2017 The Year of Starfinder
Looking back at the year 2017 surely brings up the Starfinder RPG to anyone following anything in the Role Playing Games hobby.
So how far have we all come this year that is passing by so quickly?
I, for one, ran my first Starfinder Society game (Claim to Salvation), in the fourth quarter of the year, but so have many other Game Masters, since Starfinder was only launched this year. I also express my sincere thanks to the Venture Captains and Lieutenants and all the coordinators who make Starfinder Society an exciting place to participate in and run games.
The Starfinder Society Role Playing Guild (SFSRPG)
Following in the footsteps of the very successful organized play program by Paizo known as the Pathfinder Society Role Playing Guild, a similar one was created for Starfinder and even the official player numbers could be imported from Pathfinder into Starfinder games with just an additional 700 number added. This was probably to encourage those players already signed up to Pathfinder to also transition to Starfinder. Plus, apart from the many official scenarios, the Starfinder Society offered boons mostly at public events such as my first boon which allowed me to bring a legacy race character (like elf or dwarf) into an official society game.
Some of the scenarios are repeatable like "Into the Unknown" and "Commencement" meaning the same Player Character can repeat that scenario to level up. The last scenario published in December 2017 just before Christmas was the "Solar Sortie" for levels 1-4.
The official Adventures Paths of Starfinder
The official adventure path for Starfinder kicked off 2017 with the Dead Suns campaign, which is a set of six official scenarios written to help GMs more easily run adventures that level up characters and enable them to experience the vagaries of the Starfinder universe in a balanced and exciting way.
Incident at Absalom Station written by Rob McCreary
Temple of the Twelve written by John Compton
Splinted Worlds written by Amanda Hamon Kunz
Additional Sourcebooks
Alien Archive
This great resource of NPC creatures included one obvious hit, the Skittermander (Alien Archive, p106), and they hail from the planet Vesk-3 in The Veskerium. So those imperial martial vesk have something other than war to export to the galaxy from their solar system.
Another interesting creature is the Oma or basically, space whales (Alien Archive p. 88)
Other material published by Paizo included the hex-grid and squar-grid battle maps, condition cards (featuring space goblins in various states of distress), and a very practical combat initiative tracker (I use ths one often).
Kickstarters and Third Party Publishers
Paizo has been generous to the many third party publishers by working early with them to facilitate the almost immediate production of Starfinder compatible material almost as soon as the core Starfinder RPG was launched at Gen Con 50 in August of 2017. And the Kickstarter platform was another useful avenue for third party publishers to use to fun their products.
Starfinder Alien Bestiary (3PP)
The Alien Bestiary by Third Party Publisher (3pp) Legendary Games and award winning game designer Jason Nelson and team of Rachel Ventura and CEO Ewan Lamont. This particular product includes beats for the Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition, but also Pathfinder and Starfinder RPGs.
Starfinder Masterclass miniatures by Ninja Division
Munchkin Starfinder
What else says Starfinder is now a part of your regular hobby than a special Munchkin Starfinder set of cards created by Steve Jackson Games through a Kickstarter in late 2017. If you have never played Munchkin, then 2018 may be the best time to start with Starfinder Munchkin.
One of the prolific third party publishers (3PP) is Louis Porter Jr. of LGJ Design who has published lots of Starfinder compatible material on DrivethruRPG. And even Owen K. C. Stephens, who works for Paizo has his own publishing label through Rogue Genius Games that also published lots of Starfinder compatible material.
Fan-made material
This is one of the very best things that happened with the launch of Paizo's Starfinder RPG this year. A sincere thank you to the many fans who have made Starfinder and Starfinder Society such a vast and interesting place, especially the work many fans have put into creating additional helpful material like character sheets and other guides are collated here at starfinder.com/fanbase
In closing
Here is hoping to see even more great things for Starfinder in 2018, one of them will be the much antcipated Pact Worlds sourcebook, of course. And this website will venture into adding facilities to easily publish content from Facebook to Reddit to this site and vice versa. Paizo has big blans for 2018 too, including more cool sourcebooks like the Pact Worlds and a book on weapons and equipment.
And finally, this cute Skittermander whelp also says bye to the old year and welcomes the new one.
