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I think Starships could be easily fixed by reducing the complexity and embrace one of the two space-combat tropes (dogfights or naval battles, I'm for the second^^).
Building a "system within a system" is difficult, Paizo tried it in the past, most times it was clunky at least (Jade Regent, Skulls and shackels) and sometimes it was good done (Kingmaker).
The problem with the spaceship rules is that they are a vital part of a "space opera" game, so they have to nail it.
I highly doubt that Paizo will rework the Starship system, they already released one splat book, but maybe some 3rd party publisher can come to the rescue.
I hated kingmakers system. It was a stat check with fairly high DCs. Stats simply do not scale and are more or less random d20 rolls. It doesn't give the player any sense of individuality or control over the situation when the 18 charisma paladin keeps rolling 4s. or even 10s.
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A bunch of fans, on Paizo's own Message Boards, speculating about why Starfinder (the game they are talking about) isn't talked about by more people.
The irony.
I will throw this out there: you aren't getting good numbers from Roll 20 -- because there are no damned Starfinder APs to buy other than AtAT for Roll 20.
Put down Roll20, come on over the Foundry VTT and play Starfinder. https://discord.com/invite/v9K2hKJ
What the game needs to be making a bigger splash is the same thing every game does to make a bigger splash: more fun adventures to play.
For Starfinder, that's Fly Free or Die or Horizons of the Vast. And giant mechs from Tech Revolution won't hurt the buzz, either.
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Dawn of Flame is awesome too. It’s got everything a decent SF Adventure Path needs, imo.
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Dawn of Flame is awesome too. It’s got everything a decent SF Adventure Path needs, imo.
I know you are a subscriber Steve - but have you read Fly Free or Die?
FFoD is AMAZING. What a change and breath of fresh air into the Starfinder AP line. It made me excited to play Starfinder again -- and that spark was almost thoroughly extinguished by Dead Suns.
What this game needs is more FFoD hype -- and a lot of it being played on Foundry VTT, which is a natural software platform for the game and offers tweaks and differences which make Starfinder shine brightly. Yes, even starship combat, too.
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Yeah, but I like variety. We’re playing them all in order - the only one I skipped was Signal of Screams.
In my view every AP except for Dead Suns is great (and DS is fixable).
FFoD is on our schedule next once we finish Threefold Conspiracy.
(I don’t have an opinion on foundry, I don’t like playing online).
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Well rather then trashing the VTTs available, wouldn't it be more beneficial to the health of Starfinder to embrace them all?
I use Roll20, Why? It was the only VTT I knew about that didn't directly cost money.
Wouldn't be more useful for the health if people gave more info on the different VTTs available with info on them?
Also a point on the whole 'Starfinder is falling'
Like Steve, not everyone likes playing online. Not everyone uses or knew about VTTs. All it really takes is 1 dedicated GM and something like Skype or Zoom to communicate other. Online purchases doesn't reflect the fan base. I don't buy APs. One of my friends will buy them if they are interested. Not every group is going to have every player buying all the books. To be honest, APs I see as one of the things only the GM should pick up (Why buy something if you can't read it).
Starfinder I started during this whole current situation so its still fairly new. When we played Pathfinder 1 of my group bought most books he spotted (not really APs) in our local shop, he doesn't like ordering online and liked supporting the small shop. I can only afford to purchase maybe the core and a couple books. Purchases unfortunately don't reflect peoples interest when you only really need 1 person out of 6 to purchase the books (Maybe a couple extra CRBs)
I will throw this out there: you aren't getting good numbers from Roll 20 -- because there are no damned Starfinder APs to buy other than AtAT for Roll 20.
Put down Roll20, come on over the Foundry VTT and play Starfinder. https://discord.com/invite/v9K2hKJ
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Well, that doesn't mean that adventure paths aren't being PLAYED on roll20. Roll20s less bells and whistles means its much easier to make a game for yourself from scratch. While that's good for playing a scenario the day/week it comes out, it means it's hard to monetize any product sold on roll20.
Roll20 is popular enough for society play that tables that are on roll20 don't need to mention they're on roll20.
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Roll20 is popular enough for society play that tables that are on roll20 don't need to mention they're on roll20.
The registration info for PaizoCon, by the way, indicates that Roll20 is in use in a little less than 70% of games, Foundry VTT about 25%, with the remaining 5% to FG and others.
And that's the market share for Foundry VTT when it has only been out for 1 year - and before ANY support from Paizo for it was even announced.
