Tag Archives: #StarfinderRPG

Music In Tabletop Games

By on

Music is important to me. I listen to a lot of music. My tastes are broad, and at times, seemingly random. But for all of my love of music, unlike many gamers, I don’t much care for it during game. I find it too distracting, and depending on the GM’s choices, dissonant. Frequently GMs make very common choices. I can count on both hands the number of times a GM has cued up the Conan theme for the big fight, and about as many times that someone has used the Indiana Jones theme in a pulps game.

If you turn up the music loud enough for everyone to hear it, it’s going to be too loud and distracting. If you stop the game to make everyone listen to your song, you’re breaking immersion AND slowing the game down. And, if you pick the wrong music, it just pulls me out of the game. As an example, I was once in a Call of Cthulhu game where the GM decided that since it was a 20’s game, that Jazz would set the mood. Unfortunately, he went to the only jazz piece he knew… Dave Brubeck’s Take Five.

Now, that happens to be one of my favorite jazz pieces, however, it is very recognizable and  wasn’t released until 1959. Yeah, that doesn’t work…

Okay, so I don’t much like music at the game table. I have not yet experimented with, or been in a game, that used ambient sound and sound effects. That might work, though as a GM I suspect that needing to manage a soundboard during game would be a bit much. If you’ve seen it used to good effect, I want to hear about it.

All of this doesn’t mean I don’t make use of music connected to gaming. What I tend to use it for is inspiration while planning and prepping my games. I have a large playlist of what I consider appropriate music for the Starfinder game I wish to run. That playlist is heavy with SF movie soundtracks, John Carpenter and 80’s retro electronica, as wel as some ambient and post rock.

My current thinking is that after game, I will post a playlist of the music that I was mainlining before the session. And if I manage to turn some people on to some new music, even better.

I’ll probably come back to this subject again after I get my game running.

Starfinder Updates

By on

Let’s see, I sent out a letter of intent to start running a Starfinder game in June. This will be a bit different than what I have done in the past. Other than the initial setup and resulting first adventure, I really want to sandbox this. Basically, I want to follow the players’ lead and give them the game they’re looking for.

That may prove harder than I anticipate, as there will be a lot of players. The game will be once a month when I can get the most players. Additionally, I want to allow for players dropping in and out. Thus far, the mix of character concepts seems to range from serious, to whimsical. Thus far I have nine interested players, and from them, five with character concepts.
I told them core races, core classes and core themes. Anything else I would need to pre-approve. I’m not averse to the legacy races except the Elves and Drow, but that’s another post to itself.

On top of that, one of my coworkers at Razer is going to run a weeknight Starfinder game after work… so it looks like I will also get to play. Currently, I am the very model of an Android Solarian.

Do people want to see occasional write ups of either game?

Starting new job

By on

So, I am starting a new job as of today. I hope to keep updating this thing at least once a week. I have a few things to post on, AND I think I have an idea for the start of a Starfinder game, maybe for over the holidays.

Thoughts on Hero Lab Online & Starfinder Support

By on

I will lead with the fact that I understand WHY Lone Wolf has gone this way. This gets them Android devices, which is not insignificant in and of itself. The argument that it allows them to take HL forward to be more than just a character and statblock builder also makes sense.

That said, I’m not thrilled with the decision for Starfinder to be HLO only (at least at release). While it’s true that they won’t be able to do things like group starship combat with HLC, that shouldn’t keep them from releasing the features that it can support.

To be fair, they’re not saying they *won’t* support Starfinder in HLC, but they’re also pretty carefully not saying they will either.

For this to work for me, Starfinder needs support for both HLO and HLC. Until it has both, I have no reason to subscribe.

They do say that, ultimately, purchased content will work for both once legacy game systems are supported. It would help if they were pulishing some sort of timeline on when they expect legacy game systems to be supported.

It’s also not clear to me how or if they will accommodate those that purchased additional secondary licenses.

Additionally, it’s not clear if you will still be able to make use of custom user data files with HLO. If not, that’s gonna hurt for me, which encourages me to stick with HLC.

