Starfinder
One of my more recent passions is the role playing game Starfinder. It’s a game that I’ve wanted to play since it came out in 2017. But even if I found a local Starfinder group that was accepting new players, as a driver’s license-less near shut in, I’d have no way to get to and from sessions.
Then came Covid-19.
All
of a sudden, more and more tabletop role playing games were being played over
the internet. Which opened the virtual
door for me to play.
My History With Role Playing Games
I’m an old school Dungeons and Dragons guy. I’ve been playing D&D since 1981. (That’s over 40 years now. Good God, I’m old!)
I started with ‘basic’ Dungeons & Dragons, the red paperback book. (It was me and my friend Chad, with our friend Bob acting as Dungeon Master. I played a character named Zarlantric Xanguinthain Gromorvah. Yowza.)
I then moved on to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Then to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd edition. When TSR sold the game to Wizards of the Coast, I started playing Dungeons & Dragons, 3rd edition. (Followed by Dungeons & Dragons 3.5.)
Then 4th edition came out. I took a look at the new rules and said, “Pass.” And moved on to Pathfinder, which was the real successor to D&D 3.5. (A lot of people jumped ship from D&D at that point. It seems that nobody liked D&D 4th edition.)
I have since played in a couple of short lived campaigns in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, which is much better than 4th edition, but still not as good as Pathfinder 1st edition.
I’ve also played the D20 Modern role playing game. And I’ve collected a bunch of games back in the day that I never got to actually play. Star Frontiers, Top Secret, Marvel Super Heroes, Doctor Who, Judge Dredd, Ghostbusters, Palladium, GURPS, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and who knows how many others.
And
now I’m playing Starfinder, which is basically a futuristic extension of
Pathfinder, taking place in a spacefaring society.
The Short-Lived Tale of Reverend Rand
I started searching for an online Starfinder group that was accepting new players back in October of 2020. I eventually found one, and started playing in November. My character was Reverend Rand, an Android operative (think thief / spy / assassin) who was also a priest of the god Triune (deity of sentient machines).
The GM [GM = Game Master] was a guy with the Discord handle of Obadiah. Obadiah’s group played every other Saturday. A woman called Galenty who was one of the other players in Obadiah’s group, GM-ed her own group on the alternate Saturdays. I should have immediately asked to join her group when I discovered its existence, but like a man with a Nerf ball for a brain, I didn’t.
Obadiah seemed to cancel his session at the last minute as often as he actually played. I think that I got two or three sessions of play in before ‘the incident’. Luckily for me, I did finally ask Galenty if I could join her group. She said yes, and for a brief moment, I was playing in two groups.
Then came the aforementioned incident. There was an argument between Obadiah and one of his players on Discord (I didn’t actually witness this, I just heard about it afterward). An argument which led to Obadiah basically rage-quitting his game, and deleting the Discord server that both groups were playing on. He took his ball and went home.
Fortunately,
Galenty had made note of all of our Discord handles, and was able to invite us
all to a brand new server.
Bertram the Mauler
My second (and current) Starfinder character is called Bertram the Mauler. He’s a soldier-turned-operative and a former gladiator. Oh, he’s also an uplifted bear.
What’s an uplifted bear, you ask? Heh. At some point in the past, an advanced race with better than average genetic modification abilities took a look at bears and said, “Bears are okay, but wouldn’t they be better if they were bipedal? Had opposable thumbs? Sentience? And limited telepathy? Let’s do that to them!”
They then did that to a bunch of bears. Those bears started breeding with each other and produced more uplifted bears. Now they’re a whole species. Twelve foot tall and with razor-sharp claws.
When
I joined Galenty’s campaign, the other characters were all third level, so she
instructed me to create my character at third level as well. If I knew then what I know now, he wouldn’t
be a gladiator. And he’d be a full
operative rather than multiclass soldier / operative. And he’d probably be called Bertram the Ghost
instead of Bertram the Mauler. His starting
weapon certainly wouldn’t have been a sledgehammer.
