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I don't know if it's just the local meta, or how the adventures are being written (I've only played SFS, not home games)...but it feels to me like Starfinder comes across as too much comedy, and not enough serious space fantasy.
I was hoping more for Star Wars or Firefly, but it has felt more like Futurama meets Ice Pirates, with a side of Spaceballs every time I have played.
Anyone else feel the same, or is it just me?
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Lord Fyre RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32 |
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Nerdy Canuck |
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Nerdy Canuck wrote:Nothing in the system that makes it that way, far as I can tell.Skittermanders?
An entire species using weaponized politeness and helpfulness in order to take advantage of an invading force's honour code to prevent true colonization?
Also, have you read about how Skittermander Whelps eat?
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I don't know if it's just the local meta, or how the adventures are being written (I've only played SFS, not home games)...but it feels to me like Starfinder comes across as too much comedy, and not enough serious space fantasy.
I was hoping more for Star Wars or Firefly, but it has felt more like Futurama meets Ice Pirates, with a side of Spaceballs every time I have played.
Anyone else feel the same, or is it just me?
It's probably the local groups, Starfinder isn't really any more inherently comedy than any other RPG system. Like, out of Adventure Paths, only one that has in written funny parts is Dawn of Flame's earlier parts. Sure some of the Scenarios probably have funny parts, but I don't remember most of them having that.
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I mean, I can certainly understand how it can be comedic. Gods know my players have laughed at many of the player races, and the desire to make atrocious puns is quite strong...
(One day I will make my Morlawmaw gang boss who runs a street gang called the Eggmen and I will die on that hill)
Nevertheless, there's nothing I feel inherent to the system or the APs I've read so far that's comedically focused. Heck, many of the campaigns I've homebrewed and ran were very serious and they used existing lore. I mean, the fact that an internet equivalent exists means that characters can meme in-character, but the party was always going to do that...now they can just do it without it completely breaking the story down.
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Steve Geddes |
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I don't know if it's just the local meta, or how the adventures are being written (I've only played SFS, not home games)...but it feels to me like Starfinder comes across as too much comedy, and not enough serious space fantasy.
I was hoping more for Star Wars or Firefly, but it has felt more like Futurama meets Ice Pirates, with a side of Spaceballs every time I have played.
Anyone else feel the same, or is it just me?
I can see what you mean with some of the SFS scenarios I’ve read.
I think the “you can play lots of wacky aliens” aesthetic is another factor that can easily facilitate silliness, even if it isn’t strictly inherently comedic.
Ultimately though, I suspect it’s more group dependant than system dependant.
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Cellion |
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The APs are fairly serious (though even them I find more light hearted than some of Pathfinder's heavy fare), but the SFS scenarios definitely have a lot of light hearted, silly or comedic stuff. Not all of them do, of course, but enough that you get a general sense that things are not very serious.
SFS 1-01, 1-07, 1-09, and 1-14 all stand out to me as extremely goofy from the first half of season 1.
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Dracomicron |
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Dracomicron wrote:My table definitely played that one to benny hill...I just ran 2-03 Waking the Past last week.
That ain't comedy.
Don't get me wrong, some of the results can be comedic, but the scenario is straight horror.
Waking the Past can be comedy the same way Hmm can run Signal of Screams like Scooby Doo if she leans into it hard enough.
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Maybe it is just the local player base making things too comedic for my tastes...I do enjoy some good comedy here and there...but it seems like almost every character concept around here has a comedy aspect to it, most of the scenarios come across as comedic, and overall I just am not enjoying it as much as I had hoped I would.
I was super eager to try out SF when I heard about it, bought the hardcover on launch day, played a couple times...walked away for a year because it just wasn't clicking with me...came back hoping that a year of growth would change things, only to come back to find SF has become the slapstick humor in space RPG, which is not at all what I want. :(
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Dracomicron |
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Survivor's Salvation deals with PTSD, and while there's some humor there, they never treat dealing with trauma to be funny.
It Rests Beneath has a no-joke ethical quandary that most players I've seen have taken very seriously.
