Starfinder presents some unique storytelling aspects, especially over something like Pathfinder, that I find rather compelling. In this case, this thread is about ways that you have "owned" your aspect of Starfinder to tell your own story.
To me, the one that has intrigued me the most is the Solarian, I find the class to be the singularly most unique thing in Starfinder. Soldiers are soldiers, Operatives are rogues, Mechanics are very interesting (especially Exocortexes), Mystics and Technomancers have their appeal, and Envoys have some amazing RP potential...
Solarians, to me, however have such a broad range that you can tell your own story with them that goes hand in hand with mechanics.
Example:
My personal Solarian is a Korasha Lashunta named Altea. At the start of our campaign she had just left the Cosmonestary and had begun a pilgrimage to find her place in the universe.
So I created an internal story of her self-perfection. Almost anime-inspired in this case. levels 1-5 are her beginning to understand what she can do with the energy of the Universe.
When she started out she could manifest a solar weapon (A sword) and she could gather photonic energy (over the course of about 18 seconds) to expel it in a powerful explosion of energy. Alternatively she could tap into the graviton energy spectrum and create a vacuum effect (which she sees no point in doing).
When she reached level 2 she learned how to use the Photonic Energy to surround herself in a sheath of energy and move at incredibly high speeds. (Stellar Rush)
As she made it to level 4 she realized that she could feel the undercurrent of the universal gravity and bend it instinctively to her will, this increased some aspects of her agility (Gravity Boost - Because this works in Solar mode it is unconscious as far as she plays it.).
She hasn't hit level 6 yet... That is soon. I have built a cosmology with her beliefs, and at that level she will finally realize that the sword isn't a physical thing... The energy of the universe is part of her... Called integration...
Her Solar Weapon will manifest as a sheath of swirling power that she holds in her fist and that surrounds her arm. Conveniently this is also the level that she gains Plasma Sheath. Her Solar Weapon damage will double, she will surround herself (almost permanently) in a sheath of blazing fire, and will still move around the battle field (despite heavy armor) at incredible speeds, so fast she will literally light the atmosphere around her on fire...
This will continue on and on as she gains more and more levels, allowing me to create a story of evolution, of pushing past preconceptions, of growing and changing. (Hence the Solar Weapon no longer being a blade, because it doesn't need to be. There is no point for it to be. Etc.)
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So how are you building your characters in Starfinder? How are you weaving narrative into your decisions. What interesting things are you doing to meld mechanics and story together.
What's really interesting about Starfinder for me is how many 'modern' concepts I can just throw in there that fit just fine. The internet and smart phones and public transit are all aspects of life that just don't exist in traditional fantasy but make perfect sense in Starfinder games. In fact they're pretty much required! It's certainly different.
What's really interesting about Starfinder for me is how many 'modern' concepts I can just throw in there that fit just fine. The internet and smart phones and public transit are all aspects of life that just don't exist in traditional fantasy but make perfect sense in Starfinder games. In fact they're pretty much required! It's certainly different.
It allows so many different things.
In our game, for example, one of our recent adventures was going to a primitive planet that a group of pirates had set up shop on. Using their advanced technology they were kidnapping and enslaving locals.
It had a mix of traditional fantasy as well as Science Fiction themes. It allows for a wide range of characters and situations.
Some will be hyper-tech, others may be low tech. One party member might be an Android who uses advanced heavy weapons, while another might be a contemplative monk that has a mystical connection to the universe. It has a lot of the elements that made Rifts fun.
We just played our first Starfinder session a couple days ago and it really is the ultimate kitchen-sink setting, in a good way.
I started us out on Akiton because I love the cyberpunk-meets-Barsoom vibe it can have in Starfinder. Our party had its first adventure in a Ysoki "warren city" suspended on makeshift causeways between the spires of Hivemarket's space-port district, its design inspired in part by the Kowloon Walled City. They faced off against Akitonian Kedaj street gangs, a dastardly hacker controlling a viciously addictive VR parlour and a group of his cyber-zombie henchmen in the search for a data packet with the salvage location of a recently-crashed starship.
I'd be hard-pressed to think of another game where I could mash those elements together in a single adventure in that particular way and have them work. We had a whale of a time.
Starfinder offers (almost) no unique storytelling opportunities compared to Pathfinder.
The reason for this is that the writters completely botched the "science" part of science fantasy by establishing many facts about the way the universe works and then completely ignoring anything they built whenever it's convenient for them.
For example, here are some facts established in the Starfinder universe :
-a large spectrum of AI exists, from Weak to Strong AI and even True AI (ie they have a soul).
-robots exists.
-the level of technology availible in Starfinder is vastly superior to ours.
Considering this, here are some interesting facts about robotic in general :
-the "reflexes" of a machine are more or less the speed of electricity, as it's used to carry the signals that allow it to "think". Its computing power makes processing a situation so close to instantaneous that we can ignore that part.
-markmanship is pure mathematics. If you can account for every factor and process them (which a machine can) there is literally no possibility of failing a shot.
Now, let's take a look at a typical situation in the Starfinder universe. Your party of adventurers are infiltrating an ennemy facility when they take a wrong turn and come face to face with a security drone programmed to kill on sight !
How the fight goes down following Starfinder established in-universe logic : The brain of your character try to make the association between the picture of an armed drone his eyes are sending, the knowledge he has about what an armed drone is, and what he should do now. This takes approximately 0,25 seconds. In that lapse of time, the drone drew his gun, fired a single bullet in the head of each one of your characters and wrote a complete report of the incident to its hierarchy. You're all dead. Roll a new character.
How the fight goes down following Starfinder ruleset :
DM : Everyone, roll for initiative. *rolling happens* Alright, David, your solarian goes first.
David : I strike it with my blade !
DM : You deal some damage. It's its turn. It aims at you and shoot twice. *rolls the dice* Both shots miss !
