Gen Con ’23: Paizo’s ‘Starfinder’ Second Edition Is Coming!
by Anton Kromoff
Welcome to the table,
In space!
As part of the company keynote presentation for Gen Con 2023, Paizo officially announced today that Starfinder Second Edition is happening!
Starfinder, a science fiction fantasy TTRPG was launched back in 2017 and has maintained its status as one of the best space exploration and science fantasy adventure games in the TTRPG space EVER. I say that in all seriousness, Starfinder much like its sister system Pathfinder has really grown the genera of TTRPG science fantasy in ways I never expected to see outside of large media-controlled intellectual property licensed games like Star Wars or Star Trek.
With the announcement of Starfinder’s second edition, Paizo begins to lay out our plans for the future.
This new edition of Starfinder is being designed to be fully compatible with the upcoming release of the Pathfinder Remastered rulebooks and all future Pathfinder Second Edition products. This means that all your Pathfinder content going forward will be compatible with the new edition of Starfinder so you can blend the settings with your Storytellers approval.
“With the finalization of the ORC License, and considering that Starfinder has been evolving since its release in 2017, we felt now was a perfect time to bring the system into the future,” says Starfinder’s Managing Creative Director, Thurston Hillman, “We want to take a moment to take all the things we’ve learned since Starfinder began, as well as lessons from the success of Pathfinder’s latest edition, and synthesize those together into a new and better version of Starfinder”.
The announcement featured a short panel with the Starfinder team – Thurston Hillman, Jenny Jarzabski, Dustin Knight, and Jessica Catalan. The roundtable discussion highlighted some key elements of the upcoming Starfinder Playtest and the new edition:
- This is the most open playtest Paizo has ever launched, with deeper looks into the development process.
- Pathfinder Second Edition and Starfinder Second Edition rulesets will be completely cross-compatible, allowing for cross-system porting of classes, creatures, and more — provided your GM allows it.
- The first four classes announced for the Starfinder Playtest are:
- Mystic, represented by the iconic shirren mystic Chk Chk – son of the previous iconic mystic, Keskodai.
- Soldier, represented by the returning iconic vesk soldier Obozaya.
- Envoy, represented by the returning iconic human envoy Navasi.
- Solarion, represented by a new iconic pahtra solarian — also opening up the feline pahtra as a core ancestry for Starfinder Second Edition.
- As part of the ‘open playtest’ model, the Starfinder team will be keeping players updated and involved with “Field Tests” — the first of which released today alongside the announcement at starfinderplaytest.com
- Content for this first Field Test includes the Soldier Class (Levels 1-5), new equipment, and new creatures (the Computer Glitch Gremlin and Laser Wolf).
Paizo will release a full playtest in Summer 2024 and is said to be the most open playtest from Paizo to date.
Until next time, boldly go where the forces of the universe lead you!
