What's your favorite parts of Ports of Call?


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Wayfinders

What are your favorite Ports?

Any other parts of the book you like?


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber

The first port I flipped to was Izadamar, since it provides a glimpse into the post-endgame near future for my Scoured Stars campaign. Which I was rather taken with, despite introducing some retcons that I now need to dance around and leaving me with questions that won't be answered until after I finish the campaign. But, still, useful to me to the degree that a new NPC mentioned in the port is going to be retroactively added to the Scoured Stars scenario I start running next week.

Drifter's End is handy and useful, though the opening illo, while technically quite nice, continues the ongoing trend of leaving me confused, despite Paizo's increased focus on answering this specific question, about what you see if you look up in the Ring. In general, I think Paizo writers tend to confuse the Ring with the Eye, and I'm just not really sure what I'm looking at in that illo (exacerbated by the existence of the extremely detailed, top-down map we have of Absalom Station). I'm left asking things like "What are those rings? Are they airlocks? Where is this massive, straight tube supposed to be? Is it one of the arms? What's that planet in the background?"

Conversely, though, kudos to the artist who created the Drifter's End map. It is not just a zoomed in detail of the existing Absalom Station map, which Paizo could've easily done, but whoever created this map did so with a meticulous eye for matching the original.

Also, this is the entry where the decision not to label specific sites on the maps becomes the most frustrating, since the text is specific enough that you can basically feel your way around to place the important locations pretty accurately.

I also appreciate that a goodly chunk of these Ports have ties to published (or soon to published, or potentially so) adventures or APs. If you're running those adventures, then, BOOM! Major flavor expansion for your adventuring hub. At least half a dozen of these ports have or will get direct use in my planned games.

As for other parts of the book I like, the rules that hit the bullseye for me were the (greatly) expanded downtime options. When I was describing a couple of them to my players, one asked "Is Paizo watching our games?"


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Pathfinder Adventure Path, Rulebook, Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Where do I begin?
1) The expanded downtime rules are awesome! So many new ideas for what to do in the weeks of Drift travel!

2) Anduwar is awesome: Finally, a place where a dragonkin can stretch out! I also see it as funny that it has an accidental dig at a real-life game company with all the talk about the ruling class; there are only so many proper nouns to go around. (The ruling class of Anduwar are called the Cloud Imperium; in real life, Cloud Imperium Games is a video game developer currently working on Star Citizen.) Also, I love the imagery of some of the feats, like Plow Through. "I don't dodge around them; THEY dodge around ME!"

3) Golarion World is so insane yet awesome that it needs its own forum thread. I have several ideas for adventures here, including ones with PF2e or even PF1e crossovers. If nothing else, I will be sprinkling in references to our group's Pathfinder adventures when their Starfinder characters visit. (I'll admit some concerns with continuity for the sake of continuity, but in this case, it works.)

4) Jhavom is also a great idea as a university town that isn't just "Castrovel version 2". I'll admit personal bias; one of my characters is both a researcher and a vidgamer, and I was looking for a place for them to finish their education before becoming an adventurer. Perfect!

5) Uzodia is also nice. Great to see Starfinder's take on the Magaambya! I wonder what they think of Golarion World's Mwangi Land...

6) Getting two-page blurbs on a bunch of other stations was a nice touch! Great to see some of the "runner-up" ideas for this book! Personal favorite: Ravel Station, with an entire section dedicated to soul-crushing bureaucracy solely to stop the station from ripping itself apart. Feels like something out of Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

7) And as if that wasn't enough, we got a few paragraphs each on even more stations! Personal favorite: Braxas, as a "we're totally not evil" research lab with a bona-fide lake of primordial soup. If any player wants a custom-species character, or a modified-species character, just say they escaped from here.

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