Hello all!
I've played Tabletop RPG for over 30 years and played Pathfinder a few years back and enjoyed it. After a little over a year off from gaming, my group and I tried out the Starfinder Beginner Box. Suffice to say: We fell in love right away! Loved the setting, the classes, the art, the merging of magic and tech, loved everything so far.
We played through the adventure there and I populated the extra dungeon and we finished that. We're ready to move on so I purchased the Pocket Edition of the Core Rule book and should have it soon.
My questions are:
1) Does the Core Rule book go into more detail for Absalom Station? Or, is there an AP that flushes it out more (Like Rise of the Runelords did for Sandpoint)?
2) Aside from the rule book, what else would be "must haves" or "better if you had it"? There's so many products that it's pretty overwhelming!
3) This question is going to be weird but I'll try to make sense: Can Starfinder be played as a sandbox easily? It seems geared for whatever I can dream up. Dungeon crawls in ruins or stations, spaceship fights, etc. Like, in the Beginner Box, it talks about all these forgotton levels in Absalom Station...could that be run like some sort of old school wilderness hex crawl? Or, is there more of an assumption to use official products (or, at least assume there is an official canon?)
Hope that last question makes sense.
Thanks!
1) Core book and Pact Worlds books go into more detail on Absolom Station, but it is also explored in APs (The Dead Suns #1 is set in Absolom or its environs), and particularly in Starfinder Society adventures (1-01 The Commencement, 1-10 Half-Alive Streets, and 1-32 Acts of Association are good places to start).
2) Armory, Alien Archive 1, and Character Operations Manual are the most essential non-core books. Armory basically completes the gear listings, Alien Archive 1 gives the rules for creating monsters and provides a substantial number of non-core races that will become fan favorites (nuar are my favorite, but everyone loves skittermanders), and COM provides three extra classes and some important options for every class.
3) Yes, you can do whatever you want with the game. My home game is about reality show stars on a planet deep in the Vast, embroiled in shadowrun-type corporate conspiracies and lovecraftian terror.
1. The core book has about a page's worth of description of the station. For a bit of detail about the interior, factions, neighborhoods, and such the adventure Incident At Absalom Station (part 1 of Dead Suns AP) has about a dozen pages worth of appendix devoted to it. The setting book Pact Worlds also has a fair bit.
2. I think the second most important book for players would be Character Operations Manual. It really opens up a lot of character options. For DMs Alien Archive 1 is pretty important for telling you how NPC design works. For setting information more than rules I think Pact Worlds and Near Space are good to have but not essential.
3. Yes.
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Absalom Station has never been fully detailed, The core rule book has a bit on it, the Pack Worlds book has more on Absalom Station. If you looking to run in a sandbox game getting Pack Worlds and Near Space would give you a lot of places to visit if you don't want to homebrew a lot.
All the rules are online free at:
Archives of Nethys.
Part 1 of the Dead suns adventure path; INCIDENT AT
ABSALOM STATION has about the same info on Absalom Station as the Pact Worlds book. But INCIDENT ATABSALOM STATION is currently only available as a PDF, but if you wait the whole dead suns adventure path is getting reprinted as a single book, I think it's in October
There's no one right way to play Starfinder, you can certainly use it as a sandbox. Because of the way the Drift works there's not much of a need for hexploration in space. Planet side the horizons Of The Vast get's into hexploration, but it's largely around building a colony on a distant planet.
If you must have crunch, armory and character operations manual
If you must have fluff, pact worlds and near space
If you want to hop into the adventures the online society discord can get you into organized play.
This is the last day of gencon so i'd imagine most dms will be hibernating for a week sleeping off a week of prepping games at the last minute and then running thmzzzzzzzzzzzzz
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Thank you all for the responses.
I'm going to check out those Starfinder Society adventures and the Armory to start (If only I could find a fat cred stick and buy more).
Because of the way the Drift works there's not much of a need for hexploration in space. Planet side the horizons Of The Vast get's into hexploration, but it's largely around building a colony on a distant planet.Ok I wrote Hexcrawl but I meant Megadungeon. Sorry for the confusion. But cool to know.
I'm anxiously awaiting the rule book and check it out.
Thanks again all!
There's no Starfinder Megadungeon equivalent to Pathfinder 2Es The Abominations Vaults, but there's also nothing saying it can't be done. That deep of a dive into some alien ruins could be fun.
The vaults of Apostae would work well as a Megadungeon.
Salvations end Is a giant moon with a lot of seperate vaults where.... things happen. It makes a good megadungeon