So, you might want to build a wee bit of wiggle room in to your position. Just sayin.
So, you might want to build a wee bit of wiggle room in to your position. Just sayin.
I don't see how having nearly three times the next option does anything but provide support for the statement. If there's a game its assumed to be on roll20 unless stated otherwise. If that seems odd to someone in the far off future of the year two thousAAAAAAANNND well thats why posts have dates.
It doesn't mean its the best by any means. Just the most widely used. It's free to start out (first ones free...) players don't need to pay at all, has the lowest bar for entry for newguy to hop in, and has the easiest set up- just sign up for a web page. People use it first, get used to it, and don't always have a reason to switch out.
You also can't judge popularity by module sales when roll20 doesn't sell modules. They sell a bucket of legos and you make the module.
I will throw this out there: you aren't getting good numbers from Roll 20 -- because there are no damned Starfinder APs to buy other than AtAT for Roll 20.Put down Roll20, come on over the Foundry VTT and play Starfinder. https://discord.com/invite/v9K2hKJ
What the game needs to be making a bigger splash is the same thing every game does to make a bigger splash: more fun adventures to play.
For Starfinder, that's Fly Free or Die or Horizons of the Vast. And giant mechs from Tech Revolution won't hurt the buzz, either.
I will pick up on this just to urge people to indeed come on over to Foundry VTT, it's a fantastic piece of software and I love it, I use it regularly for my Pathfinder 2e campaigns.
That being said, the data I mentioned in my original post, starting this discussions, are clear. The game is AT BEST maintaining most of its original popularity, and it's definitely not picking up any on balance. (Add the google trend data to the mix, on top of everything else, I just forgot to mention it before).
This isn't necessarily a problem for ppl like me who have every manual and are capable of houseruling to fix everything they don't like in the game. We will keep playing it.
The problem, or rather missed opportunity, would be if Paizo failed to plan ahead for the inevitable evolution of this game (actually, I'm sure they already are, behind the scenes). I hope that Paizo catches this opportunity, in a year or two, to really push the accelerator pedal and openly star talking about "Starfinder NEXT".
My personal wish: 1) innovate, get away from the d20 system, make a truly next-gen ttrpg and keep what makes your games epic: THE SETTING! 2) BETTER adventure material! get away from the go in-kill monster-get reward-rinse and repeat rotuine. More free form, open ended plots, less scripted encounters, more tools for the GM (art most of all!)
:)
I can't wait till "star" comes out, without any of the finder.
I maintain that if all you want is the setting with a completely irrelevant system... you can just use the setting with a different system like fate, savage worlds or stars without number. There is very little reason to ditch the people who actually enjoying your rpg.
Starfinder will eventually need to update itself of course, but just throwing out playerbase sounds... like throwing the house out with the bath water.
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I'm curious how exactly these databases collect data? Does it simply track purchases and 'new games' started with the Starfinder template? If it tracks using the planner then its not going to be accurate. I can't be the only GM who doesn't 'schedule' the next game on Roll20 (mine says the last game was over 2 months ago, it plays every Saturday). It might be something I failed to click on but I don't exactly receive any notification that a game has been scheduled so I can't be the only person who doesn't use it, basically telling people when the next game is through what ever means we started it. I am not saying no one uses it but if that is a part of what makes them (The survey people) think its not being played then they could be missing a good portion of players
I find the fact that Golarion is missing from the Starfinder setting & that the Gods won't talk about the Gap could mean that Pf2 & SF are happening at the Exact Same Time if they really wanted it to >.>
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I approached it with some trepidation - I didn't think my group would like it as we're much more a "kick in the door, kill the monster, take their stuff" group. I literally began session zero with "make sure you tell me if you hate the campaign and we'll drop it" speech, which I've never done before.
As well as thinking it wouldn't suit my players, I wasn't sure I'd be up to running a mystery plus handle a dozen or so NPCs all with agendas/secrets and things the PCs need to find out. It's not an easy first module to run, imo.
However, the ending of book one (the end of our last session) was one of the most satisfying moments as a DM I've had in years. They kind of wrapped up most of the mystery in book one, had a few niggling loose ends, then had their minds blown by the 'big reveal' at the end of the book leading into the rest of the AP.
Previously Dawn of Flame has been my favorite AP, but I suspect it will be knocked off its perch by Threefold Conspiracy. I strongly recommend looking into it if you think your group is up for the slightly unusual premise.
