Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 259 - Space Adventures & Review of Starfinder 2e Player Core

Episode Date: August 17, 2025

In this episode, we're blasting off into the unknown with tips for running epic space adventures, from exploring derelict ships to discovering bizarre new worlds. Plus, get an in-depth review of the Starfinder 2e Player Core, diving into its mechanics, ancestries, and how it connects to Pathfinder 2e. Don't miss this cosmic journey!   Resources: Buy Me a Coffee! - ko-fi.com/taking20podcast Episode 140 - Spelljammer Review Episode 137 - The Gap and Empty Histories Starfinder 2e Archives of Nethys - https://2e.aonsrd.com/  

This week on the Taking 20 podcast. The same type of adventures you run today in your fantasy world could be run in a space campaign with very little change. It's no longer a lost city on the edge of a frontier, but a derelict spaceship. Thank you for listening to the Taking 20 podcast, episode 259. discussing adventures in space and a review of the Paiso book StarFinder 2E Player Core I want to thank this week's sponsor

watches my watch went missing but I never went looking for it I couldn't find the time if you like this podcast please like rate and subscribe to it wherever you happen to find it that may help someone who would enjoy

or may like this podcast may help them find it so please take a few minutes if you don't mind and do those things for me fair warning this is likely going to be a long episode i'm trying to cover two broad topics so today's episode's probably going to be a little supersized my apologies if you wanted me to keep it a little bit shorter but hopefully you can listen to it in two parts instead i want to start this episode by talking about how to run adventures in space there are some people like me

who love to mix and match their fantasy and sci-fi with varying levels of mixture between the two Pathfinder, for example, has just a touch of sci-fi to go with their high fantasy, with at least one adventure path, for example, for first edition, incorporated a crashed spaceship with advanced technology in it. I'm going to stop there so I don't spoil anything, but if you're interested, the adventure path is Iron Gods, and I loved it. Meanwhile, games like Shadow Run are more technology-focused with just a dash of fantasy ancestries and magic thrown in.

There are a ton of game systems that would let your character have an axe in one hand and a laser pistol in the other, mixing the two genres like chocolate and peanut butter. I will concede, however, that there are some players and DMs that want to keep the two completely separate, keeping wizards off their spaceships and arc throwers out of the hands of their paladins. Hey, I get it, no judgment here. These people see the mix between fantasy and sci-fi like mixing chocolate and ketchup. Each is fine on their own, but not great mixed together.

I will admit, I am a sci-fi fan, and I love game systems where the two can blend. Besides Starfinder and Shadow Run, there was like the old-school Greyhawk that had a little sci-fi spice added to the fantasy setting, and I really enjoyed mixing the two. Space adventures, though, they're not new to fantasy RPGs. D&D released the original Spell Jammer Rules in 1989, and updated, them in 2022 for the 5E rule system. The original rules back in the 80s were, gosh, strange.

And the decision that released updated versions of the rules honestly wasn't well received. I did a review of the 5E Spell Jammer release back in episode 140, and I'll put a link to that episode in the description. Just know that the rules for D&D in space didn't really jive well with the game system. They kept a lot of the original rules that were odd

and not to cast aspersions, but the original Spell Jammer book reads like a magic mushroom-induced fever dream that they tried to codify into D&D rules. But what if you're itching to run an adventure in space? What are your options? There are game systems, traveler, alien, Star Wars, where being in space is a core part of the gameplay. You can always run a game in one of these game systems where it's built in and live out your Star Trek-fueled gaming dreams with a game built. for that type of adventure. But you might be saying, Jeremy, I don't want to learn a whole new game system. We finally got the hang of D&D or Delta Green

or whatever you've been playing and everybody at the table knows the rules or at least as close as your table can get to knowing the rules. The last thing you want to do is to start from scratch with a completely different way of designing encounters, new stat blocks, new ways of building characters,

and just trying to figure out what these new ability scores mean? Okay, then let's take the game you love, D&D, Blades in the Dark, whatever, and move that adventure into space. The good news is that if you're moving from fantasy to space, there are a lot of similarities between the two. In many ways, adventures in space compared to adventures on a fantasy planet are just variance on a theme.

There are core parts of the adventures and adventure design that are consistent between the two, The concepts of good versus evil, law versus chaos, rebels against a tyrant, exploring the unknown, escort missions and fetch quests, and the list could just go on and on. The same type of adventures you run today in your fantasy world could be run in a space campaign with very little change. For example, imagine you're running your game in a fantasy world and they're exploring a lost city. Maybe there was a cataclysm or a disaster of the city, and it was abandoned due to war, plague, a kingdom on the decline, it's overrun by nature, or any of a hundred other reasons why a city might be abandoned on a frontier. In this city, you may find monsters that have moved in, traps from weakened and collapsing buildings, environmental hazards left behind, and so forth. Where did everybody go? What caused this city to become deserted?

