Free RPG Day - Pathfinder's new science fiction brother

A Skittermander - ready for action!

So Free RPG Day has come and gone again. I have to say that this is a wonderful institution, and have the good fortune to live about 10 minutes by car from the Dice Saloon, now in new premises in the heart of Brighton, which hosted the event last weekend. If you are in the Sussex area, the Dice Saloon is well worth checking out.

This year I managed to get along to Free RPG Day in Brighton for the third year running, which has to be a record for me, as I failed to get to Dragonmeet in December 2017 and also failed to go to Salute in London in April of this year.

One of the attractions of Free RPG Day is the swag - free stuff that is given away by publishers to promote their games. Among the items I picked up were an excellent little one shot for Paizo's new Starfinder science fiction RPG. I was in two minds when Starfinder came out, partly because I wondered whether it would be a clone of the original Pathfinder RPG, but in space, which I suppose you could say it largely is.

BUT, I've found myself recently becoming a little jaded with horror RPGs, which have been my mainstay over a number of years, even though, if you looked at the number of hours I have spent actually playing horror RPGs versus Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder and other FRPGs, then horror still stands in a distinct minority. I have tended to run horror / pulp as my favoured genres on those occasions when I have been behind the GM's screen, be it in 1960s Vietnam, 1930s New Orleans or even Renaissance Spain.

However, more recently I've been playing more science fiction. I think this comes more through force of circumstance, since at the Dice Saloon I've been able to dip in and out of Star Wars D6 and a Judge Dredd D20 campaign that was in its final stages, and bend this around my work schedule. I've also been inspired by a fellow player to start watching Star Trek.

Star Trek is a setting I've never been that familiar with, always being at heart a Star Wars fan when it comes to the whole Trek vs Wars debate. Yet as I become more jaded by the global political situation and the financial markets, somehow the wide eyed optimism of Star Trek becomes more attractive. I've started watching Star Trek: the Next Generation on Netflix, which I missed out on when it first came out as I was at school/university and had other things to worry about. This I'm finding quite entertaining. I'm still on series one, mind you, but I enjoy dipping into it at the end of a long day, and at 45 minutes per episode, there is less chance of being interrupted!

Starfinder RPG

Back to science fiction RPGs. I've played quite a bit in my time, including forays into SLA Industries, Shadowrun, and more recently Dark Heresy and Rogue Trader from the Warhammer 40,000 stable since moving to Brighton. But many of these settings have been very pessimistic and dystopian in nature - SLA Industries' World of Progress is a very nihilistic vision, while Dark Heresy's inquisitors work to preserve a ghastly pseudo-medieval bureaucracy. By contrast Star Trek is bounding with optimism and a drive to explore and improve the galaxy. We need a bit more of that in today's world.

Reading between the lines, and I don't own the game yet, Starfinder looks a little more positive. coming to science fiction as it does from a more heroic/generic perspective, dare I say, space opera. Like Pathfinder, it does have its own setting, and is not generic, unlike for instance the early d20 Modern offering from Wizards of the Coast in the early 2000s, which included a science fiction expansion I have since sold on eBay. That was a setting you could use as the basis for any science fiction campaign - Starfinder comes with a ready-made setting into which you can shoe horn your own plots.

During Free RPG Day Paizo released 'Skitter Shot' for Starfinder. This is a one shot which, dare I say it, has been inspired by the success of their series for their fantasy RPG based on the exploits of a mischievous tribe of goblins, which kicked off with 'We Be Goblins!' some years ago. In Skitter Shot the characters play skittermanders, a new alien race created for Starfinder, which remind me a little of Stich from the Lilo & Stitch TV series.

Is it a dungeon bash in space? It certainly looks like one, but it is a realisation of a universe which is a little less...negative...than the Imperium of Dark Heresy. And it is a universe which can probably cater to quite a wide range of styles of play. It may well help to scratch a science fiction itch. I am seriously considering buying Starfinder and giving this one a go at some point. Stay tuned.

Next time: Monster of the Week at Free RPG Day in Brighton...