I Was This Close to Buying Starfinder 2E

I like Starfinder 1e, and I played some of that and its throwback 3.5E science fiction. The combats were fun, and the adventures were memorable and enjoyable. I also liked the concept of "space fantasy," with classic fantasy races in a futuristic world. I liked the space drow, the star elves, the space orcs, the goblins, and all the other classic Pathfinder races "in space," and it felt cool.

Seeing Traveller 5E announced got me thinking about getting the new version of Starfinder, but I hesitated. For one, I bounced off of Pathfinder 2E pretty hard, and that game is in storage. Going back to one would mean I pull out the other. Also, the classic ancestries are no longer central to Starfinder, and I know the games are cross-compatible, but the universe feels different.

The core Starfinder races are what the settings and adventures will be about. I am free to put everything from Pathfinder 2E in there, and even the OGL version, but again, that is a lot of work for a game I am not really into. Pathfinder 2E is a good game, just not for me. Things are not the same.

It looked cool, but I didn't think I would play it much. I had the store pages open, but did not add the books to my cart. I read a few mixed reviews about it, saying the writing wasn't up to the standard of the original. So I backed off, and I will likely read up more on this. If the writing isn't there, I will skip this edition. Excellent writing is something I look for in a game, especially its adventures.

Some have expressed disappointment that the game wasn't taken further from Pathfinder 2E, like it was in the playtest versions. Compatibility with Pathfinder 2E ultimately won out, which is a smart business move, but the game lost some of its identity and feels more like an expansion. Others say the "ranged meta" won, and DEX is your most important stat, and melee feels secondary. I liked melee being important in Starfinder 1E, which made the game hit differently for me. The best way to do considerable damage was up close and personal.

What I want is gonzo, anything goes, science fiction plus fantasy. I want melee strikers to be on par with ranged attackers. I want the rules to have depth and substance. I want an anything-goes science fiction world.

That game is Rifts.

Rifts backs me up, too, letting magic inflict MDC damage, so my elven arcane caster can throw up an MDC shield and blast away at power armor with MDC fire bolts. This is good stuff, and puts them on par with the armored powerhouses of the setting, and elevates magic as an equivalent force in this world. Get a rune weapon, some magic armor, and you are close to becoming a minor god at this point.

You can stand toe-to-toe with MDC armored foes in Rifts with magic.

You can also adopt a melee style and absolutely slay up close with MDC melee weapons, and beat the heck out of power armor with a rune weapon or your fists. That's cool.

The next best option is to keep everything on the hit point scale and use White Star, with fantasy races pulled from BX. This is also a viable option that works well, and I have White Star on my most-played shelves. However, this is not as flat-out cool as Rifts. My proposed game will be a mod, magic is relatively low-powered, and it feels derivative.

Another option is a science fiction campaign using Stars Without Number, incorporating the magical classes from Worlds Without Number and importing fantasy races from BX. The magic in this system is better than BX, and allows for magical casting that recharges after a scene, so magic-using classes are not "one spell and the day is done." Still, this is another mod, and it does not feel right.

But if I am going to DIY fantasy science fiction in those games, I can DIY it just as easily in Rifts, and have tons of cool monsters and enemies to battle. Plus, since Palladium games are by their nature "make your own game with this," I can drop in a group of elves, an elven faction, a kingdom of elves, or a whole planet of them anywhere I want, for any reason I want.

Dark elves? They can be in the setting. I will just mod the Palladium Fantasy Elf and port them in from somewhere in the multiverse. Anything I want is here, and it fits in. If I want a planet of them and a few gods for them, fine, go ahead.

In Rifts, anything goes.

In Starfinder, I will usually need to wait for the book. Why am I buying into this again?

DIY games are superior to those that ship with default assumptions. Rifts are so open that anything I can imagine can be here. It may sound silly, but all Palladium games are supposed to be wide open, and it supports many power levels and campaign types. There is no "this game is made for dungeons, and everything is balanced against each other" feeling. Every class is overpowered in what it does.

I don't mind MDC armor either. Nobody in D&D complains about having to wear armor. Mostly, they just ignore it and take the AC value. The MDC system simplifies Palladium combat greatly, eliminating AR, and you are either hit or not. Don't subject the players to cheap shots, and you will be fine.

