Starfinder: My Experience

I am sad to say my experiment with Starfinder fell through and I boxed up the game. The complexity of characters as they leveled grew, the special powers, options, pets and spells multiplied, and I found the characters for playing solo turned into a record-keeping tax that dragged down play. I am done with Starfinder, but still like the game and concepts.

For a group where the record-keeping is distributed across several people? Probably manageable a lot better than one person. Not all games are created equal, especially for solo play. Some games on the market are designed to be "party games" where they intentionally raise the complexity of characters where each player needs to be a specialist in a class build, manage the rules knowledge and record-keeping, and bring that expertise to the table for the group. For one person to manage with several multi-page character sheets? Really a tall order when you consider one person playing multiple classes and managing all that complexity themselves.

The beginner boxes for both this and Pathfinder 2? Great fun! Still recommended. Going deeper? I would only do this if you and friends are investing and committed to a game. For one person to manage it feels like a lot. Certain games are designed for more than one person, and everyone at the table can be a specialist in one small area and shine. These games naturally do better in more social and group situations.

Things I Liked & Didn't

Were there things I liked? Sure. The class builds and abilities were interesting. There was a lot of cool gear. The strong against/weak against elemental game with monsters was fun. The free-wheeling universe felt huge. The game does d20 "Guardians of the Galaxy" style sci-fi well and captures the feeling. The races and classes were fun and iconic, and had lots of cool options.

The leveled weapons felt like they were borrowed from MMO games, and the explanation of how these works felt nonsensical. The weapons exist but they are somehow harder to obtain by low level characters? Not use, but obtain. Magic is way overpowered at low levels and the way to go, and I suspect as you level magic becomes more of a necessity. If you ignore casters and just want 1d4 damage space blasters you have an abnormally difficult time with encounters (and you are paying out the nose for weapons that never do enough damage).

The ship construction and upgrades all being free was a huge negative. I ended up assuming a quasi-socialist patron system (which is what the modules tend to push) for all factions with starships where they essentially upgrade your starship for free as you level. Ships cost zero money, they are frequently given to you (but you can only have one), and they did not feel special.

Even if your ship is destroyed you will find or get handwaved a new one by an adventure path pretty soon, because the game requires you to have an adventure-assigned starship to have fun. Ship combat was okay but lacked the fun and charm of other games I have played in this genre.

We had a situation where the characters were physically poor with less than 4,000cr to their names and they now had a starship to take care of. My party wanted to take cargo runs, which would not pay for anything ship-related and money is only really useful in the game for buying personal combat upgrades. It feels like you can unbalance the personal combat game through too much money. Melee options were good and did more damage than ranged.

Do not get this game if you are expecting a Traveller experience. This is clearly more of a story and adventure focused game with a "credits as GP" sort of power-up experience than it is hard sci-fi. For some, that is exactly what they want from a sci-fi game and Starfinder is a good choice.

Some Races are "Legacy Conversions"

This is Pathfinder in space; but the elves, dwarves, and other fantasy races/heritages you would expect to see (and that would be cool) are shoved to the back of the book and feel like an embarrassment to the setting. I wanted them in the front and to see them hidden away as "optional content" like that made me feel sad and disappointed in the game's design and direction. I mean, we have monsters and magic here! Where are my space elves? The space drow? Dwarf mining planets? The space gnomes!

And having them as options means you will rarely seem them in adventure paths and the official setting, which makes the entire product less appealing to me. The cool art they give as examples only makes it hurt worse, since that is all we are going to get. Yeah, I house-ruled them in, but having me make them show up and be artificially important and not in the main setting felt like a referee insert and not something organic and built into the setting.

For a game that is supposed to be all about inclusion and extending the Pathfinder universe, this entire situation feels like a huge miss to me. What I wanted to see in the game, like a different take on space-elves, space dwarves, and other fantasy races in space (like back when Warhammer 40K was cool) for a freaking Pathfinder game of all things, was lost.

Those darn goblins are all over the place in these adventures. Where are the other fantasy races?

What Next? Story Based Sci-Fi

So I am probably replacing this all with a easier to play space game. Why? I can keep all the rules in my head and focus on the story. As I get older the rules become less important and the story gets more important. All that rules stuff is nice and it works well when it is clicking and running smoothly, this feat gives me a +2 flanking bonus when this happens, and so on, but it takes a lot of work to learn and keep running. Is it worth more to me than a good story?

I don't think so. Finding time to learn versus going with something familiar that I know is an easy choice for me to make. So what are my options? Something simple, likely B/X, and with a solid foundation of space economics and adventure.

White Star

Starfinder is in that special genre known as "Guardians of the Galaxy" sci-fi. You know the genre, zany heroes, talking animals, alien brutes, 80's music, and freewheeling adventure. One of the best B/X games that also does this well is the great White Star: Galaxy Edition, and I could go and drop anything I liked about Starfinder in here and have B/X and the best of both worlds.

But I am not really looking for this type of a game. I am a little tired of the zany space adventure genre. Granted, it is a cool game and I could pare this down to fit, but the classes feel more like they fit in GotG than a more serious and grounded sci-fi game.

For those looking for a B/X Starfinder replacement based on Swords & Wizardry, this is your game. Highly recommended, and they have a setting book that goes with this. I am still excited about this as my "salvaging Starfinder content" game, but not now.

And I could have my space elves and space dwarves here by just dropping them in from Swords & Wizardry White Box. Or any other monster. It just works and I have what I want.

Stars Without Number

An easy choice. In fact, currently my favorite B/X Traveller replacement. I could reskin this to do Star Trek or Star Wars easily. This is one I want to go with, but I want a story and angle to go with the experience. I may look for a few adventures for this to get started. I feel that beginning hook is the thing keeping me from diving in, otherwise this is a cool toolkit that I don't know how I want to start with. I know, just jump in!

The starship weapons I would rename and make a little more generic (as I did in the other post). Right now they feel different for the sake of being different, and I like the simpler "laser cannon" and "laser battery" sort of starship weapons, like out of Car Wars or Star Frontiers, than I do ship weapons with "what is this again?" type names, like a diflux rapid flexinacator.

Traveller (2022)

Another obvious choice. This isn't B/X, but I know the rules well. The universe is familiar. The ships are iconic. This one I could jump right into. The only thing holding me back is I like strong character advancement in my games, that sort of leveling up and getting new powers every so often. There are some alternate XP and advancement systems in the rules companion I would need to look into.

If you are into "space truckers" and the traditional pay-for-your-play starship upgrade and purchasing experience, this is the way to go. A solid game that was recently updated, attractive, and the rules just work well. The game scales from small ships to large very well.

The universe is a classic, with ready-to-play factions and roles. You can extend the game however you like, or play in your own setting. The art in the 2022 version is cleaned up and the presentation is better.

Cepheus Engine

As a Traveller alternative and if I wanted to go more open content, there is always Cepheus Engine. They recently updated the rules and I have that as well. This game includes things outside the Traveller mold, like blasters and other generic sci-fi gear, so if you are more looking for a Traveller set of rules not tied to the Third Imperium, this is a solid choice.

Really, if I were playing Third Imperium, I would just go Traveller. If I weren't and doing something different and wanted the 2d6 type system, I would go Cepheus and all the Third Imperium stuff does not need to be changed or removed.

More Coming

I have a few more games coming, but these are my top picks so far. I am avoiding the classics such as Star Frontiers and Space Opera, for now.