like Star Trek, but I am also a fan of hard sci-fi and some occasional techno-babble does not make the story hard sci-fi. The difference between Star Trek and Star Wars is not hard vs soft but instead that Star Wars technology has become so mundane and ubiquitous to its characters that they no longer stop to explain how it works.
[/rant]

It varies. TOS was considerably influenced by the shows of its day, which had more blinkey lights, computers that made clankey typewriter noises. and so on. TNG was much more magic as technology, as transporters became replicators that could produce almost anything you desire by a simple command... dish of ice cream? Stradivarius violin? a holographic character that can outsmart an android? all at your whim. Enterprise tried to evoke a more 50's kind of atmosphere, whereas DS9 for the most part, had a lessened focus on tech in exchange for politics and cultural clash.

Hard sci-fi is a rare beast on visual media, the best examples were probably found in B/W Outer Limits and some episodes of Twilight Zone.

I completely agree with that last paragraph! And yeah, Star Wars has always been science fantasy: fantasy with sci-fi trappings (like the Dragonriders of Pern was science fantasy, as in sci-fi with fantasy trappings). One big difference is that Star Trek before Abrams (talk about magic...) occasionally tried to introduce new tech concepts and see what happened. With the exception of a few new ship or mobile gun platform (Death Star(s), those ridiculous things from the comics) designs, there was really NO new technology in Star Wars, at least to the NPCs there, and hadn't been for probably centuries, if not millennia.

But to be fair, even ST:TOS has "replicator" tech; if you wanted ice cream, you basically plugged in something that looked like an 8-track cassette tape (cutting edge!) that had the schematic of ice cream on it into the food slot in the mess hall. You could poke a few more buttons, perhaps, to specify something like "vanilla ice cream with marshmallow sauce and whipped cream" and run the risk of terminally disappointing some hyper-powered kids, or maybe the buttons were just there to tell the computer what to access. But you always got the dishes, utensils, etc. with your order ("Chicken salad sandwich and coffee." --Kirk to computer. >ping< "Your order, sir. Plate of tribbles with side cup of hot, soggy tribble." --computer to Kirk, if it could talk back then in the mess hall), so yeah, it had to get all that from somewhere. ;)

LB

[thejeff]

Lady Bluehawk wrote:

And as far as infinite etc. cosmos go (and yeah, Marvel's rebooted several times; how many Fantastic Four #1s/Avengers #1s/X-Men #1s/etc. do we have to go through?), universe (Prime Material, Inner/Outer Planes, etc.) = one bubble; multiverse = foam. Somewhere those bubbles are going to touch...

New #1s don't mean a reboot. There have been many in all those titles without reboots.

Marvel's had a few limited reboots - generally changing things in one title's or character's history while leaving the rest of the universe unchanged. The recent post Incursion/Secret Wars reboot was the first large scale one.

Lady Bluehawk wrote:

(Grammar Police: "it's" is a contraction of the words "it" and "is," with the extra letters and spaces that were removed indicated by the apostrophe. "Its" is neutral possessive, like "his" and "hers" are gender possessives. "A ship's hull has its hit points..." etc. When in doubt, try replacing the problematic term with either "it is" or "his/hers" and see which one makes sense.)

Grammar Rebel: A damn grammar rule that needs to die in a fire.

Elsewhere the 's construction is used as a possessive, as in "ship's hull" in your example. There's no reason "its" should remain irregular and I suspect that will change - probably is in the process of changing.

[Lady Bluehawk]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Lady Bluehawk wrote:

Um, just out of curiosity: why Earth 1908? The impression I always got about Golarion was Age of Enlightenment at most recent, with not as many guns or printing presses as we had in real life. :-/

And as far as infinite etc. cosmos go (and yeah, Marvel's rebooted several times; how many Fantastic Four #1s/Avengers #1s/X-Men #1s/etc. do we have to go through?), universe (Prime Material, Inner/Outer Planes, etc.) = one bubble; multiverse = foam. Somewhere those bubbles are going to touch...

(Grammar Police: "it's" is a contraction of the words "it" and "is," with the extra letters and spaces that were removed indicated by the apostrophe. "Its" is neutral possessive, like "his" and "hers" are gender possessives. "A ship's hull has its hit points..." etc. When in doubt, try replacing the problematic term with either "it is" or "his/hers" and see which one makes sense.)

Wow...James Jacobs hates pirates and Doctor Who? Hmph.

LB

One because Jacobs isn't really big into hokey science fiction shows, and 2, because he's gotten really tired about the many readers on this board who keep pushing Dr. Who on him, despite his having made his preferences known. And to be really honest, Dr. Who gives science lip service at its best.

