Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! PaizoCon leads to lots of Pathfinder and Starfinder news, a collector’s edition for Star Trek Adventures announced, and more!
Paizo held their tenth annual PaizoCon and, with it, came the usual string of big announcements. This year, not only did they let us know some of their plans for Pathfinder for the coming year, but also more details from Starfinder. Including an appearance of the entire Starfinder Core Rulebook itself (or at least a prototype), under heavy security as seen below.
Coming up first from Paizo is The Book of the Damned, focusing on demons, devils, daemons, and demigods for all your alliteration needs. Stats will include Archdevils, Demon Lords, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse along with information on the different levels of Hell, Abaddon, and the Abyss. New feats, spells, magic items, and prestige classes useful for characters who fight evil as well as those who serve it, along with infernal contracts and demonic rituals. This book releases September 2017 with a retail price of $44.99.
Ultimate Wilderness will contain new archetypes for alchemists, bards, druids, hunters, investigators, kineticists, mesmerists, paladins, rangers, rogues, slayers, and more along with new feats, new magic items, and new spells. There will also be a new full class called the Shifter. This is a martial class with full Base Attack progression, described as “Shifters are to druids are paladins are to clerics”. Many self-buffing abilities, primarily a natural weapon combatant as “everybody gets claws”, utilizes wildshape to transform parts of their body or take on animalistic abilities until eventually fully transforming into beast shapes. This book releases in November 2017 with a retail price of $44.99.
The next Adventure Path will be Ruins of Azlant, released in monthly volumes from August 2017 through January 2018 with a retail price of $22.99. This adventure path sends the players on a quest to uncover a lost undersea empire, drawing inspiration from Atlantis myths. Following that will be War for the Crown with releases monthly from February 2018 through July 2018 with a retail price of $22.99. This adventure path has the players working for Princess Eutropia to secure her claim to the throne and prevent a civil war, set in the Inner Sea.
The pocket edition line launched last year will continue with new releases through the rest of the year. Two books spotted on tables for sale at PaizoCon include the Advanced Player’s Guide and GameMastery Guide. Two more releases will come player this October for Ultimate Equipment Guide and Bestiary 2. This joins the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and Bestiary 1 (released last year). The pocket edition line are reprints in a “pocket-sized” paperback format measuring about eight inches by six inches containing all the material from the hardcover books, each with a retail price of $19.99
A few organized play announcements were made as well. The Starfinder Society will launch in time with the release of the Starfinder rulebooks, starting with the Year of the Scoured Stars events. “You’ll need to investigate a catastrophic event and figure out what happened!” Meanwhile, the season’s adventures for Pathfinder Society will be the Year of Factions’ Favor. No details were given by Paizo’s Twitter feed, but the title indicates it may tie into early 2018’s Adventure Path, War for the Crown.
The first Starfinder announcement was the debut of the Gamemaster’s Screen art, seen above. The cover for Alien Archive also debuted as part of the presentation, along with the information that it will include several new playable races as well as “monster” races and new alien equipment. Several images from inside the book were shown, but no source I’ve been able to find shows clearly enough to read the text. Almost legible versions are available on coverage of the panel from the official Paizo Twitter account, and alternate coverage available from EN World’s column on the panel. Even without reading the full text, there was a lot of new information released at the panel.
The Paizo account also tweeted out a very high-resolution image of a character sheet for one of the Iconics, Obozaya, a female vesk mercenary soldier at level 1. There are a few interesting bits of information on the sheet, but most of it is information that’s previously been announced but shown in full context. The only major differences from a standard Pathfinder character are the new defense abilities (listed as SP, HP, RP, EAC, and KAC), special weapon descriptions (“penetrating”, “unwieldy”, and “archaic” with specific new meanings), and the currency of choice in the Starfinder world seems to be “credits” which are stored on a “credstick”. There is also a full description of Obozaya with roleplaying information.
Star Trek Adventures will launch with a special Borg Cube collector’s edition case with storage space and pull-out drawers with protective foam inserts. Included with the kit will be a “1701-D” collectible core rulebook, four miniature sets (TOS, TNG, Klingon, and Romulan), a map of the Alpha and Beta quadrants, custom Star Trek dice, tokens, a gamemaster screen, Starfleet geomorphic tile decks, and character sheets. There’s no firm price announced yet, but Modiphius says "£300 retail value would be around $380US or $500 AUD. However yes there will be a special pre-order price." No release date was announced, but it would be surprising if it were not available at the Gen Con launch of the game or slightly before.
With PaizoCon this past weekend, it only makes sense to highlight EN World’s own Pathfinder Patreon, Trailseeker. Whether you want new character options, encounters, maps, or full adventures, you’ll find something for your Pathfinder game with weekly new articles and a full adventure every month. Now because of the frequent updates, this Patreon works a little differently than the others I’ve highlighted as it’s a pledge per-article. That means when a new weekly article or the month’s full adventure are available, you’ll be charged your pledge amount (available from $1 to $5 per article). However, you can also set a monthly cap for your pledge so that you never go over your budgeted amount if a month happens to have more than five articles. There’s also a free sample adventure and three articles available to see if it’s worth your support.
