From an always-packed booth ringed by larger-than-life statues to entire con halls devoted to their organized play, Paizo never goes small at Gen Con. But this year was an especially big year for the company as they debuted Starfinder: Second Edition, bringing their long-running space fantasy TTRPG into a new era with books, accessories, and partnerships. This also meant converting the Omni Severin Bar into the Drifter’s End cantina and Creative Manager Jenny Jarzabski, getting a chance to cosplay as someone straight out of the Starfinder universe (which, as far as I know, she might be). In a space mechanic’s jumpsuit and gleaming with stardust, she gave us a close look behind the scenes of the newest release and everything Paizo has in store for Absalom Station and beyond.
What’s it like launching this big new edition of Starfinder?
Jenny : It’s pretty exciting. It’s especially exciting to see people getting to actually play and then coming up to show me cosplay of their characters, seeing physical books stacked on the table that you can’t see if you’re actually publishing this card…it’s surreal.
How’s the process been in the past year since we’ve heard about it, from publishing and developing and honing on what we’re doing with it?
So we got a lot of feedback from the playtests. We’ve actually run another playtest since then. We called it the Tech Class Play Test, with Technomancer and Mechanics; two of our classic Starfinder classes that are more high tech. We playtested those and Mechanic was a really big hit. Technomancer was good, but we’re tweaking that one a little more. We got some feedback that maybe it was a bit more complex than what we had intended. Maybe it didn’t quite serve the class fantasy we wanted, though there are certainly fans of it. It’s been a great process, just constantly iterating on things
Jenny: Sometimes it can be kind of confusing because there’s the edition creep of, I was just working on this edition. Now it’s second edition. And which version of the rules? There was the playtest and then we updated this. So it’s a little chaotic, but now that we have the book set in stone. It’s a lot more stable ground.
It’s an interesting sort of shift in design philosophy that we’re seeing at a lot of publishers. I think Paizo kind of was a little bit ahead of the curve on these editions that are treated as living documents, not as, here’s the book and then we don’t touch it for 10 years.
Jenny: We already have a list of errata, but we are not gonna do a day one errata. We wanted to take some time and let people enjoy the game, learn the game, but in the next few weeks you we’ll be publishing some errata and some questions to clarify things people are noticing. Whether they’re typos, things that seem inconsistent, or things that in more play didn’t work out the way we thought. We’ll continue doing open play tests and fact documents and errata documents.
So what can we find in the Player Core, which is the book that we have out?
Jenny: There’s all kinds of goodies in Player Core. It has six classes, ten playable ancestries, and two versatile heritages. New skills, Computers and Piloting for starships as well as a navigation aspect to piloting. There’s some new exploration activities, new conditions like glitching to represent your tech gear going haywire.
Tons of new gear with our new equipment system. We call it CTA because it’s commercial, tactical, advanced. Instead of runes, you upgrade your gear, technology-wise. But of course we also have weapon upgrades, magic items, and augmentation. So just tons of new gear and playable species that you can use in your Pathfinder game too.
Is there something in the Player Core that’s either new or something that’s really kind of good update that you’re particularly fond of?
Jenny: Like trying to pick your favorite child, but, okay, so a few things. I love the new Solarian and that now your Solarian can begin combat just being attuned. They don’t have to build up points and track attunement points, which some people find fun, but it can also be a little tedious for other players. You just can say, “I want to be attuned” and “I want to be Graviton” or “I want to be Photon.” When you roll initiative, you just get to do that as a free action. You also can always manifest all of your solar manifestations. So you have your solar weapon, you’ve got a Nimbus that gives a little reaction when you take damage. And then you have your solar flare, which is a short range weapon. So you have a little bit of everything, just from the beginning. And you have it all. You don’t have to pick which one is active.
Another big thing part of launch is Murder in Metal City. So what went into wanting to launch with this adventure as part of the launch alongside the Player Core?
Jenny: We know that eventually that we want to have a beginner box on the roadmap, but this is not a beginner box. It is a level one adventure. What it was made for is for groups where they want to have a deluxe experience playing this adventure. It has NPC cards, item cards. It’s a murder mystery, so it’s got some GM tools to help the GM track this investigation through a massive city on the machine planet of Avalon. So we knew that we wanted to have plenty of first-level content for people to relay, but we see beginner boxes as more of an ambassador product. This is something for when you already know how to play Pathfinder or Starfinder and it’s intended for people to know and to teach and bring others in. But we figure having this first, this Deluxe Adventure will bring people in, get them, get our ambassadors ready to go and convert or bring in other friends to play. So we’re going to try it. It’s a bit of an experimental product.