Does that sound a little unfair and unfun ? Maybe, but science isn't fair. Ask a trader from the 90's what he thinks about trading machines that probe the entire stock market in real time and performs hundreds of transactions by the second. And secondly, why the f#*# would you involve robots and AI in your setting if you absolutely don't want to deal with the logical consequences ? That would be like creating a setting where the entire Earth is covered in volcanoes and never explaining why humanity is only mildly inconvenienced by the heat instead of just dead.
Starfinder offers (almost) no unique storytelling opportunities compared to Pathfinder.
The reason for this is that the writters completely botched the "science" part of science fantasy by establishing many facts about the way the universe works and then completely ignoring anything they built whenever it's convenient for them.
For example, here are some facts established in the Starfinder universe :
-a large spectrum of AI exists, from Weak to Strong AI and even True AI (ie they have a soul).
-robots exists.
-the level of technology availible in Starfinder is vastly superior to ours.
Considering this, here are some interesting facts about robotic in general :
-the "reflexes" of a machine are more or less the speed of electricity, as it's used to carry the signals that allow it to "think". Its computing power makes processing a situation so close to instantaneous that we can ignore that part.
-markmanship is pure mathematics. If you can account for every factor and process them (which a machine can) there is literally no possibility of failing a shot.
Now, let's take a look at a typical situation in the Starfinder universe. Your party of adventurers are infiltrating an ennemy facility when they take a wrong turn and come face to face with a security drone programmed to kill on sight !
How the fight goes down following Starfinder established in-universe logic : The brain of your character try to make the association between the picture of an armed drone his eyes are sending, the knowledge he has about what an armed drone is, and what he should do now. This takes approximately 0,25 seconds. In that lapse of time, the drone drew his gun, fired a single bullet in the head of each one of your characters and wrote a complete report of the incident to its hierarchy. You're all dead. Roll a new character.
How the fight goes down following Starfinder ruleset :
DM : Everyone, roll for initiative. *rolling happens* Alright, David, your solarian goes first.
David :...
1) Because that's not how robots work in the vast majority of science fiction - especially heroic space opera. But then I suppose that assassin droid should have just killed all the Jedi before they could move.
2) Because video pattern recognition in real time is hard. I've done some programming work on it and it's nigh impossible to duplicate the kinds of things the human brain does subconsciously. Starfinder AI may have solved that, but there's no need to assume it can do it instantly. Computers don't process information instantly, they do it really fast. Process enough data with complex enough algorithms and really fast becomes slow.
Even with instant processing, the robot still has to move weapons in the real world. Its aiming and firing will not be instantaneous or even light speed.
3) And in comparison to Pathfinder? A setting which the designers routinely ignore the logical consequences of the magic they put in. Which has routinely been shown should properly either evolve into a Tippyverse or descend into some kind of shadowpocalypse. But doesn't, because it's designed to be fun place to have adventures in, not a rigorous simulation.
@Gryffe: Eh. "Account for every factor" is a pretty big leap, there. Fighting a living opponent is many orders of magnitude more complicated than analysing a spreadsheet. (Also in fairness to Starfinder, virtually no roleplaying system I know of treats robots or drones as automatic insta-killers, for indeed the very good reason that notwithstanding whether it's plausible -- which is hugely questionable -- it would certainly be un-fun.)
That said, "science fantasy" of course skews toward pulp space opera and away from "hard science" because "science fantasy" is inherently a contradiction in terms. If you want to analyse the system for scientific consistency you'd certainly want something else: in the Starfinder setting "science" is mostly "Science!" in the pulp-fantasy mad-scientist sense. So you have to make your peace with that. I mean, no, this space opera RPG is not a Neal Stephenson novel, which cannot be a surprise.
"Unique" is probably putting Starfinder's narrative possibilities a little strongly -- after all the underlying roleplaying chassis is an updated version of PF, and much of the setting is basically adapted from PF's "People of the Stars" and similar supplements -- but one doesn't need to be a massive nit-picker about it. There are still narrative possibilities the Starfinder system and setting encourage that I wouldn't think to see anywhere else.
For example, there's the fact that Starfinder characters usually incorporate Themes -- and that those Themes in some cases tie into SF concepts not treated in Pathfinder -- encourages different stories right there that Pathfinder was really not set up to contemplate. I can attest to this as someone presently playing in a campaign that's been adapted to Starfinder from a Pathfinder AP that did not contemplate the existence of, say, the Icon theme.
1) Because that's not how robots work in the vast majority of science fiction - especially heroic space opera. But then I suppose that assassin droid should have just killed all the Jedi before they could move.
My issue is not about tropes or what other pieces of work are doing, it's about internal inconsistencies. You have smartphones and spaceship computers perfectly able to hand the complex tasks they're assigned, but somehow the robots get stuck with a human level of cognition for no reason at all.
thejeff wrote:
2) Because video pattern recognition in real time is hard. I've done some programming work on it and it's nigh impossible to duplicate the kinds of things the human brain does subconsciously. Starfinder AI may have solved that, but there's no need to assume it can do it instantly. Computers don't process information instantly, they do it really fast. Process enough data with complex enough algorithms and really fast becomes slow.
Even with instant processing, the robot still has to move weapons in the real world. Its aiming and firing will not be instantaneous or even light speed.
That would be a good point, if it wasn't for the fact that our own world's Weak AI are child toys and we have virtually no strong AI yet. A civilisation that has figured out and perfected Strong AI to the point we're shown would have no problem with that. Optimizing things like pattern recognition and space perception is a prerequisite for that kind of big work.
And even if we take movement into account, you would still be dead before you even understood what struck you. Machines can move at surhuman speed. That's not hard, animals already do it.
thejeff wrote:
3) And in comparison to Pathfinder? A setting which the designers routinely ignore the logical consequences of the magic they put in. Which has routinely been shown should properly either evolve into a Tippyverse or descend into some kind of shadowpocalypse. But doesn't, because it's designed to be fun place to have adventures in, not a rigorous simulation.