Not wearing armor is not advised, and primitive weapons are useless. But this is science fiction, like Heavy Metal, where the energies and forces you are dealing with are so powerful you need special forms of protection, either tech or magic. Some miss the lower-powered science fantasy. I don't mind it since you are slugging it out with mech suits as a caster, and that is awesome.

With most other games, I feel guilty for breaking the game or playing it not as it is supposed to be played. I get this with Starfinder 2E and Pathfinder 2E, now that the OGL content has been removed. I don't see the classic Pathfinder Dark Elves anymore, and I know they will never appear in adventures, so a piece of the world feels missing.

But a part of me misses the old Starfinder, as flawed and broken as it was, with the massive weapon lists that turned into run-on sentences and felt like something out of a video game. There was a ton of 3.5E cheese in this game, too, and some classes felt utterly powerless. But the mixed science fantasy world was fun, which was the best part of the game. This is a game where most of what you put up with is for the sake of the setting. Even 3.5E was okay, I didn't mind it, but I knew how to break the system.

Removing alignment in 2E, I did mind, and the entire aspect of playing chaotic or evil characters is now an afterthought and gone from the game. Rifts and Palladium? It has the best alignment system in the industry, and playing anything is on the table.

A lot of people love Starfinder 2E, so there is something here.

But I almost bought Starfinder 2E today. It is a game I miss. But I need to learn more before I make a purchase, especially these days. It is on my radar, but I have other games taking up my time currently.

I don't find much enjoyment in sifting through rules. Let a computer game do that for me. I want story and easier character builds and powers. I don't play a tabletop game to slowly work my way through a few hundred pages of rules to simulate a combat. If I do want that, GURPS gives me a better end result, and there are far fewer rules to follow if you follow them all.

Most of GURPS' rules are optional. Few of Starfinder 2E's are.

People like the "-Finder" systems, and I bounced off hard after trying them. Pathfinder 2E was not for me, despite how hard I tried. I may give it another chance. I may grab the PDFs and skip the books.

We shall see.

Why the Netflix and Warner Brothers Merger is Bad for D&D

The above headline should tell you everything that is wrong with OSR and D&D YouTube right now.

Whatever is trending plus D&D equals views.

Stop it. Get some help.

Mail Room: Rifts Ultimate Edition

Rifts is one of the best games and settings of all time.

You will either think I am crazy or agree. There is really no middle ground here. I know about Savage Rifts, and while that is a fun, game-balanced version of the game, it does not do it for me. You know that scene in Avengers: Endgame where Captain Marvel is flying through the ships of the enemy battlefleet and destroying them by treating them like she is flying through paper?

That is Rifts.

That is what it lets you do.

I have a softcover in the mail, and the hardcover is still out of print. It is nice to see Palladium selling out of books, and they deserve all the praise and success they can get. This is one of the OG pen-and-paper role-playing game companies, and they make excellent games that are still very affordable.

You can be that powerful, and there are enemies out there that can out-power-level you and crush you like an ant under a shoe. Forget D&D 5E and its "managed power levels" that only let you go so far. Rifts is roleplaying with the rails removed. Does your 50 SDC/30 hp super-character get caught without their MDC armor, and someone vaporizes you with a low-power 1d4 MD laser pistol? Tough luck.

It is like one of those Heavy Metal scenes where the main character gets vaporized, and the audience sits in shock. That's life. Deal with it. You should have done that to the other guy before they pulled on you. Live and learn. Oh, and even if your character has 600 MD of hit points like Captain Marvel, a battlesuit could roll up on her doing 1d6x1000 MD, and it is basically the same thing. That's life. Deal with it.

Take your fake assumptions of fantasy superheroes and throw them in the trash, this game ain't that. Even a level 20 D&D character rigged for maximum damage still is not doing that 1d4 MD per attack, so those power levels are laughable and small. Sorry to burst your ego bubble, but that "D&D balance bubble" is a tiny, small, almost insignificant thing to beings that can harness the power of suns and atomic fusion blasts.

