Episode: 3373
Title: HPR3373: HPR RPG Club reviews Starfinder
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3373/hpr3373.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 22:19:43

---

This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 3373 for Wednesday, 7th of July 2021.
Tid's show is entitled, HPRPG Club Reviews Star Finder, and is part of the series' tabletop
gaming that is hosted by Clot 2, and is about 86 minutes long, and carries an explicit flag.
The summary is, Star Finder is a C5RPG using dungeons, and Percent Dragon's 3.5 rules.
This episode of HPRPG is brought to you by Ananasthos.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPRPGR15. That's HPRPGR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at Ananasthos.com.
This is a group of listeners like you who want to get together and play a tabletop RPG
game, role-playing game, on, I think, UTC Sunday. That's New Zealand Monday.
We play one game for approximately four weeks, and then we review it.
That's what we're doing today. We got on to a call and reviewed our experience with Star Finder.
Star Finder is...don't lose track here. Star Finder is an offshoot of Pathfinder,
which is a fork of dungeons and dragons at 3.5 edition. So Pathfinder is Dungeons and Dragons,
3.5, except rebranded with some rules changes here and there, and further development done on it.
And Star Finder is sort of a Pathfinder, but written for space at let's call it a 3.75 edition,
because some of the rules are different, but generally it's the same. This one generated a lot
of discussion about the strengths and the weaknesses of the system. We do a lot of comparison,
obligatory comparison, probably, between Star Finder and Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition,
which if you've not played either, those comparisons probably won't resonate with you.
We tried to keep it down to a minimum, but at a certain point you just can't quite help
but compare. So you'll hear a lot of that in this recording. We also talk a lot about the
spaceship combat. Of course, being set in space, it's rather inevitable that you're going to get
into a skirmish with another spaceship. And so a game set in space needs to have rules to
govern that scenario. The rules for that in the book, as it was published, are somewhat
infamously, shall I say, intense. And you'll see lots of different opinions online, no surprise there,
but I think that the general consensus, and I'm aware that I am hazarding an assumption here,
but the general consensus tends to be from what I can tell, that spaceship combat,
as written in the book, is a little bit burdensome. It is probably from what I've heard,
or I think it is probably quite a good system if you are getting together with friends
to play a spaceship combat simulator. And if that is your only expectation, I think,
reasonably, that would be a good system for that. If you're getting together with your friends
to play a role-playing game in which people play individual characters with their own choices
and their own personalities, that spaceship combat scenario isn't quite maximized for that setting.
It's the difference, if you've ever heard people talking about the difference between the
tabletop role-playing game and the tabletop war game. It's kind of the difference between those
two things in many ways. So I have an alternate rule set for Starship Combat that I tried
during the game, and then as a special bonus session at the end of the game,
we played a traditional or a rules-as-written spaceship combat scenario. So we do touch on
the differences a little bit between those two systems, although probably because we were all
there and played it, we don't really go into detail. And so I will simply say that the alternate
rules try to maximize individual character choices, tries to speed up combat by only requiring
you to play until one or the other of the ships reaches half of its hit points. It does away with a
lot of the, well it does away with the phases of combat turns. It just kind of lets everyone go
in sequence, do whatever they want to do, using all of their character abilities, or some of their
character abilities, and sort of ignoring the spaceship itself, which seems counterintuitive.
And again, if you're looking for a spaceship combat simulator, it is counterintuitive,
but I find for people who want to get together to play people running around in space doing
cool things, a simpler, quicker system to resolve spaceship conflict seems to be pretty nice
and well appreciated. So I've had good luck with it so far. It is available undrived through RPG,
just look up simple starship combat for StarFinder, and it'll come up. It's free or two dollars,
depending on which you prefer, and I highly recommend it. So that was a completely unsolicited ad,
which hopefully will get past the sensors. But to be fair, I am recommending it not only because I
wrote it, but also because I truly believe that it's a good alternative to starship combat as written.
So if you are playing on playing StarFinder, just kind of keep that in the back of your mind that
alternate rules do exist, people have been trying it out and seem to be pretty happy with it.
I certainly have been quite happy with it with the games that I've been playing.
So let's get into the review on this call. You'll hear Benny, Ken Fallon, Padregg, Baffelt,
and me.
So let's first roll for initiative. So roll a D20, and if you have your character sheet,
you can add your initiative bonus. If you don't have a handy, that's fine. We'll just roll your D20.
Oh, I should have gotten my character sheet. It's a plus six, right? Yeah. So that's 20.
20 for Padregg. Six. Six for Baffelt. 21. 21 for Ken. I rolled at 16, and I'm trying to find my
character sheet that I think it was plus two, but let's just go with the 16 then. 16. All right, Ken,
how did you get 21 on a 20-sided die? Did you add your, you have your character sheet? No, I put
in the number 21 into this. So let me roll that again, Sean. 21 sided die on my favorite set.
This could be an inkling as to my review of this game, by the way. 20. That is me. 20 for Ken.
Let me just try that one more time. Well, I rolled, I rolled a 14, but I added what I think is my
initiative. All right, and I just checked in my character sheet. It's actually two, so my roll is 18.
Oh, it is an 18. Okay, so the first question that we should talk about is the character build process,
not how the character played, but how it was to actually build the character. Only a few of you
on this call did that. Actually, it was basically one. Okay, that's what I thought.
I wasn't sure if the lore that I had heard was true or not, but I think it sounds like it's true.
Two people have a custom character, but only one person really built the character. Got it.
So, Patrick, how did you find the character build process? I got my core rule book. I look at the
part where it says, this is how to build a character. And I followed the steps closely. I made a
character when I knew what to actually do. I made a character for Ken. How was it? Do you feel
paired to like five fifth edition build process? It's more complicated, definitely, definitely more
complicated. There's a lot more stuff. There is the themes which I like. I like the themes.
Also, I like the fact that you can choose not to have a theme, but there is a little less
options in races and in classes, which I don't necessarily think is a bad thing, but it is a thing.
There's definitely a lot more looking through the book. What is this? There's a lot more writing down
on the actual thing. Fifth edition, you just basically, it mostly is just rolling for stats is
mostly it, and then a few other stuff just reading from the book. But with this, it's a lot more
math and complicated stuff like the KACA, that kind of stuff, not something you can do in your head.
Yeah, I feel like I agree with you. I think it's more complex, impossible, a good way, or not
even a good way, just like an alternative way. And I do like the themes as well. And I think
that you see this a little bit in fifth edition, and you see it a little bit in Starfinder,
and I hope other RPGs take note. And that is this idea that there's the way to build the character,
and then at the end of the paragraph, and if you don't care to figure all this stuff out
yourself, here's a quick example, or here are some sane defaults to take. I feel like even in
fifth edition, how you have that standard array, if you don't want to roll the die for your stats.
I just, I kind of like that sort of thing, where it's just like you have whatever.