I don't really understand your point there.
Are you saying that Starfinder brings "new" possibilities because high-end technology is now so ubiquitous that continuing to carry a setting-sized Idiot Ball would rip a hole in reality ? Well, that's not "new" possibilities then, like you said simply playing in a Tippyverse would bring as much to the table as Starfinder RAW setting.
And I don't like the "everyone is stupid because it's supposed to be fun" excuse. It only makes me question why no one in-universe ever figured how a bunch of level 4-6 spells can completely destroy the entire foundation of the society they live in. That's bad writing 101 and a clear sign that whoever conceived this has to step up their game.
1) Because that's not how robots work in the vast majority of science fiction - especially heroic space opera. But then I suppose that assassin droid should have just killed all the Jedi before they could move.
My issue is not about tropes or what other pieces of work are doing, it's about internal inconsistencies. You have smartphones and spaceship computers perfectly able to hand the complex tasks they're assigned, but somehow the robots get stuck with a human level of cognition for no reason at all.
thejeff wrote:
2) Because video pattern recognition in real time is hard. I've done some programming work on it and it's nigh impossible to duplicate the kinds of things the human brain does subconsciously. Starfinder AI may have solved that, but there's no need to assume it can do it instantly. Computers don't process information instantly, they do it really fast. Process enough data with complex enough algorithms and really fast becomes slow.
Even with instant processing, the robot still has to move weapons in the real world. Its aiming and firing will not be instantaneous or even light speed.
That would be a good point, if it wasn't for the fact that our own world's Weak AI are child toys and we have virtually no strong AI yet. A civilisation that has figured out and perfected Strong AI to the point we're shown would have no problem with that. Optimizing things like pattern recognition and space perception is a prerequisite for that kind of big work.
And even if we take movement into account, you would still be dead before you even understood what struck you. Machines can move at surhuman speed. That's not hard, animals already do it.
thejeff wrote:
3) And in comparison to Pathfinder? A setting which the designers routinely ignore the logical consequences of the magic they put in. Which has routinely been shown should properly either evolve into a Tippyverse or descend into some kind of shadowpocalypse. But doesn't, because it's designed to be fun
...
No. I'm saying neither Pathfinder or Starfinder take into account the kinds of logical consequences you're concerned about. There's no difference other than what things cause the problems. If Starfinder's worse, that's only because it keeps many of the things from Pathfinder and adds its own.
Personally, while they might be "logical outcomes", I'd find both the Tippyverse and your "robots autowin" settings horrible places to play in. While both Pathfinder and Starfinder are fun to play in.
Neither system even pretends to be a complete logical simulation. Both run on Rule of Cool. There are robots and AIs because robots and AIs are Cool.They're not completely dominant because that isn't Cool.
If that's not an approach you're interested in, then likely neither game is for you.
I pointed out the other pieces of work, because they do the same things you're complaining about and they're the genre that Starfinder is trying to emulate. It would be a worse heroic space opera game if it didn't do heroic space opera things. It might be a better hard science fiction game (+magic), but it isn't trying to be a hard science fiction game (+magic).
Again, if you have basic problems with the genre the game is in, it's likely you won't like the game.
All that said, I think you're overstating the case. Overestimating what robots <b>must</b> be able to do and also underestimating Starfinder characters. Starfinder characters, like PF ones, get pretty damn superhuman pretty fast. If they can trade blows with 30' giants without being crushed or punch out rhinos, why can't they react faster than robots? Often they'll be magically or technologically enhanced themselves. How does that factor in? Don't forget that robots come in
various levels of expense and power - can't the cheap ones be using more limited hardware - both electronic and mechanical? Sure, it's handwavy, but so is the science in the whole damn game.
The 20 CR robot will drop the 1st level party as quickly as you suggest. Of course, so would the 20th level character.
1) Because that's not how robots work in the vast majority of science fiction - especially heroic space opera. But then I suppose that assassin droid should have just killed all the Jedi before they could move.
My issue is not about tropes or what other pieces of work are doing, it's about internal inconsistencies.
Of course your issue is about tropes. Having a setting with spaceship computers but without the invincible robots you (extremely questionably) think are their "logical consequence" is a basic space opera trope. What you're objecting to is a genre choice. Your belief that the Rule of Cool is "bad writing" is likewise about a genre choice.
It's kind of like Tippyverses are a genre choice. There is in fact nothing about D&D or PF that particularly encourages abusing magic to setting-breaking degrees, and in point of fact GMs are always empowered to assign whatever narrative consequences they like to attempts to build whole societies around the "teleport" spell. That's about GM and player agency, not "bad writing" because you can plug the spells into spreadsheets and produce certain outcomes with them.
(This would be a bigger hazard for Starfinder where the line between magic and technology really is deliberately blurred. However even then the core setting already has cosmic forces working behind the scenes to rebalance how magic is being used, and/or how technology is being abused, and competing with each other in such a way that the canon setting is possible. GM's are likewise free to impose their own restrictions if they want to. There's nothing to prevent Tippyverse-style "I plugged some spells into a spreadsheet, what happened next will amaze you" adjustments if you want them, but that doesn't necessitate them either.)
Bad writing 101 is... not intentionally writing bad stories because they fit your notions of consistency better? Nevermind that your assertions aren't even necessarily consistent or accurate to begin with.
Reads more like you're just making s~@+ up to be angry about.
Starfinder offers (almost) no unique storytelling opportunities compared to Pathfinder.
I don't think I agree...
Quote:
The reason for this is that the writters completely botched the "science" part of science fantasy by establishing many facts about the way the universe works and then completely ignoring anything they built whenever it's convenient for them.