Treading History's Folly has the PCs exploring a long-past tragedy that isn't really funny at all.
Yeah, no, I think it's the players. There are some hilarious scenarios out there for sure (Star Sugar Heartlove, Skitter Shot/Crash, Live Exploration Extreme!, etc) but people play games to have fun. I'm not going to bust someone's chops for being jocular.
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Maybe it is just the local player base making things too comedic for my tastes...I do enjoy some good comedy here and there...but it seems like almost every character concept around here has a comedy aspect to it, most of the scenarios come across as comedic, and overall I just am not enjoying it as much as I had hoped I would.
I was super eager to try out SF when I heard about it, bought the hardcover on launch day, played a couple times...walked away for a year because it just wasn't clicking with me...came back hoping that a year of growth would change things, only to come back to find SF has become the slapstick humor in space RPG, which is not at all what I want. :(
Yeaah, I'm strongly leaning to side of it being about players in this case. Even the more comedic SFS scenarios aren't ever really slapsticks or puns. It might help if you are able to join party that is playing Adventure Path through since players who aren't playing one shot adventures might prefer to not playing comedic character for longer continuous story?
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Ixal |
Define shallow?
Shallow as in being designed to mainly support dungeon crawling type games with item pricing and even level restrictions on general goods that make no sense economically and societies that let everyone buy, own and walk around with tank weaponry or let people have free, unlimited nuclear weapons because they reached a specific level. The SF setting us very obviously there to fulfill a support function for the PCs instead if tryubg to be believable.
And when the setting itself doesn't take itself serious why should the players?
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Master Han Del of the Web |
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Shallow as in being designed to mainly support dungeon crawling type games with item pricing and even level restrictions on general goods that make no sense economically and societies that let everyone buy, own and walk around with tank weaponry or let people have free, unlimited nuclear weapons because they reached a specific level. The SF setting us very obviously there to fulfill a support function for the PCs instead if tryubg to be believable.
And when the setting itself doesn't take itself serious why should the players?
Okay, there are a few legitimate criticisms I could level at Starfinder’s setting but the economy is not one and I definitely don’t see the setting as being ‘shallow’ or there to support ‘dungeon crawling’.
The economy makes sense when you expand the inherently exploitative model of capitalism to an interstellar scale. I could very easily see governments and corporations developing a vested interest in stratifying and restricting access to certain kinds of goods.
As for dungeon crawling... First of all, that term is really so vague it can be stretched to encompass just about any portion of an adventure that takes place inside an enclosed environment. Sure there are a lot of ruins and ‘dungeons’ for players to explore but the universe is old and full of secrets but...
A train chase
Breaking in to a missing academic’s apartment and then having to explain themselves to the cops
A western style shoot out in a canyon of bones
An investigation into missing persons
Meat factories
Gang hunting
And much, much more...
None of which were ‘dungeons’.
As I said earlier, humor is a way to diffuse awkwardness, role playing can make people feel awkward. Regardless people like to laugh.
Also Ixal, your posts on Starfinder have been pretty constantly negative, you don’t see to like the mechanics or the setting, can I ask why you stick around?
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Rysky the Dark Solarion |
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In addition to what Master Han said, they explain in the Core Rulebook how your character is allowed to walk with an armory, their level is correlated with acquiring appropriate licenses, contacts, and the like for having access to that equipment, it's the in setting justification for why equipment is "level" locked.
What would make this more believable, having to actually constantly fill out paperwork for everything or not allow PCs to have the equipment in the first place? That doesn't sound fun.
And the setting and APs take themselves plenty seriously, but as Sutter mentioned in another thread, it's good to break tension, so you can build it back up again.
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You're A Hairy Wizard! |
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Lord Fyre wrote:Nerdy Canuck wrote:Nothing in the system that makes it that way, far as I can tell.Skittermanders?An entire species using weaponized politeness and helpfulness in order to take advantage of an invading force's honour code to prevent true colonization?
Also, have you read about how Skittermander Whelps eat?