Starship combat is a little rough, but a lot of the players I saw pick up SF and later drop it never really got that far into the system. It was more little annoyances like the way skills scale or disagreements with the way equipment work, starfinder archetypes, or the content pacing. Some of them just didn't have a great time with Dead Suns and left it at that.
Also just a decent chunk of players who simply felt like they could get a better Pathfinder experience by sticking to Pathfinder and more recently some PF2 fans who look back at SF but are turned off by its old-school baggage. Though TBH I did expect SF to pick up a bit more than it did when PF was discontinued.
That said, can also agree that just looking at roll20 numbers doesn't really paint a clear picture and that Starfinder has always been more of a niche game and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
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More I play starship combat, more I feel like its not as bad as lot of people think, it can be genuinely great even without "gm being really good at describing the action". Its still intimidating to explain to new group though and I think core rulebook made mistakes with it.
Like starship operation manual's "how much point you can spend on turrets" guidelines and such rules should have been in core book, starship combat becomes most boring when ships have only super big long range turret gun and high amount of shields. Stunts are most useful when playing slower ship than faster ship as well.
As to VTT conversation, I'm bit annoyed currently at Foundry VTT for crashing my old gpu multiple times in session :p I don't really get sense that starfinder's popularity is falling, but that while scifi fantasy genre has its own niche, its relatively smaller than pure scifi/fantasy and that starfinder has slower rule book release schedule so there aren't lot of big hype products to keep up public conversation. (I think only D&D 5e can pull off "few times a year" schedule and still have some hype :P )
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More I play starship combat, more I feel like its not as bad as lot of people think, it can be genuinely great even without "gm being really good at describing the action". Its still intimidating to explain to new group though and I think core rulebook made mistakes with it.
Like starship operation manual's "how much point you can spend on turrets" guidelines and such rules should have been in core book, starship combat becomes most boring when ships have only super big long range turret gun and high amount of shields. Stunts are most useful when playing slower ship than faster ship as well.
I think I went full circle on Starship Combat myself. I didn't really like it at first, then thought it was pretty good as I got to engage with it at higher levels and played some SFS scenarios that did creative things with it, then played even more and GM'd even more of it and found it unwieldy and boring for too many people at the table.
It doesn't help that it is at its most boring and frustrating at low levels, where default starships in the hands of beginners result in these interminable slugfests where neither ship can do more than scratch the foe's shields before they regenerate.
Even with SOM, with all the ship build guidelines and updates, almost everyone ends up building a max speed ship, at which point combat often feels "solved" - what you do round-to-round stays static. It almost always ends up being "Are the pilot's initiative dice hot or cold? And are the gunner's gunnery dice hot or cold?" because there's such minimal decision making. It's frustrating. Not impossible to make work by adding a lot of pizzazz and complications, but the baseline is not a good start.
Starship combat Cycle
This is confusing I have so many options
I think I know what I"m doing...
Hey wait a minute, i keep using the same option over and over and over..
In case anyone is in doubt as to the falling interest in Starfinder, one more data point: there are way less posts on the Starfinder forums than there used to be. Not just in SF General Discussion, the whole lot under Community / Forums / Starfinder
Glass Cannon just cancelled their Starfinder podcast too.
Troy didn’t mention listener numbers in his broadcast yesterday, but he did last year (back when they actually made the decision). I think it’s probably relevant.
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Fantasy is just more popular than Sci-fi in tabletop games.
I hope Starfinder sticks around for at least 5 more years, still not in the mood to return to fantasy games.
It's obvious Starfinder has been Paizo's red-headed stepchild for some time. You don't get rid of a co-creator right after a successful initial release of a game if you expected it to succeed. It has always seemed like SF was just intended to test a few new mechanics and sustain a little interest until 2E came out. It has always seemed like Paizo - especially one or two higher-ups - were not only surprised by its initial success, but didn't believe it was sustainable.
Third party support via Roll20, FG, HeroLab, etc. has been lagging for some time, which seemed like a canary in the coal mine. Is that because of a lack of player interest or a lack of Paizo support? Dunno. Maybe both.
Were APs dropped to bimonthly because of a lack of purchasing or a lack of faith? Did COVID play into this, causing support to go to the less risky 2E? Dunno.
I'd like for SF to be more central to Paizo's future, but it seems to me from the outside it's intended to be on the level of the PF card game, followed by eventual de facto cancelation.
I'd love to be wrong.
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Sutter left, he wasn't fired. He also still freelances for Paizo, so no bad blood there either.
