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With the lasts blogs, it seems clear that Starfinder will be basically a Space Opera game. I have no problem with that, I love Space Opera. But some home-made settings my group play have been a long time on pause waiting for Starfinder, and those settings are basically CyberPunk. How viable is Starfinder for settings like that? Is possible some kinf of "Cyberpunk Adventures" like "Horror Adventures" for Pathfinder on the future? The setting seems interesting, but I will use nearly always homemade ones. How much I lose of the Core if I don't use the setting or use very little the space part?
I'm very excited and impacient waiting for Starfinder. Those lasts months are really slowwwww.
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There will be more laser guns than a traditional cyberpunk game unless you pull them out.
We don't know much about cyberware or hacking yet, but we do know that - particularly with regard to hacking - there is a hacker specialty for the operative class, and that the analog equipment quality means that such equipment can't be hacked. So it really seems like a hacker would be viable. I am personally thinking that it would be pretty easy to adapt the library-research rules from Ultimate Intrigue to deep hacking, and plan to use those if the hacking rules in SF feel too light.
Likewise, Ultimate Intrigue has heist rules, and again it seems like those might be relevant for a cyberpunk-style game.
Rob McCreary said they want the game to be subgenre neutral like PF was, allowing you to be able to run just about any flavour of science fantasy possibly the same way PF let's you do just about every kind of fantasy. Horror in space was given as an example and a campaign with no space travel at all was said to be perfectly viable.
And we’re trying to really build a platform where you can run any sort of game. If you want to run a Shadowrun-style corporate intrigue, and sort of a gritty street-life kind of game, you can. You can also run a very classic space opera sort of game. You can run an Event Horizon or Alien game, or that sort of horror-tinged science fiction or science fantasy. You can do that too. (Game Informer interview)
While at its heart, Starfinder appears to be a space opera genre game, it sounds like Paizo wants to make a system versatile enough to work for a wide variety of sci-fi genres. They've actually frequently cited Shadowrun as an inspiration for this game. I think, as long as your world has a large proliferation of firearms, a certain degree of technological advancement, and some type of mystical element (whether reskinned as something mundane like psionic ability or a "mass effect"-type energy field, or something on the other end of the spectrum like the Force or Pathfinder's magic) - you should be good. Starships are a big part of this game, but not indispensable. I actually think Ace Pilot can potentially get a lot of good use here, as they are also supposed to be very proficient with vehicles - might make for a good setup for a Rigger type build. Spacefarer I don't know about, although they might provide good survival abilities akin to what you'd expect of a ranger in a sci-fi setting. For hacker PCs - Shisumo already pointed out the hacker subclass, and there is apparently a setting-based "Infosphere" sounding somewhat like a matrix that may see some translation in the rules themselves. I don't know whether you've read the "Meet the Iconic" for Iseph yet, but that should provide some really great inspiration for a cyberpunk world set in Starfinder's rule system.
I would think that if you were going to play a cyberpunk theme, you'd have to arrange some sort of E6 type of game. I think that any D&D based game is going to have a hard time staying within a "punk" style milieu. Eventually you are going to have so many levels that you become the "The Man" that the new generation of cyberpunks have to deal with... which could very well be a feature for your game.
It is like starting up with D&D and expecting to play Game of Thrones. Eventually the PCs are going to be able to walk all over the setting assumptions.
Not to say you can't do it, no. You just have to be prepared that power levels have to be addressed almost before the game starts up.
With the lasts blogs, it seems clear that Starfinder will be basically a Space Opera game. I have no problem with that, I love Space Opera. But some home-made settings my group play have been a long time on pause waiting for Starfinder, and those settings are basically CyberPunk. How viable is Starfinder for settings like that? Is possible some kinf of "Cyberpunk Adventures" like "Horror Adventures" for Pathfinder on the future? The setting seems interesting, but I will use nearly always homemade ones. How much I lose of the Core if I don't use the setting or use very little the space part?
I'm very excited and impacient waiting for Starfinder. Those lasts months are really slowwwww.
