Hilary Moon Murphy might do extra content on Starfinder Infinite, anyone interested?


Horizons of the Vast


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I was posting that it sure would be nice to have some extra specific encounters here for this Vast AP as there are a LOT of empty hexes and I'm not that good at building interesting encounters myself.

Hilary posted back that she might consider writing some up and putting it in Starfinder Infinite if there was interest, she has mine to say the least, LOL

Anyone else out there as well?

I know our Starfinder forums don't get much traffic and is a tad neglected from time to time :(

Just look that this AP is still below Devastation Arc....... Then none of the Modules GM thread ever get a sticky, but one can still hope for some progress at some point??

Anyways, sorry for the derail but I think it needs to be said!!

Take it away Hilary and lets hope for some active interest in this cool project that might happen in the future!!

Cheers

Tom

Dark Archive

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In a word, yes.


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Yes of course!

Maybe some faction driven events or encounters would make a nice touch.

Wayfinders Contributor

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Oh, hey! I wanted to let you know that I decided to start working on this project for the first three volumes of HOV. Good to know that there is already interest!

What have I done so far?

1) Completed reprinting statblocks for all the creatures and ships for HOV #40-42. Ron Lundeen's GM Guide for Abomination Vaults did this, and I decided there would be a value in having one document with all the statblocks together so one did not have to hunt them down as a GM. This also meant putting templates on the elementals and other creatures that had templates.

2) Started work on a Smuggling Vessel Supply Ship that visits regularly. I figure they can be a source of both off-world loot and their own mini-adventures.

3) Started trying to figure out what we needed for those empty hexes. I'll admit that I have so far only outlined this one as I was mulling over how to handle this. While I think some additional random encounters by terrain might be fine, I also know that empty hexes can also be a relief for not using up resources. So I may do a mixed method here. I'm thinking of mostly including a bunch of narrative descriptions that you can use for those empty hexes so that claiming an 'empty hex' is not a boring thing, as well as an optional table of different encounters by terrain type. If I decide to include more encounters by terrain, I'll throw those creature's statblocks into the bestiary as well.

By the way, have y'all checked out the Galaxy Exploration Manual? They had some really cool random encounter tables. My main complaints were that these tables a) included a lot of sentient creatures -not native to New Harmony- and b) were also not sorted by level.

4) A very tiny section for 'Minor Fixes' that includes a bit on Threl's gender and the verdant blast spell.

Dargoth876, what do you mean by faction driven events? Are we talking about rumors or gossip from the various charters?

Hmm


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Hilary Moon Murphy wrote:


Dargoth876, what do you mean by faction driven events? Are we talking about rumors or gossip from the various charters?

Well on the first 2 modules at least (the third is in the mail), the charter patron does not change a lot of things except for charter beginning score and some events that are to be initiated by a secondary charter.

The patron could imply special visitors, or special tasks or requests that are unique to the patron.

Radiant Oath

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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

I'm always eager to see more of HMM's work! It's ALWAYS stellar!


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This is a great idea for players, GMs and authors.

Hopefully we get a lot of expanded material for all APs in a similar fashion - there are always situations/encounters that could use a couple more pages of setup/explanation and getting stuff like that with the insight of one of the authors has a lot of potential.


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GREAT to hear Hilary on this!!

Sounds like you have a solid plan so far

GEM was OK but I thought there would have been more specifics rather than just terrain type elementals, the party can get quite bored with them after a while if thats pretty much all there is to roll for (IE my 3 groups did sadly)

I'd like perhaps a few specific encounters with some more of the 25 NPC's perhaps.

Make some hexes skill check specific, say good Survival or Perception they find a misdropped Pallet of supplies untouched, BUT might have another groups stamp on them :)

If failed they get a specific encounter, say some stowaways from another faction ransacked the Misdrop Pallet so no units to add to their stash, but a fight instead perhaps, or they just plain did not spot the container and its gone for good perhaps?

You would know better than I if this might work or not.

And as its mod 2 let the other organizations have a pop in in a hex or two, explorers lost or what not, family looking for their lost pet Skitter or some such just so there can be some pre connections to later parts in the AP or not , just something interesting.

Just got done with work a while ago so pretty tired so hope I'm not rambling to much, I post again after work thursday if I have some time.

Thanks again for giving this a go and I'll read mod 3 a bit closer to see if there might be some good hooks one could put in an empty hex for mod 2.

ALSO, just a thought but I was a bit startled that all the maps so far look like regular earth map type Ala PF I or II, any chance for some true alien terrain maps buy chance please :) I know its a big ask and maybe to pricey but can't hurt to ask here.

Tom

Wayfinders Contributor

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Hey TRDG --

Thanks for all your enthusiasm and ideas! I really appreciate it!