DA: Do you need this Player Core to play that?
Jenny: You do need the Player Core to play that, but it contains the adventure, it contains tokens, so we didn’t use the minis of plastic faces. We decided to try these nice little tokens that fit on the five foot squares in our maps. It has the map, it has the cards. Oh, and it’s not just an adventure. We’re cramming ancestries into everything. We heard y’all want that space cantina to be open so that’s what we did.
There’s pre-gens too. You can make your own or you can just give your friends these characters that are already made. They have art, they have a little backstory suggestion that talks about their relationship with the murdered person that they’re investigating the case of. I think that definitely adds a lot of value if someone were to look at like a Murder in Metal City Adventure Path Part 1 with a floppy.
Tell me a bit about the Infinity Deck and how that fits in.
Jenny: So the Infinity Deck is actually an in-game item. It is in the Player Core and you can buy it for like…two credits. But it’s a real thing too. It’s a card game that they found after the Gap. Nobody remembered how to play with this deck of cards so they made it up. All these alien cultures came together to make up different games trying to piece together their lost culture from the gap. So what that means for you in real life is that you can buy this like $20 card deck. It’s 52 deck of cards, starfinder or space themed suits, beautiful holographic cards. They’re really nice and you can use those to play one of four games that’s included in the rule book like Absalom Ante, which is kind of like a gambling game. You can play your earth card games with it as well or you can make up your own and the fun part is we’re we’re now just able to throw in these little games into our modules. So if you have your infinity deck you might get more games to play. You can use it if you want to do like a casino scene or even use it for like an initiative check.
Is that something that the RPG team is developing? Or do you pull in some people who are more board games? How do you develop that within the process?
Jenny: So that was actually from Paizo Games. And it was Joe Pasini and Jason Keely who designed it. You might notice those names were Starfinder people in the past. They both have been on the Starfinder team. And they have had this desire to make this Starfinder card game for a long time and with the second edition, we’re like, you know what? We could do this. We could launch this. And what if we just put it in the game as a real item you can buy? And the rest is history now.
Finally, we got a book, too, the first ever Starfinder novel. That is very cool. Why a novel and how does it fit into the world of Starfinder?
Jenny: We really wanted to pull back the curtain and start showing not only telling you stories about what it’s like to live in the world of Starfinder but exploring the history of Starfinder as a setting. One of the biggest historical events that we talk about all the time that we never have told anyone anything about is The Gap. This book is all about a person, an android, who wakes up after the gap and has no memory. And it’s how they and their friends piece their lives back together and essentially they end up saving Absalom Station from some pretty dastardly disasters. You get to meet some modern characters too. get to meet Chck Chck and Dae, our new iconics, who are modern day starfinders looking into the mysteries of the past and stumbling on this historical document written by this mysterious android. I don’t want to spoil anymore, but this is an important android to our setting.
We have a sequel that is in development right now. So don’t worry, it’s not a one-off. And we’re testing the waters. We really want to show you some more of the world beyond just the tabletop setting and rules aspect. And yeah, so check it out. Yeah, so is there anything that I forgot to mention that we want to talk about, that you want to plug? Because I feel like I hit everything, but…
You recently announced a partnership with Warframe, what’s that been like working with Digital Extremes?
Jenny: Yes, literally we just announced it at TennoCon, Warframe’s big convention. We let them announce it because they have a bigger platform. It’s surreal, a dream come true. I’ve discovered that I really like crossovers, so maybe there’ll be more. I think that’s one thing I liked about Starfinder in the first edition and I love about the second edition from what I remember from the play test and stuff.
That’s not the only big video game new for Starfinder is it?
Jenny: Yes! Epictellers Entertainment is doing a Starfinder video game. It’s going to be a CRPG, like in the style of like Baldur’s Gate, but obviously Starfinder. We’re a little overdue, I think, for Starfinder to get one.
Images via Paizo
Have strong thoughts about this piece you need to share? Or maybe there’s something else on your mind you’re wanting to talk about with fellow Fandomentals? Head on over to our Community server to join in the conversation!