I see absolutely no reason why you couldn't run a cyberpunk or any any planet bound campaign with Starfinder, your party just needs a reason to either not leave the planet or an inability to do so.
Maybe your party are part of an intergalactic anti-corp or totalitarianism in general organization and their current mission has them either stirring up trouble for or helping to overthrow the Reigning powers.
Maybe they are natives to a heavily controlled world and essentially slaves to a megacorp thus cannot leave, or are to poor to leave;either way they begin to rebel against the system...violently.
Maybe they are space travelers who crashed on a Corporatist world and that world's many problem's are now theirs.
Horror can blended into any of the above scenarios.
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I suppose the issue is, not "can you do it" but "why would you do it?"
Starfinder includes detailed rules for starship combat, but only perfunctory rules for cyberspace.
Shadowrun has no rules for starship combat but detailed rules for cyberspace.
Which is the best choice if you want a campaign with lots of cyberspace and no starships?
Starfinder because Shadowrun is a confusing mess while the d20 system is easy and nice to play.
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Cyberspace is the reason why I hate cyberpunk games. Lets waste an hour of game time giving the decker a solo adventure while the Street Samurai, Rigger, and everyone who isn't jacked in twiddle their thumbs. Its great for fiction, or single player video games, but it sucks for tabletop. Not having a fully fleshed cyberspace, and reducing it to some skill checks is a big improvement.
What Torbyne said. Your entire adventure could take place on any number of that's no moon-sized stations, which could have entire levels that resemble the surface of a planet and/or a city in which to craft your adventure. Doesn't have to have any starships in it other than using a moored/docked starship as another "room" to explore.
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One of the core tenets of Starfinder during creation was that it should work just as well for an entire campaign on one planet as it does for one that's flying around the galaxy. (I actually didn't even think the game should *have* starship combat until several other designers here thankfully convinced me I was wrong.) So you can absolutely use the rules as written to play a single-planet cyberpunk game!
I'm gonna use Starfinder to run a game based on MegaMan Legends. Instead of star ships, you get water ships, sailing around a vast ocean world
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With the lasts blogs, it seems clear that Starfinder will be basically a Space Opera game. I have no problem with that, I love Space Opera. But some home-made settings my group play have been a long time on pause waiting for Starfinder, and those settings are basically CyberPunk. How viable is Starfinder for settings like that? Is possible some kinf of "Cyberpunk Adventures" like "Horror Adventures" for Pathfinder on the future? The setting seems interesting, but I will use nearly always homemade ones. How much I lose of the Core if I don't use the setting or use very little the space part?
I'm very excited and impacient waiting for Starfinder. Those lasts months are really slowwwww.
Not Starfinder, but Pathfinder-compatible, and the book will release soon.
Sorry for the delay to respond; Paizo forums have been acting weird for some days.
I am relieved to hear that from James Sutter. My group will use the space part...eventually. It just do not clash well with the ideas we have right now. I asked basically because the Themes blog. There are 9 specific themes, and 3 of them (Ace Pilot, Spacefarer and Xenoseeker) are based on Space Opera. 3/9 is a huge proportion, and I was asking myself "if the proportion on the rest of the Core is similar, that can be a problem".
Edit: Just to be clear; the setting on question is not exactly cyberpunk, just similar. No problem with laser weapons or high level characters. Halfway cyberpunk and NieR Automata, a game I LOVED and will steal many ideas for Starfinder.
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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Legendary Games is working on a Starfinder version of our sword-and-planet pulp Legendary Planet adventure saga, which blends sci-fi and fantasy elements and takes place across a half-dozen worlds, but interplanetary transport is almost exclusively through the use of an ancient portal network. Spacecraft of any kind are very rare and FTL ships are unknown (though airships and occasional orbital vessels or satellites exist on some planets).
In Starfinder context, this is a campaign that could exist either on the far frontier of space, beyond where FTL exploration has reached, or a generation in the past, during the mysterious "gap" period before its discovery. Either way, the campaign is still all about the exploration of alien worlds and strange civilizations and the clash of cosmic powers striving for control of known space!