If that's your argument then Star Wars has Ewok's and other races that look rather silly (IE Gungan/Jar-Jar).
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I'll be honest, part of me wonders if it's a matter of genre convention as well...like fantasy as a genre just appears to have more gravitas than sci-fi from my perspective. When I think sci-fi, I think of Star Wars, which has a whole lot of cheese, but when I think of fantasy I think of Lord of the Rings.
IS there sci-fi stuff that feels as serious as Lord of the Rings does? I think most people would say Dune but to me the David Lynch movie kind of undercuts its gravitas...
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Rysky the Dark Solarion |
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Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:why do I envision you saying that *right* before the torture begins?Milo v3 wrote:Ah yes, because Signal of Screams is totally a comedy campaign.Laughing is a coping mechanism.
*ties a stack of lewd magazines to a drone and sets it to fly away just fast enough*
Oh hey look :3
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Ixal |
Okay, there are a few legitimate criticisms I could level at Starfinder’s setting but the economy is not one and I definitely don’t see the setting as being ‘shallow’ or there to support ‘dungeon crawling’.The economy makes sense when you expand the inherently exploitative model of capitalism to an interstellar scale. I could very easily see governments and corporations developing a vested interest in stratifying and restricting access to certain kinds of goods.
As for dungeon crawling... First of all, that term is really so vague it can be stretched to encompass just about any portion of an adventure that takes place inside an enclosed environment. Sure there are a lot of ruins and ‘dungeons’ for players to explore but the universe is old and full of secrets but...
** spoiler omitted **
None of which were ‘dungeons’.
As I said earlier, humor is a way to diffuse awkwardness, role playing can make people feel awkward. Regardless people like to laugh.
Also Ixal, your posts on Starfinder have been pretty constantly negative, you don’t see to like the mechanics or the setting, can I ask why you stick around?
Here I disagree, the economy is completely silly in SF because the item prices are created exclusively to have a tiering system for weapons, but they do not make sense for a society with mass production capabilities and are quite frankly insane.
The addition of level as purchasing requirement makes it even worse. Why would you need to level up a few times to buy a board game or other civilian equipment like valet drones or healthcare items? How do you even measure level? That is a purely metagame concept and there is no way in game to actually know what level someone has or give an in game explanation what level means. For casters you can argue that it represents access to certain spells but for other classes? When they have access to mundane abilities is also a purely metagame concept. And why has the speed a soldier can shoot (soldiers onslaught) have any relevance for him being allowed to buy a drone that styles his hair and polishes nails?Thats also the reason why justifing weapon permissions with levels do not work as they are not a thing. When your 1st level PCs go off following a rumor, fight some baddies and come back lvl 8 without any proof of what they have accomplished, why should they be allowed to openly carry anti tank weapons everywhere, even in the middle of the city?
My definition of dungeon is a lawless area where the PCs are expected to fulfill an objective by primarily killing everything in their way and don't face any reprecussions for it.
So Dead Suns has you
Crawl through an asteroid, crawl through a jungle, crawl through a temple, repeat asteroid and temple a few times and finally crawl through an super battleship.
The same for other APs where you even crawl through an office building in the middle of a metropolis and haven open fights on the streets using whatever heavy and/or explosive weapon the party has at the time and the police doesn't care (thats an actual GM instruction and no, its not on Akiton).
You do not have to play through getting permissions for your weapons, but the problem is SF was never designed with the idea in mind that weapons could be restricted. Because as soon as you enforce something like this the soldier is hosed while the mystic or operative just shrug as they are not affected. The same goes for other advancements even most of todays countries have except places like Somalia. Things like an ID system, effective immigration, a police force that keeps the peace and uses DNA profiling or facial recognition, etc.
It is quite obvious that the SF setting was never meant to work or at least be believable and instead is only there to support PCs fighting level appropriate enemies and be rewarded with ever more precious loot. It is as believable and serious as the settings created for saturday morning cartoons, not at all.
