In my black-and-white Starfinder setting, all magic comes from divine sources.
Why?
This is a massive clean-up of the mess of "it may be divine, it may be arcane, it may be spiritualism, it may be some other something" soft, undefined, messy mess of magic origins in the game. I can't make any sense of what magic is in this setting or what technology is, and it all blends together like some neon food-coloring, chemical-laced millennial drink.
In B&W Starfinder, all magic comes from divine sources.
Technology replaces arcane magic.
This makes technical-minded characters "the mages" of the setting and clears up the split between technology and magic very cleanly, as well as a lot of ambiguity.
This simplifies the setting considerably and focuses the magic system along the Dungeon Crawl Classics sort "patron" system, where your magic comes from an alien intelligence, divine source, or something out there that can both ask for favors and take away magic due to disfavor. This also heightens the importance of the gods in the setting; before, they were dongles, which did not matter at all.
Now?
You need a god for magic. You will be asked for favors, and your magic powers may be removed if you displease your patron. This is not a "neutral, zero cost, no responsibility" magic source in the setting like arcane is in fantasy.
No patron? No magic.
No favors? No magic.
Anger your patron? No magic.
And the gods won't be these "modern" versions presented in the book, where they wear business suits, spacesuits, or dressed up as aliens. They are amorphous, strange, powerful, and mystical entities that aren't made cute, given iPhone app icon designs, or made socially acceptable if evil. They are more like DCC patrons: strange, never understandable, with vague motives, but desiring clear outcomes. I will also use the original Golarian deities book for these choices since it strips off all the marketing and plastic coating from the identities of the gods.
They aren't cute or TikTok celebrities—they are ancient, powerful, almost alien intelligence entities. They are concerned that technology will replace them and cause them to cease to exist.
If you serve a good patron of a life domain, and the undead are present - that will not be good. For the undead, or you should ignore the call to destroy them.
I can hear people now, "But I want to play undead! I want to play demon-touched! They are valid character options I can choose!" Okay, but like in a fantasy game, you will live with the consequences of your choices.
Starfinder's most significant problem is this soft moral relativism that makes every choice acceptable. I should probably say the Pact Worlds since my setting will have more vital good-aligned and evil factions battling for control. The Pact Worlds will be the neutral party crushed between them, trying to say, "All sides have a point," and "Can we just get along?"
Again, I only need to point to the present day to see where that gets you. Starfinder was written before what we know today, and the events in Europe really changed everything and made this game show its age. The Pact Worlds appease evil, deny there is a war, and will suffer the consequences, just like every other group that thought appeasing the bad guys ended up in this world.
B&W Starfinder has no such problems and aligns the game with what we know today. The battles between good and evil mirror the battle between faiths and technology. This way of looking at the game setting creates explicit conflicts and makes telling stories here simple.
The war has already begun.
Pick a side.
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