In fifth edition, you basically, it's, you also have that in fifth edition, you have that in
Starfinder, you have basically, but there they literally just lay down the path, which you should
take in a fifth edition. They do a start, like they just have that kind of basically like a small
sentence, like, okay, if you don't, if this is your first time playing, and you have no clue what to do,
this is what you should, and you want to play this clash, this is the background you should pick,
this are, these are the spells, yeah, do this, but not really impeding on your thing. It doesn't
really do that in Starfinder, but it's very much if you, if you want to follow the thing, it goes
way further. One cool thing about Starfinder that I'll quickly mention here too, is that the,
the equivalent of the monster manual called the alien archives, it, it has a bunch of playable,
new playable races. So you can, not all aliens are playable, but there's, there's a good handful of
aliens in the, in the alien archive that are playable races. So you get a bunch of new races pretty
quickly, just, just by expanding your library a little bit. Oh, I didn't know that, that's definitely
a good thing, but I overall just like the character building thing, it's different, but it's not
necessarily bad. The only thing I would add is just like background, because that's not really
there. You have a description, and that's everything for what you basically can do with your
background and stuff. Yeah, that is an interesting omission. That would be a nice thing to have,
yeah. It's probably, they probably do have it in a separate book for all I know, but yeah,
it's not in the court rule. Yeah, it's not very clear on what you should do with defactions,
because they're like factions, and it's there in the court rule book, and it even says that you
can be one of these factions, and you can believe in these gods, but it doesn't say that anywhere
on the character sheet, and it doesn't really, it's not really clear if you should, or should not do
it. Those are primarily aimed at organized play, where you go to conventions, and there's record
keeping, and it's a very organized process, and factions play a big role in those games, but yeah,
they don't make that clear in the court rule book at all. For someone who's never been to any of
those things, it's completely, yeah, yeah, totally. I like them, and I chose to include it,
but I didn't find anywhere where to do it. Well, Benny, I know that you do have the
court rule book. Did you ever try building a character for Starfinder or no? No, not at all. I
just read through the part where it explains how to do it, but I just came over it, so I couldn't
have a foreman opinion in this one. Fair enough. Back up to the top of the initiative says,
Ken, now, how was it to play your character? So in other words, did you feel like your character
had lots of features and abilities and things like that? Ken. No, I think I made a fundamental
mistake in choosing a coward for my character, and as such, I didn't have any of the weapons,
or basically all I had was a Swiss Army knife, and that was a major disadvantage. Granta,
they sitting along while Patrick created my character for me was quite enjoyable,
and I felt this was a really cool character, but I think it was probably a good character for
a different universe than this one. Yeah, great point. I mean, there are games where that would be
completely doable, I think, but oh, and I mean, I could have run Starfinder to make that possible,
but I was running a pre-written adventure, which, you know, focuses, I mean, it was in fact the
first adventure that they published for this game system, so it really does focus as you can almost
tell on like hitting all of the mechanics, and combat is, you know, a big mechanic in D&D style
RPGs. There are other RPGs where that's not such a big deal developing a coward for your
character is, like, strangely brave as a player, but it does kind of cripple your actual character
sometimes. Yeah, I did warn him. I did warn him. I also warn him that his character was a great
utility character, but we had a lot of engineers and he was an engineer, so it wasn't really.
We had no control over it. Yeah, that was interesting how many people chose the same character type.
Patrick, how did you, yeah, to be fair, everyone chose mechanic, which is for all intents and
purposes, the tinkerer in Starfinder, and we're on hacker public radio, so yes, it was predictable
in retrospect. Patrick, how did you feel about your character? Was it easy and nice to play your
character? Lots of features, lots of abilities. Yes, I definitely enjoyed playing my character.
It was fun having a character which was actually, if you, if you looked at the details acted
quite different from other characters, running headlong into stuff without forming a plan,
is very much not the thing I usually do. Up close combat was also very fun.
Had lots of abilities, especially after I leveled up. The thing is it's actually with numbers
are too big, I think. Yeah, you make a good point about those numbers. They do get really big
in Starfinder and it is a little bit strange and it makes, at least for the game master, it makes,
it makes the specifics of following the pre-written module very important because those numbers,
like I mean, one thing will be a DC-15 and then later it'll be like a DC-35, you know, and it's
just like, it's completely like, how do you get to 35 on a 20-sided die? Well, it's all those
those modifiers and that's, that's very different than really a lot of other games, I think,
those are big numbers. I basically have to specialize into something. You can't not
specialize. It's a great point. I generalize my character and basically have it be able to do
lots of different stuff and do combat but this was like, okay, so you have to specialize in this
and you have to specialize in that other right shall fail. Any role under the 10 basically felt
like, okay, well, this is a failure. Usually it does have even like any role under the 15 is like,
okay, this is not very good. Vinny, what did you think of playing your character? The first problem
of my character was this, as you already pointed out that there were too many copies of my character
joining the game because we used the prechan mechanic and others use, I think, Bathold used the
same character and at the beginning there was someone else. At first I chose like two or three of
the prechan characters and then in the first session we were only three people and I was the only one
using this character so that's why I kept it. I think I would have gone with another character if I
knew that the next session there will be more copies of myself. Apart from this, it was fun
character to play because you have all this options. You even have this drone you can use when
you attack, you get an attack for yourself and you can have your drone attack. The other thing
I enjoyed having but never used except for once in the first session is my cheek pouches where I
can keep like for the size of the character a huge amount of stuff in cheeks. Yes, that's because
you're a rat person and they they could stuff their cheeks full of whatever random stuff they want.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. It was like a third of my height cute and I could stuff in my cheeks so
it was like, I'm not sure how this physically works, but it was fun having. There were a couple
of things in the in the correct character I'd never quite got how to use them so I'm not sure
whether those were just numbers that were calculated into the stats anyway and didn't matter or whether
I just didn't get what they meant and never used it but I think some of it might be a bit too
complicated for a preaching character which is meant to be played in an introductory game. I think
that's how they designed the character. It was it was like saying well if you don't want to go
through the whole build and everything just use those characters and characters and do this
this adventure. I think they give in I'm not sure whether it was in the choral book or whether it
was in the starter kit where they give you an adventure to play along with those characters.
