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Let's get really, real here:
It's nice we get to see the Swarm and the Azlanti close up so quickly and I also get that the Swarm and the Azlanti are going to be the Whispering Tyrant/World Wound of the setting (a big threat that isn't going to go away anytime soon) but honestly...
There are two places that NEED an AP just based entirely on how cool they are haven't even gotten a lot of attention in SFS yet.
Akiton is perfect for an AP because it's got enough pieces that would work as their own module by themselves. For instance, you could do a whole futuristic Rollerball style Death Race Bloodsport gladiator games in just the cities alone. Then if you left the cities, you could do a cool ass Mad Max storyline or a Wild West "Let's get them banditos" themed storyline. In fact, with a six volume AP, Akiton could be a setting of an epic damn campaign.
Right so like let's call this hypothetical AP "Rage on the Red Planet"
AP 1 is sort of a "Blood and Sand" Gladiator games where the Players cross the wrong gang boss or trip over a bloodthirsty corporation and wind up fighting in a series of futuristic gladiator games. Finally your level nothing characters have to fight Half Orc Brock Lesnar. Maybe the back page goes into various types of professional athletes in the pact worlds, a Pro Baller character theme (though that's probably just Icon) and why bloody deathgame competitions are still allowed on Akiton and Eox.
Fresh from their victories in the Hunger Games or whatever, the PCs show up for their prize ceremony and wind up getting attacked by a vast army of marauders led by "Scaryname McGuffin, the meanest mutant in the wastelands". APs two through five is your party getting a posse together to hunt this SOB down and bring back his head for a hefty reward. You'd hit all the tropes with Mad Max style vehicle combat, Wild West Shootouts, and back page articles about the Shobhad tribes, Max Max-y character themes or Wild West archetypes, and new, dust covered playable races who enjoy driving murder dozers and shooting pistols.
AP six could have you discover that Scaryname McGuffin is just a pawn being used by a rogue Wytchwyrd or Contemplative named "Reveal Von Actualvillain" who is using his massive mental powers to manipulate the entire planet and suddenly the last adventure in the campaign is you trying to beat this mystic bad guy with whatever means are at your disposal. The backside of this book would have stuff that expands on the Phrenic Adept Archetype and discusses psychics in Starfinder, maybe there's a slightly different version of the Archetype, and a bestiary of like "Other massively psychic races" and you get the Starfinder version of Munavri and a bunch of other new playable psychic races.
That's a great way to narrow in on a place we've already gotten glimpses of but if we can't have that just yet, a Veskarium AP would be a great runner up. It would be cool because we haven't been there yet and the AP could be a lot like the Aeon Throne in the sense that it could be a cool three volume appetizer to a future setting hardcover.
Let's pretend it's called "Empire of Thunder" and it begins with an attack on a Pact Worlds ship by a group of Vesk terrorists. Not wanting to disrupt the longstanding peace, the Vesk hire you to hunt these lawless jerks down. The First AP you arrive on the throne world and you walk through a vast marketplace teeming with crazy alien life forms. You find evidence of a Vesk terrorist group that's upset with the current government and you head off on an adventure through this new system. The Backpage would be like the Dead Suns first AP but it would be about Vesk-1 or Vesk Prime
AP 2 would have us hop around two or three different planets with a backpage about the Veskarium's version of the Stewards and maybe an archetype that lets us play as such.
AP 3 would finish the adventure on the most terrifying place in the universe Vesk-3, home of the Skittermanders. There would be no back page info because your party would die here.
I'm more interested in the Veskarium than Akiton, but a Mad Max Akiton AP sounds fun.
I think the Veskarium AP needs to feature the Pahtra (is that Vesk-6?). I can't imagine that cat people are terribly happy with being conquered and having to deal with skittermander bureaucrats.
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I'm more interested in the Veskarium than Akiton, but a Mad Max Akiton AP sounds fun.
I think the Veskarium AP needs to feature the Pahtra (is that Vesk-6?). I can't imagine that cat people are terribly happy with being conquered and having to deal with skittermander bureaucrats.
Dude, I took one look at those genderless cat monsters and thought "They are clearly not the kind of people who take being conquered lightly". You just know that that there's a whole underground of Pahtra resistance fighters out to throw the Vesk off the homeworld. How much you want to bet that the Pahtra demand you still call it Pulonis and not Vesk-6?
Personally, while a Veskarium AP would be more interesting and probably have a higher demand, to me the Veskarium is better covered under a full hardcover like the Pact Worlds because even a full six volume AP would leave stuff out. For the AP format, an Akitonian Wild West/Mad Max dungeon crawl is a better fit.
If they decide to turn the Pact Worlds HC into a series, they should go:
Starfinder Pact Worlds
Starfinder Veskarium
Starfinder Azlanti Empire
Starfinder Near Space
Starfinder The Vast
Starfinder The Planes
Boom, that's five years of HC material covered and they wouldn't actually need to write anything else ever. The nature of Starfinder's settings means that we could spend ten years messing around inside the Near Space colonies alone and then spend our Seeker Level sunset years fighting Elder Gods and Planar monsters in The Vast and the Planes. I mean the star systems devoted to the Dominion of the Black are worth a book by themselves.
