Alright, Lew and myself got a demo of Starfinder in on Friday.
It was exactly what I thought it would be.
Alright so Starfinder. We sit down with four other people for a party of six. We are the only two at the table who have no real grasp of the Pathfinder system, but rolling a D20 is standard stuff.
I play some sort of bug, who happens to be the healer. At first I grabbed the little rat guy with a remote drone. Then I paused and asked if anyone else wanted to try this guy. Yes, I was hoping for a nope. Instead I got a guy who wanted to use it. I should have just held on to it, but I didn’t want to be “that guy” at the demo. Lew is some alien with four arms who was….I have no idea what class this thing was.
We were thrown into a scenario to retrieve Starfinder badges for some reason. We had no idea what that was about, nor was it explained to us. I guess everyone else knows about this kind of shit from playing Pathfinder? Do they hunt for Pathfinder badges?
Anyway we found those with a seamless and pretty pointless bit of dialogue with a space lizard guy. Then we were sent to look into rat men who were using dead bodies as fertilizer in some sort of greenhouse. I guess fertilizer is hard to come by on a space station. Oh and there was an undead lady who was involved with all this and the badges too. Why? Why not? The whole plot was skimmed over really fast and this is all I really remember about it.
So we go check out this greenhouse place and find the undead lady and some gardeners. They attack us and we have our combat encounter.
The tank is a lizard guy and he dives into melee combat. The rest of us hang back and shoot laser guns. It was now that the guy running the game said the lizard guy was the first to go down in all the games so far. Well I took that as a challenge. The bug cleric was not going to let that happen!
Lew did this attunement bit that let him do extra fire damage because four arm aliens do this. Well that or pull people toward them, which is what every other player had done so far according to our DM/GM or whatever they are officially called. We both were confused about why not choose to do more damage instead of movement shenanigans, but what do we know. We are D&D guys in a Pathfinder/Starfinder game.
We kill the undead lady and two of the three gardeners and win the scenario. I keep the lizard guy alive, so screw you guy running the game!
After thoughts……
I was looking for a sci-fi RPG.
I am still looking.
Not a fan of this game after a demo.
The character sheet is way too busy. There is just too much crap on there to drink in for a game you have never played. EC, KC, RP, SP, Su, Feat and so much more. We just found stats that were described and rolled accordingly. It would have been nice to get a heads up on what these abbreviations and such were. You know since we have never played the game or Pathfinder more than once like 100 years ago in gaming times.
Yeah take a little time to go over anything before throwing the game into full play mode. You know give players unknown to this system a quick once over of rules and character stuff.
Once in combat there were game mechanics that were throw about that we had no idea what was happening. It seems there is a lot more to do in combat than just move and fight. Not to mention the modifiers that were getting tossed around for movement, flat footed, flanking, facing favorite hat, best dressed etc. There seems to be a more complex rule system underneath the demo we played. A complex rule system I am not excited about learning to run.
I tried to use a Feat that was tied to an RP ability, but I was told that I couldn’t? Not sure why since the wording made it appear a feat and my RP ability could be used together, but dude said no and I didn’t argue. I mean he knows the game. I was just reading stuff on my sheet. It was annoying not to get a reason why, just a nope can do one or the other not both. I didn’t argue and just went about healing instead of trying something fun.
Maybe it is the pure D&D guy in me. Maybe it was the hour wait for less than an hour of game play. Maybe it was the character skill/stat bloat. Maybe it is the game system shock. Maybe it was the guy running the game. Maybe it was all of it?
Starfinder for me is a solid pass. It will do fine. Paizo has enough people behind them to make this game a living community like Pathfinder. I just do not like or really understand a lot about the system and have yet to get a game where stuff is explained. It is always a rush to get players through these demos.
Hey if someone wants to sit down and teach/ run Starfinder over more than 45 minutes, then I might be willing to try again. You know like a Starfinder game for true Paizo noobs. I do know that I will never run this game. I know that for sure.
The search for a sci-fi RPG might truly be over. I have failed to find a good sci-fi RPG. They are either feel way too free form (Star Wars), heavy with rules and/or a clunky system ( Shadowrun, Starfinder ), silly and random ( Gamma World ) or wildly breakable ( Rifts ).
I guess we can just stick to fantasy since we know what is going on there.
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