Just like your level 20 D&D fighter could not stand in front of an M1 battle tank and block the 120mm APFSDS shell flying at them, Rifts teaches you "you ain't all that." One cloud of red mist later, you realize that was probably a dumb idea as 20 levels of XP get torn up with the character sheet, and tiny bits of magic armor go flying.

In Rifts? Well, magic gets naturally amped, so your fighter could bounce that 120mm round off their shield and redirect it into another tank or battle robot. You are just that awesome.

D&D is a fantasy superhero game that operates in a limited power envelope.

Rifts is a superhero anything game that operates in an infinite power envelope.

In D&D, you are being given a tiny power envelope to play in by the gods and the game designers, and you are expected to play nice. Some people cannot exist outside of that cave, and they need that illusion of balance to construct a mathematical framework of how the world works with its numbers. They need to know, well, an Orc can only do this much damage, and anything outside that is a reason to start a fight with the dungeon master. Suppose that Orc just did 1d6x20 hit points of damage with a longsword. In that case, the DM is a terrible person, not worth playing with, breaking the game for everyone, hurting the community, attacking online play, and needs to be called out online as a blight on the hobby.

In Rifts, none of that matters. That Orc could have been bathed in massive amounts of arcane power. He could be a very strange OCC, an arcane summoning swordsmith. In Rifts, not much is a "stock something out of a monster book," and roleplay comes first. You need to gauge your opponent's strength before the MDC goes flying. If your tails are getting kicked, you need an escape plan.

Rifts is extremely "roleplaying meta." Your characters from the Forgotten Realms? They could all be in here, converted to Palladium classes and MDC power levels. Here they are. Comic-book characters? Right over there, anyone you want, created in Heroes Unlimited or TNMT and converted up to MDC. Characters from movies and fiction? Right over there, anyone you want, created in Ninjas & Superspies or any other Palladium system that fits, and pulled into the Rifts world. Anime? Rifts has Robotcech in its design DNA, so it is one of the first anime-inspired roleplaying games.

Harry Potter meets Happy Gilmore? It works in Rifts!

Rifts is the ultimate roleplaying sponge. It will soak up every idea, character, movie, role-playing game, comic, anime, monster, music band, or idea it can and find a place for it.

Drow? You don't get these game designers telling you, "they aren't in our world anymore." They are in the SRD now, even the name, so get outta here. You want them? They are in Rifts, one of them or billions. Rifts doesn't care about game designers with control issues. The game was designed to give you control and put your ideas first. Even down to rules customization and how the game is played, your ideas come first.

Tiny little sandboxes, designers who have too much control over your world, games that feel more like tabletop MMOs, games that tell you that there is no room for your ideas, and surrendering your ideas of the world to a set of rules is what Rifts is designed to destroy.

The Rifts game is freedom.

And once tasted, it is hard to go back to anything less.

AD&D is Coming Back?

Really?

It never left. I have been playing OSRIC for a while now, and the news would surprise me. I would rather support a game that anyone could publish for than a nostalgia re-release. Unless the first edition license is opened up, any news right now is clickbait. Otherwise, if I can't write adventures and expansion content for it and sell it on DriveThru or any other store, I am not interested.

With OSRIC? I can. Now we are talking. Community-supported games are superior to the reprints.

I don't want a new first edition with modern art and any of the adventures designed by the current teams. They don't understand the product, the times, and they would end up making more people angry than happy. Will a new first edition come with a warning message? If it doesn't, it isn't the first edition.

Besides, we have plenty of first editions, and some of them are free.

Oh, do you mean For Gold & Glory? This is the second edition, but just as good. A free PDF, and compatible with first and second-edition adventures.

Oh, do you mean Hyperborea? No?

Oh, one of my favorites...?

Oh, it is Swords & Wizardry! Right?

Umm...

Castles & Crusades? Wait. I have something else that is like the first edition around here somewhere.

Dungeon Crawl Classics? Wait...I think I have another...

What is going on with OSR and D&D YouTube? I see them passing the same topic around, and it feels desperate over there. Last week, it was "What would I do if I were in charge of D&D?"

First and Second Edition never left us.