Torg is coming back with a new edition, Torg: Eternity. If you missed the original Torg from West End Games, wow did you miss something. A genre-bending epic cinematic multi-dimensional roleplaying incorporating elements from fantasy, science fiction, cyberpunk, pulp adventure, horror, and pretty much anything else you associate with the word “awesome”. This new edition is redesigned from the ground-up using the original rules as a base to bring the system up to date and ready for its first major overhaul in over a decade. You can get a PDF version of the core rulebook, drama deck, tokens, archetypes, counters, and all digital stretch goals for a $30 pledge, add on a full digital library of all published material for the original Torg game for $50, print versions of the new material plus a set of custom dice (along with the original Torg PDFs) for $70, and a limited edition cargo boxed set with even more bonus material for $200 (unfortunately, the ten seats on the Delphi Council sold out almost immediately). There’s also add-ons to upgrade to blue or red leather limited editions of the hardcover rulebook. This project funded in minutes and is already at over 2000% of its funding goal in just two days, so you have until Friday, June 30 to decide if you’re ready for the Near Now.
Zombicide: Green Horde is the new stand-alone-but-compatible expansion to the Zombicide: Black Plague game from Cool Mini or Not. It’s Zombiecide mixed with fantasy. There are zombie orcs. It comes with a LOT of minis, both undead and characters. They unlocked a zombie dragon mini. Do I really need to sell this? The only pledge level is $120, which gets you the game, the minis, and all the stretch goals. Considering CMON sets records for funding every time they do a Kickstarter, do I even need to tell you this project’s already into seven figures? More and more minis and characters will be added to this Kickstarter until it funds on Tuesday, June 27.
That’s all from me for this week! Find more gaming crowdfunding news at the EN World RPG Kickstarter News website, and don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you even more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enworldnews.com. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse where I’ve been ranting about my inability to give money to people due to silly website policies that make no sense, or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
Paizo held their tenth annual PaizoCon and, with it, came the usual string of big announcements. This year, not only did they let us know some of their plans for Pathfinder for the coming year, but also more details from Starfinder. Including an appearance of the entire Starfinder Core Rulebook itself (or at least a prototype), under heavy security as seen below.
Coming up first from Paizo is The Book of the Damned, focusing on demons, devils, daemons, and demigods for all your alliteration needs. Stats will include Archdevils, Demon Lords, and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse along with information on the different levels of Hell, Abaddon, and the Abyss. New feats, spells, magic items, and prestige classes useful for characters who fight evil as well as those who serve it, along with infernal contracts and demonic rituals. This book releases September 2017 with a retail price of $44.99.
Ultimate Wilderness will contain new archetypes for alchemists, bards, druids, hunters, investigators, kineticists, mesmerists, paladins, rangers, rogues, slayers, and more along with new feats, new magic items, and new spells. There will also be a new full class called the Shifter. This is a martial class with full Base Attack progression, described as “Shifters are to druids are paladins are to clerics”. Many self-buffing abilities, primarily a natural weapon combatant as “everybody gets claws”, utilizes wildshape to transform parts of their body or take on animalistic abilities until eventually fully transforming into beast shapes. This book releases in November 2017 with a retail price of $44.99.
The next Adventure Path will be Ruins of Azlant, released in monthly volumes from August 2017 through January 2018 with a retail price of $22.99. This adventure path sends the players on a quest to uncover a lost undersea empire, drawing inspiration from Atlantis myths. Following that will be War for the Crown with releases monthly from February 2018 through July 2018 with a retail price of $22.99. This adventure path has the players working for Princess Eutropia to secure her claim to the throne and prevent a civil war, set in the Inner Sea.
The pocket edition line launched last year will continue with new releases through the rest of the year. Two books spotted on tables for sale at PaizoCon include the Advanced Player’s Guide and GameMastery Guide. Two more releases will come player this October for Ultimate Equipment Guide and Bestiary 2. This joins the Pathfinder Core Rulebook and Bestiary 1 (released last year). The pocket edition line are reprints in a “pocket-sized” paperback format measuring about eight inches by six inches containing all the material from the hardcover books, each with a retail price of $19.99
A few organized play announcements were made as well. The Starfinder Society will launch in time with the release of the Starfinder rulebooks, starting with the Year of the Scoured Stars events. “You’ll need to investigate a catastrophic event and figure out what happened!” Meanwhile, the season’s adventures for Pathfinder Society will be the Year of Factions’ Favor. No details were given by Paizo’s Twitter feed, but the title indicates it may tie into early 2018’s Adventure Path, War for the Crown.
The first Starfinder announcement was the debut of the Gamemaster’s Screen art, seen above. The cover for Alien Archive also debuted as part of the presentation, along with the information that it will include several new playable races as well as “monster” races and new alien equipment. Several images from inside the book were shown, but no source I’ve been able to find shows clearly enough to read the text. Almost legible versions are available on coverage of the panel from the official Paizo Twitter account, and alternate coverage available from EN World’s column on the panel. Even without reading the full text, there was a lot of new information released at the panel.
- Each class will have four separate sample builds.