Yeah, I think that's in the starter kit. The introductory end of Starfinder is just it's
non-existent. It's like even as an introductory thing where your characters are already built for
you. The place where you're starting is just way up here and you just have to know all of this
information. A simpler level one character sheet would be a nice thing to have. I think it also
adds to the complexity that your characters live in a world which is completely different to our
world. It's not just our planet and another reality popped over it. It's like it's
complete different in space and everything but well we'll discuss I think we'll discuss the world
right later. Staffold, what did you think about playing your character? It was fun. There were so many
parameters to the character and being relative newbie to RPGs. I didn't and I still don't know
what the large majority of those things are. I could just sort of only follow along and go yeah
sure I'll go with that and with a lot of help being explained what they all did you know I think
one of the things is that a lot of people chose mechanics as you pointed out they were the things
that we're already familiar with as hackers. A lot of the other character types that were offered
as far as pre-gen characters went are things I just have no feeling for or connection to so I didn't
feel I could choose one of as they were sort of totally alien to my mindset of what would I do
as a biohacker? What would I do as a necromancer? Whatever it was technical rants. I mean I don't
even know if those things are so I ended up sort of speaking to mechanics because that's as a hacker
that's what you know. To be fair as the game master I could have and in retrospect maybe should have
had people choose their character beforehand and then made sure that nobody was choosing the same
character. I just kind of felt like it might be interesting to see what would happen if people
chose the same class because in theory that shouldn't be a problem however I think since they were
pre-generated and people were literally taking the exact same mechanic I probably should not have
gone that route so that's a little bit on me. It was fun though I mean I had no problem with having
the good thing was eventually we knew we knew the stats of the characters that were literally in
wrap the modifiers off. Yeah totally. May I clarify something I said? This is highly irregular
this is out of the initiative order but I'll let you take an exception. Just in case someone
listens to this and gets and thinks like oh yeah there's a lot of features there were a lot of
features when I got to second level and I got to choose this feature thing and I had my heavy bone
blade that's the only reason there were a lot of features for me because I could do this combo
during combat that's the only reason features yes there are lots of features but definitely not
early and it's harder to get than you might think from what I just said. A soldier was the
soldier you played correct yeah okay let's talk about rules what did you think of the rules of
the game at least in so far as you understood them and that can be part of the question is did you
understand the rules let's start back up at the top with Ken? Yes it all seemed fairly logical I have
to admit I don't know how much of that is down to I completely knew this is the first game I've ever
played but I've listened to a few so it all kind of made sense and although I did need to rely
both you and Patrick from time to time to explain what I needed to do math wise yeah but you kind
of get the feel of it pretty quickly right yeah yeah no it was it was obvious we can very
obvious to me I could have done with some more weapons yes just for the record like in the future
if you're ever playing in a game that I'm running ever again you just you realize that you've
made a horrible mistake with your character choices you can totally talk to me and we can we can
make sure that that is repaired either in story or just magically as a hand wave so just so you know
like yeah just talk to your game master anybody you ever it was interesting to play the character
out fully okay cool Patrick would you think of the rules yeah they made sense they were very
similar to what I already know from fifth edition D&D though there were some differences
note to believe what I already said the higher numbers that was one thing which really kind of
annoyed me but other than that it was pretty logical the the AC will split into two pieces because
it's the future yeah everything apart from like starship combat was fairly logical starship
combat is weird it's not necessarily bad not necessarily good it's weird the one thing I would
change is just if numbers were smaller it would be near or the perfect game I would say because
numbers are so big I can't do my preferred style of play which is special is it which is only
specializing in combat yeah no I think you're making a really interesting point about the forced
ability of specialization in order to hit those high numbers I haven't heard it expressed that
way but it's actually really insightful it really really annoyed me I was until we had like I was
like second level and we had combat stuff where I could do my cool combos until that I was like
really like why did I have these large numbers I can really do anything I made my character in
in a way where it was a little bit spread out only one rank into anything which yeah and so I had
to go to second level which no one else did and to actually be useful also I chose to theme pilots
yet just because my dexterity was a little lower um 10 got to be the better pilot before I reached
second level right interesting how is that supposed to work just because he's got a steadyer hand
he beats the the nerdy pilot guy don't really understand that we're secretly talking about the
character build rules again but I mean I I wonder if the reasoning behind this was well we want
each player to feel like they that they have a special sort of talent that nobody else on the team has
and and and and so they're kind of don't mind that people are forced into specialization because
that's kind of part of the thing it's like well that's why you're playing this role because you
want to be the guy who can do such and such if you do that that there are other ways to do it like
features or just having or class just uh being able to roll higher for this kind of stuff
just having all the numbers be higher is a possibility and it will work for those who want to
specialize but if you don't want to specialize and you just want to be a general character it's
very annoying. Benny what do you think of them rules? As everyone else already said they're
pretty close to two fifth edition D&D so a lot of them already make sense if you know
the D&D rules except for certain stats that that are different there are don't exist like the
the fact that you have KAC and yes he was a cult and not just normal class and hit points hit points
work work differently because you've got stowing up points first and when there you used up you
hit on the hit points but apart from this was was mostly clear actually point is I like the fact
that the numbers were higher to make a counterpoint here because it kind of felt right in this world
what that everyone has to to specialize in something and as a team you felt more like you depended on
each other than in a D&D game where everyone plays whatever he likes right and here you actually have
to make sure you have a pilot on the team because otherwise you won't be able to fly a starship
and you have to make sure that you have a mechanic on the team who's also good with computers because
eventually you want to fix this starship or like hack another starship or something and the downside
was at some point McNally left the game so we were the only the only person with healing powers
was kind of gone and so we had problems staying alive because of this you have to put more effort
into designing the team and not just just the character and I think that's also what what the
pre-gen characters were built built to do that's why the mechanic was actually specialized in
in engineering and computers and there was no pre-generated like general ability character
I think in fifth edition one of the common complaints or criticisms I guess is that yeah
character like everyone can cast spells now in in D&D whereas it used to be that wizards could
cast spells or clad wizards and clerics and that was it and if you wanted magic but nowadays you
can just play a rogue and get spells at a certain point so it's it definitely encourages the
generalization of the characters this seems to take a different tact it's not only that the
numbers are higher it's also the ranges are on larger so for for some checks you might not need
such a high number and for other checks you might need a high number so it's kind of it's kind
something like you always for everything you need a specialized person to to do it is sometimes
their toss that can be done by everyone and sometimes their toss where you have to have someone
who specializes in in something we get into our head that we have to roll high but I mean sometimes
the DC is only five you don't have to roll high you know you just have to not fail completely
and so it's fine with a DC of five it also makes sense that some people just succeed without
even rolling a die because they they're just specializing in something and this task is so easy
that obviously they they can't fail because they're they've got the ability to to do like more
difficult things in in this field yeah and once again the sort of the mythos of dnd style games
is that if you roll a one it's a crit fail critical failure but in reality that's not true that's
the rules say that that's in combat situation so in if it's like yeah you're you're rolling to I
don't know log into a computer or something and it's only a DC five you can easily roll a one
