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Yeah, I hear a lot of people say "Starfinder is obviously just a trial Pathfinder 2.0." Along with "Alternity was just the 3.0 playtest" and "Saga was the 4.0 playtest".
Just because 3e borrowed ideas from Alternity doesn't mean that was the reason Alternity was published. I honestly believe Alternity was published because TSR (or were they WotC yet?) wanted to make a Sci Fi game. I remember being very excited that it was about to come out, and then disappointed that it didn't come out as soon as I wanted. (I somehow managed to miss the Traveller boat when I was a kid playing AD&D/1e, which is a shame. I would have loved it. I would try to run spaceship games using AD&D rules, and spent time creating deck plans, etc.) Eventually, because Alternity's release was delayed (or, at least, was not coming out "for a while" to my perspective), I discovered GURPS and used that as my system for a long time. (Which was probably a good thing; that's what really broke me out of the shell of thinking that RPGs had to be published by TSR or whoever'd bought them.)
Is it possible that some ideas developed for Starfinder will make their way back into Pathfinder rules? Sure! But to me it's absurd to think that Starfinder is just (or primarily, or even partially) out there as a Pathfinder 2.0 trial balloon. The notion of a space fanatasy game is cool enough, and something that I believe is currently underserved in the market, that I don't understand why people don't believe that Paizo would do that just to do that.
Yeah, I hear a lot of people say "Starfinder is obviously just a trial Pathfinder 2.0." Along with "Alternity was just the 3.0 playtest" and "Saga was the 4.0 playtest".
Speaking of Saga, when the Dragonlance Saga card-based RPG came out, there were people (including a columnist for Dragon Magazine) speculating that it was a test bed for 3rd edition AD&D. So this stuff comes up pretty much anytime the maker of a popular game tries something new.
The "Saga was the 4.0 playtest" speculation is probably helped by the fact that one of the 4th edition preview books specifically called Saga out as an inspiration for 4th edition. However, I'm pretty sure the context was that they took lessons from that game and incorporated them into 4th edition rather than designing the game specifically so they could playtest a new version of D&D.
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Similarly, I believe that the Star Wars Saga Edition game was designed as a playtest for 4E rules.I am one of the designers of Star Wars Saga Edition.
This is not the case.Saga was the one with the long, instead of tall, books right?
Ooo, I had fun playing in those games, Thankies!
I still have the whole set of them. I really love Star Wars, and I really really enjoyed the Saga Edition.
Here's my thought. I have no insider info, but I've spent most of my life following game companies.
Pathfinder is pretty mature on the non-Golarion specific crunch end. Further books will have to be more and more niche. Ultimate Performance. Ultimate Basketweaving. The Left-Handed Throwing Master's Guide. This is either going away or winding way down.
There's still a lot of Golarion-specific stuff and AP's to do with Pathfinder. With subscriptions, this is a huge business and likely to keep doing well.
Starfinder is going to need a lot of generic crunch stuff - starships, aliens, robots, more tech, new magic. It also needs the setting and AP stuff as well.
I predict that Paizo will initially reallocate resources between the new priorities. If Starfinder takes off, then they may add some people.
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Pathfinder is pretty mature on the non-Golarion specific crunch end. Further books will have to be more and more niche.
Starfinder is going to need a lot of generic crunch stuff
I predict that Paizo will initially reallocate resources between the new priorities.
Disagree. First of all, Lisa specifically said that Starfinder won't affect Pathfinder, so Pathfinder is still going to have the same number of resources going. Second of all, the RPG line still has years to go before going into the niche stuff.