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pithica42 |
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I'll be honest, part of me wonders if it's a matter of genre convention as well...like fantasy as a genre just appears to have more gravitas than sci-fi from my perspective. When I think sci-fi, I think of Star Wars, which has a whole lot of cheese, but when I think of fantasy I think of Lord of the Rings.
Two words... "Tom Bombadil"
Fantasy, as a genre (even with the 'serious' ones) has a whole mess of silliness. Only some of it is intentional.
To each their own on their preferences. I happen to like Dr Who and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Space Opera both for their serious satire/social commentary on the real world and their silliness. I also happen to like Dune and the Expanse and Old Man's War and Neuromancer and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
You can find what you want to find in any genre. It's not the genre, it's the preconceptions you're bringing to the party.
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Rysky the Dark Solarion |
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Thats also the reason why justifing weapon permissions with levels do not work as they are not a thing.They are, the GM is just intentionally supposed to handwave getting them rather than have the players go through a paperwork simulator.
It is quite obvious that the SF setting was never meant to work or at least be believable
It's a science fantasy setting that you obviously don't like. That doesn't mean it doesn't "work" or is not believable. It's perfectly believable.
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Two words... "Tom Bombadil"
*opens mouth to protest...then pauses* That's fair.
Fantasy, as a genre (even with the 'serious' ones) has a whole mess of silliness. Only some of it is intentional.
To each their own on their preferences. I happen to like Dr Who and Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Space Opera both for their serious satire/social commentary on the real world and their silliness. I also happen to like Dune and the Expanse and Old Man's War and Neuromancer and The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.
You can find what you want to find in any genre. It's not the genre, it's the preconceptions you're bringing to the party.
True. I will have to read those ones you mentioned to get a feel for more serious sci-fi (except for TMIAHM, I heard that was one of Heinlein's worst, or at least most obnoxiously libertarian).
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Archpaladin Zousha wrote:For something more recent and on film, The Expanse.
True. I will have to read those ones you mentioned to get a feel for more serious sci-fi (except for TMIAHM, I heard that was one of Heinlein's worst, or at least most obnoxiously libertarian).
I REALLY need to look into that one, if only because then I can play the RPG for it that the great Crystal Frasier helped write!
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Nimor Starseeker |
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My Take on the SF setting has always been: it’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
However, a lot of it is how your group likes to play.
With that said, some of the aliens are truly ALIEN and very very strange!
One of the playable races from the AA2, Quorlu is one of those weird creatures that I thought I would never play because it is so weird, but after hearing one of people in the Androids and Aliens podcast play one, I quickly changed my mind. I want to play a Quorlu and other strange creatures because It is just a whole new world of being something/someone very different and borderline bizarre! I love it!
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pithica42 |
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True. I will have to read those ones you mentioned to get a feel for more serious sci-fi (except for TMIAHM, I heard that was one of Heinlein's worst, or at least most obnoxiously libertarian).
All of Heinlein's work is complex and multi-layered and as often as not used to critique his own positions as support them. That's part of why he has won so many awards. It's unfortunate that it is also the target of a lot of reductionism, especially by people that want to use it to push an agenda. While that particular book isn't my favorite (I prefer Stranger in a Strange Land), it's pretty dang 'serious', as is much of his work. (Despite the pulp-sci-fi cover art.)
I mean, there's seriously a lot of serious sci-fi out there. Even the silly stuff is often meant to have a point. Space Opera isn't just about weird looking aliens having a singing competition.
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pithica42 |
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Oh, and to that point. The 'silly' sub-plot in 1-1 - 1-14, and the one in 1-9 are actually pretty heady.
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One way in which Starfinder does feel a bit shallow is in the amount of wacky races that get pushed out, with just 1-2 pages of description. I'd prefer a slowdown in playable races (81 in Nethys, and ~15 more incoming with AA3), and instead focus on more development of some of these races we already have.
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Master Han Del of the Web |
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Here I disagree, the economy is completely silly in SF because the item prices are created exclusively to have a tiering system for weapons, but they do not make sense for a society with mass production capabilities and are quite frankly insane.