Second Edition Bliss

BX, BECMI, 0e, and White Box tend to be too simple for me. I see most of YouTube going crazy for this easier-to-play system, and yes, they play fast and don't require much rule support, but a lot feels missing. What will always be true is that the BX system as a "base compatibility layer" is the bedrock of gaming, a standard set of math and numbers that all games can communicate with and use.

The one thing Wizards did to "own the game" was break backwards compatibility, which was a sin, and it destroyed D&D. We have the scaling damage of 3.5E, the insane triple-down hit points of 4E, and the doubled hit points of 5E.

There is nothing wrong with the original math. THAC0 is laughably easy; don't listen to the clowns out there. Roll a d20, add the target's AC to the roll, did you roll THAC0 or higher? You hit.

Of course, you are using descending AC too here, but there is nothing wrong with that either. The better the armor, the less of a to-hit bonus you give your opponents. It is simple. Do you have AC 0? The entire world gets no bonus to hit you.

In fact, you can pre-adjust THAC0 for your melee and missile attack adjustments, and it gets even easier. My 6th-level fighter with a THAC0 of 15 has a +1 melee-hit bonus from STR, and a +2 sword. My base THAC0 is now 15 - 1 - 2 = 12. Have fun adding that proficiency bonus, ability score bonus, and weapon modifier to every attack, 5E players. Even if you make it one number, you are still adding it to every roll in 5E and comparing it to a floating target number.

5E is more math versus a floating target number (AC or DC).

With THAC0, my target number never changes: I only add a number from 10 down to 0 (or lower in rare cases) to my attack, then check my THAC0. I attack an AC 3 creature with my THAC0 of 12. Roll a d20 + 3, beat THAC0.

Also, with the second edition, you lose the demons and devils in the game. OSE does not have them either, and that has not stopped that game. They are the same as in the first edition, so port them in from that, and adjust the XP awards to the second edition standards. Or, use the renamed ones out of the AD&D 2E Monster Compendium and Outer Planes Appendix. They are all there; you just have to do a little finding.

Personally, our Forgotten Realms game ran fine without them for a decade, and I liked having to be creative with other monsters and not fall back on the same old tired enemies. Let the mastermind be a red dragon this time, or an intelligent purple worm. Use an NPC. With Tieflings everywhere in 5E, I am tired of modern D&D proving the Satanic Panic right, and they have become as exhausted as the Drizzt trope. Sorry to burst your ideal character bubble, but everyone is playing them, and they are tired now.

Plus, if you remove them from the "normal world" when demons do show up, it feels special again, and not everyone is playing one. Let evil be evil, and stop co-opting it.

I like For Gold & Glory, the beautiful, free second-edition retro-clone. The book is far better organized than the Wizards reprints, and the core-book art is superior. I will give the 2E Monster Compendium scores on better art for plates of each monster, even if they are slightly cartoony. FG&G does the job, feels like classic AD&D, and the PDF is free for everyone.

Why am I buying BX OSR games when I have this? Designer hubris? To say I "have something" and try to use that as an influencer? Why is it that on YouTube, most OSR influencers are trying to sell you something while ignoring the free games? Why is it Labyrinth Lord versus Dragonslayer all of a sudden? Are we all dumping OSE, which is also an expensive version of the game, for some reason?

The ads were bad enough on there; now all the videos are ads.

OSRIC is free. FG&G is free. Even Basic Fantasy is free.

Are we in this for the game and community, or are we here to sell people things?

Another great thing is FG&G's compatibility with the 2E complete guides, which give us "subclass options," or what we call character kits, to flavor our character classes without creating new ones or piling on complexity. A gladiator or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit; it is simple and easy, reducing rules bloat. These books you need to buy from Wizards, but they are worthy and an improvement over the first edition.

I love character kits over 5E's mess of subclasses. This is a much cleaner design, and it works perfectly. I never want to see hundreds of character classes and subclass options for each one in a game ever again; it is a terrible mess of a game design that reminds me of tangled, knotted, dusty, and filthy cords behind an entertainment center. 5E's design sucks, and it is far too complicated for its own good.

