Paizo Inc., creators of the fantasy roleplaying game Pathfinder, have just revealed their plans to release an all-new science fantasy roleplaying game called Starfinder in August of 2017.
Set in the same universe as Pathfinder but thousands of years in the future, the Starfinder roleplaying game makes players the explorers of weird new worlds, where monsters and magic exist alongside spaceships and laser guns. While compatible with the Pathfinder RPG, Starfinder will be a complete standalone game, requiring only the Starfinder RPG Core Rulebook to play.
Starfinder Creative Director James L. Sutter says:
Everyone at Paizo loves science fiction, so there’s always been this crazy desire to take Pathfinder, which is primarily a fantasy game, and mash it up with things like Star Wars, Firefly, Alien, and all our other sci-fi favorites. That’s definitely true for me, as the person who initially designed Pathfinder’s solar system, and it’s a huge honor to now be captaining the Starfinder team.
Starfinder is set in one possible future of the Pathfinder universe, one in which Golarion—the planet on which the Pathfinder setting focuses—has mysteriously gone missing. In its place, races formerly from that world live on a massive space platform called Absalom Station, or else have spread throughout the solar system, integrating with the alien cultures there. As the game opens, an artificial intelligence that’s ascended to godhood has recently granted mortals faster-than-light travel, and the race is on to explore and colonize the myriad worlds of the galaxy. But not everything out there in the darkness is friendly…
Our goal with Starfinder is both to give you some fun new takes on familiar Pathfinder elements—What if the Hellknights had massive fortress-ships instead of castles? What if the god of wealth formed a megacorporation?—and to show you a lot that’s brand new. One of my favorite aspects of that is letting some alien races take center stage as player characters—while there are still elves and dwarves, you’re also going to be playing races like androids or the ysoki ratfolk. (While it’s still early days yet, you can see some of the preliminary concept sketches for both of these illustrated here by awesome concept artist Taylor Fischer.) There’ll be new classes and rules to help you be a spell-hacking technomancer or a black-ops assassin, xenodiplomat or ship’s mechanic, ace pilot or power-armored mercenary. And of course a ton of science fantasy gear and vehicles, from plasma cannons engraved with magic runes to undead boneships or hot-rodded hoverbikes.
At Gen Con 2017, in addition to releasing the core rulebook for the game, we’re also going to be kicking off Starfinder Adventure Path, a monthly 64-page book line that contains linked adventures making a full campaign every 6 months, as well as a ton of new monsters, setting articles, and rules to help expand your game.
Check out some of the concept art below! For more information, visit paizo.com/starfinder.