I... Disagree?
Quote:
For example, here are some facts established in the Starfinder universe :
-a large spectrum of AI exists, from Weak to Strong AI and even True AI (ie they have a soul).
-robots exists.
-the level of technology availible in Starfinder is vastly superior to ours.
Considering this, here are some interesting facts about robotic in general :
-the "reflexes" of a machine are more or less the speed of electricity, as it's used to carry the signals that allow it to "think". Its computing power makes processing a situation so close to instantaneous that we can ignore that part.
-markmanship is pure mathematics. If you can account for every factor and process them (which a machine can) there is literally no possibility of failing a shot.
Now, let's take a look at a typical situation in the Starfinder universe. Your party of adventurers are infiltrating an ennemy facility when they take a wrong turn and come face to face with a security drone programmed to kill on sight !
Okay, hold on, there are some issues here.
To start you assume that it can do all of these calculations in the span of 0.25 seconds, which it likely cannot do. When a computer does calculations it has to do all of the base calculations. There are a ton of calculations for the kind of thing that you are talking about.
Here are the simple ones:
What is the distance between myself and the attacker. This requires the computer to make use of the Pythagorean theory.
A squared + B squared = C squared.
The data needed to do this is actually very complex. First it needs to generate a 3D scale simulated plane (meaning using sensors) and find itself and its target in 3 dimensional space. This requires multiple calculations just to do that (it needs its XYZ axis positions and its target's XYZ axis positions.).
Then it needs to plug that data in to get A and B. Then it has to square A and B. Once it does that it has to multiply A squared and B squared. Now it has the distance.
Then it has to calculate how long the attack will take to reach the target. That is super complicated, especially if the target is moving. Why? Because then you need to run a predictive algorithm. This is super complex and is beyond my ability to display via the math but it involves gathering data on how fast the target is moving and in what direction, which requires multiple recalculations of the above information.
Once it generates that sample, it has to determine the percentage that the target will maintain that established velocity. Once it has that it then has to pull data from its own systems. This data is multi-fold.
The first bit of data it would need to pull would be a viable firing solution. Note that this might require it to determine its own movement, which also makes all of the previous operations require recalculation as it would have to factor relative position based on its movements while simultaneously running a predictive algorithm to determine the percentage chance of its movement altering the movement of the target. This can require doing all of the above calculations multiple times.
The second bit of data it needs is the time it would take the projectile to travel from the point of firing solution to cross the distance to the target. You technically need this before generating the firing solution to know for certain that you have a firing solution.
The next piece of the puzzle that is needed is the exact time it takes the robotic body to activate servos, artificial muscles, and other machine parts. It needs this data in order to also determine the viable firing solution.
This can take, alone, millions of calculations. Even after all of that... It can be wrong. If the predictive algorithm says you are going to juke right, when you instead juke left, then the entire process automatically misses as it is not aiming where you are because its predictive algorithm failed.
If there is a bit of crud build up in a servo and the servo is slow to respond then the maneuver automatically fails. Why? Because it won't be in the proper position to line up with the firing solution.
The wind could blow, the target could suddenly change its gait, it could suffer a miscalculation, it could receive bad sensor data, there are literally millions on top of millions on top of millions of variables. Each of those variables are more calculations.
Also while it could potentially do many of those calculations quickly (the human brain does them quickly too) it still is at the mercy of its mechanical components to move, respond properly, etc. So, no, it can't respond at 0.25 seconds unless its mechanical component can also move at that speed.
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How the fight goes down following Starfinder established in-universe logic : The brain of your character try to make the association between the picture of an armed drone his eyes are sending, the knowledge he has about what an armed drone is, and what he should do now. This takes approximately 0,25 seconds. In that lapse of time, the drone drew his gun, fired a single bullet in the head of each one of your characters and wrote a complete report of the incident to its hierarchy. You're all dead. Roll a new character.
This is a bit flawed.
The Drone has to do the following:
1. Associate the picture of the target and cross reference it to make certain that it is shooting at a valid target.
2. Confirm that the picture of the target is accurate and check for sensor malfunctions.
3. Calculate it's position. Calculate the target's position. Calculate the distance between the two.
4. Locate a firing solution after running a predictive algorithm taking into account its own movement, its speed, environmental factors, the machinery involved in shooting, the weapon's statistics. In order for this to work it has to predict how the target will attempt to dodge as well not simply the target's momentum and velocity (which requires that it allow more time to gather that data. Remember, computers aren't like humans, they can't predict things, they can't actually make guesses. They have to have data to work.).
5. Fire at a location determined by its predictive algorithm where it predicts the target will be regardless of if the target is actually there or not.
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So here is how the fight goes down using in-universe logic:
The player sees the drone, this takes about the same time for the machine to process that it sees a player. The player starts moving, the machine uses that time to attempt to figure out the player's velocity and direction. The drone tries to pivot into a firing solution based on that prediction. The drone fires. If the algorithm is correct, no other variables interfere with the shot, it will hit the player.
So not only is this not instantaneous, but it also can just flat out miss because the player zigged when the algorithm said they would zag.
Quote:
How the fight goes down following Starfinder ruleset :
DM : Everyone, roll for initiative. *rolling happens* Alright, David, your solarian goes first.
David : I strike it with my blade !
DM : You deal some damage. It's its turn. It aims at you and shoot twice. *rolls the dice* Both shots miss !
That is fairly accurate. The algorithm was thrown off by an added variable that it improperly countered for or could not predict. Being hit, it could have been incorrect in its prediction, there are any number of things that could cause this.
Remember, combat isn't like how we see it on a grid. The player doesn't move, then hit, then stand there still while the done moves, then fires. These actions all (more or less) happen at the same time. When the computer does it, it has to recalculate for all of this stuff.