and your bonus of four or five will get you over the over that DC and so you succeed even though
you have literally rolled the one so people forget that a lot I think I will bring up some things
that you made me think of though that I took that I took a note of during play one is the weapons
remember we had a little bit of a problem understanding how to know whether a weapon targets
of players KAC or EAC and that was a little bit odd I thought because there's a lot of terminology
around the weapons and there's it doesn't really just say in the weapon stat you know like targets KAC
which would be beautifully easy it says like analog and then I think you go off of the damage type
to figure out whether it's EAC or KAC and I thought that was needlessly complex yeah I I guess
that's where this science part of science fiction to play yeah um I don't want to think that hard
in my RPG in Starfinder you have resolve points which you can spend to regain stamina points
once you're depleted from your stamina points you have health points the idea is that you have
resolved to stay alive and so you're just pushing through and this builds up your stamina to continue
going but once your stamina and your resolve has drained for the day then when you take damage
you're actually taking like physical mental sort of like actual damage to your body and that can
kill you so this is obviously a timer technique because they don't want you to be able to just replenish
your health points whenever you want but they do want you to be able to stay alive so you can
spend the resolve if you have it to get your stamina up and that gives you a little bit of a boost
but then you start to get drained back down so it's it's a timer mechanism which D&D fifth edition
does quite elegantly with hit die where you can take a short rest and you have a certain number of
hit die that you can spend to boost your health points back up and once all your hit die are finished
then you'd better rest for the day because now you're starting to actually be damaged two different
approaches to the same problem of how to keep characters alive while also making it a risk to
to be in this world and I feel like the resolve stamina hit points is a little bit clunky I feel
the the number of resolve points you have to spend starts to increase as your character level
increases which seems weird to me why does it take a level five character more resolved to stay alive
than a level one character or whatever just feels a little bit weird and then just having to
track three values for your health seems really really kind of clunky to me I do like that system I
like the in the in the fifth edition I usually whenever it's possible I take a long rest instead of
a short rest because I don't really like to die things this makes it way easier for me to use
because it doesn't feel like oh no I have to spend the thing it's like it's there you could
it's so you supposed to be used it's not an option but what I really think was weird it does
make kind of sense but you can't gain HP back through taking a long rest because it would make
sense because it's not a hostile and because of that sole reason my fight my soldier wasn't
really able to do a lot in the fight against out space demon thing which it should have been
able to do more it was not for the fact that its entire HP was completely gone because of the
space zombies to revolt the day before but I think I like the idea that you need medical attention
when you lose hit points you you can't just rest and then you you're you're fine again because
that's that's how you gain stamina that's not how you gain health back in this game if you use
I feel if you lose health points it actually means you're you're physically damaged and you
need you need some attention to get this fixed listening to this conversation is brought up
some thoughts about it is this universe I think part of the reason it has is may have as many attributes
and different types of values resolution stamina that type of thing is it appears to be a very
in-depth long-term universe playing style and coming to it as a pre-gen character and
not being familiar with RPG general there's no way in the realm of one scenario or two if you
want to call the starshifting another scenario that you can really become comfortable with why those
rules were set up and why those rules give you so many options because really it appears from
my perspective that it's a system meant to be played through many different scenarios and have
characters build those qualifications and those abilities over a period of time and not through
a series of adventures we sort of took a shortcut it seems to me at least from my perspective that's
why I don't understand or didn't understand a lot of what all those things I was able to do I
mean for instance the cheek pouch I thought they were cool that I was never clear whether cheek pouch
man in my cheek until you guys talking about cheek pouch just now and we're talking you know
five weeks into the process I wasn't clear what they meant I just thought oh wow it's a hip pouch
that I wear on my butt sort of thing so I think the rules are probably fine for people who engage
in many scenarios of this game who really get into the universe and really want to play a lot
constantly different scenarios and stuff like that I mean it seems to me that having specialized
in mechanics or wizards or whatever and having the ability or the wish to take on other
aspects so whether a mechanic should be able to do healing or something like that would need to
have some sort of a system of education and they could work towards other capabilities maybe that
they didn't have automatically you know because I think everybody gets into a scenario and then
they wish they could have something or they had something they didn't necessarily have when they
started out you know there's a couple of times when I was sitting back in the ship being a coward
I was a better coward than Ken was because I stayed in the ship and just did everything through
my drone but I was wishing that I had the ability to move the ship around to be a pilot because
there I was all by my own son and you know I didn't have the ability to move the ship I've
needed to be moved sort of thing there's probably an eternal push and pull for RPG designers
where by you have to decide like when your players start the game are they going to feel like a
hero now or they can feel like a loser now with the promise that they're going to be heroic
five games from now and Starfinder and I think D&D Fifth Edition and that style of game the D&D
style of game at least today the style is let's start out everyone sort of as a hero we're going
to assume that they're all like the characters or adults they've been through a lot already and so
they have a bunch of skills and a bunch of abilities and that's where they're going to start and I
think for players the disadvantage to that is now you have to know a lot when you look at that
character sheet you have to know about all of these crazy abilities and features that you suddenly
have and you know yesterday you didn't know those things existed in the real world and in the game
world you've been doing this for for 20 years or however old your character is and the counterpoint
to that is just to start everyone out really low where no one has any abilities and they're just
regular joes but I think the the criticism to that is that that's kind of boring to play and
that's why not that's not why people play in RPG they play because they want to feel heroic and
do really cool things wasn't that earth a bit like this I mean you start out as a loser and you
kind of stay a loser or or you die but it was still was still fun to play the there was wasn't like
a way to develop your character to a hero at least I felt that way yeah I agree yeah I think
it can be done but well both ways and I mean even I don't I've never quite understood why D&D
didn't just use level one through five let's say to be yeah you're just a loser developing your skills
and for people who don't want to start out as a loser you can just say well I only play in games
that start at level five or whatever you know like I don't understand why why we use one you know
like why we can't have both in other words scenarios that aim at people's skill level within that
universe sort of thing in D&D fifth edition I think that they should add like zero level four
level eighth level because that's like in CR that those exist so they should add that for people
want to play it like that when I say like I don't like that I have to specialize I mean with
skills because I like skills not just because they're useful but mostly just because I now have more
numbers on my character sheet and I like that doesn't Shadowrun has this concept of like three
different ways to build a character you either can build like a character that just starts out
in the shadows and or one that's already accustomed to it a bit and or a hero hero shadow
runner and then I think everyone has to build the same type of character and then the the
adventure you play is adapted to whatever however you decide to start off. Yeah and I quite like
that about Shadowrun I like that you can your your game master can say okay everyone build a street
level character or build a professional character and and you can kind of adjust tweak your settings
as to where you're actually starting out because of that that sounds like a like good system I think
well the tradeoff is that it takes eight years to learn Shadowrun apparently um okay
next next question is the world setting and what did you think of the shadow the star finder
universe can what you saw that at least I like to very much I must say I did uh the one thing about
the the whole universe which we didn't get to cover in the in the book are in this uh game
period but that is the fact that there's magic in there seems a bit odd to me that there's magic but