We see plenty of artificial scarcity, built-in obsolescence, and cheap products flooding markets in order to exploit different income brackets in real life. Why is it so hard to extrapolate from there for a science fiction society where the class divides are only ever going to be more extreme? (I highly recommend looking up the 'Samuel Vimes Boots Theory of socio-economic unfairness' for a quote from my favorite fantasy book regarding the subject)
The addition of level as purchasing requirement makes it even worse. Why would you need to level up a few times to buy a board game or other civilian equipment like valet drones or healthcare items? How do you even measure level? That is a purely metagame concept and there is no way in game to actually know what level someone has or give an in game explanation what level means. For casters you can argue that it represents access to certain spells but for other classes? When they have access to mundane abilities is also a purely metagame concept. And why has the speed a soldier can shoot (soldiers onslaught) have any relevance for him being allowed to buy a drone that styles his hair and polishes nails?
Thats also the reason why justifing weapon permissions with levels do not work as they are not a thing. When your 1st level PCs go off following a rumor, fight some baddies and come back lvl 8 without any proof of what they have accomplished, why should they be allowed to openly carry anti tank weapons everywhere, even in the middle of the city?
I feel like the majority of your issues, since they clearly are issues for you, can be solved with a bit of RP and the understanding that item level is an abstraction that the book even calls out as such. Have characters go through background checks and licensing if you feel like that improves the game. Force them to build connections before they can get access. On the flip side, you can let players buy the non-combat or any items they want if you so choose.
Combat is based around certain numerical assumptions so I would still recommend restricting that some but if you really feel like item levels are holding back the setting, feel free.
My definition of dungeon is a lawless area where the PCs are expected to fulfill an objective by primarily killing everything in their way and don't face any reprecussions for it.
...I do hope you realize that your definition is ridiculously broad and that I can make a case that just about any piece of action/adventure media you'd like to choose falls under the umbrella of dungeon crawler based on it. For instance Shadowrun, most of the World of Darkness properties, Star Wars, the CoD franchise, Grand Theft Auto, Red Dead Redemption, all of the James Bond movies...
You do not have to play through getting permissions for your weapons, but the problem is SF was never designed with the idea in mind that weapons could be restricted. Because as soon as you enforce something like this the soldier is hosed while the mystic or operative just shrug as they are not affected. The same goes for other advancements even most of todays countries have except places like Somalia. Things like an ID system, effective immigration, a police force that keeps the peace and uses DNA profiling or facial recognition, etc.
Once again, this is really the duty of the GM and players to enforce if they want to. The CRB handwaves it as being 'handled' in conjunction with level because it assumes most players would not enjoy playing a bureaucracy simulator. If you think this level of granularity is important to a setting, then feel free to indulge. I might also suggest figuring out prices for docking fees and repairs to your ship, as well as rearming it after every encounter, paying for inspections to make sure a hidden flaw in the reactor is not poisoning your crew, dealing with quarantines when traveling to from remote locations, keeping up-to-date passports... oh! Yearly taxes, and voting too.
It is quite obvious that the SF setting was never meant to work or at least be believable and instead is only there to support PCs fighting level appropriate enemies and be rewarded with ever more precious loot. It is as believable and serious as the settings created for saturday morning cartoons, not at all.
You know, I went back and re-watched a lot of my old Saturday morning cartoons. The DC cartoons in particular dealt with some pretty darn serious stuff on the regular, and the newer stuff that is getting popular is not shying away from heavier subjects either. So maybe don't be so dismissive of Starfinder?
It certainly has a bit of the Planet of Hats problem going on and the mystical elements certainly preclude me from telling stories with a few of my favorite transhumanist themes in them. Your problems with the system seem to stem from not being willing to work with it or being willing to fill in what you see as glaring flaws with your own creativity.
It's not a hard sci-fi setting and it was never meant to be. It's not a simulationist game and it was never meant to be.
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Xenobiologist |
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We see plenty of artificial scarcity, built-in obsolescence, and cheap products flooding markets in order to exploit different income brackets in real life.