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Does that sound a little unfair and unfun ? Maybe, but science isn't fair. Ask a trader from the 90's what he thinks about trading machines that probe the entire stock market in real time and performs hundreds of transactions by the second. And secondly, why the f*!~ would you involve robots and AI in your setting if you absolutely don't want to deal with the logical consequences ? That would be like creating a setting where the entire Earth is covered in volcanoes and never explaining why humanity is only mildly inconvenienced by the heat instead of just dead.
Not the same thing... For one, we had those machines in the 90's. For two, a computer is only as smart as the person programming it, and can only be accurate to the data that it is able to access. The more data it accesses, the longer it takes. The number of factors a machine needs to access to run stock trades is tiny compared to what it would have to do in order to stand up straight, aim a weapon, determine distance, predict movement, calculate its own movement speed, calculate its own aiming speed, perform those actions, confirm the firing solution, and fire.
To use the stock machine analogy...
If the human stock broker makes a guess on a stock based on intangible factors that have nothing to do with the present data. He could beat the machine by a huge margin. Not only can that happen, that does happen, millions of times a day in real life.
In order to get the speed that you were inferring was possible the easiest way to do this would be for the program to not calculate all of the data. This is actually what we do in real life. We don't calculate everything because doing so would take too long.
So what would happen is this:
After determining a viable target, the computer would have a crosshair that moves with the alignment of its physical weapon. It would run an A Star style program (instead of a predictive algorithm) then try to line up the crosshair with the target. It will not try to "lead" its target. It will not aim "for the head or heart" it will aim at the center mass. The moment the crosshair and target images line up it will fire. If the target is moving this could result in misses.
You would end up with a far less accurate shooter, but a far more effective one.
Threads about narrative storytelling within a game that's essentially a tactical wargame with little to no elements supporting narrative storytelling always make me smile.
Threads about narrative storytelling within a game that's essentially a tactical wargame with little to no elements supporting narrative storytelling always make me smile.
So how are you building your characters in Starfinder? How are you weaving narrative into your decisions. What interesting things are you doing to meld mechanics and story together.
I’m just about to play my first game. I rolled up an envoy but with pretty hardcore physical stats and a low intelligence. That translated to an airhead, trid-star “survivalist/gladiator” who has had a cushy job being airdropped into various exotic locations throughout the Pact Worlds from where he had to make his way back to civilisation. Now he’s decided to join the Starfinder Society and do it “for real” (trideoing everything as he goes, of course).
He’s a vesk envoy at the moment but about to switch to soldier (with the trainee Starfinder archetype). The plan is to be a mobile, melee focussed front line fighter cutting a dashing figure on the battlefield, commentating for his legions of fans. I’ll be interested to see just how much it matters to play a reasonably sub-optimal PC (although I rolled pretty well statwise, so perhaps that’ll cover it).
My other character is a human exocortex mechanic - he rolled astonishingly well though and I generally find those to be pretty dull characters. I don’t have much invested in him yet.
I did notice myself wishing for more options when it came to feats. Not sure if that’s just because a vesk envoy/operative is a little off the beaten track though.
The reason for this is that the writters completely botched the "science" part of science fantasy by establishing many facts about the way the universe works and then completely ignoring anything they built whenever it's convenient for them.
For example, here are some facts established in the Starfinder universe :
-a large spectrum of AI exists, from Weak to Strong AI and even True AI (ie they have a soul).
-robots exists.
-the level of technology availible in Starfinder is vastly superior to ours.
Considering this, here are some interesting facts about robotic in general :
-the "reflexes" of a machine are more or less the speed of electricity, as it's used to carry the signals that allow it to "think". Its computing power makes processing a situation so close to instantaneous that we can ignore that part.
-markmanship is pure mathematics. If you can account for every factor and process them (which a machine can) there is literally no possibility of failing a shot.
Now, let's take a look at a typical situation in the Starfinder universe. Your party of adventurers are infiltrating an ennemy facility when they take a wrong turn and come face to face with a security drone programmed to kill on sight !
How the fight goes down following Starfinder established in-universe logic : The brain of your character try to make the association between the picture of an armed drone his eyes are sending, the knowledge he has about what an armed drone is, and what he should do now. This takes approximately 0,25 seconds. In that lapse of time, the drone drew his gun, fired a single bullet in the head of each one of your characters and wrote a complete report of the incident to its hierarchy. You're all dead. Roll a new character.
I 'm actually really sympathetic towards your view. Then again some considerations are to be taken into account.
I would handwave the above post that bothers with the algorithm crunching since this is already established to be easy since we got slave droids that are as intelligence as humans on mass production.
However the issues on engineering that arise are not to be handwaved.
Although I enjoy AHAVs from Alien Archive very much I got a stronge distaste for the common robots.
If I was restarting my campaign I would rule more AHAV like robots and 0 androids an other so far and wide intelligent beings.
This way we can have our fun without supra intelligent robots.
What I would do is decide that the study in Robotics was not in equal measure to AI so we ended up with really useful but no so smart robots.
Maybe this can stand as a solution in the narrative. Still its a hack.
Threads about narrative storytelling within a game that's essentially a tactical wargame with little to no elements supporting narrative storytelling always make me smile.
You don't need mechanics to roleplay.
No, but many D&D/PF GMs will not accept any player-side narrative that is not entrenched in the rules. So if the rules say that your character leaves a rainbow trail of light as she runs around the battlefield... sure.
But if the rules don't, but that's a very cool idea you have? You're down to whether your GM is of the by the book type, or of the collaborative narration type. Sadly, D&D GMs are frequently of the former type, because they've never been exposed to games where the underlying, spelled-out assumption is that the GM and players craft the meta-narrative together and the players use not only the stuff on their PC's sheets, but also can influence the surroundings by means of meta input. Stuff like players inserting their own narrative elements into adventure on the spot.