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I don't think near space and vast technically need hardcovers though. I mean, one galaxy is so large that you could make infinite amount of homebrew in it during your life time :p
And its not like they can even make "here is all planets currently known in pact worlds" book since 1) that would still be too large number to be in a book 2) you don't want to say GMs "If you make new planets also known in pact worlds you are breaking canon" :p
But yeah, otherwise I agree that having book for each faction should be enough and having the planet itself covered in ap located there would be one way to handle it. Though I think Starfinder APs are going to avoid single planet APs to avoid making spaceships to be just transports over long distances
I don't think near space and vast technically need hardcovers though. I mean, one galaxy is so large that you could make infinite amount of homebrew in it during your life time :p
And its not like they can even make "here is all planets currently known in pact worlds" book since 1) that would still be too large number to be in a book 2) you don't want to say GMs "If you make new planets also known in pact worlds you are breaking canon" :p
I see your point but I was thinking that since it's Paizo policy to avoid doing a full world map as much as possible, covering the broad "regions" of space within a HC without giving specifics of where it is in relation to the other regions. Thus preserving the whole "I'm going to insert my own planet here" part of Starfinder that Paizo wants home-brew campaigners to do within their settings.
But yeah, otherwise I agree that having book for each faction should be enough and having the planet itself covered in ap located there would be one way to handle it. Though I think Starfinder APs are going to avoid single planet APs to avoid making spaceships to be just transports over long distances
Personally, I think we'll only see single planet APs set on various Pact Worlds, with maybe an AP apiece for each one. This would follow the format they have in Pathfinder where we only have single country or region APs set in the Inner Sea while other stuff travels from country to country. The others will indeed be galaxy spanning adventures because, I mean, why have starships at all?
Now that you mention it, an AP that's almost entirely starship combat centric would be friggin awesome!
I don't think near space and vast technically need hardcovers though. I mean, one galaxy is so large that you could make infinite amount of homebrew in it during your life time :p
And its not like they can even make "here is all planets currently known in pact worlds" book since 1) that would still be too large number to be in a book 2) you don't want to say GMs "If you make new planets also known in pact worlds you are breaking canon" :p
But yeah, otherwise I agree that having book for each faction should be enough and having the planet itself covered in ap located there would be one way to handle it. Though I think Starfinder APs are going to avoid single planet APs to avoid making spaceships to be just transports over long distances
There’s no reason Vast and Near hardcovers need be exhaustive. As you pointed out, the “Pact Worlds” book we got only detailed the Pact worlds within a single system, even though we know there are at least a few more out there. The two regions of space presumably have very different character than other major stellar factions: the Vast wild, alien, and often unexplored, whereas with the Near, we get to see stellar society outside of under the thumb of a major galactic superpower. If faction books were all we had for Starfinder setting material, I’d kind of find that a little bit boring. Fascinating as Vesk and Azlanti may be, space isn’t space unless it gives you something you’re not expecting: the final frontier, where no man has gone before! Backwoods places like the Shire and Erebor and Fangorn are as much key to Middle-Earth’s identity as Gondor and Mordor and Rivendell.
Also, we do kind of have a single planet AP already with Dawn of Flame. To be fair, we’re dealing with an actual sun there, so that gets around the “transports for long distances” problem. Still, I think there’s room for both narratives. Single planet stories are a tried and true sci-fi convention (Metroid, Bladerunner, Avatar, Valerian, and various Lothal arcs in Star Wars Rebels, to name a few). As much fun as planet hopping is, it can be easy to forget the immensity and trove of rich history and untamed frontiers to be found on a single planet. If you could spend ten sessions exploring a single planet without wanting to jet, wouldn’t that be as much fun as hitting ten different planets in that same time, half of which you’ll soon forget?
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There’s no reason Vast and Near hardcovers need be exhaustive. As you pointed out, the “Pact Worlds” book we got only detailed the Pact worlds within a single system, even though we know there are at least a few more out there. The two regions of space presumably have very different character than other major stellar factions: the Vast wild, alien, and often unexplored, whereas with the Near, we get to see stellar society outside of under the thumb of a major galactic superpower. If faction books were all we had for Starfinder setting material, I’d kind of find that a little bit boring. Fascinating as Vesk and Azlanti may be, space isn’t space unless it gives you something you’re not expecting: the final frontier, where no man has gone before! Backwoods places like the Shire and Erebor and Fangorn are as much key to Middle-Earth’s identity as Gondor and Mordor and Rivendell.
And see, of the two of them, I would be much more interested in the Near Space book. There are probably countless Near Space "empires" and systems that have enough "juice" to be considered regional powers but can't compete with the Galactic super powers. I would love to see what other races are being used as "proxy kings" by the Pact Worlds, the Vesk, or the Azlanti. I also wouldn't mind seeing how the criminal element of the Pact Worlds exploits the Near Space planets.
The stuff in the Vast would be better for high level play and more for spooking people out. The book would basically be "Hey, here's where the Swarm lay their antennae heads" and "Here are the monsters that live under the Swarm's bed."
Also, we do kind of have a single planet AP already with Dawn of Flame. To be fair, we’re dealing with an actual sun there, so that gets around the “transports for long distances” problem. Still, I think there’s room for both narratives. Single planet stories are a tried and true sci-fi convention (Metroid, Bladerunner, Avatar, Valerian, and various Lothal arcs in...
I still think Starfinder's Single Planet APs will be restricted to the Pact Worlds because that would be the stuff that Paizo would WANT to be fleshed out.
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Huh, that is good point, they could definitely do "General book on this part of space" to tell what kind of political climate or such is in near space and farther from Pact Worlds' Point of view. Still, not sure The Vast needs book(since its kinda supposed to be remote space), but near space definitely might benefit from that.
Huh, that is good point, they could definitely do "General book on this part of space" to tell what kind of political climate or such is in near space and farther from Pact Worlds' Point of view. Still, not sure The Vast needs book(since its kinda supposed to be remote space), but near space definitely might benefit from that.
I honestly just threw it out there because it might be a nice "catch all" book for anything not in Near Space but yeah, I agree it's not entirely needed. Probably once you get further away from the frontier, you'd just release books about factions instead of planets.