that's just uh my personal yeah funny that you would mention that because that that was gonna be
the question that I specifically asked you so you so it sounds like you you don't prefer your sci-fi
with magic you prefer your sci-fi with sci-fi yeah because sci-fi with magic is you know just
cupping out all of a sudden we can do something and then that's fine I think I do like
that star finder actually does separate science from fantasy pretty sort of well like once you
get into the monsters it gets a little bit dicey here but then again monsters are interesting anyway
and what looks like quote unquote magic to when a monster does it doesn't necessarily mean it's
magic kind of depends on what you're choosing but if you were to play if you wanted to play a very
science heavy uh star finder game I it is my belief although I've not actually done it but it is
my belief that it could be done you could just say nobody's gonna build a magic user and we're not
gonna have this planet of the undead push that off to the side and have a sci-fi yeah could do but then
I suppose you could do the indeed in a in a space universe as well it's built into the game so
not using it is kind of defeating the game you know if you were playing with somebody who really
is into magic then that wouldn't be a great game for them with it no no yeah I would well yeah
and that's why I haven't done it yet I haven't found it uh I believe that if you had a group of
players who who said we want to play in space we don't like magic in space then I think you could
run star finder as as that so that's my assertion but it's it's as yet unproven there was some other
type of game that was more a spacey game but didn't have magic in it so why not play that one
will be my answer uh well the reason would be because I know for instance as a game master I know
D&D rules really really well so you star finder super easy for me to game master I don't
have to learn really anything new whereas if I were to run say traveler uh then I would have to be
learning a whole new system so yeah okay yeah yeah yeah purely functional uh Patrick what do you
think of the world setting I loved it I love it it's my favorite chapter in the cool
rule book just the whole background of the world and stuff the fact that they're there's the gap
it's the gap is so annoying it's so great because I want to play the game and um figure out the
lore of the game at the same time the gap is a is it a gap in history nobody who people who live
through it can't remember anything it's some sort of weird unexplained phenomenon no one knows
what it is so there are if you read closely there are some stuff which like weren't affected as
much by the gap or which lived through it but all normal conventional historical stuff is pretty much
gone and I like that and I like the fact that there is a blend of magic and um and of sci-fi the
fact that there's also um like a part in the back which uh let's you're able to convert your
pre-existing uh pathfinder characters into uh this game and that made me think wait I don't
know anything about pathfinder but could this be like the future of pathfinder or a pathfinder
thing where it's like in the future and that's why there's magic yeah I like all the planets
I like all the factions I I love just the entire background of everything and anything and
stuff and that there's in timeline there's a massive timeline of stuff and a map and anything
anything anyone who likes lore should definitely read the last the packs world chapter
well as you know by now I'm I'm a fan of sci-fi settings anyway more than like the the traditional
fantasy setting and I'm like can I also don't mind magic I like I mean I like sci-fi and I like
magic and dragons and and stuff that's why I also enjoyed Shadowrun and I think the one thing that
I mean I don't know a whole lot about the world but the one thing that makes kind of sense is that
you have different races in this world because it's it's a space travel right so those races can
come from different planets unlike with Shadowrun where you have this weird awakening where suddenly
there are like trolls and and elves in the world where there have been none before or at least
not visible I think the one thing that I found a bit difficult was what I already said before
the world is so different from what we are used to on our planet I mean even we kind of had a
hard time orienting because there was no north or south and sometimes we started again with
north and south but there were there are no poles so how do you how do you know where north and
southeast and also with with the space fight I mean it's a three-dimension world with no gravity so
where is up where is down why are are the spaceships generally traveling on the same plane I think
at one point you said the spaceship can go over the other spaceship and this kind of doesn't even
make sense because there is no over or under I mean they they don't even have to have the same
alignment with regard to where their wings are and everything so it's kind of hard to imagine how
how a world in space works and where where it's a lot easier if you're just on earth in a different
future century so let me get the straight you're basically saying that space is hard to no because
we're humans and we live on a round ball floating through space but we don't actually live in space
but yes exactly if you are on another ball floating through space with the same laws of physics as
us because we can navigate them because we can well I haven't played the game where you are on
the on a different planet so all the other games we played were on earth in a fantasy setting
or in a in a future setting and then you can we in in the game we just normally play it's
torrent completely different planets yeah true technically even earth exists in the indie uh
fifth edition if I'm pretty if I heard it correctly yes so we don't be on there so it's just the fact
that we weren't that we weren't on the planets which we could technically do so you're basically
saying that space is hard to navigate yeah you you you all what you keep applying you keep applying
your your uh physics the physical rules you know from from earth right and a lot of them just
don't apply in space and that's where it kind of gets difficult to to figure out what's actually
happening yeah yeah I definitely I definitely definitely agree it's complicated I feel like
Starfinder does make it a little bit even more confusing in a way because at least this
adventure that we played through dead suns because at times they would have artificial gravity
that's you know basically sci-fi magic gravity and then at other times they'd say there's no gravity
here so at one point there was like a door where on the other side of the door there was artificial
gravity so we didn't know how how does this work if you open the door already then pull into the
door by gravity or are you unaffected until you step over over into into the the whole way
baffled what did you think of the world setting yes that you saw um thinking about stuff that
people have been talking about here and I found some disconnects I'm not a big fan of zombie
stories and vampire stories so I found myself saying or thinking how can you kill
an undead with a bullet like I mean I'm thinking while we're playing this they're already dead
how you gonna kill them one of the other disconnects that happened for me was with Ben and Podrick
we're just saying was so many of the activities flipping over the spaceship or barrel rolling you
know those are airborne techniques that we are aware of from aerodynamic you know airplane fighting
which certainly would have absolutely no relevance to an in-space adventure or in-space scenario so
they were kind of disconnects I didn't mind having them but those thoughts still crossed my
mind like you know how is it that I'm going to kill a zombie with a gun you know it just didn't
make sense to me but then even in reality when we're talking about what is accepted technology
and what is not accepted technology we have difference of opinions in real life so for instance
you've got the standard model of the big bang theory versus the electric universe model
which is quite a bit different than the big bang theory and we have people arguing about those
things in real life over time and people who are adherents of one universe are not adherent
of the other universe whether something is magic or something is science or whether it's
real science or pseudoscience I don't know how you actually nail that down so I think I'm going to
play a game that's in a in a universe that has a world and and stuff like that you just need
to be able to say okay these are the rules we're going to accept because we want to play this game
and we want people to have a good time and you're just going to have to suspend into thoughts or
feelings you have of other realities or you don't see it that way sort of thing because
certainly there are disconnects and and I have them and maybe I'm just not maybe I'm just not
used to sinking myself and developing myself in these RPG universes yet and that's why I find
they're kind of weird I wasn't sure how what kind of answers I was going to hear that was
it's really really interesting I'm I'm a fan of the world setting myself but then I'm kind
of a fan of any world setting is just kind of it's fun and I will say that I quite like the one
of the things that I quite like about Starfinder is that it does encompass the whole universe so
like whatever you want you can pretty much do like if if you have a bunch of players who are like
we really just want to play on a desolate wasteland well then you set your adventure on a planet where
everything is a wasteland if they want to play a game set in the jungle yeah you know it's just
like you've got everything you could possibly need and everything is just as likely as anything else
