While I was at Gen Con, I got the opportunity to chat with a couple members of the Paizo staff about the future of the Starfinder brand.
With the the Playtest of the new Starfinder Edition, I met up with Jenny Jarzabski, Senior Developer of Starfinder, to discuss what the reception has been like for Starfinder and what we can look forward to in the future.
Dawn Dalton (DD): Talk to me about Mechageddon.
Jenny Jarzabski (JJ): It came out this spring and we are having a great reception to it. I’ve had a lot of people coming up to me asking to join the New Valor Defense Force. I was able to give out the patches for it. It was a really great finale for Starfinder One.
DD: How do you feel about Starfinder One being over and the playtest starting?
JJ: I know a lot of people in Starfinder have had their moment to mourn the first edition. I have been playing and writing for Starfinder since the beginning so there is the bit of wistfulness of seeing it go, but I am so excited about the playtest. So much hype is coming off of the demos we’ve been running. People are having a blast and telling me about their characters and talking about how we weren’t kidding about it being compatible with Pathfinder. We’re hearing stories about gunslingers going into space. We sold out of the adventure I wrote, A Cosmic Birthday, which you can still get on Paizo.com. It is a first through third or fourth level adventure depending on if you play all of the encounters. It tells the story of the Newborn, which is a new eldritch entity that sends a psychic wave of energy across the Pact Worlds.
DD: What is your favorite part in the playtest?
JJ: It’s so hard to say because when I look at it I can see things that our whole team did. I feel like we all Barathu melded (just as a note, Barathu are now a core ancestry). I will say that I am in love with the new Solarian and Witchwarper, they are definitely changed from the first edition iterations. You don’t have to track attunement points, you are attuned. Witchwarpers have anchors that keep them in their reality that you get to choose to further define your character. I’m also partial to the new gods like Zon-Shelyn, a merging of Shelyn and her brother Zon-Kuthon, who is the god of overcoming suffering through art and expression. Our Mystic, Chk Chk, is a worshiper of Zon-Shelyn. He’s a little emo boy. He has a little pain journal.
DD: Is this one of the shortest playtest periods you’ve ever done?
JJ: Yeah, it is because we’ve already stress tested the system. We are using the Pathfinder 2 rules, so we know those rules work. We just need to try out the six new classes, ten new ancestries, and almost a hundred spells. None of the base rules are in the playtest book. You will need the Pathfinder Player Core and GM Core for the base mechanics for this playtest. When the Starfinder Player Core comes out next year, it will be stand alone with all of the rules intact.
DD: You also announced some new classes coming out next year.
JJ: We did. Because we are never done, in January we will be playtesting the technomancer and the mechanic. In the spring, we will be releasing the Galaxy Guide. That will be a setting book that will have cool stuff about the galaxy and differences from Starfinder One. That will also have six ancestries in it and backgrounds to tie into the different planets in the book. There will also be a bunch of GM tips and tools for running different types of games. We wanted to try something different this time and instead of grouping our book in an encyclopedic manner, we decided to group it by types of adventures (genres like space horror, dystopian, etc.).
DD: Is there anything exciting that you want to talk about coming down the pipeline?
JJ: In October, we will be releasing a tenth level playtest adventure called Empires Devoured. Starfinder Player Core releases next year at Gen Con. GM Core will be hot on its heels soon after. We also had the debut of an intergalactic pop star at Gen Con called Prisma. She is in the playtest rulebook and was featured in the demos at Gen Con. If you missed out, don’t worry, she will be back next year for her reunion tour.
I want to extend a huge thank you to the staff at Paizo for giving me their time during a very busy weekend to talk about everything and to share in their excitement for the new products!
With the the Playtest of the new Starfinder Edition, I met up with Jenny Jarzabski, Senior Developer of Starfinder, to discuss what the reception has been like for Starfinder and what we can look forward to in the future.
Dawn Dalton (DD): Talk to me about Mechageddon.
Jenny Jarzabski (JJ): It came out this spring and we are having a great reception to it. I’ve had a lot of people coming up to me asking to join the New Valor Defense Force. I was able to give out the patches for it. It was a really great finale for Starfinder One.
JJ: I know a lot of people in Starfinder have had their moment to mourn the first edition. I have been playing and writing for Starfinder since the beginning so there is the bit of wistfulness of seeing it go, but I am so excited about the playtest. So much hype is coming off of the demos we’ve been running. People are having a blast and telling me about their characters and talking about how we weren’t kidding about it being compatible with Pathfinder. We’re hearing stories about gunslingers going into space. We sold out of the adventure I wrote, A Cosmic Birthday, which you can still get on Paizo.com. It is a first through third or fourth level adventure depending on if you play all of the encounters. It tells the story of the Newborn, which is a new eldritch entity that sends a psychic wave of energy across the Pact Worlds.
DD: What is your favorite part in the playtest?
JJ: It’s so hard to say because when I look at it I can see things that our whole team did. I feel like we all Barathu melded (just as a note, Barathu are now a core ancestry). I will say that I am in love with the new Solarian and Witchwarper, they are definitely changed from the first edition iterations. You don’t have to track attunement points, you are attuned. Witchwarpers have anchors that keep them in their reality that you get to choose to further define your character. I’m also partial to the new gods like Zon-Shelyn, a merging of Shelyn and her brother Zon-Kuthon, who is the god of overcoming suffering through art and expression. Our Mystic, Chk Chk, is a worshiper of Zon-Shelyn. He’s a little emo boy. He has a little pain journal.
DD: Is this one of the shortest playtest periods you’ve ever done?
JJ: Yeah, it is because we’ve already stress tested the system. We are using the Pathfinder 2 rules, so we know those rules work. We just need to try out the six new classes, ten new ancestries, and almost a hundred spells. None of the base rules are in the playtest book. You will need the Pathfinder Player Core and GM Core for the base mechanics for this playtest. When the Starfinder Player Core comes out next year, it will be stand alone with all of the rules intact.
DD: You also announced some new classes coming out next year.
JJ: We did. Because we are never done, in January we will be playtesting the technomancer and the mechanic. In the spring, we will be releasing the Galaxy Guide. That will be a setting book that will have cool stuff about the galaxy and differences from Starfinder One. That will also have six ancestries in it and backgrounds to tie into the different planets in the book. There will also be a bunch of GM tips and tools for running different types of games. We wanted to try something different this time and instead of grouping our book in an encyclopedic manner, we decided to group it by types of adventures (genres like space horror, dystopian, etc.).
DD: Is there anything exciting that you want to talk about coming down the pipeline?
JJ: In October, we will be releasing a tenth level playtest adventure called Empires Devoured. Starfinder Player Core releases next year at Gen Con. GM Core will be hot on its heels soon after. We also had the debut of an intergalactic pop star at Gen Con called Prisma. She is in the playtest rulebook and was featured in the demos at Gen Con. If you missed out, don’t worry, she will be back next year for her reunion tour.
I want to extend a huge thank you to the staff at Paizo for giving me their time during a very busy weekend to talk about everything and to share in their excitement for the new products!