- It was made clear once again that both Pathfinder’s own goblins as well as the Magic Missile spell will be part of the game.
- A page from the Equipment section showed twenty-five different guns, from small hold-out style pistols to massive heavy weaponry.
- Starships will be a part of the game from the start, and even Level 1 characters will be able to crew a ship.
- A map of the solar system was shown naming each of the planets (from closes to furthest from the system’s sun): Aballon (a machine planet), Castrovel, Absalom Station (not a planet but a space station), Akiton, Verces, Idari (also appears to be a space station), The Diaspora (an asteroid belt), Eox, Triaxus, Liavara, Bretheda, Apostae, and Aucturn. Liavara and Bretheda are also shown with large moons in orbit, which the other planets are not. As in our solar system, the inner plants are mostly rocky planets while the outer planets look to be gas giants.
- Dwarves and Elves are in Starfinder, but are NOT core races.
- Factions in the solar system include Hell Knights, Xeno Wardens, Azlanti Star Empire, and Free Captains (with more that haven’t been announced).
The Paizo account also tweeted out a very high-resolution image of a character sheet for one of the Iconics, Obozaya, a female vesk mercenary soldier at level 1. There are a few interesting bits of information on the sheet, but most of it is information that’s previously been announced but shown in full context. The only major differences from a standard Pathfinder character are the new defense abilities (listed as SP, HP, RP, EAC, and KAC), special weapon descriptions (“penetrating”, “unwieldy”, and “archaic” with specific new meanings), and the currency of choice in the Starfinder world seems to be “credits” which are stored on a “credstick”. There is also a full description of Obozaya with roleplaying information.
Star Trek Adventures will launch with a special Borg Cube collector’s edition case with storage space and pull-out drawers with protective foam inserts. Included with the kit will be a “1701-D” collectible core rulebook, four miniature sets (TOS, TNG, Klingon, and Romulan), a map of the Alpha and Beta quadrants, custom Star Trek dice, tokens, a gamemaster screen, Starfleet geomorphic tile decks, and character sheets. There’s no firm price announced yet, but Modiphius says "£300 retail value would be around $380US or $500 AUD. However yes there will be a special pre-order price." No release date was announced, but it would be surprising if it were not available at the Gen Con launch of the game or slightly before.
With PaizoCon this past weekend, it only makes sense to highlight EN World’s own Pathfinder Patreon, Trailseeker. Whether you want new character options, encounters, maps, or full adventures, you’ll find something for your Pathfinder game with weekly new articles and a full adventure every month. Now because of the frequent updates, this Patreon works a little differently than the others I’ve highlighted as it’s a pledge per-article. That means when a new weekly article or the month’s full adventure are available, you’ll be charged your pledge amount (available from $1 to $5 per article). However, you can also set a monthly cap for your pledge so that you never go over your budgeted amount if a month happens to have more than five articles. There’s also a free sample adventure and three articles available to see if it’s worth your support.
Torg is coming back with a new edition, Torg: Eternity. If you missed the original Torg from West End Games, wow did you miss something. A genre-bending epic cinematic multi-dimensional roleplaying incorporating elements from fantasy, science fiction, cyberpunk, pulp adventure, horror, and pretty much anything else you associate with the word “awesome”. This new edition is redesigned from the ground-up using the original rules as a base to bring the system up to date and ready for its first major overhaul in over a decade. You can get a PDF version of the core rulebook, drama deck, tokens, archetypes, counters, and all digital stretch goals for a $30 pledge, add on a full digital library of all published material for the original Torg game for $50, print versions of the new material plus a set of custom dice (along with the original Torg PDFs) for $70, and a limited edition cargo boxed set with even more bonus material for $200 (unfortunately, the ten seats on the Delphi Council sold out almost immediately). There’s also add-ons to upgrade to blue or red leather limited editions of the hardcover rulebook. This project funded in minutes and is already at over 2000% of its funding goal in just two days, so you have until Friday, June 30 to decide if you’re ready for the Near Now.
Zombicide: Green Horde is the new stand-alone-but-compatible expansion to the Zombicide: Black Plague game from Cool Mini or Not. It’s Zombiecide mixed with fantasy. There are zombie orcs. It comes with a LOT of minis, both undead and characters. They unlocked a zombie dragon mini. Do I really need to sell this? The only pledge level is $120, which gets you the game, the minis, and all the stretch goals. Considering CMON sets records for funding every time they do a Kickstarter, do I even need to tell you this project’s already into seven figures? More and more minis and characters will be added to this Kickstarter until it funds on Tuesday, June 27.
That’s all from me for this week! Find more gaming crowdfunding news at the EN World RPG Kickstarter News website, and don’t forget to support our Patreon to bring you even more gaming news content. If you have any news to submit, email us at news@enworldnews.com. You can follow me on Twitter @Abstruse where I’ve been ranting about my inability to give money to people due to silly website policies that make no sense, or you can listen to the archives of the Gamer’s Tavern podcast. Until next time, may all your hits be crits! Note: Links to Amazon and/or DriveThru may contain affiliate links with the proceeds going to the author of this column.
