Humanity’s homeworld, Golarion, has disappeared. All knowledge of how and why this has happened has been lost in a multiverse-wide amnesia known only as The Gap. Artificial intelligence has risen to godhood and created faster-than-light travel. Magic exists side-by-side with technology in a universe driven by the great mystery of Golarion’s loss. This is the setting of mystery and magic in Paizo’s science-fantasy roleplaying game, Starfinder.
This world is being brought to vivid life with two new lines of starship and character miniatures designed and created by Ninja Division Publishing. For the serious hobbyist, a line of highly-detailed resin miniatures have been developed. Showcased at Gencon 2017 to great acclaim, these eight miniatures represent the Iconic forces of the Starfinder world and are the first in an impressive array of miniatures coming from Ninja Division.
The second line of miniatures are for players who want to leap into the game with a collection of pre-painted characters and ships. This collection is introduced with two sets of Iconic heroes ready to explore the mysteries of the Starfinder universe, as well as two sets of ships, the Pact Worlds Fleet and the Corpse Fleet.
Ninja Division Creative Director John Cadice commented, “Ninja Division has been working hard with Paizo to create a line of pre-painted miniatures for gamers. We’re both passionate fans of miniatures and of Paizo’s fantastic RPG worlds. Starfinder hasn’t disappointed in the richness of the races and designs we get to help bring to life for players.”
Starfinder Creative Director James L.Sutter said, “The sculpts that Ninja Division have been creating for both characters and starships have been blowing our minds with their artistry and obvious love of the genre. I’m especially excited about the ships — I can’t wait to see the looks on my players’ faces the first time I pull out a bunch of the starship miniatures for a space battle!”
This balance of mystery and familiarity sets the tone for Starfinder. It’s also part of the reason for the disappearance of Golarion and the advent of The Gap, a period of collective, galaxy-wide amnesia in which historical documents are unreliable and even those who lived through the events can’t recall them.
“It’s a challenge to simultaneously produce two games when one of them is set in the other’s future,” says Sutter. “We want to be able to call back to Pathfinder, but we don’t want players of both games to page through Starfinder’s setting material and say, ‘Oh, hey, it looks like that Pathfinder adventure we’re playing doesn’t matter, because that whole nation blows up in twenty years anyway.’ By having the Gap as an enforced period of mystery between modern-day Pathfinder and Starfinder, we can help divorce the two games and keep them from stepping on each other’s toes.”
While Starfinder is a standalone game, the rules system will be relatively familiar to Pathfinder players and fans of similar games. “We’re calling it ‘conceptually compatible,’” Sutter says. “Starfinder is its own game, but if you know how to play Pathfinder, you should be able to jump right in and learn it easily. Plus, while it’s not fully backward compatible, we wanted to make sure that monsters from Pathfinder could be dropped into a Starfinder campaign with on-the-fly conversion. So, Game Masters with a vast library of Pathfinder Bestiaries will find them very useful in Starfinder.” One major change is Starfinder’s inclusion of a robust system of starship combat rules. Players’ starships can be customized, modified, and upgraded as their party advances, and every player takes on a different and vital role within starship combat, making sure that everyone is involved in the fight.
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