“We” are expecting the Second Edition Starfinder Playtest Rulebook sometime this coming summer. I plan on running a homebrew campaign to playtest the new rules. When? No idea. With whom? No clue.
In preparation for the campaign, here is a list of homework assignments people could undertake to prepare themselves:
I make no judgement on how “good” these sources are. We’re just watching them to get a “feel” for the campaign is going to be like. Or at least my intention(s).
One of the major plot/setup points for the Starfinder 1 universe (which I’m assuming they are maintaining for the second edition) is known as the Gap - a galaxy (universe?) wide memory loss experienced by all living creatures as well as artificial memory storage systems where a “gap” in time was lost and there is no record of what happened during that period of time. In the Pact Worlds, one major event of note that people surmise happened during the Gap was somehow the entire planet of Golarion went missing!
The campaign is going to take place exclusively on a “generation ship”: an extremely large spacefaring vessel packed with colonists and all of the supplies they would need to start a new life on another world that travels the distances between star systems at such a slow rate that generations of inhabitants will exist on the ship before it reaches it’s destination. Said generation ship was launched during the Gap and thusly does not have a Drift capable drive.
The inhabitants of the generation ship - and more importantly the player characters - will be drawn from the standard races/ancestries available in the Pact Worlds before the Gap and before the advent of Drift travel:
Humans
Androids
Halflings
Elves
Dwarves
Goblins
One will note that ancestries like the Lashunta, Ysoki, Orcs, Drow, etc, are missing from said list. That is by design and/or we do not know the state of such ancestries in a potential post-OGL ORC licensed 2E of Starfinder. Some of these ancestries will also probably not be detailed in any Starfinder playtest document and we’ll be using the statistics/feats/etc of said ancestries from PF2 Player Core. If you want to play something that is not on the list: ask. You’ll probably be denied but it doesn’t hurt to try.
The Second Edition of Starfinder is (supposedly) going to be 100% compatible with PF2(E) so-much-so that the playtest document for Starfinder (supposedly) will require use of the PF2E Player and GM Core books for rules references that will not be reprinted in the Starfinder Playtest Rulebook, but will appear (supposedly) in reprinted form in any eventual Starfinder 2E rulebook(s).
Those who are interested in this campaign but not necessarily interested in “space” stuff could in fact play PF2 character classes/feats/spells/etc from the PF2 Player Core - as well as the upcoming content from PF2 Player Core 2 which will be out by the time we get the Starfinder Playtest. We want to test as much Starfinder as possible, but um… people should play what they want to play.
Not a movie, but I’ve always thought that The Killing Star by Charles Pellegrino was rather neat on this subject because of the Valkyrie Drive described therein.
Generation ships remind me pf the Ithorian race from the Star Wars movies…or should I say movie as there was an Ithorian shown very briefly in the cantina scene in Star Wars Episode IV and that was it (I think Ithorians are shown in the Clone Wars series as well). The Ithorians travel around the galaxy in big ships called herd ships which are generational and contain multiple living ecosystems from the Ithorians homeworld as well as from other places they visit. The Ithorian herds live on these ships generationally and maintain the living ecosystems on the ships.
That reminds me of Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C Clarke. Earth scientists detect a miles long cylindrical object hurtling into the solar system. They infer that it will pass through the solar system without crashing into anything and decide to send a team to investigate. The astronauts manage to enter the cylinder where they find a massive artifical habitat built around the interior walls of the cylinder with an artificial “sun” built as a long iridescent rod through the center. They find various structures and automata but never discern the purpose of the cylinder or meet any inhabitants before they have to leave as the cylinder exits the solar system.
I always wondered if it was a generation ship that was crewless for whatever reason. I remember there were a bunch of books in the series. I tried reading the second book, but it didn’t grab me like the original.
If you are looking to expand the races - you could have an evolution for the races that work the engineering spaces, and the exterior maintenance of the generations ship - causing mutations - goblins got bigger and stronger, elves skin changed to protect them from the radiation and darkness of space.
Also reminds of a story I read of where the people living in the habitat area had an agrarian medieval culture to prepare them for the new world. And the people running the ship were super advanced culture to maintain the ship and that they were not suppose to interact then there was an emergency and it was treated like alien first contact
It’s more similar to Warhammer 40k in the sense that you have magic and elves, etc. but it doesn’t have the grim-dark vibe that 40k has. I’m sure you could run a sort of “treky” campaign though where the party commands a ship and they go around exploring alien worlds.
I was in a SF campaign Rando ran and it was sort of Star trekie…if the crew were homicidal manics. We met all kinds of alien races and … you know the rest.
I would say Starfinder is a mix of Star Trek, Star Wars and Warhammer 40k. In one of Rando’s Starfinder games I got to play a 8’ tall Dragonkin which is sorta like a DnD Dragonborn on steroids with the ability to fly. There’s a lot of really unique options for character races. You could play a sentient otter, a blob like race, a four armed cross between an insect and a minotaur…the list of weird and unique races goes on.
Is the generation ship new/luxurious? Or is it more run down/gritty/blue collar?
Similarly what are the clothes of the passengers like? Are they all in uniform, or is their own individuality apparent? Are their clothes new or are they worn/threadbare? Fancy or utilitarian?
I noticed several of the homework items involve people waking up from cryosleep/stasis/hibernation with little memory of how they got there. Will this be like that or will the characters have been awake/active on the ship for quite some time?
In case it comes up. There’s six classes in the Starfinder 2E playtest book:
Soldier - not just a space fighter
Mystic - not just a space cleric
Envoy - not just a space bard… more like a space warlord (from 4E)
Solarion - um… “Jedi”
Operative - not just a space rogue… ranged instead of melee focused
Witchwarper - um… um… space caster wierdo
So sadly no Biohackers, Evolutionists, Mechanics, Nanocytes, Precogs, Technomancers, or Vanguards. Some of which I don’t expect for a long time even after SF2 launches.
Ideally people would be playing (i.e. playtesting) the official six classes, but of course given the 100% assured compatibility between PF2 and SF2 one could take any of the classes from PF2 as well. And maybe test that supposed 100% compatibility? And of course Player Core 2 will be out for PF2 by then which will give us remastered Champions, Barbarians, Alchemists, Monks, Oracles, Sorcerers, Swashbucklers, and Investigators.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems that Starfinder 2e classes is a mix of mostly the original 1e classes minus some but with Witchwarper and no Technomancer, or Mechanic. That just seems weird that they didn’t even keep all the original classes for 2e.
I think they’ve said the original SF1 classes will all be in the official release. But yeah Witchwarper is… weird - well at least the presence of it in the playtest book.
I’m sure they’re working on the Technomancer and/or the Mechanic but I - as a non-professional game designer - struggle to see how they make them not just space-Wizards and space-Inventors respectively. I don’t know if there’s going to be Computer and Engineering skills baked into core SF2 but that might be one way for the Technomancer and/or Mechanic to exist, i.e. lean into the class-based skill interactions like Thaumaturges and Investigators.
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