Sounds like a fun adventure, right? Solving the mystery, finding lost artifacts, killing unknown monsters, etc. Now move that exact same concept to an adventure in space. It's no longer a lost city on the edge of a frontier, but a derelict spaceship. A ship devoid of life forms drifts into colony space. It doesn't respond to hails and scans reveal no intelligent life on board. What the heck happened to this ship? Where did the ship come from? Is it really empty? What secrets and technology are left behind? It's the same adventure just with a science fiction twist. Similarly, in your fantasy world, there's a large earthquake and now there's a path to part of the underdark that was previously unknown or unreachable. Or an adventurer has

discovered a new unexplored island in a vast ocean. What could live there? And more importantly, what relics and magic items can we find there, bring them back and sell and get rich? This same concept can be moved to an adventure where a previously unknown planet or even solar system is discovered. Is there life there? If so, is it intelligent? What new things can we learn by going there? Maybe an archaeologist needs some adventuring types to keep them safe in this unknown land. As you can see, the same types of adventures can be picked up from your fantasy world and dropped into a sci-fi adventure with very little modification. It's no different for a city leader in a fantasy world giving a quest

versus the leader of a planet or mega corporation doing so in the sci-fi world. I mean, at its heart, most adventures are a variation of go to this place, kill this thing, meet these people, steal this other thing,

or gather this information. Most quests are a variant of those five things. Those basic building blocks of adventure can be used anywhere in any type of campaign. Despite their similarities, though, there are some differences in sci-fi adventures when compared to traditional fantasy.

Think about your group of fantasy adventurers, fighter rogue cleric wizard, heading into lost ruins. They are, for all intents and purposes, completely on their own. It's part of the reason why adventuring is so damn dangerous in the first place. There's likely not a cavalry that can ride in to save them if they get in over their heads. If they get trapped in a room with sealed doors, they are most likely going to starve to death.

Even if they tell someone where and when they're going, the adventurers are cut off from the outside world unless they can make their way out again to tell the tale. With sci-fi adventures, would that be true given the advances in technology? I mean, wouldn't most sci-fi universes have some sort of communicator? Even if it's just a short-range one, if they have someone waiting outside the ruins or the lost planet or on their home ship, couldn't they radio or quantum message or whatever the person, if they get into a jam? much less long-range communication technology where you see, like, in many sci-fi properties.

In Star Trek, they could communicate with a ship whenever they wanted to, or they could communicate all the way back to home bases if they needed to, unless, of course, the plot needed them to be isolated because of, oh, I don't know, minerals in the walls of the cave they're trapped in or interference from a local civilization that wants to keep the away party completely isolated or solar radiation or whatever. There are ways you can create that fantasy,

sense of isolationist adventuring in sci-fi. There'll probably need to be some reason why they can't just connect back to the Federation or Galactic Empire or whomever. So if you want that traditional fantasy adventuring experience, you may need to come up with a reason, even if it's a contrived one for the adventuring party to be utterly on their own. Furthermore, information is much more readily available in most sci-fi settings. Whatever that universe's version of the internet is,

will likely allow adventurers to do some research and gather information before even setting off for the minds of the planet Radri or whatever. It's much harder to surprise the party outside of recent changes to that location that may not be reflected in the knowledge archives. Underground elves have moved in to reclaim the area or an earthquake has made parts of the ruined temple radioactive or something similar. It is possible that the information the party references or looks up before an adventure could be incorrect, incomplete, or out of date. Maybe the previous person filed a false report about the location because of, I don't know, bribery, coercion, or they're simply lazy.

Yeah, I went there, it's a deserted hellhole. When in reality, there's a thriving underground society that they just couldn't be arched to look into, but they still wanted to get paid for the work. So if you want to run adventures in space, what are my tips? First off, in space, no one can hear you scream. Yeah, okay, tagline for the movie Alien. God's, I love that movie. No, not because Scurney Weaver gets in her underwear. Look, I mean, she's a gorgeous badass, but the movie was just a tense...

