Paizo’s Starfinder setting blends space opera science fiction with elements of fantasy. Massive starships face off against gods in epic battles. Spellslingers fight alongside cyborgs and swordmaster elves.
This kitchen sink setting is heading to a new edition soon. Playtest materials aravailable right now through the paizo website. At Gen Con 2024 the company is expected to release a full playtest book to fans a chance to shape the new edition into a product they want.
Those balmy days in Indianapolis are still months away. Paizo sent along a few new releases to bide my time until the convention. There’s a lot of life left in the first edition of Starfinder and these books contain some hints on what to expect in the next.
Ports Of Call
Every scurvy space pirate needs a wretched hive of scum and villainy to call home. Ports Of Call contains 10 full location write up along with several shorter hooks. There’s also some new player options here including new gear for ships and playable species.
My favorite ports in the collection offer something besides the usual bars, shadowports and unsavory crime bosses. Shulgi Station also offers access to other planes. Golaron World is a tourist trap that needs monsters, magic items and more to power their fantasy theme park in a setting where magic is real.
While this book has its fai share of mechanical bits like all Paizo books do, it’s also the one that’s futureproofed the most. It shows some of the consequences of the Drift Crisis, a storyline event that affected the settings space travel. The locations also won’t change regardless of what new rules might be in play.
Starfinder Enhanced
Player options books are immesely popular. Players want new toys for their characters, be they gear, feats or class options. Starfinder Enhanced offers plenty of this material for anyone looking for new ways to customize their characters. There’s also plenty of new gear, rules for spell building and even some new takes on old classes.
I really enjoyed looking through the themes because they make taking a character in a unique way easy. Hybrid items like the applied magic encyclopedia add so much flavor to the setting. Why carry around a massive, cursed tome when you can upload all your spells to a tablet?
The new classes also feel like a preview of the upcoming edition. The enhancements to the envoy, solarian, technomancer and witchwarper come from years of player feedback. I love playing face type characters, so seeing the envoy get six new archetypes in the book made me want to create a new character for each.
Scoured Stars Adventure Path
Paizo puts out a lot of adventure content for their games. The most well known are the Adventure Paths that come via subscription directly from the company. The other most popular version is the Starfinder Society Organized Play program where Starfinder players can play at their local game stores.
Scoured Stars combines the two options into one book. It takes some of the most popular adventures from the Organized Play pogram and puts them into a single storyline from level one to level 15. It also polishes up the adventures to be the longest published Starfinder campaign to date.
This marks the second hardcover compilation of Starfinder Adventure Path materials. I hope Paizo continues to do them with an update to the new rules. I also enjoyed the development notes and other elements that made this feel like a special edition DVD.
Starfinder products are available directly from Paizo or friendly local gaming stores everywhere.