It has always seemed like SF was just intended to test a few new mechanics and sustain a little interest until 2E came out.
The amount of tinfoil to support this theory, that they spent an obscene amount of time and resources on such a supposed "quick fix" till P2 came out.
They have Hardcovers, APs, Society Scenarios, and now standalone Adventures, Starfinder is very much [i]not[/t] an overlooked side thing for Paizo.
APs are dropping to bimonthly as an experiment as they also publish the standalone Adventures now, they also introduced the 3 Month AP format which they later introduced into P2, so that's the exact opposite of a failure.
I saw this theory being pushed on a different social media platform recently.
It seems like a bizarre thing to be pushing. Why spend your valuable life speculating on the failure of something on the fan forums of that thing?
Starfinder will continue to exist even if Paizo stops releasing products for it, and some folks will still want to talk about it. Heck, there are still forums out there for 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which stopped being released in the early 1980s.
Third party support via Roll20, FG, HeroLab, etc. has been lagging for some time, which seemed like a canary in the coal mine. Is that because of a lack of player interest or a lack of Paizo support? Dunno. Maybe both.
For roll20 anyway, you're not just looking at the cross section of roll20 users that play starfinder, but the cross section of roll20 users that play starfinder AND use stuff on the roll20 store. That may take you below profitability on anything but your biggest items. Most DMs i've seen in society use the simple sheet and don't buy compendiums or the few pre made adventures. It's too easy to slap together your own.
I saw this theory being pushed on a different social media platform recently.
It seems like a bizarre thing to be pushing. Why spend your valuable life speculating on the failure of something on the fan forums of that thing?
Starfinder will continue to exist even if Paizo stops releasing products for it, and some folks will still want to talk about it. Heck, there are still forums out there for 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which stopped being released in the early 1980s.
Never go to the World of Warcraft Forums, 99% of threads is players claiming the game is failed/wishing it to fail.
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For roll20 anyway, you're not just looking at the cross section of roll20 users that play starfinder, but the cross section of roll20 users that play starfinder AND use stuff on the roll20 store.
This.
I'm logging 5ish hours a week of Starfinder on roll20, but I'm using the (awesome) Simple Sheet, and not purchasing anything. (Ripping .bmps was good enough for my grandpappy, and it's good enough for me, consarnit!) Like the Wolf says, if your only metric for how much something is getting played is the % of people who are paying to do so, that's going to severely skew your data.roll20 doesn't appear to publish their ratio of free users to paid users, but if that were avaiable, I would wager you could apply that ratio as a sort of bellwether for people playing Starfinder with 'paid'/flagged games, vs those playing 'invisible' Starfinder with no paid content/categorized games.
Never go to the World of Warcraft Forums, 99% of threads is players claiming the game is failed/wishing it to fail.
DROOD IS FINE it's your fault the druid can LOS you omg L2PLAY NUB :D
It seems like a bizarre thing to be pushing. Why spend your valuable life speculating on the failure of something on the fan forums of that thing?
I spent a weekend rationalizing the economy of the Starfinder universe once. Time has not been an issue during COVID, let alone the 2 minutes to crank out a reply.
Heck, there are still forums out there for 1st edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, which stopped being released in the early 1980s
If it ain't THAC0, it ain't D&D. 2E all the way.
For roll20 anyway, you're not just looking at the cross section of roll20 users that play starfinder, but the cross section of roll20 users that play starfinder AND use stuff on the roll20 store. That may take you below profitability on anything but your biggest items. Most DMs i've seen in society use the simple sheet and don't buy compendiums or the few pre made adventures. It's too easy to slap together your own.
Yeah, the disaster that the R20 sheet is has been a handicap.
But R20 never brought out any AP but the Aeon Throne one, and even that's sort of hacked together. No one wants to use an inferior sheet with little support that they'll have to rework or ignore.
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I'm surprised to notice they are actually updating the sheet, I noticed that this year(I'm not sure if it was month or two ago) the starship version of sheet(which btw IS actually better than simple sheet starship sheet ;P Same way official npc sheet is better than simple npc sheet.... Yeah basically only player version of simple sheet is somewhat better :p) was updated so that they finally added maneuverability and turning speed into it x'D
But yeah they update it so slowly that I'm shocked it isn't actually completely abandoned
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Yeah, the disaster that the R20 sheet is has been a handicap.
