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So going over the comments from the design team it seems like the obvious thrust of Starfinder is very much in the Science Fantasy direction rather than Science Fiction.
Having said that there is an incredibly rich vein of stories and characters that can be played with in the more science fiction side of things and paizo has historically been very good with designing the system as a toolboxes of rules and mechanics that, outside of organized play, can be and should be used or not used or modified as any table sees fit.
So the question that occurs is two fold.
How easy is it going to be to houserule magic away or reskin magic as technology? I would imagine it would be easier than the low magic/no magic games of Pathfinder that are around since in Starfinder there's a lot of technology to take up the slack.
Will there eventually be official support for such a variant?
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You forgot Babylon 5 -- heresy!!
One of the interesting things, based on the SF properties you've listed, is that each of them have their own "magic" (or at least strongly "magic-like") elements:
- Star Trek: faster-than-light travel (warp, transporters), solid-state illusions with the ability to gain sentience (holodeck), the ability to divine a medical, chemical, or physics property or problem and the eldritch lore to fix it (tricorders, scanning, ships computers), the ability to ward off powerful deleterious local effects and energies (shield), small wands or rods that allow them to use incredibly powerful and diverse arrays of enemy destruction or neturalization effects (phasers), and so on. Oh, and technobabble; that's basically just Schrodinger's wizard, except it always has to do with the ship.
- Culture: while this is mostly just "Behold the power of math" (and is probably the least fantasy while being fantasy-like, here), the Culture books have people making volcanoes (on ring-worlds, no less); benign super-beings who take an (alternating) light-or-heavy hand in universal affairs and who's designs go far beyond anything mortals can know or comprehend as they live forever (super-computers MINDs); the ability to live forever (as an digital replica, reincarnation, cloning...); shape shifters, mind readers, and "god" (the first book of his I'd ever read, more like "mind-guesser", and inscrutable alien non-corporeal entities again from the first book of his I'd ever read; respectively).
- Firefly: Readers, son. They're real, and they do their thing.
While I do hope that Starfinder enables a style of play different from "space fantasy!" there are still elements that can be borrowed from "space fantasy!" that can be relatively easily re-fluffed as super-science.
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You forgot Babylon 5 -- heresy!!
My Dude, Babylon 5 has:
- telepaths, empaths, and similar- immortal god-angel aliens that can fly
- immortal demon aliens that can phase out of reality and back in
... I love that daggum series so daggum much, but it, too, falls into sci-fantasy...
#fromacertainpointofview
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Honestly, if I wanted a hard sci-fi I'd just use Traveller. Which I do, and is why I'm only lurking at SF. I tend not to tie myself to one system so im always looking for the best fit. The Paizo kitchen sink approach means the game will probably allow you to simply handwave a lot of the fantasy elements away. My caveat would be that some of those fantasy elements are really baked into the system so you can only make it so hard.
I also wouldn't be starting with Pathfinder/d20 as a base, but that's just me. :)
I absolutely love me some d20 base game.
That said, The Firefly RPG and its version of the Cortex+ system is really boss. I highly recommend it as a secondary, fluffable system. One thing I've learned is that one Cortex+ is not like another: each variant is actually quite different. A slight modification of the mechanics and a refluff job created a marvelously stable and surprisingly robust and customizable fantasy system for our games.
But that said, I'm super-excited for Star Finder! And I'm looking forward to being able to use it to adapt my own variants of all of the above settings and worlds!
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So going over the comments from the design team it seems like the obvious thrust of Starfinder is very much in the Science Fantasy direction rather than Science Fiction.
It is however not the fantastic wildspace of spelljammer. Planets are round and revolve around stars, space has vacuum, and much of the physical aspects of the universe are heavily science grounded.
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You forgot Babylon 5 -- heresy!!
My Dude, Babylon 5 has:
- telepaths, empaths, and similar
- immortal god-angel aliens that can fly
- immortal demon aliens that can phase out of reality and back in... I love that daggum series so daggum much, but it, too, falls into sci-fantasy...