It's too bad; initially, Dr. Who tried to be educational (it is still considered a kids' show, after all, which still blows me away; our kids' shows generally tend to be written for "slow" three-year-olds with deep-pocketed parents), and would go back in time for a history lesson or into the future for a science lesson. I think the character himself got so popular, though, and folks were so intrigued about him and his background that the literature of the show got to be more of a popular aspect.

And I dunno about "pushing it on James Jacobs" (unless they're actually suggesting he come up with a Dr. Who AP or new campaign setting); what I've seen is folks just discussing how they'd like to do an homage character, like they do with a lot of the Marvel universe (Iron Mithral Man, Captain Andoran, etc.). But then again, I haven't looked too deeply (honest!)... He doesn't have to read all the forum entries on those. ;->

LB

[thejeff]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

thejeff wrote:

A hypothetical Star Wars setting without the Force might be grittier and not have a bunch of the convenience tech stuff Trek does, but the entire damn series focuses on a mystical conflict between casters. It's fantasy with science trappings.

Trek is soft science fiction. That the tech is driven by technobabble not hard science doesn't make it magic. Pretty much any non-near future SF is magic by that definition - anything with FTL, for example.

To be fair, Trek is loaded with Gods that walk among men, Apollo (and the rest of the Olympian Pantheon), Multiple Qs and offspring, The Squire of Gothos and his parents, The Organians, (who apparently moved to a more fashionable or quiet neighborhood by the time TNG came around) The Traveller, and his demigod apprentice or Roddenberry avatar, Wesley Crusher, and the Dowd who eliminated an ENTIRE GALACTIC SPECIES WITH A SINGLE THOUGHT, No tech involved at all, among others. Star Wars never went down that particular road.

And when the Tech is driven by NOTHING other than technobabble, it's just magic with a new covering.

The first part I can concede - though I think them being kept as antagonists does make a difference.

The second, perhaps, but the covering matters. There is science fiction other than hard science fiction. Fantasy isn't a catch all that only sufficiently hard SF can escape from. Fantasy has it's own subgenres and it's own rules. Star Wars comes much closer to playing by those rules than Trek does.

And for the purposes of this topic, the kind of genre that Starfinder's going to be designed for is going to look a lot more like Star Wars than like Star Trek. Probably pretty high powered gonzo Star Wars at that. It's going to be full of actual magic in addition to "magic" tech gizmos. You could probably strip it out and play something more like Star Trek, but it would be the equivalent of stripping the magic out of Pathfinder and using it to play historical fiction instead of fantasy.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Lady Bluehawk wrote:

But to be fair, even ST:TOS has "replicator" tech; if you wanted ice cream, you basically plugged in something that looked like an 8-track cassette tape (cutting edge!) that had the schematic of ice cream on it into the food slot in the mess hall. You could poke a few more buttons, perhaps, to specify something like "vanilla ice cream with marshmallow sauce and whipped cream" and run the risk of terminally disappointing some hyper-powered kids, or maybe the buttons were just there to tell the computer what to access. But you always got the dishes, utensils, etc. with your order ("Chicken salad sandwich and coffee." --Kirk to computer. >ping< "Your order, sir. Plate of tribbles with side cup of hot, soggy tribble." --computer to Kirk, if it could talk back then in the mess hall), so yeah, it had to get all that from somewhere. ;)

LB

TOS isn't quite consistent, in at least one episode, and in ST5, The Enterprise is shown to have a cook (and in the movie) a kitchen as well. And Kirk makes a reference to the fact that the cook is planning on serving synthetic turkeys to the crew, when he's informed them that Charlie X (another mad space god I forgot to mention) has turned them into real living turkeys. I always thought that the food slots were nothing more than a high tech version of the Automat (a reference that no one under 40 will get). Cooks prepared the food according to what was asked for by the card and then mini transporters beamed it to the slot.