Sorry, sparked a discussion with my wife, and I learned that she has the hots from Mike Rowe of Dirty Jobs fame. Huh, that was unexpected. Anyway, first off, with space adventures, I think one of the strongest themes you can embrace is the unknown. To quote Douglas Adams, space is big. You won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. There is so much that we don't know about space, and the same could be said in your game world, or game universe, rather. Even if you're adventuring in the Starfinder Pact Worlds, where most of the solar system is mapped

and drift pathways to nearby star systems are well known, there are always edges of the known that aren't explored, where a map would say, here there be, space dragons. While fantasy games let GMs go kind of nuts when designing their homebrew creatures, space adventures let you take off the reins and just go double hog on design. Almost anything and everything goes. An undead space lizard with rocky plates in front like a Treseratops? Sure, sounds fun. An elephant-like creature that can change its pigment like a chameleon

and it has an octopus head with tentacles and all. It's stated up. A hybrid eagle and zebra with wings like a Pegasus, head of an eagle in stripes? Sure, call it an eagle obra and throw it at the party. And it's not just creatures. Make bat shit crazy environments like the one with a methane atmosphere

that's generally safe, except for there's one time in its orbit when geysers erupt oxygen into the methane air making the entire atmosphere flammable. Fireballs might change from an area of effect damage to genocidal world enders. Make the environment like, Mercury where it's tidily locked and half the planet is permanently boiling hot and the other half is permanently frozen.

Maybe creatures have settled beneath the surface of the area. In a very narrow area, it's habitable. An environment could be changed by modifying gravity, have a world with half gravity from what the players are used to. They can now jump twice as high and much farther linearly than while probably being able to survive falls from greater heights. Or have a fight in zero gravity where the players in the DM have. to account for a third dimension of movement. Changing temperatures, changing area, et cetera, can really add variety to the game, especially the battle maps.

Finding strange creatures and environments like this can really make the game feel magical. Discovery of what was unknown or lost is a very fun aspect to many games, and I think, if handled properly, these discoveries can make your players say, that was cool. I wonder what's over the next horizon.

Embrace the unknown. Go nuts with creature and environment design. The third tip I would have for you is if your characters are traveling in space on a ship, make that ship part of the adventure. Hell, give it character. In space adventures, your ship is so much more than your mode of travel. It is a home base. It's resource storage.

It's where you go to eat. It's where you can go to stitch wounds and make plans. The ship can become critical to the adventure and even a character in its own right. Imagine if the ship itself has a personality. It's AI like Jarvis and Friday in the Iron Man suit or the ship in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where the doors opened with a sighing happy sound that Marvin couldn't stand.

Or it could be like the old TV show Farscape where the ship itself is alive and has a living pilot fused to the ship to control where it travels. I think the ship's name was Moia? Sorry, back then I had eyes for Chiana. I definitely remember her. I've been told to get back on track and to stop talking about alien girl crushes from the past, so let's get back to the episode. Ships can have a history that explains their purpose or even repurpose in their past.

Their quirks, their foibles, especially if the onboard computer has a semblance of sentience. The ship can provide information and assistance and may even want to give the pilot grief when it takes too many asteroids to the power couplings. As I previously mentioned, Paiso has released some adventures from, for Pathfinder that lead into space, but it's almost always teleporting to another planet. I don't know of an official module that has you actually travel in a spaceship going on adventures into the black as Firefly used to describe it. But the good news is, Pisos released rules for a space-themed version of Pathfinder called Starfinder, recently updating it to the Starfinder 2E player core. Let's start with the basics about that book. It is 464 pages long. The hard copy will run you 604

99, but the PDF can be bought online from Paiso for 1999. In the interest of full disclosure, Paiso were kind enough to provide me with a review PDF copy of the book. But as I always say, that doesn't affect my reviews. I'm going to give you my honest opinion, whether it's great, crap, or somewhere in between. I will admit, I was excited for Starfinder 2E since I loved 1E. Heck, I loved it ever since I've played it online during GenCon. oh god, 2018, 2017, long time ago. I did love Starfinder 1E, but it suffered from some of the same issues that Pathfinder

1E did. It was pretty complex. There was a lot of balance issues with the game. God, hell, a low-level operative could outshine almost any other class without even trying. Mystics were magic users that made you feel like you're casting nerve bullets at enemies, especially at higher levels. Paiso released a second edition of Starfinder, numerous goals, starting with getting rid of the language derived from the OGL license shenanigans Wizards of the Coast pulled back in January 2023. That crisis has largely passed, but Paiso made the decision to publish the Ork license and publish all of its materials under that. They also sought to

correct a lot of balance issues I mentioned and bring the rule set in line with those released for Pathfinder 2E remastered. All that being said, let's talk about the book itself. I have not been shy with my praise to Paiso about the artwork they use. Sonia Harris and the entire art team has provided beautiful artwork in this book with image after image that would be, God, it'd be at home in a graphic novel or could be used to provide you with inspiration for character and adventure ideas. I am very glad that Paiso decided to design Starfinder 2E in such a way that it shares mechanics with Pathfinder 2E.

