"Zones of Thought" and Starfinder / Pathfinder crossover

[McBugman]

The excitement of this "Year in Waiting" has me revisiting all my favorite Space Opera stories/movies/etc. Recently my mind has come back to Vernor Vinge's Zones of Thought series (mainly A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky, wasn't as much of a fan of the Tines World) and I was really hit with a Wow moment of how cool the Starfinder to Pathfinder system blending could be in a universe like that.

For those not familiar with the Zones of Thought:

The novels are set in various locations in the Milky Way. The galaxy is divided into four concentric volumes called the "Zones of Thought"; it is not clear to the characters if this is a natural phenomenon or an artificially-produced one, but it seems to roughly correspond with galactic-scale stellar density. The Zones reflect fundamental differences in basic physical laws, and one of the main consequences is their effect on intelligence, both biological and artificial. Artificial intelligence and automation is most directly affected, in that advanced hardware and software from the Beyond or the Transcend will work less and less well as a ship "descends" towards the Unthinking Depths. But even biological intelligence is affected to a lesser degree.

This description as been utterly hacked from the Wiki page here to save time. See the Setting section.

I think it would be fantastic to play a setting like this, the Unthinking Depths and Slow Zone would be in Pathfinder with the Technology guide only available in the Slow Zone. While the Beyond is pure Starfinder and the Transcend is High Level Starfinder mixed with the AI God Triune's Drift.

A lot of interesting character development would proceed and these options would really paint the campaign's feel:
-Multiclass between a Starfinder and Pathfinder class during your travels as needed?
-Gestalt with one foot in each system?
-Just deal with the potential class crutch when you dip into a Lower or Higher Zone?

Mostly the Tech classes would get hit, to even it out Magic could run on an inverse system in comparison to Technology... So many thoughts..

Needless to say, I will be interested in GMing/Playing this idea come August/September. Re-skinning the Jade Regent AP to be a galactic traveler comes to mind right away in a dreamy sense, but that's insanely aggressive. I think re-skinning PFS scenarios or some 1-2 level modules would be best... much more forgiving.

[Odraude]

I like it. I had a similar sort of idea, but with a different goal in mind.

For my idea, it essentially is about an advanced extraterrestial intelligence that has set up an artificial "Great Filter" on the galaxy. This is a sort of galactic weapon that checks for species with a certain Tech Level, eliminates them, and takes their resources and technology. In this way, the ETI remains top dog in the universe and survives.

There's plenty with this, as the weapon generally attacks civilizations with FTL travel capabilities. What makes the Earthlings in this special is that they took FOREVER to discover FTL travel compared to their contemporaries. So humanity's robotics and weapons are actually advanced enough to somewhat deal with this weapon. So it should make things fairly interesting.

[Matthew Shelton]

Something like the Time Odyssey isn't it? There is a race called the Firstborn that thinks there are too many other species for the universe to support in terms of useful resources (energy available to perform work and is not waste heat or entropy) until the end of the universe occurs (the big rip). So they have decided to eliminate the unworthy and the wasteful.

[Tom Kalbfus]

There was a D&D module called Expedition to Barrier Peak, it seems that with Starfinder rules, I could stat up the Androids in that module compliant to 3.5 rules.