[Lord Mhoram]

Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:

Lady Bluehawk wrote:

But to be fair, even ST:TOS has "replicator" tech; if you wanted ice cream, you basically plugged in something that looked like an 8-track cassette tape (cutting edge!) that had the schematic of ice cream on it into the food slot in the mess hall. You could poke a few more buttons, perhaps, to specify something like "vanilla ice cream with marshmallow sauce and whipped cream" and run the risk of terminally disappointing some hyper-powered kids, or maybe the buttons were just there to tell the computer what to access. But you always got the dishes, utensils, etc. with your order ("Chicken salad sandwich and coffee." --Kirk to computer. >ping< "Your order, sir. Plate of tribbles with side cup of hot, soggy tribble." --computer to Kirk, if it could talk back then in the mess hall), so yeah, it had to get all that from somewhere. ;)

LB

TOS isn't quite consistent, in at least one episode, and in ST5, The Enterprise is shown to have a cook (and in the movie) a kitchen as well. And Kirk makes a reference to the fact that the cook is planning on serving synthetic turkeys to the crew, when he's informed them that Charlie X (another mad space god I forgot to mention) has turned them into real living turkeys. I always thought that the food slots were nothing more than a high tech version of the Automat (a reference that no one under 40 will get). Cooks prepared the food according to what was asked for by the card and then mini transporters beamed it to the slot.

" My chicken sandwich and coffee. This is my chicken sandwich and coffee! "

[Cyrad]

I'd be okay with Outlaw Star.

Pirate ninja wizards, futuristic magic guns, alien catgirls, androids, cool but impractical ship combat

[darth_borehd]

The starship combat rules have been the Achilles heal of many Sci fi rpgs.

How do you take a rules system made for tactical combat counted in feet and scale it to bigger-than-colossal ships at ranges of thousands or millions of kilometers?

That's the question few such games have handled well.

[BigNorseWolf]

darth_borehd wrote:

The starship combat rules have been the Achilles heal of many Sci fi rpgs.

How do you take a rules system made for tactical combat counted in feet and scale it to bigger-than-colossal ships at ranges of thousands or millions of kilometers?

That's the question few such games have handled well.

whosee whatsits the thingamajig so that any fast moving object can be repelled by the shields but slower moving objects can't? (which i think was dune's explanation for why the fight wasn't over from a laser mounted sniper rifle in orbit)

[thejeff]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

darth_borehd wrote:

The starship combat rules have been the Achilles heal of many Sci fi rpgs.

How do you take a rules system made for tactical combat counted in feet and scale it to bigger-than-colossal ships at ranges of thousands or millions of kilometers?

That's the question few such games have handled well.

whosee whatsits the thingamajig so that any fast moving object can be repelled by the shields but slower moving objects can't? (which i think was dune's explanation for why the fight wasn't over from a laser mounted sniper rifle in orbit)

Well, Dune's was technically that both the shielded object and the shooter would explode, which has some serious issues, but made for cool knife fights.

[Currahee Chris]

BigNorseWolf wrote:

darth_borehd wrote:

The starship combat rules have been the Achilles heal of many Sci fi rpgs.

How do you take a rules system made for tactical combat counted in feet and scale it to bigger-than-colossal ships at ranges of thousands or millions of kilometers?

That's the question few such games have handled well.

whosee whatsits the thingamajig so that any fast moving object can be repelled by the shields but slower moving objects can't? (which i think was dune's explanation for why the fight wasn't over from a laser mounted sniper rifle in orbit)

Couldn't agree more- you make an excellent post. I have played around with FFG's Edge of Empire SW game and its vehicle combat rules and they are doable. Still though, my favorite was Knight Hawks from the SF line.

On another note, I was just perusing the SF info and got to thinking- I wonder if they will release minis like they do for PF. That would be really exciting imo. Im still on the fence with this game but no doubt would at least buy some of the minis (if they were produced).

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

Grimcleaver wrote:

I mean really it's one way or the other. Either all that stuff is out there or it isn't. You can't really soft shoe something like that.

Sure you can... because the only parts that matter are the parts relevant to individual campaigns. I can safely say that since I have no intentions of dealing with 1912 Earth, nor 25th Century Vulcan, that I could not care a plugged nickel as to how Paizo thinks they'll fit in the same universe as Empty Space Where Golarion Used To Be. If I wanted to reconcile that kind of mess, I'd be playing WhoFinder.

[Matthew Shelton]

James Jacobs wrote:

To further freak folks out... we also assume the Material Plane is big enough not only for Golarion and Earth... but for pretty much ALL campaign settings. For all RPGs. And for all books and movies as well. The planet Vulcan's out there somewhere, as is Narnia and Middle Earth. In some cases, time AND space separates these lands from Golarion, but in some cases only space separates them.

And all of those worlds are contained in the Material Plane, which is a speck at the center of the elemental planes, which are combined to a speck in the center of the astral plane, which is a speck at the center of the Outer Planes.

In this case, the material plane probably exceeds 10^10^118 meters in radius, if the Pathfinderverse agrees with Max Tegmark's ideas about a large enough universe being able to contain multiple nearly identical copies of individuals, planets, galaxies, and more. ("Parallel Universes", _Scientific American_, May 2003)