D&Ds/PF/SF ruleset is 80% combat, 20% figuring out what the pressure damage for being 200 ft underwater is. The GM is the assumed sole narrator while the players can only influence the narrative through actions of their characters, and those actions are limited by the ruleset. It's cool and you can have a lot of fun with that, but ever since there've been dozens of games which challenged that paradigm with ensuring assumed shared responsibility for the narrative, having the players influence the setting and stories, rewarding creativity and improvisation.
Threads about narrative storytelling within a game that's essentially a tactical wargame with little to no elements supporting narrative storytelling always make me smile.
You don't need mechanics to roleplay.
No, but many D&D/PF GMs will not accept any player-side narrative that is not entrenched in the rules.
Yes. They're called 'bad GMs.'
The elements supporting narrative storytelling are called the adventures and the setting. The reason you're there. Fun as the tactical rules are, they're largely meaningless without a fun (preferably collectively-told) story behind them. That a game has a detailed tactical rule-set doesn't compel anyone to play it unimaginatively and in a way that rules out player-side narrative. That's about the people at the table.
Now of course there are s%$&ty GMs who cannot get their heads around player-side narrative. These will not be fixed by a different system and good GM's will not be deterred from delivering good story by the existence of tactical rules.
Threads about narrative storytelling within a game that's essentially a tactical wargame with little to no elements supporting narrative storytelling always make me smile.
You don't need mechanics to roleplay.
No, but many D&D/PF GMs will not accept any player-side narrative that is not entrenched in the rules.
Yes. They're called 'bad GMs.'
The elements supporting narrative storytelling are called the adventures and the setting. The reason you're there. Fun as the tactical rules are, they're largely meaningless without a fun (preferably collectively-told) story behind them. That a game has a detailed tactical rule-set doesn't compel anyone to play it unimaginatively and in a way that rules out player-side narrative. That's about the people at the table.
Now of course there are s&#&ty GMs who cannot get their heads around player-side narrative. These will not be fixed by a different system and good GM's will not be deterred from delivering good story by the existence of tactical rules.
Its also bad GMing to assume anything not explicitly described in the rules is impossible and/or non-existent in the setting. Something which I didn't *think* was ever an issue, until I read this forum, and started seeing arguments along the lines of "Does kneeling exist".
I think that was more a case of someone trying to argue that kneeling should have mechanical effects, given that it's physically different from standing or prone in real life.
If you try to do something outside of the rules, the GM either has to say, "I will make up a new rule for this," or "I will treat that as being the same as another thing that there is a rule for," or "No, you can't do that".
I don't particularly agree Gorbacz. GMs that don't care about narrative are GMs that don't care about narrative and is a separate matter from the system they choose to use.
There's two things that narrative focused games have over D&D style games in terms of narrative from my point of view.
First, narrative focused RP games weed out GM's who don't care about that stuff by their very nature. This is a good thing for players looking for a focus on narrative certainly but there are plenty of narrative focused Pathfinder games.
Two, narrative focused RP games can tell more different kinds of stories than Pathfinder/Starfinder (Monster Hearts is the go to example.) Path/Starfinder games are set up to tell action adventure style plot driven stories where with lots of external challenges and enemies to overcome. (These challenges could be physical, or mental, or social! or maybe even other based on more creative GMs)
Now these are 'incredibly significant' certainly but they aren't deal breakers. Dwarf Fortress is a hardcore simulationist video game that has generated some amazing stories after all.
And it all depends on what kind of story you want to tell. Starfinder is amazing for Star Wars type narrtives for one example. It's not so good for cosmic horror or high school drama on the other hand... but there are other systems for those... and those systems are weaker in telling pulpy heroic stories in turn.
Edit: Plus Starfinder isn't just a bunch of mechanics. It's a setting as well. And setting has a hell of lot to do with narrative possibilities.
If you try to do something outside of the rules, the GM either has to say, "I will make up a new rule for this," or "I will treat that as being the same as another thing that there is a rule for," or "No, you can't do that".
I would say the first thing the GM has to decide is whether a rule is needed for that. The rules are not the game, the make-believe is. As this sweet and temperate gentleman puts it:
'“a player says a thing and you decide whether it’s possible or impossible, then decide whether you need rules to figure it out, then you use the rules" . . . the first and last thing that should be involved in every GM decision is YOUR BRAIN.'
(He actually has quite a bit more detail to contribute than that. The full post is worth a read.)
I don't particularly agree Gorbacz. GMs that don't care about narrative are GMs that don't care about narrative and is a separate matter from the system they choose to use.
There's two things that narrative focused games have over D&D style games in terms of narrative from my point of view.
First, narrative focused RP games weed out GM's who don't care about that stuff by their very nature. This is a good thing for players looking for a focus on narrative certainly but there are plenty of narrative focused Pathfinder games.
Two, narrative focused RP games can tell more different kinds of stories than Pathfinder/Starfinder (Monster Hearts is the go to example.) Path/Starfinder games are set up to tell action adventure style plot driven stories where with lots of external challenges and enemies to overcome. (These challenges could be physical, or mental, or social! or maybe even other based on more creative GMs)
Now these are 'incredibly significant' certainly but they aren't deal breakers. Dwarf Fortress is a hardcore simulationist video game that has generated some amazing stories after all.
And it all depends on what kind of story you want to tell. Starfinder is amazing for Star Wars type narrtives for one example. It's not so good for cosmic horror or high school drama on the other hand... but there are other systems for those... and those systems are weaker in telling pulpy heroic stories in turn.
Edit: Plus Starfinder isn't just a bunch of mechanics. It's a setting as well. And setting has a hell of lot to do with narrative possibilities.
And as a side line to this, I like my campaigns to have focus on narrative, but as a player, I tend to dislike narrative mechanics - because they tend to break my immersion.
Thus I usually prefer more rules light games and plenty of GM improvisation.
