Great Article: Starfinder

Check this out:

http://www.polygon.com/features/2016/11/17/13625140/starfinder-rpg-pathfinder

Wow, this article makes me generally excited for Starfinder. Magic plus sci-fi sort of is a tricky thing to do, since you get too much mojo going on at one time and people can't make sense of things - but this article generally hits the right notes for me and piques my interest in the setting.

A big plus is eliminating the original Golarion world entirely and forcing the setting to deal with "the everything else" out there. The original setting is so large and so well-established in the minds of players it would be easy to see how the game would bog down into "...with lasers" versions of everything on the original world, such as, "It is Cheliax...with lasers!" That? I'm not interested in that.

Forcing everyone to get out there in the stars and explore a post-Golarion universe? That sounds fun. It is like those anime stories where "original kingdom" is destroyed, and the plucky band of heroes needs to find a way to survive outside of the established safety net of "what came before." I swear my home campaigns are suffering from this and it is time to clean house, and it would be an exciting thing to shove the whole lot of "safe spaces" in my campaign to the back burner (or destroy them) and put players out on the hunt for fame, power, and a new sort-of-safe place in the universe.

Once campaigns go stale it becomes this messy political infighting that just feels stagnant to me. You know the moment happens when a player character goes into a government job. I like universes and settings in flux, where nothing is really, really safe, and players need to be heroes in order to make the world a better place. There needs to be cultures and races that demand to be dealt with, negotiated with, and got along with even though everything isn't super perfect and tensions exist.

Players hustle and fight the best when they are standing on thin ice. They are threatened. Choices matter. They can choose to be a hero...or not. Gaining power means a slightly larger margin of safety, but nothing is guaranteed. Safe spaces suck.

Starfinder doesn't sound so safe and settled, and that intrigues me. Even compared to the original Golarion world, which feels like a theme park full of separate and unconnected rides, this feels like a melting pot and universe in a constant state of change. Once can imagine different factions and groups fighting for control of resources and far-flung populations, with different factions splintered across a universe trying to find solid ground.

That sounds very intriguing to me. Especially compared with a bipolar Star Wars (that I still love) concerned with an us-against-them war, this feels more chaotic and in flux, with hundreds of factions in hundreds of conflicts for hundreds of reasons all seeking to grab a little more power for themselves and not get stabbed in the back by the next guy.

It that type of a universe, where empires are built on sand and crumble every day, the small guy matters. The hero matters. Choices matter.

And you can't make an assumption without digging into who this next group of people are, and what type of planet this is. You need to do your legwork and get invovled to know who is who and what is what.

Player engagement? Avoiding source-books that bog down the campaign into "kingdom X is this way and that's it?" That sounds interesting to me.