Starfinder: Starship Minis, Combat, and More…
Starfinder previews abound, check out what was revealed at the GAMA Trade Show, including a new player race, this week…
Gen Con is around the corner. Well it’s in August, but we’re already halfway through March (seriously, when did that happen, nobody told me). So here’s a look at all the new Pathfinder stuff that’s been dropping from Paizo. One of the big announcements this week is that Paizo is partnering with Ninja Division to release some Starfinder Minis that look like they could be pretty flipping sweet. Jason Bulmahn, lead design for Pathfinder was at the GAMA trade show, showing off the Starship Combat and the prototype minis from Ninja Division
I love that you can immediately tell, oh hey these ships are designed by different races. I love the look they’ve got going on–and these are just the prototypes, not even the final versions of the game. I can only imagine what the final product will look like (probably similar to this). Oh and the final ships will be full-color pre-paints too. Which, let me just say, the industry is getting real good at.
via Paizo
Ninja Division is proud to announce a partnership with Paizo Inc. to bring fans of Starfinder an exciting range of pre-painted miniatures to accompany players on their Starfinder adventures. With painstaking detail and coloring, these pre-painted miniatures bring the heroic crews and explorers from Starfinder to life. The range of pre-painted miniatures will include both adventurers and the ships they use to traverse space, both scaled appropriately to use as gameplay pieces for their unique roles in the Starfinder game system.
Sadly we don’t have a preview of the rules for you–but as the Starfinder team mentioned on their Livestream, Starships are going to be an important part of the game. They level up along with your party, and you’re assumed to have one from the get go. So I can’t imagine the rules will be simply tacked on.
It reminds me a lot of Rogue Trader, in a way. You have your party, and then the “fifth” (or sixth or seventh or n+1th) member of the party is your spaceship which you can improve and which you use in Starship combat. Especially with the hexes. I love me some hex-based maps though. It makes me think that they’ll maybe use something like facing or arcs–after all, directional positioning is one of the big advantages of hex systems. I mean, I’m not expecting Saganami Island Tactical Simulator or anything (THOUGH THAT WOULD BE NICE, PAIZO), but I am curious to see how ship-to-ship combat differentiates itself from normal combat.
But wait there’s more. Paizo also unveiled a new player race for Starfinder this week.
The Vesk are a race of 7-foot tall lizards with spiky bones and a martial society that very much places them in the “proud warrior race” category of aliens. Paizo revealed a little of their backstory on their blog:
With the introduction of Drift travel, however, they quickly turned first contact with the races of the Golarion system into an all-out war of invasion (and inadvertently created the Pact Worlds as the governments of that system banded together in mutual defense). The brutal conflict lasted for centuries, until the sudden arrival of the Swarm threatened to annihilate all life in both systems. Forced to put aside their differences, the Veskarium and the Pact Worlds were able to join forces and drive off the Swarm, and the tenuous truce forged in that fight continues to this day—if only barely.
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I’m sensing a pretty big Krogan vibe from these guys–but that’s not a bad thing. Those tropes are there for a reason–and the Veskarium (which may be the best territorial noun ever) is a hodge-podge of all the worlds and race of their Solar System, so there’s a little Covenant to them too. Though without the religious fervor–they’re very much about being Soldiers and Mercenaries and proving that they’re good fighters–but, this is all to help them gain social mobility. Something about that last part especially appeals to me. I love the idea of the stereotypical “ambitious scheming vizier” character being a 7-foot tall hardened mercenary who spent the last three years on the fringes of space, basically on a suicide mission, so he could have enough political clout to get a trade regulation passed that will one day ensure his rise to prominence and secure the downfall of a hated rival’s ambitions.
See this hammer? It’s gonna make me an Archduke one day.
For those of you playing along at home, that brings the grand total of races that have been revealed to six, leaving one mystery race left. So far we know there’ll be Humans, Lashunta, Ysoki (the ratfolk), Androids, Kasatha, and Vesk. And possibly the “Shirren” which were referenced in the Compatibility Doc for Starfinder that was making the rounds a while back.
As one final teaser, let me just leave you with this image of the upcoming products slide from the GAMA Trade Show. Be sure and take a look at who’s hanging out between the Ysoki and the Kasatha…
Watch the skies, traveller…