Plus I do like pulpy heroic stories. :)
Bad writing 101 is... not intentionally writing bad stories because they fit your notions of consistency better? Nevermind that your assertions aren't even necessarily consistent or accurate to begin with.
This IS bad writing because it's a cop out. You establish facts about your universe and then refuse to deal with the consequences. As a result, everything in this universe is meaningless because the writers can pull out anything they need out of their arse. Need to make a very impressive big bad for a special occasion ? Bend the rules of the universe to give him special powers. Want to get the PC out of a tight spot ? Bend the rules of the universe to save them.
Now don't get me wrong. I think that instakill bots are a terrible thing that should never exist if you want your friends to stay your friends and players to keep coming at your table. But you can't deal with a gamebreaking in-universe problem by simply putting a cloche on it and pretending it doesn't exist. Look, here are two potential fixes I invented in five minutes during a lunch :
-The Pact World hard-coded inhibitors in the AI "brains" to prevent a perfect killing bot from ever existed, and the policy is strictly enforced. Nobody tryied to bypass this security for the same reason nobody tryied to launch a nuclear bomb on a neighbouring country in the last 70 years.
-At some point a squad of killer bots existed, but after they wiped out an entire planet in a week, a goddess dedicated to the protection of biological life cursed the very concept of robot itself to never be able to outperform organic life.
There you have it. And I'm not an official author working a full time job on figuring out solutions to these issues.
I'm not saying "do nothing about the killer bots issue". I'm saying to that you should either ditch the AI entirely, avoiding the issue in the first place, or give an explanation as to WHY this won't happen.
(I saw some people talking about high-level caster defeating basic drones. It's true it could happen, but we have to remember that magic and technology aren't incompatible in the Starfinder universe. Which means robots have access to the same kind of magic the PCs have. Ultimately, biological life can't win an arm race against a machine.)
NB : I see a lot of people understimating the speed at which processing power increases. Do keep in mind that it evolves at an exponential rate, which mean that when machines start to approach our level of computing power, they'll reach it soon afterward and then pulverize it in the blink of an eye (compared to the time it'll take them to go there).
Gryffe: I'm a software engineer by education. Computational power increase doesn't mean much when faced with NP Complete problems.
There's a reason why the latest approach in computer science has been trying to get software to mimic human learning patterns. It's because algorithms relying on processing power are a dead end (and have mathematically been known to be a dead end since the 70s... well unless you can solve the P=NP problem! There's a million dollar prize if you can!).
Regardless of that I completely disagree with your basic premise so I don't think there's much to talk about other than that.
And as a side line to this, I like my campaigns to have focus on narrative, but as a player, I tend to dislike narrative mechanics - because they tend to break my immersion.
Thus I usually prefer more rules light games and plenty of GM improvisation.
Plus I do like pulpy heroic stories. :)
I'll just say that it's very easy to turn paizo games into rules light games by just ignoring a third of the CRB and ditching minis and maps for theater of the mind!
I will always attempt to muck about with rules. If insufficiently interesting rules are provided, you can bet I will ask about the laws of physics and magic and try to produce interesting combinations with them. If you want your plot to be safe from me, you better be willing to put up with ten books of mechanics.
Even if it's 'realistic' that futuristic AIs are greatly superior to humans in combat situations, it's still acceptable to almost everyone to have it work this way. If Klingons teleport onto a Federation Starship, they're not instantly gunned down by automated defences. Battle-droids don't gun down Jedi before the Jedi even realise they're there. The Guardians of the Galaxy don't get wiped out by squadrons of drones.
We can come up with an explanation ("safety settings to prevent robot rebellions" "the power of the human soul" "the gods hate AIs" "magical fields slow down electricity") or we can ignore it. Not every space opera story needs to be an Iain M Banks novel.
NB : I see a lot of people understimating the speed at which processing power increases. Do keep in mind that it evolves at an exponential rate, which mean that when machines start to approach our level of computing power, they'll reach it soon afterward and then pulverize it in the blink of an eye (compared to the time it'll take them to go there).
Moore's Law is the observation of a trend, not a fundamental law of nature. The growth in processor speed is already slowing. There are also some fundamental limits we're approaching that will bring an even harder stop to it.
Your little visual representation is a basic truth about exponential curves. You could apply it to nearly anything that shows an apparently consistent doubling time. Population growths are the obvious example. Except that extrapolating off a short exponential curve is a beginner's mistake. I can take some bacteria in a petri dish, observe them for a few doubling cycles and then calculate how long before their mass is larger that the Earth. Which is just slightly more obviously absurd than Moore's law.
Even if it's 'realistic' that futuristic AIs are greatly superior to humans in combat situations, it's still acceptable to almost everyone to have it work this way. If Klingons teleport onto a Federation Starship, they're not instantly gunned down by automated defences. Battle-droids don't gun down Jedi before the Jedi even realise they're there. The Guardians of the Galaxy don't get wiped out by squadrons of drones.
We can come up with an explanation ("safety settings to prevent robot rebellions" "the power of the human soul" "the gods hate AIs" "magical fields slow down electricity") or we can ignore it. Not every space opera story needs to be an Iain M Banks novel.
And even Banks uses human characters. The Minds are powerful, but not every machine is a Mind.
But yeah, that's the basic clash here:
1) Here's a space opera trope I don't like.
2) Starfinder is a space opera using that trope.
3) Starfinder is bad space opera.
If you want to defend 1 with "but realism", I'll look at the rest of the game and point out that realism is currently sitting in the corner crying and getting very drunk. "Realistic" is not a goal of space opera. Especially not high pulp fantasy space opera.
This IS bad writing because it's a cop out. You establish facts about your universe and then refuse to deal with the consequences.