A gladiator, cavalier, or barbarian is a fighter with a character kit. No new classes are needed. The design achieves flavor with minimal rules interaction, and is a modern, object-oriented design that is clean and simple. There is a beauty to 2E's design that has never been replicated, and certainly not by the BX-obsessed OSR. Many OSR games will create a gladiator and barbarian class, just to fill books and sell you more stuff.

Yes, I am calling this out, but the OSR suffers from many of the problems that ail the 5E design community. Where simplicity, inheritance, and elegance can solve a problem, many OSR games do the same exact thing that 5E does: create classes to please the collectors, sell books, and bloat the game until it becomes unplayable.

Character kits rock.

THAC0 is the better system.

The second edition wins on solid design principles.

The AD&D 2E monster book is also a purchase if you want the product identity monsters; for FG&G comes with plenty of monsters of its own and is compatible with all of OSRIC's monsters, too. For that matter, all of BX is compatible too, just make sure descending AC is supported, as it should be. If you look around, you will find literally tons of OSRIC and Swords & Wizardry monsters that are directly compatible with second edition, and there is no shortage of foes to fight.

We have bards here, too, so that is not a reason to skip out. In fact, bards are a more challenging class to play, and I like that design since it forces you to have a high degree of player skill and leverage your roleplaying chops, which you should be doing as a bard instead of falling back on designer gimmes and free magic powers. I would not let an inexperienced player choose a bard in 2E; this is for skilled players only. As it should be.

Add the second edition's story XP and increased monster XP on top of what is already the best version of the game, and you have pure gaming bliss.

Game Glut: The Random RPG Flood

What is it with all these random fantasy role-playing games being pushed on Facebook and YouTube? I have seen three new ones in the last week. It is like everyone is rushing to get their games out as quickly as possible. YouTubers are rushing to cover "the next big thing in fantasy gaming!"

Excuse me.

What?

How To Create Palladium Character Sheets with LibreOffice

https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download-libreoffice/

All right, let's create some Palladium character sheets by hand, for free. While this tutorial is for Palladium Games, specifically Ninjas and Superspies, nothing is stopping you from doing this for D&D 5E, Pathfinder 2, GURPS, or any other game you can imagine. All we need are some free tools, like LibreOffice; grab it from the link above, or if you are on Linux, you probably already have it installed.

Why LibreOffice? Why Linux?

Because we are not supporting the AI ecosystem and are staying away from paid character hosting sites, software packages, and learning to be self-sufficient without spending money or having Microsoft feed our documents into AI models. My characters are my IP and thus mine. Also, I am not feeding into this RAM crisis. I choose not to use AI.

Also, my hand-crafted character sheets come out far better than these pretentious ones you get in the OSR and other games with dungeon maps and far too much clip art tossed all over them. They are simple, to the point, save paper and toner, and I can create custom sections to my liking if a game needs special information.

Download LibreOffice and install it. Then, go to Format->Page Style...

Set your margins to a half-inch, and give yourself a half-inch gutter. This way, we can three-hole punch our character sheets to store them in a binder with dividers. You may not want to know it now, but if you plan to run many characters or track one as they level, you will thank me later.

If you run an adventure, three-hole punch that too, and put the old character sheet in with it when you print a new one. This way, you will have a record of the adventure and the characters who went on it, and how they were at the time. Since you have hard drive space and these are small files, save a new file every time you level, just to watch the progression.

Next, go to Format->Columns and set this to two, and leave all the default values, including autowidth. This will use our paper better. Three columns are sometimes too hard to manage, and I end up with a lot of overflow onto the following line.

Part of me wonders if people need a tutorial like this, but another part of me knows that many just don't know. This is how we used to hack together character sheets in the 1990s, using word processors and dot-matrix printers, doing our own layouts and working magic with the features of the programs we had.

If you want an actual throwback, 1990s experience, doing your character sheets this way (or by hand) is the way to go. This is how we did them, and they always came out so clean, with plenty of room for notes and other scribbles. Did a value change? Cross it out, pencil in the new number, fix it later, and print a new sheet when you level up.