so like I was saying to Ken if you want to play without magic then you can play without magic it's
it really is a sort of an all-purpose science fiction setting and I mean even heck you wouldn't
even have to go to a different planet like even absolute station the sort of default setting of
Starfinder the central point even that has multiple levels and you can just say well it's a really
big station and to you your your universe quote unquote is this one level that's all you know
in the world you don't have the money to get on a starship and jump around space this is the adventure
we're gonna play so it's it's very flexible which I quite like yeah I agree for instance she could
also solve the solve the problem with like how do you imagine navigating in space by just
saying okay so so the packed world decided for navigation in space we're gonna go decide that this
is off that is down that's that that's that way that's that way and stuff and for instance doing
something like okay it's lighting to the packed world Sun or it's in line to the center of the
Milky Way or something and that's something people would do because people are very bad at
navigating space otherwise and that would be so standard for for space navigation yeah absolutely
not you want to go step further you could just say okay artificial gravity aligns in this way
so even then even the spaceships with a line so I just think that's that might be a solution
some great ideas there let's talk about combat kind of have a feeling that everyone is going to
I mean combat is basically the same as combat in D&D really so I don't think we're gonna have
differing opinions there if you do you can speak up but let's also encompass space combat
boy this is a complex question I'm gonna just ask lots of different questions to each of you
Ken what did you think of combat and by combat I mean right now on the ground combat it would have
helped to have more than a pen knife yes well yeah for club yeah that's true well the pen knife
when I only had a pen knife I was able to throw a D20 and kill a zombie so that that was good
I was really phenomenal when I got the club I had a false sense of security and then
did all more than I could chew but standing as an observer and by standing I mean lying down dead
suspended animated state it was actually quite fun and that was kind of the reason I went on to
the android asteroid because it's boring if you're working going to be involved in the combat
and I didn't have a remote drone to do any of the to sit back and safety and have a remote drone
which in hindsight would have made more sense yes sir about the I don't know what you've good
against swimming knives I mean I live like I live like two kilometers not even one kilometer from
the factory where they were made so they're great tools I've got a couple of them I don't know
that he gets just in fact that was the only thing I had to have a weapon and that was the only
thing that I thought my character recovered would have ground combat was good was just general good I
look I just I just liked it I like I like that they split the AAC in the KAC I didn't think that
was confusing at all the only thing was what I already said with the hit points and stuff and at
that first level you have of course not really many features when I was at second level I just had
a heavy bone blade which for some reason is cheaper than a long sword and better at the same time
so definitely if you're making a character and you're thinking oh I want a sword get a heavy
bone blade because it's cooler it's it's cheaper and it's better and basically I could I could
attack twice if I hit I could attack twice and also it would make them staggered which would
mean that they could only either move or attack not move and attack which was very handy it's huge
yeah yeah you have to hit though it won't it won't work if you don't hit if you miss then sorry
you're out of luck as you as you already said it's kind of the same as in as in Dungeons and Dragons
with a KAC and YAC once you figure this out and once you figure the stamina points and hit points
out it's basically more or less the same thing the one thing I enjoyed is having having a drone so
you could technically attack something from from two different angles which kind of was kind of fun
was was different from Dungeons and Dragons while you're just standing wherever you're standing
and attack from there either with a melee or a ranged weapon you also had the benefit of being
able to double up your attack because you had that drone yeah drones are really powerful
yes yes I don't remember how the rules were but I think I had to use if I wanted it
roamed to move and attack at the same time I had to use my own move action for this so I could
only either move myself or or the drone in one in one round which I think is kind of a beautiful
system I really like that you can you can get the two attacks but you have to sacrifice the
sort of security of movement which you know not that's not always a big deal but sometimes
it's a very ideal also as soon as you're you're positioned you can attack with the drone and with
your own weapon so you don't or you can you can move yourself and just have to drone hover in
in the same place and then it still gets to attack it's generally recognized that in fifth edition
the combat really is the main mechanic in combat is the action economy you know you get you get
one attack generally speaking and getting more than one attack is a very special I mean Benny
doesn't know this because he's playing a monk but to most people more than one attack is a huge deal
like that's really hard to get so I don't feel like it says much of a thing in star finder they kind
of they don't seem to care as much which I think it's fine I think it works out well and I think
the move the the action economy in fifth edition is kind of probably my least favorite aspect of
this edition I think I don't mind the action economy like I don't mind it I'm just saying it's my
least favorite part of I don't I also don't think it's my least favorite but that might just be me being
only really playing a fifth edition or only really caring for it because I don't I have those
books yeah but yeah I like it mostly I do kind of like the action economy I don't hate it if
they change it it wouldn't be too bad for me I guess would depend on what the what it would be
replaced with me for instance when it does make some abilities like you get an extra attack that's
and it will take up like and you have to be fifth level you have to have this thing and it will
take up another thing that's definitely worth it like compared to another thing where you do extra
damage you're like ooh I don't really know do I want an extra attack or do you want extra damage
extra damage means that if I hit I'm guaranteed to have more damage yet if I don't hit I can
attack again and if I hit twice I can do way more damage than that just one time so that's what
like fifth edition it's not Starfinder but yeah they just wanted to say that yeah no it's definitely
I mean it's a design choice and I don't think either one is wrong it's just a different different
different way of approaching it baffled what did you think of combat I liked the drone that we had
I didn't think I was gonna like it before we started the game out but considering that I
hit behind my drone for pretty much the entire game I didn't have the issue with having to share
moves like like Benny did with coordinating whether he was going to move or taking a move for
the drone to be able to fight I just got to use the drone as a my my basic proxy the battles
themselves I'm very like I keep hiding behind this newbie persona I don't know what didn't know
what to expect from a combat thing I mean I wish real life's fighting was as nice as rolling
a piece of dice and having it over with immediately it was dicey I mean I guess that's good if
if you felt like there was some some risk but not too much risk and I think it's really interesting
the the fact that so many did so many people did take the mechanic we did get a lot of variety
as it in the end of of play styles because yeah it's it's worth noting that baffled played his
character is such that his character stayed in a spaceship and just sent it out his drone to do like
literally everything all of the exploration all the combat which like you know like in real life
that's exactly what we would do like if you had the choice of going out and risking your own life
or just sending a drone who could basically do everything you could do except I think your drone
couldn't open doors right that's one drawback but other than that like it was such a smart smart
thing to do and really a fascinating way one thing I had to depend on my teammates for is somebody
to recover the drone and repair it thank you Benny for that when he didn't manage to get zapped I
mean that was it's made drawback I couldn't do it I recovered it and Benny fixed it like I think
Zach really was like the Zach wasn't smart enough it was smart apparently smarter than the average
person which is disturbing but he really just was like oh look a room let's go into it really just
first intuition not planning at all no planning whatsoever needed and it for some reason worked
out usually except with the zombies cool all right let's talk now about space combat and you'll
all know that we played two different styles of space combat one was a custom rules set developed
by me for really I thought to fit better into the RPG game because I felt like the rules for
star finders star ship combat it's basically a separate game Ken what did you think of the
the of the space combats that we played first one I per token and the second one I didn't
and the first one seemed fine all the much better actually that was quite cool I'm excited
to be honest what it really felt it appealed to me on the story level it felt like you were in