Well for starters, they aren't facts about the universe. They're extrapolations and assumptions you're making based on how you feel the universe should work. Assumptions made for the express and sole purpose of criticizing the setting because you yourself admit that it's actually a bad idea. Even though as already established these assumptions aren't even internally consistent with the setting in the first place.
Threads about narrative storytelling within a game that's essentially a tactical wargame with little to no elements supporting narrative storytelling always make me smile.
You don't need mechanics to roleplay.
No, but many D&D/PF GMs will not accept any player-side narrative that is not entrenched in the rules. So if the rules say that your character leaves a rainbow trail of light as she runs around the battlefield... sure.
But if the rules don't, but that's a very cool idea you have? You're down to whether your GM is of the by the book type, or of the collaborative narration type. Sadly, D&D GMs are frequently of the former type, because they've never been exposed to games where the underlying, spelled-out assumption is that the GM and players craft the meta-narrative together and the players use not only the stuff on their PC's sheets, but also can influence the surroundings by means of meta input. Stuff like players inserting their own narrative elements into adventure on the spot.
D&Ds/PF/SF ruleset is 80% combat, 20% figuring out what the pressure damage for being 200 ft underwater is. The GM is the assumed sole narrator while the players can only influence the narrative through actions of their characters, and those actions are limited by the ruleset. It's cool and you can have a lot of fun with that, but ever since there've been dozens of games which challenged that paradigm with ensuring assumed shared responsibility for the narrative, having the players influence the setting and stories, rewarding creativity and improvisation.
There is also an art form for a player to write narratives that exist within the rules as they are.
Take my example:
The "integration" of the Solar Weapon from a sword, to a nebulous ball of energy that sheaths the arm/hand in power.
Is this supported fully by the rules? Yes.
You can change the form of the Solar Weapon at each level. You can do things such as nebulous energy, glove-like coverings, or even glowing runes. It is in the book.
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The strengthening of power from this integration?
Yes. If you do the change at 6th level. Stellar Rush gets stronger, Gravity boost gets stronger, Solar gets stronger. You get an extra revelation.
By the rules your powers get stronger.
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This is writing within the rules rather than attempting to gain a mechanical advantage or effect unsupported by the rules.
For example: Can a character kneel? Yes.
Does this have a mechanical benefit? Yes and no.
Kneeling is pure flavor. You don't get anything from it, it doesn't cost an action, it is pure description.
I may have "cover" that if a player uses it, they'll narratively kneel. They don't get anything other than "being in cover" and it costs nothing mechanically to use the cover or stop using cover.
The issue is when people say, "I kneel to take the time to aim so I get an attack bonus!"
As a GM the answer is: "You can kneel, but it grants you no bonus and doesn't cost movement."
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Narrative crafting from the player side is the art of saying, "I want to do X, and I'm using Y mechanics to accomplish it."
Life is a game. There is nothing that is not mechanics. To be used, twisted, and beat within an inch of breaking. Your computer wouldn't work if somebody hadn't beat up electromagnetics and semiconductor chemistry and rifled through its pockets.
So on the topic of character narratives I had an interesting idea for an Android Mechanic.
Massive Backstory Wall of Text:
Eons ago, when the original Androffan ships crashed to the surface of Golarion, a single brilliant Android researcher survived the crash in a vessel devoted to researching biotech and cybernetics. As the only survivor, he was able to use the hydroponics systems to survive near indefinitely. But after a hundred years trying to resuscitate his crippled home, he realized his time was running out. No creature can live forever.
Determined not to strand his successor, he put his prodigious intellect to the creation of an implant, a bold new creation, one capable of subverting the natural order. By harnessing the potential of neural shunt tech, augmented by his unique biology, and merging it with biotechnological ingenuity he stretched the mental transfer tech to it's extreme conclusion. The result was the Dual Soul Terminal, or DST Circuit. (Pronounced "The Dust Circuit")
With the DST completed, he took the greatest and final risk of his life and activated the renewal process. To his great joy the process was a success, with his soul shunted into the auxiliary cortex that comprised the DST, the renewal process was a success and his predecessor took habitation of the body.
Over the next 500 years the new owner of the body was coached by his predecessor, able to draw on his prior life's prodigious knowledge of biology to keep themselves both alive and, thanks to the contact and conversation, sane. Eventually though, it was doomed to end. No creature can live forever.
Realizing that the DST could not handle two souls, and that the original's time was long since up, the two worked together to fashion a modification for the original augment. A final hurrah to the original, they together created a way that his mind might be saved, if not his spirit. Nanites inserted into the DST served to backup the consciousness within and construct a memory chip containing the newly created AI copy, as the soul transitioned on to the Boneyard.
It was during the fourth generation that the wreck of their starship home was discovered by golarion's Technic League. Through clever guile and stealth the Android proved capable of escaping their notice. He infiltrated their ranks and over time, regathered the parts of his home from under their noses.
During the fifth generation he saw rise to Numeria's Iron Gods and the eventual rise of the Iron Goddess, Cassandalee. This iteration became a fervent follower and powerful Cleric of the Iron Goddess before his inevitable passing.
Generations 6-8 were lost to the Gap, their memory chips horrifically wiped clean and left with little more than their names. At some point during that time one of his iterations became quite wealthy, capable of even moving the well-preserved remains of his starship home to an extremely well-protected safe house.
Generation 9, Cassius, devoted a considerable portion of his life searching for a way to restore the Lost Ones, including his predecessor, which he stored in their shared "home" once he located it in the Diaspora.
Generation 10, Jin, the current day successor. Aided by Cassius and by the vast knowledge of the original creator of the DST, Gaius, he boldly makes strides forward in the fields of bioengineering, computing, and cybernetics both in an effort to recover the knowledge of his lost predecessors and to pursue his passion in bio-tech and augmentations.
All of this was just based on the idea of "What if the mechanic's Exocortex was actually the Android's prior incarnation". Taken to it's logical conclusion.