#fromacertainpointofview
There's not that much in science fiction that ISN"T science-fantasy :)
Best example I can think of such, is "MOON".
- Firefly: Readers, son. They're real, and they do their thing.
Do you mean Reavers or do I need to rewatch Firefly?
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You forgot Babylon 5 -- heresy!!
My Dude, Babylon 5 has:
- telepaths, empaths, and similar
- immortal god-angel aliens that can fly
- immortal demon aliens that can phase out of reality and back in... I love that daggum series so daggum much, but it, too, falls into sci-fantasy...
#fromacertainpointofview
There's not that much in science fiction that ISN"T science-fantasy :)
Best example I can think of such, is "MOON".
If we're talking movies, The Martian and Interstellar both have really good spaceships. Speaking only for myself, I think the difference between science fiction and science fantasy is how your futuristic setting handles the artificial gravity proposition: grav plates or centrifugal force?
Not that I have any sort of problem with science fantasy. I'm totally cool with a setting where the difference between Klingons and Hobgoblins is whether they wield laser guns or melee weapons. Just don't ask me about the Bat'leth, it's a futuristic Klingon melee weapon, it's ceremonial, mmkay?
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I didn't shove everything but hard SF into a specific genre, I said The Martian and Interstellar both have really good spaceships.
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^ true!
Also, I wanted to mention: my point wasn't that it was all fantasy, but that it had elements that are, to our current understanding, fantastical to almost nonsensical. ... and also that you could use current d20 rules (magic and all) to replicate several iconic things in each of those, if not all the iconic elements (though, uh... Culture would require serious "scale" fluff alteration... ssssseeeeeeerrrrrious scale-fluff alteration).
Arthur C. Clarke, you know.
I could remake phasers, Vulcans, transporters, ships, replicators, and so on, within current magic rules, call it "Treknobabble" technology, and rather accurately run a Star Trek game without too much issue (and, heck, if I go by the Original series, I can mostly just use the bestiary as-is, no fluff changes needed).
Firefly is more or less: humans-only, low level; no magic; up to one (1) psion (telepath), psychic warrior, or wilder (extremely limited power selection); guns everywhere; no monsters (other than fellow humans and mmmmaaaaayyyybe undead or aberrants or sommach for the Reavers).
For something like Babylon 5, I could do very similar, but I'd actually have to either borrow and paint some low-grade stats that I don't currently know, or "build my own" monster from parts to get a few of the aliens correct.
Culture wouldn't translate "correctly" into PF, even if you go full-bore into their fantastical sci-CI elements. That said, if you embrace different "scales" of effects or events, you can emulate the stuff with the basic framework of the rules, you'd just have to a) change a lot of the specifics (ex: shape changing is limited to your own size, and shrinking too much could kill you; "mythic" would have to be applied to the MIND devices), and b) introduce a "scale" system (ex: handling body-scale with humans, a ship-scale with planets, a low civilization scale with smaller civilizations, and a Culture scale with the Culture and a few similar civilizations). Few of the specifics would look the same (feat chains would be collapsed, hit dice lowered, etc), but it could still be a d20 game.
Speculative Fiction is a massive double genre that includes tropes and twists that are surprisingly common between both sides of Mr. Clarke's law. It's useful to talk about the way it presents itself, but focusing on the specifics of a setting can quickly blur the line.
Also, while the Core rules could not, the d20 system can basically handle anything. : 3
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I guess it all comes down to homebrew then for each setting that a GM might want to emulate.
Heck a really stripped down version of Starfinder (no magic PLUS low tech!) combined with Pathfinder Advanced firearms might make for a compelling game with the PCs playing Late 20th, Early 21st Century Astronauts.
The telepath trope is so strong in Sci-Fi that I'd be surprised if that isn't a Starfinder class of some sort to fill the Deanna Troi role without resorting to Pathfinder magic spells that accomplish the same things.
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I hope we'll be able to use the Starfinder rules for Fallout and Mass Effect.
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Can't you do a pretty decent Fallout through Pathfinder and the Technology Guide? Numeria is pretty similar to Fallout style wastelands with the radiation and whatnot.