Remember to shred and recycle! But, seriously, doing my character sheets this way wastes a lot less paper than printing out a 16-page monstrosity with Hero Lab. One double-sided sheet can hold a lot of information when done this way. Of course, one sheet done by hand is the most waste-reducing way to make a character sheet, since you can use it until the holes wear through the paper. These sheets can do the same, as long as you pencil in new SDC and other changing values. I could do empty tables for "fill in by hand" parts, like for gear and open skill slots, and that is probably a smart improvement I can make to enhance reusability.

But it is my choice to make them! In many sheets and programs, you get no choice. This way, I get exactly what I want, and I can engineer re-use into the sheets if I feel I am wasting paper. I could go the whole way and make the entire sheet rigged for re-use, with a fill-in-the-blank box for everything.

For Ninjas and Superspies, I laid my first page out like above. The stats have tab stops, so I can create "columns" for the value and then the modifier. If a character has more than one martial art, copy and paste the Primary Form section for a new one. I made one since that is enough for now.

Skills and secondary skills will expand! Leave a lot of room at the bottom of a column for these expanding lists. In general, open lists will appear at the bottom of your page. Also, use the Insert -> More Breaks -> Insert Column Break command to stick a section at the top of a column, as I did for the weapon proficiencies. This way, they won't keep backing up into the skill lists.

Palladium has a lot of weapon modifiers that can add up for different weapons, so I split out the "to strike" modifiers for different weapon categories and include any bonuses from PP.

My second sheet has gear and, on the right, a list of the characteristics of different attacks. I have equipment back here, cyber implants, and a section for the training programs I selected during character generation, including the colleges the character attended and the time spent there. Cover is not on the official character sheet, but it improves as you level, so it needs its own section. Background is another fun section that covers family and other personal details. Remember to total your equipment weight!

If you need to set tab stops, you can do that by putting the cursor at the first spot in the document, choosing Format->Paragraph, and choosing the Tabs tab. Type in 0.5, press New, and then add them like that. I did mine every half inch.

If you want to get fancy, you can insert tables, too, and be very organized! I do everything with tab stops, but to each their own. If you like tables, go for it, and your sheets will begin to look very fancy. For games like Pathfinder 2, this may be a lifesaver feature. I will need to adjust column widths, and that is just a matter of dragging them over. Doing it this way gives me higher reusability, as previously discussed.

I like these hand-made character sheets a lot. They are more work, but this is a small trade-off for a sheet that grows as you fill it in, and you can create custom sections for whatever you want on the character. I can also copy & paste out of my PDFs into these, saving me a little work typing. If I need an entire spell description, I can create a sheet for it and paste that right onto the character's grimoire. If a character has an animal companion, I can make a place for their stats on the sheet.

If I want an adventure log, I can create a spot on the next sheet and list the adventure, the location, people involved, a summary of what happened, the XP gained, and other information.

Also, given the way you create characters in Palladium Games, you are copying and pasting a list of skills and modifiers into the sheet, making a few choices, and moving on to the next training package. For my character, I just added all the skills first with their modifiers, sorted the list, and removed the lowest-modified duplicates. Select a bunch of rows of text, and use Tools->Sort to sort that list so you can keep your skill and ability lists alphabetized for easier reference during play.

Would I love a Palladium software package and character designer? Yes, I would, and I know about the spreadsheet designers and have those for fantasy. But even those can't be as fine-tuned as this style of sheet, which is very personalized, and I can optimize the numbers I need and put them all in easy-to-read sections. The availability and quality of the character sheets I can find for the game do not limit the amount of fun I can have with it.

And my DIY sheets, while taking a little longer to set up, are fully customizable and quick to use during play. Are they fancy? No. Are they retro, and look like something we would do back in the 1990s with a 486 and a dot-matrix tractor-feed printer? Oh, yes! We did this for Spacemaster (with WordPerfect), and those sheets worked very well. All the same skills were used, including columns, bolded titles, and tab stops.

Now I don't need character creation software; I can do this myself on Linux. I am not feeding into the AI nightmare, and as a gamer, I can make the conscious choice not to feed into the AI bubble madness. I have the freedom to make that choice as a consumer.

Also, this throwback, 1990s-style word-processor sheet makes me happy.