Global Representation
I
don’t think that any of our players share a time zone. I’m in Oregon, our GM is in Montana, the
others are all elsewhere. One of our
players is in Sweden, and has to set his alarm for the middle of the night to
come play with us.
The Other Characters (and Their Players)
Aside from GM Galenty and Bertram, we play the game with the following characters:
Lirta, a Mystic / Solarian played by Fnoffen, our player in Sweden. Lirta is the group’s medic and the captain of our starship.
Xavier Quinn, a human soldier bounty hunter played by SavageJeff, who has a really (sometimes really, really) bad joke for any potential occasion.
The Duke of Decay, a lovingly-dimwitted human vanguard played by Koopz, whose solution to every problem is to punch it.
And
Luke Kaskinstsky, a (possibly insane) Technomancer / Soldier played by Toaster
Servitor (who – in my head – I always refer to as Toaster Strudel. Don’t really know why.)
Roll20.com
Earlier I mentioned having played in a couple of 5th Edition D&D campaigns. One of those was an online campaign. We played in a Google Hangouts room. Everyone rolled their own physical dice at their location, and we relied on the honor code to keep people from fudging their rolls.
Our Starfinder campaign is played using Discord’s voice channels for communication, and Roll20.com as our virtual tabletop. And I am not a big fan of Roll20. (Neither is our GM, who complains about its deficiencies on a regular basis.)
As a player, Roll20 is frustrating. (As a GM, I suspect I’d find an alternate platform to play on.) Their character sheets are mostly counter-intuitive. And they lack some of the seemingly simplest components. I mean, how hard would it be to implement the programming to count your ammunition down every time you make a ranged attack?
The
GM has to spend a lot of time punching data into her side of the Roll20
platform, and the game doesn’t even retain that information from session to
session. WTF?
Miniatures
Needing artwork for my online character token, I turned to HeroForge.com. HeroForge is a site that produces custom miniatures for role playing games and other likely pursuits. One of the options in their character creator menu is anthropomorphic bear. Score!
After building a miniature for Bertram, I did one for Reverend Rand. (Originally, Reverend Rand’s character token was from a photo of a LEGO minifigure I had put together to represent him.)
At first, I was content to simply build the mini in virtual and screenshot it for the character token. But then HeroForge emailed me a coupon code. And since I had stimulus money at the time, I went ahead and ordered physical minis for both Bertram and the Reverend. I ordered them each uncolored (the difference between uncolored and colored is an extra $15 each), and handed them off to my brother (whose hobby is painting minis) for the finishing touches.
Not Enough Starfinder
Playing once every other week is fine and all (and certainly better than not getting to play at all), but I want more.
So I’ve started looking for another group. Not to replace my current group, but to add a second biweekly (or maybe weekly) campaign to play in. So far, I’ve had no luck in finding a new group, but hopefully soon.
My Plethora of Unplayed Characters
One of the reasons why I want to play more Starfinder is because I have an interest in playing a bunch of different characters. (Specific characters, not just quantity for quantity’s sake.)
Right now I’ve got six or seven character concepts sitting in a word processor file waiting on an opportunity to play. Two of those I’ve fleshed out with stats and skills and whatnot.
My probable next character is going to be Red Rog, who is a Tiefling (demon-blooded) mechanic. When you first meet Red Rog, he’ll tell you that you probably recognize him as the host of Red Rog’s Toolkit on the InfoSphere (space internet). Yes, in addition to being a space adventurer, Red Rog is a minor celebrity with his own repair show.
The other character I’ve got waiting in the wings is Chuk-Chuk. Chuk-Chuk is a ysoki (think ratman) mystic. He’s a priest of Lao Shu Po (aka Grandmother Rat), who is the goddess of assassins, rats, spies, and thieves.
So much fun roleplaying in my future!
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