I'm going to be a bit conservative on what I'm including in this volume though. I want this to be a book that I can finish and that you can get before you are done GMing the AP for your players! On the other hand, hearing your ideas are great. I like seeing them. Just be aware I may not use all of them because I need to keep this somewhat streamlined. :)

The misdropped pallet sounds a bit like am encounter I'm working out for the Supply Ship.

TRDG wrote:
GEM was OK but I thought there would have been more specifics rather than just terrain type elementals, the party can get quite bored with them after a while if thats pretty much all there is to roll for (IE my 3 groups did sadly)

What were you looking for that was missing in GEM? Tactics? A reason the animals are attacking?

TRDG wrote:
ALSO, just a thought but I was a bit startled that all the maps so far look like regular earth map type Ala PF I or II, any chance for some true alien terrain maps buy chance please :) I know its a big ask and maybe to pricey but can't hurt to ask here.

Weydana-4 is an Earth-type planet that is uninhabited. That's the reason why all these charters are so excited to go there. There are other planets in the system that are far more alien, but I think they might be out of scope for my project. I will let other Starfinder Writers do Infinite Adventure material for the other Weydana system planets.

A Weird Aside on Maps and Hidden Costs to Self-Publishing:

As for maps, they are by far the biggest expense for adventure writers. When I am writing officially for Paizo, art gets commissioned for my projects by the Developers and it's always wonderful!

In the case of Paizo Infinite, I can freely use Paizo art that is labeled community use or has appeared in the blog, but they've kept most of their maps proprietary, thus off limits for the Infinite Program. Commissioning new maps is expensive -- often 100 bucks and up if you do not have the graphic skills to make your own. I don't have those skills yet. Given this, it may not surprise you that I'm only commissioning one encounter map for this book. I'm going to try to keep the rest of the encounters mapless.

Third party sales tend to be minimal, so I don't want to lose too much money on this project. I know that Ron Lundeen's Guide is a silver medal bestseller, which means it's sold at least 101 copies. But 50% of everything that Ron (or any other Infinite author) makes from Infinite goes to either RPG DriveThru or to Paizo itself. Ron Lundeen is a superstar with a reputation that helps drive his sales. I'm not sure I will sell as many copies, and make back what I spend.

On the other hand... If you want alien world maps, Michael Tumey of Gamer Print Shop makes a ton of Sci-Fi Alien maps. You can see some of his art in Wayfinder 20, or on the Starfinder RPG Facebook group, where he is constantly previewing it. He might have stock art (aka, already produced art) that he might be willing to sell rights to cheaply. He's fast, professional and excellent.

I hope this helps!

Hmm

Wayfinders Contributor

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I should also say that it is exciting that the Infinite program exists, and makes independent projects like this possible. I am looking forward to seeing more Starfinder Infinite creations and seeing what others do with it!


Thanks for the kind reply Hilary

No prob, just some ideas I had that might spark further and more refined ones for you :)

For GEM there was no actual per the rules to roll any skill checks in the hexploration, just know your party speed and they get x number of actions and move and "explore" and done.

I would have liked to have seen per the rules Perception and survival checks so the players are a bit more engaged in the activity from the get go.

Otherwise what you get is,

"OK, everyone has 30 or better move speed so we go to hex B, we will do a carefull search, so GM what do we find....."

Then encounter or no then just rinse and repeat. Gets very stale very fast if run by the GEM/Vast rules per say

Yep and as the GM I did the extra stuff from the get go, percep checks be it hexploration or a reconn in downtime so it added some flavor that hexploratrion is something special and out of the ordinary and who might be good or bad at some skills might be meaningfull. NOT just going through the motions sort of thing.

As to the random encounters, by the module not on GEM I hear ya on the new planet and should be nothing but elementals, but its gets as I said before a tad old for just elementals they randomly run into every time if not a set encounter.

Hope that helps a bit more and for those who wrote those specifics in GEM, or lack of key specifics to make hexploration so much better overall.

But at least we have the book and can extrapolate a bit on what players might be interested in then add in extra stuff so not a huge problem, just a pretty glaring one, at least to me.

But its all good and my groups are having fun with my extra efforts so all is well :)

Got it on the maps, Myself and some p[layers asked why are they just like regular RPG maps, should'nt there be weird unearthly terrain somewhere right?

I've bought some from RPG now and have sprinked them in and it was a hit compared to the the "plain old maps" LOL

Well have fun writing this and can't wait to see the results, and others to I suspect and hopefully other writers might take up their pen and add stuff to their mods in this AP as well!!

Ha Ha

Thanks again for the convo, very fun :)

Tom


Hey Hilary I'm sure your super busy as usual but how goes the Infinite project so far?

Almost done with mod 1 in my player game :)

Hope you having good holidays so far!!

Tom


Any luck yet Hilary, I'm sure your quite busy as usual, just rechecking :)

Tom

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