So… for now at least, I’m going to hold off on adoption until there is Starfinder support in HLC. Hopefully more of my questions will be answered by then.

It also means I am now less enthusiastic about running Starfinder, at least until it’s supported for both.

More Starfinder Thoughts

By on

Sorry for the scattered brain dump posts like this, but if I don’t put this to bits, I’ll likely forget it later.

Subtle difference between 3.x and Starfinder: Typically, you are only caught flatfooted when you are surprised in Starfinder. Previously, you were flatfooted if you were surprised, or until your first action in the round.

As I said before, character generation is fairly straightforward. Pick a race, a theme, and a class. The combination of theme and class effectively is your class archetype (though it’s not called that). For example, Envoy plus the Outlaw theme can be a Scoundrel. These are, effectively, suggestions for how to build a type of character more so than an actual archetype.

This combination is fairly versatile, and easily covers a lot of  characters from fiction. Han Solo? Envoy/Outlaw. Chewie? More complicated but I would likely go with Soldier/Outlaw (an argument could be made for multi-classing). Luke? Solarian/Ace Pilot.

I could totally do Jim Starlin’s Dreadstar with Starfinder. Vanth is so obviously a Solarian it’s not even funny.

I can only guess what the various inspirations were to the creative team (I miss having a Bibliography like in GURPS books) but some of them are pretty obvious. Star Wars, Mass Effect (Biotics is basically space magic) and Guardians of the Galaxy are all pretty clear.

Since the setting is tied to Golarion, there is a chapter for Legacy Races, such as Elves, Dwarves, etc. I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted to play a Half-Orc so badly as I do here. One of the more common choices for the Half-Orc is basically a professional pioneer. They go in do the hard work of taming the world, and then they sell their stake and move on to the next world.

I think that’s it for now. I need to finish the tactical combat chapter and see what other changes they’ve made.

Starfinder RPG, First Thoughts

By on
image of Starfinder cover
Starfinder RPG

Unlike many of my tribe, I am NOT attending GenCon 50. I have attended in the past, but I am not a fan of huge conventions these days.

However, I did pre-order Paizo’s new RPG, Starfinder, based on my experience at PaizoCon earlier this year. Thanks to said pre-order, I have a copy of the RPG in hand.

Starfinder is, in my opinion, not Spelljammer for Pathfinder. It is not D&D in space, but rather space opera with magic. Closer, thematically, to say Star Wars or perhaps Shadowrun in a space setting. As such, this is pretty much right in my wheelhouse.

While I have not yet read the book cover to cover (I’m not THAT fast of a reader), I’ve managed a decent scan through what’s needed for character creation so far.

As I understand it, and if someone in the know wants to comment in more details please feel free, two of the major design goals were to:

  • Make the game more accessible for less experiences gamers, and
  • Ensure that they did not obsolete previously published materials, most specifically, the Bestiaries.

My personal opinion, is that in many ways it is essentially a Pathfinder 2.0 fork. Not wanting to repeat the mistake of how D&D 4th was handled, they did this with a new game and setting, rather than just declaring a new edition and waiting for the edition wars to die down.

At this point, the core mechanics behind Pathfinder are 17 years old, and it is a crunchy game that encourages system mastery, and there is a lot of published material for it.

That’s all well and good if you’ve been gaming as long as I have been, but I would never call Pathfinder ‘friendly’ when it comes to new gamers.

So, coming back to the first point, character generation does appear to be less complicated than Pathfinder, and one of the more common min-max exploits has been removed.

Effectively, to create a character you select a race (human, android, etc.) , a theme (Ace Pilot, Outlaw, etc.), and then your class (soldier, technomancer, etc.). Once all of this is complete, you may spend 10 points (1 to 1) to raise your stats. You  are allowed to lower stats as well, but you do not get points for this. No stat can be higher than 18 at start, and in general, you may only have one stat as low as an 8 due to racial stat modifications.

I’m still looking through skills and feats, so I will be posting again. I also hope to be posting a sample character, but Paizo has not yet updated their Community Use document. I assume that should happen shortly.