For roll20 anyway, you're not just looking at the cross section of roll20 users that play starfinder, but the cross section of roll20 users that play starfinder AND use stuff on the roll20 store. That may take you below profitability on anything but your biggest items. Most DMs i've seen in society use the simple sheet and don't buy compendiums or the few pre made adventures. It's too easy to slap together your own.
it's really not that bad once you figure it out. but the learning curve is more a learning cliff...
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Dawn of Flame is awesome too. It’s got everything a decent SF Adventure Path needs, imo.
I would run it after we get done with THREEFOLD ADVENTURE [just got to book 3 and it is great so far] but I want to play it SO BAD [had a game early in the pandemic where we finished book 2... oh man I just loved it]
So we'll probably do FLY FREE or ATTACK depending on what the group wants to do ... and if people are still interested after that, run a DEVASTATION ARK with players being able to choose between their 2 prior PCs or start a new one...
it's really not that bad once you figure it out. but the learning curve is more a learning cliff...
Yeah, the disaster that the R20 sheet is has been a handicap.
What is the trick to using it? With the simple sheet the trick is you need to not use it on firefox so you can see the icons you need to click to pop the hood see the engine and check the info.
I'm running a Starfinder game tonight. On roll20.
I'm running a Starfinder game tonight. On roll20.
I'm running one on Roll20 tonight, too. I use Roll20 as a dumb grid; could probably play the game in a Google spreadsheet if I really needed to.
I've got a couple thousand hours of roll20 Starfinder logged at this point, but I don't usually tag my games as Starfinder cause I don't need them to be roll20 searchable.
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What is the trick to using it? With the simple sheet the trick is you need to not use it on firefox so you can see the icons you need to click to pop the hood see the engine and check the info.it's really not that bad once you figure it out. but the learning curve is more a learning cliff...
Yeah, the disaster that the R20 sheet is has been a handicap.
well, that's probably why it's been a cliff for me! LOL.
nah, but it's easy enough. some of our new guys had some problems, but the vets straightened them out in a few minutes.
its flexible, which is what sheets should be, does everything you need it to do...
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Let's also not forget about the pandemic. I love Starfinder, but with the pandemic, we dont meet up any more to play in person for our old Society games. I was one of my area's 3 main SFS GMs, and none of us really run right now. I ran our first game in over a year tonight, and it was just as fun, but we just havent been able to make it work. I fully intend to go back, and i believe every table im signed up for at Paizocon (all SFS) is full. Maybe there's a problem, but it may just be it's tough to grow right now for the obvious reason.
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Sutter left, he wasn't fired. He also still freelances for Paizo, so no bad blood there either.
It has always seemed like SF was just intended to test a few new mechanics and sustain a little interest until 2E came out.The amount of tinfoil to support this theory, that they spent an obscene amount of time and resources on such a supposed "quick fix" till P2 came out.
Not as much tinfoil as you think, considering I've seen at least one of Starfinder's own developers state that part of its impetus was because they'd run out of hardcover material for 1e, and needed something to draw attention at Gen Con until 2e was ready, but that at the same time was being stymied because one very prominent member of the team expressly didn't want to design the game, and spent a great deal of the time they could have used working on Starfinder to continually advocate giving up on it, even as transitioned from just a one-off with some supplements for Gen Con to the full second product line it released as.
It's only thanks to some very hardworking and passionate people going through some really bad crunch that we got the game in the first place and I can't thank them enough for it (though of course the crunch shouldn't have happened and the management shouldn't have let one team member hold the entire project back).
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You need to stick to chrome for roll20 in our groups experience.What is the trick to using it? With the simple sheet the trick is you need to not use it on firefox so you can see the icons you need to click to pop the hood see the engine and check the info.it's really not that bad once you figure it out. but the learning curve is more a learning cliff...
Yeah, the disaster that the R20 sheet is has been a handicap.
well, that's probably why it's been a cliff for me! LOL.
nah, but it's easy enough. some of our new guys had some problems, but the vets straightened them out in a few minutes.
its flexible, which is what sheets should be, does everything you need it to do...
i'll give it a shot. next session is tomorrow!
Foundry this, Roll20 that... isn't anyone else running Starfinder games in a cobbled-together macro framework in MapTool?
Foundry this, Roll20 that... isn't anyone else running Starfinder games in a cobbled-together macro framework in MapTool?
I have a cobbled together macro framework in roll20 called The PC woof
Works well as a simple/official table character sheet.
I bailed on maptools because I couldn't run anything with all the port forwarding issues , and everyone kept havinig a different java version installed, and java doees NOT living having a different version around.