Starfinder 'Ultimate Campaign' ?

[ForeverQueen]

So, let me preface this by saying I am a DM running three different parties in the same 'universe/continuity'. So, the ships occasionally send messages to each other, and at some point the groups may team up to overcome severe threats, or share knowledge stuffs.

My big three-pot homebrew game is moving towards Swarm stuff. In my head I'm picturing the PCs as being one group of many on a planet battlefront. There are loads of NPC locals, small militias, random folks, all trying to fight against the might of the Swarm. Will they turn the tide of battle? Are they trying to merely minimize loss? Or direct the swarms slaughter until reinforcements arrive?

I'd love to have a hex 'battlefield' map with resources, (a la Ultimate Campaign style), armies, etc, to help coordinate attacks.

Has anyone else had this sort of feeling of needing a bigger venue for planet-side combat? (Is anyone working on something like this for themselves/their party that I can peek at?) Am I thinking too big?

(Also, I realize a lot of Starfinder is 'the ship is home, so we don't need to put down roots', but I think it would be cool to have a method for building your own scifi outpost on a random asteroid in the diaspora or something.)

[Pantshandshake]

You know what might work really well? Battletech maps. They're relatively small, it seems like it'd be pretty easy to press them into service as something like a strategic map, and they come in all kinds of terrain types.

[BPorter]

ForeverQueen wrote:

So, let me preface this by saying I am a DM running three different parties in the same 'universe/continuity'. So, the ships occasionally send messages to each other, and at some point the groups may team up to overcome severe threats, or share knowledge stuffs.

My big three-pot homebrew game is moving towards Swarm stuff. In my head I'm picturing the PCs as being one group of many on a planet battlefront. There are loads of NPC locals, small militias, random folks, all trying to fight against the might of the Swarm. Will they turn the tide of battle? Are they trying to merely minimize loss? Or direct the swarms slaughter until reinforcements arrive?

I'd love to have a hex 'battlefield' map with resources, (a la Ultimate Campaign style), armies, etc, to help coordinate attacks.

Has anyone else had this sort of feeling of needing a bigger venue for planet-side combat? (Is anyone working on something like this for themselves/their party that I can peek at?) Am I thinking too big?

(Also, I realize a lot of Starfinder is 'the ship is home, so we don't need to put down roots', but I think it would be cool to have a method for building your own scifi outpost on a random asteroid in the diaspora or something.)

I'm a huge fan of Ultimate Campaign and would love to see a Starfinder book in the same vein.

Specific to your point, though, I recommend getting Star Empires from Legendary Games. They essentially adapted principles of the kingdom-building rules and applied them to science-fiction/fantasy concepts. It's abstract enough that it can be applied to everything from colonies, outposts, corporations, guilds, etc.

I've begun using it to develop groups and entities that are relevant in my campaigns. So far, it seems to be crunchy enough to be satisfying but abstract enough that it is readily applied to a variety of organizations/power groups. It seems to have found a good balance without bringing along some of the more problematic aspects of Kingdom-building. It also includes examples for 2 organizations that for IP-related reasons seem to closely align with AbadarCorp and the Starfinder Society without naming them such. I appreciated their inclusion for showing how the rules apply to things other than stellar nations/empires.

It also has rules for sci-fi warfare and mass combat but I haven't had a chance to play with those so I can't speak to how well they work at the table.

I also just picked up their Star Intrigue supplement which provides rules for developing factions that can struggle for power within a 'star empire'/colony/corporation if you want to play up internal power struggles while fighting the external threat. As with the warfare rules, though, I haven't had a chance to dig into them too much yet.

Good luck with the campaign!

[ForeverQueen]

Oh.Em.God.

This is exactly what I was craving! I'm so excited!

Thank you, BPorter. :D

[Metaphysician]

Sadly, you remind me mostly about how terrible the realm rules in Ultimate Campaign were, vis a vis their economics. No, I don't mean in the sense of realism. I mean in the sense of "they are a wealth black hole that can only be sustained via adventurers dumping money in a pit". Hopefully if Starfinder gets similar rules, they are more abstracted and less "we are terrified the PCs might actually be able to use this to gain money".

[Ravingdork]

A black hole? My group ultimately stopped using the rules because it was making my character insanely wealthy.

Being able to generate magic capital, then use said capital to quickly make cheap magic items for sale, then use the proceeds for more magical capital...

At my height, I was making thousands of gold every day without having to do much of anything, and I had all the magical items I could ever want.

With a bit of work, you can use those rules to craft magic items at roughly a 90% discount over purchasing them outright.

Money sink indeed!

[BPorter]

Quick clarification to my earlier post: Star Empires does have sample nations & colonies. However, the AbadarCorp & Starfinder Society analogs are in Star Intrigue.