I don't know but the strong electric aerosol it was actually going on the first one I can't really
remember but I didn't really hate it wasn't I I liked it but I'm pretty sure the the only problem
my hat was that it was rolling terrible so all my epic stunts which I did were not great I also
didn't have a plus nine in piloting yet so that yeah that wasn't very helpful the second one though
was a difference it wasn't bad but then again we didn't play it with more characters than roles
because there's like five roles you can do and we played with three people three characters basically
and so we didn't really experience much limitation except for the fact that you had to follow
the guide thing it wasn't like you can scan first a fix later no it was fixed first scan later
which might which kind of makes sense to sit the the the the the fact that you can't choose which
one you're going to do first is a little weird the fact that you scan during the piloting
is also a little weird I would put it in the engineering phase but basically it does make sense
like it's supposed to be middle round so it like you acted before then you're going to fix the
wounds of your ship you're gonna fix your shields you're gonna fix your hole and stuff and then
you're gonna move and scan and then you're gonna shoot that makes sense and then I think they
thought like okay so you're going into combat so you're gonna skip the engineering phase if it's
like your first round and you're immediately gonna scan and move but in fact no you don't skip
because you can do helpful stuff which would be which is why I think they should do the scanning
part in like the engineering phase because you're gonna scan first then you're going to be like okay
we're gonna divert more power to these things um because now you have a plan and then you're
gonna move and shoot stuff but it would you could easily like fix those problems with just
making the characters be able to decide what they're doing like a normal fight but it's not
necessarily bad it's not necessarily good it's different it doesn't really feel out of place
too necessarily the one point that kind of confused me with the second the the Starship Combat
session we had last week was why would they even put a completely more or less completely
different game into this game and to be honest I didn't enjoy this Starship Combat as much as
everything else in StarFinder so it kind of seemed a little bit needless to me to put
put another game into into StarFinder I would have enjoyed it more if Starship Combat was just
an adoption of the regular fighting rules and without all those all those special rules that made
it technically a different game I think to me it was to the whole Starship Combat was too
restricted it felt more like a board game and less like an RPG and I prefer playing an RPG
where you have use your own fantasy to to figure out what your character is doing then to a board
game where you stick to strict rules and then follow the rules I didn't necessarily equate
that it felt like a board game now that I think about you definitely act like a board game more
strategizing than normally as Patrick stated I know remember the first games space combat all that
detailed to to be honest I just skipped over this one it was a more realistic thing I think the
second Starship Combat I wasn't crazy about to tell you the truth a we outclassed the other
ship by so much it was kind of to me like a game of risk whoever has the most armies on a property
is gonna win because all they got to do is keep throwing dice until they got it and I don't think
that this game with the space combat the spaceship combat thing I don't think we could have lost
considering we outclassed them three to one on just about everything except whatever that AC
was that that they had higher than us but it was clear right from the outset all we had to do
was hang in there and we were gonna wait just a game to me yeah and that was my my bad I should have
gotten the correct enemy Starship stats but I I think that Benny's analogy of the official rules
being like a board game is spot on and yeah the player agency just is completely removed in Starship
combat to speak to Padre's point like the fact that you can't scan when you want to scan you have to
wait for a certain phase it's just like this isn't role playing this is this is like some weird
sort of simulations board game system it just doesn't make any sense by any stretch of the imagination
so it's you go from complete freedom as your role playing character to like this bizarre restrictions
of of spaceship combat and it just feels it is it's a different game and the fact that none of you
seem to remember the initial space combat is great that's essentially what it was designed to do is
just to fit right into the rest of the game doesn't remove you from the role playing experience you
get to do what you want to do it should feel very fluid it is essentially like ground combat except
you all do happen to be in a spaceship but you're there's a lot of agency you get to do stuff and it
doesn't last long either which is another benefit even with you outranking your enemy in that
final combat I mean it took us like an hour and a half to get through that process that's just
crazy that's a huge investment on a role playing game is it's like every combat every spaceship
encounter is going to take at least 90 minutes and if you only play for two or three or four hours
that's that's a big chunk of time of not actually role playing for the record though playing
starship combat with you guys the official starship combat with you guys was the first time I ever
had fun playing that system like I've played it and game mastered the official starship combat
several several times now and it was miserable every single time but I actually had a lot of fun
playing with you guys yeah maybe this was just because we have classed the other ship it that
definitely probably colored things differently although honestly baffled says that that's not
very sportsman like but it it actually kind of it did help because trust me we wouldn't have
even gotten through the spaceship combat if if you hadn't outranked that other starship because
what ends up happening from experience isn't they keep fixing their shields they keep rebalancing
their shields you keep hitting them they keep hitting you you fix your shields it goes on forever
I mean it can go on for just hours at a time of time it is not fun it's just not fun the fact
that you could actually get their shields down and then explode them was a huge benefit to us all
I didn't think of that yeah that's that's really possible just you could be in an eternal fight
constantly shooting constantly fixing never getting any progress on yeah I mean there is a
system eventually that will cause their systems to glitch and do unpredictable things there is
entropy eventually but it takes a long time to get there from my experience generally people
agree that it goes on way too long on at the best of times so basically what you're saying is it
would feel like that bomb battle we did in the in the fifth edition the anything which baffled
wasn't in but the sorry that make the reference but yeah basically where we were fighting
this one guy who would regenerate oh that's right and every time yeah yeah and it would
at it literally took us like a two sessions or something yeah and the session in the middle
no there's sessions finish it and it was so long I'm so glad I skipped that troll that one time
that would have been horrifyingly long too yeah yeah um okay let's do final thoughts final thoughts
Ken would you play again for instance no oh that's surprising you seem to have very glowing
reviews all the way through but your answer is no you'll never play again no I'll never play again
I think it completely turned me off role-playing games the whole combat thing the the fact that
there was very little character development or anything interesting happened we arrived at a rock
and we've killed some monsters and the way flew away it seems going to superficial to me in the same
way that you know we're in a tavern and we go to a cave when we kill a vampire yeah yeah um well
for the record though that is that is this that is this style of game like you can definitely find
RPGs that are not all about combat so yeah it just kind of depends on I told them yeah yeah maybe
we should find one of those for for our next review yeah I could definitely drum up a system that
actually actively discourages combat I would say dead earth for instance discouraged combat
because you were pretty fragile in in theory but I think a period I would need a period
away from it to be honest yeah yeah okay I'll invite you back to the live the first the first few
games was was good and oddly enough listening to the games that she did on HPR or even
lost and bronx's one that was more interesting to me and it was more interesting listening to the
combat in that for some weird reason but being in it myself I just felt yeah I'm sitting here
now I can't do anything yeah I have to wait for six people to go whereas in real life it doesn't
happen like that but listen to the podcast of the show it's kind of weird because okay now we're
cutting to the action scene the first guy has shot and then the second guy has shot third guy
shot but I'm sitting there wondering okay what am I going to do I've got this excellent Swiss army
now I've highly recommended one we're going to do in the next thing yeah it wasn't as interesting
to play as it was to sit down and listen to oddly enough I think one point you mentioned is also
our our party was maybe a tiny little bit too large so it kind of took a long time until you got
to do something again in in a fight because there were so many people fighting yeah that was
generally in the beginning I'm sure after that like with four people four people is it still takes
a little time but it it's a lot less yeah it's amazing even in fifth edition and we only