In addition, items are artificially marked up, sometimes to exorbitant levels, with flimsy justifications or none at all, and then marketed only to upper-middle and/or wealthy people. In the U.S., the corporate approach to organic food and life-saving pharmaceuticals are good examples.
The addition of level as purchasing requirement makes it even worse. Why would you need to level up a few times to buy a board game or other civilian equipment like valet drones or healthcare items? How do you even measure level? That is a purely metagame concept and there is no way in game to actually know what level someone has or give an in game explanation what level means. For casters you can argue that it represents access to certain spells but for other classes? When they have access to mundane abilities is also a purely metagame concept. And why has the speed a soldier can shoot (soldiers onslaught) have any relevance for him being allowed to buy a drone that styles his hair and polishes nails?
Thats also the reason why justifing weapon permissions with levels do not work as they are not a thing. When your 1st level PCs go off following a rumor, fight some baddies and come back lvl 8 without any proof of what they have accomplished, why should they be allowed to openly carry anti tank weapons everywhere, even in the middle of the city?
I think the character level is meant, at least in economic terms, to be an abstract representation of the character's social standing and connections with the SFS. In a more detailed and granular game like GURPS, this would be various Status, Ranks, Allies, Contacts, and licenses. While I don't like the way that characters suddenly get better all at once when they increase a level, I think level does seem to work as an abstract measurement of social standing.
Where I could agree is non-combat items, though. I think that anything which wouldn't be restricted by licenses (or perhaps artificial scarcity) might be better "restricted" by price rather than level. That probably still wouldn't make it a good idea for a 2nd level to save up 25,000 credits and blow them on a hair-styling bot... unless your GM runs scenarios in which hairstyle is extremely important ... somehow.
Or perhaps certain healthcare items get cheaper the higher your level... because at a higher level you can get some equivalent of health insurance?
Have characters go through background checks and licensing if you feel like that improves the game. Force them to build connections before they can get access. On the flip side, you can let players buy the non-combat or any items they want if you so choose.
If you think this level of granularity is important to a setting, then feel free to indulge. I might also suggest figuring out prices for docking fees and repairs to your ship, as well as rearming it after every encounter, paying for inspections to make sure a hidden flaw in the reactor is not poisoning your crew, dealing with quarantines when traveling to from remote locations, keeping up-to-date passports... oh! Yearly taxes, and voting too.
Personally I might find dealing with docking fees, ship repairs and re-arming, buying ammo and food, actually interesting. But I'm the sort of gamer who gets a kick out of Dwarf Fortress. I can understand if a lot of players don't want to do that. I wouldn't want to RP the red tape, filling out forms, and crap. Just tell me what the license fee and taxes cost and I'll subtract the credits.
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Freehold DM |
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Freehold DM wrote:Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:why do I envision you saying that *right* before the torture begins?Milo v3 wrote:Ah yes, because Signal of Screams is totally a comedy campaign.Laughing is a coping mechanism.*ties a stack of lewd magazines to a drone and sets it to fly away just fast enough*
Oh hey look :3
hey, come back here drone! chases
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Rysky the Dark Solarion |
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Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:hey, come back here drone! chasesFreehold DM wrote:Rysky the Dark Solarion wrote:why do I envision you saying that *right* before the torture begins?Milo v3 wrote:Ah yes, because Signal of Screams is totally a comedy campaign.Laughing is a coping mechanism.*ties a stack of lewd magazines to a drone and sets it to fly away just fast enough*
Oh hey look :3
*pilots drone into strip club*
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Master Han Del of the Web |
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Ixal's problems with the Starfinder ecoonomy are old news. This horse has been beaten to death in several threads. Spoiler alert: you're not going to change their mind.
That was the impression I got from their sundry posts but not challenging them leads to a perceived, if inaccurate, acceptance.
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"So, ah, um... life in my um, universe is actually very ah, hard. But if you, um, er, don't have some sense of ah humour then all the 'jocks' win. It is um, er an important part of a well-balanced emotional diet." opines a garishly colored Vesk in a suit of armour clearly oversized for her and thick-rimmed spectacles.