play with three player characters that can take time so I think yeah I think RPG combat because it
breaks out into those turns it it is I think some people do find it pretty pretty boring I don't
find it boring personally but I know lots of people who find combat in RPG very boring which is fine
the default setting for dnd style game like yeah the dnd derivative games such as star finder
and fifth edition is like pretty heavy combat like that's just part of the game people there's
there's a crowd that really really likes that and I get really impatient with RPGs that are too
strangely enough well to me I felt was a bit of a bit of a missed opportunity we had this cool
spaceship oh yeah this cool got one two three four different spaceships that were all cool and
we didn't get to I felt there were a bit like a two-dimensional thing it's probably what they were
because it's just a map but it didn't really matter that you know there was there was no
novenous about any of the spaceships it was just you're on the spaceship and it's going to be
faster you're on this spaceship and it's going to be slower there was no there was no meat on the
bone of the spaceships that felt yeah I mean the fact that we were playing an adventure path that
is very much like you know get the players here get them here get them there that is quite restrictive
for a four-week game that's it's kind of almost I think kind of important but there is a different
style of playing where you just let the players decide what they want to do you know they they
get into spaceship they decide where to go they go to a world you decide what the world has on it
and they explore it you know that sort of thing different style of game and probably not my specialty
frankly I had a game master who who really really did that sort of thing really well where he could
just come up with all kinds of stuff off the top of his head and it was always amazing but yeah I
think for for the short games anyway if you give the players too much agency strangely I think
that it starts to stall because then everyone's just sort of puttering around without any purpose so
I think for the shorter games railroading the players is a little bit of an essential thing I could
be wrong on that that's just my opinion I think that's really interesting Ken that that you you
want a little bit more story development out of your RPGs I think that's totally a fair criticism
to be fair you guys on our fifth edition game um you you guys do a really surprisingly good job
of avoiding combat sometimes which is cool so and it does demonstrate I thought yeah it can be done
it's just the game master has to be open to it which is easier to do like I say when there's like
this just this great expanse of endless time you know it's like I don't care how long it takes
you to get through the abyss like you can take five weeks or one week you know it doesn't matter
whereas in the Star Finder game I knew that I needed to get us through this adventure in four
weeks and that was that so yeah a little bit of a different different requirement in the in the
in the D&E fifth edition thing we like I mostly try to avoid combat for the sole reason of it takes
time it takes more time to do combat than to avoid combat it takes more in game time maybe
overall it might take more time but we can do more in one session if we don't go into combat
I like combat I love I might even love combat but it takes lots of time and I just want to play
D&D um and I want to progress in the story otherwise it doesn't feel like we did that much
so yeah that's why I usually try to avoid combat plus than it's easier with you have all your
spell levels all the stuff safer oh and similar to me rushing you through the Star Finder game
I'm gonna have to rush us through the rest of this review because we've only got about 15 more
minutes padrig final thoughts would you play again yes definitely I enjoyed it wouldn't say it's
better than fifth edition I like fifth edition more that might also just be because I have more
books I have more experience I have better characters and stuff um but yeah I do like this um yeah
I just don't I I just like fun to see a little more than sci-fi but yeah it's enjoyable definitely
would play again yeah seven jades out of ten seven point five I'd then I would say if you ask
me whether I want to play another Star Finder game or what should this just I'd definitely go
for Star Finder if you if you ask me but I want to play Star Finder or Shadow Run I'd go for
Shadow Run because I can't I can't exactly pinpoint it to to anything but to me the whole story
in the game also felt a bit flat I enjoyed I enjoyed the first session on the
base station I don't know for what the reason but as soon as we entered this starship it kind of
at some point it was was a bit boring even even the fights weren't that I I thought the best fight
was the first one where I'm not sure who was who was there I think that's the first session where
Phil and Phil yeah oh yeah oh yeah oh what's just be a philly something like that yeah for for
some reason this was more enjoyable I think I'm just I just prefer as I say I said before I just
prefer like close worlds where where I know how they work and where I know where my character lifts
and everything to open space this is really interesting almost feedback I would say because it's
interesting because that first session was the least scripted session that we had because I was
stalling for time so a lot of that was just me making stuff up to to sort of give you guys something
to do which maybe it's just your imagination is better than the books I mean I think maybe this
book wasn't the best adventure which kind of surprises me and and I I kept going back and forth
between should I run this adventure or not and then I thought well this was the adventure that
they put out concurrently with the game like it was the first adventure they came out upon
release that's the adventure everyone sort of had to choose if you wanted to play a pre-written
adventure that was what was available so I thought that's what we'll do sort of like to emulate
the everyone else's first impression I don't know if that was the right choice I feel like now
maybe it wasn't but then again you know no the purpose of this is to try the game and that's
what we were doing I mean at the same time we could we can try the game with a made up story too
and I think that would be equally valid it would just be a different tactic I definitely agree
that the the first few sessions were a lot more enjoyable than it kind of kind of is I think I liked
being like I wasn't there at the very like first you could put the one where the people who I'm
who like I'm pretty sure that was with the people who mistook the time the day yeah maybe I
should have mistaken the day but I like the spaceship Basel the most yeah the the the the
the battles on the on the spaceship with the with the dog things those I liked exploring the thing
it was very scary though like sci-fi is very scary than fancy I sometimes in the fifth edition
thing I got scared like when there was when when Lenny was attacked for instance in the very first
adventure and we didn't know what it was he just saw a creepy doll there and then he was attacked
and so we burned the house that that was how I felt like I was so I was I was scared because oh no
something attacked it there's a creepy it's it's in in the abandoned house let's burn it down
it's it's in single reaction but this adventure was scary it was just the zombie dog things the zombies
it was all pretty all the space stuff just makes it way more like um with with firefly you also
how about you know sometimes with some of those episodes which isn't a bad thing but it's definitely
something you should know yeah yeah baffled final thoughts slash would you play again well I
don't have a lot of experience so I would say yeah I'd play a man because I had a really good time
I don't know really what I was expecting I really enjoyed the interaction and watching everybody
else play and everybody else's ideas and come up with different scenarios and how they would do
things I found that fascinating I did not find at any point that I was bored waiting for my turn
to be on screen again because it was for me just enjoyable to watch what everybody else was coming
up with and doing and I had a good time with that I wish we would have spent more time exploring
the spaceship before moving over to the asteroid because I was having a good time finding out what
was in all the different rooms and what was behind door A and door B and outdoor C killed me so I think
so I had a good time I at this juncture I don't think I'd want to play that starship combat
thing again but the actual scenario we played or more in that universe yeah I'd have a good time
with that I did have cool great thanks guys for the for the thoughts it sounds like
sounds like we have reviewed starfinder so next week we'll start a different game which I'll
announce on the hacker public radio mailing list everyone is of course welcome to join in
anyone listening to this is welcome anyone on the mailing list is welcome to join in um thanks a lot
you've been listening to hacker public radio at hackerpublicradio.org we are a community podcast
network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday today's show like all our shows
was contributed by an hbr listener like yourself if you ever thought of recording a podcast then
click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is. Hacker public radio was found
by the digital dog pound and the infonomican computer club and it's part of the binary revolution
at binrev.com if you have comments on today's show please email the host directly leave a comment
on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself unless otherwise stated today's show is
released on the creative comments attribution share a live 3.0 license