If you have played Pathfinder 2E, then everything in Starfinder feels familiar. According to Paiso, in theory, the entire contents of the game systems could cross over with one another. You could potentially bring your Shiren Mystic from StarFinder 2E into your Pathfinder 2E world, or you could have your Leshi Oracle fall through a wormhole and Galerian and wind up in the far future Starfinder campaign with no changes to the characters. While I did not have time before this review to cross characters over between the two systems, I'm very interested in trying that in the near future. It's theoretically possible.

The mechanics of the characters are exactly alike between the two systems, ability scores, feats, skills, level progression, character build mechanics, etc., duplicated exactly between the two systems. While reading the book, I took a look at some of the rules and values that are provided and as are in common between the two systems. The simple DCs or difficulty classes are the same between the two systems. The ancestries that are in common between the two have similar buildments, mechanics with similar bonuses. Both have four schools of magic and many of the feats are common

between the two systems. The fleet beat gives you higher speed by five feet per action. Die hard means you don't die until you're reached dying five instead of dying four. These commonalities certainly make it possible to bring a character from one world and game system to the other. However, in thinking about this, I think there'll be challenges crossing a character over, not the least of which is I wonder how much play testing has been done between the two. There's a fundamental design decision between the two games, I think that points to a potential challenge. In Pathfinder 2E, most monsters and characters and creatures have melee attacks with range attacks existing, but many times being secondary to melee combat.

Pathfinder 2E fighters, for example, are commonly sword and board or pole arm fighters or dagger fighters, tridents, whatever, and they are very good at going toe to toe with monsters and baddies. You can make characters that are skilled at range combat, but in my experience with the system, melee is far more prevalent in Pathfinder 2E. In Starfinder 2E, at least my brief read of the rules, it feels like that script flips. There are melee weapons, and the rules from melee combat appear to be the same with similar combat maneuvers, like trip and grapple and shove and disarm. But at least in my week with the book, the expectation is that almost every character will be involved in ranged combat of some sort.

Starfinder characters will have arc emitters and laser rifles, gyrojet pistols, and other abilities to take down enemies using weapons with ranges of 30, 60, or even 100 feet or more. My expectation would be that if you put a Pathfinder 2E sword and shield fighter up against a Starfinder 2E soldier with a laser rifle, unless the combat starts with them relatively close to one another, that soldier is going to win more often than not. There are other smaller differences like Starfinder has credits, whereas Pathfinder is based on silver pieces.

The lore options will always be different between the two games systems, and if you've never played Pathfinder 2E, lore's always been a bit of a wild card. Some backgrounds grant you a specific lore like corporate lore, piracy lore, games lore, hunting lore, or a bunch of others that you can select or design a lore skill when you increase a skill rank. This lore can be something really narrow and specific, like Gladiator lore, or Caden-Kalian lore or it can be more generic like hunting lore or swamp lore.

The lore options or what used to be knowledge checks that would be useful in a game will be different between Starfinder and Pathfinder because, for example, swamp lore is not going to be very useful in many campaigns happening in deep space and energy weapon lore may not be very useful in the Pathfinder world of Galerian.

I chased a little bit of a rabbit there, but I will say that Starfinder 2E's design appears to be the easiest potential crossover between a fantasy game and a sci-fi one that I've ever seen. I think Paiso made a wise decision in keeping the game systems the same. In this player core, there's an introduction common to a lot of role-playing publications, teaching you about what an RPG is, what a character is, what levels are, etc. About page 40 of the book is when the book really starts getting to the mechanics of Starfinder 2E.

That page kicks off the Ancestry section, which was called races in older game systems. The picture there is of Absalom Station, which is to put, put it far too simply, the hub of the galaxy. This book details 10 ancestries from the Androids with synthetic bodies, but living souls, to the rat like Yosoki. These 10 plus the six ancestries released in the Galaxy Guide bring the total to 16 main ancestries, with each of these having multiple heritages to further customize your character.

The book also includes two versatile heritages that can be added to any other ancestry, the Borai, B-O-R-A-I, whose souls have returned from the dead, and the prismini, which are creatures who have incorporated the energy of the hyperspace plane known as the drift. I talked about the drift briefly when I discussed the Starfinder lore topic of the Gap in episode 137. I'll put a link to that episode in the description. In short, the drift is what allows faster than light travel speeds. Its origins are tied to the god triune, which is the fusion of three previous deities into one. Cassandalee, Brie, and Epic. I don't want to go further in this episode since it eventually becomes a spoiler for a Pathfinder adventure path,

but those three entities fused into a single god of artificial intelligence and computers. It's not known whether the new god created the drift or discovered it. The lore behind this whole thing is fascinating. Give it a read if you're really, really interested. Paiso also made some welcome changes to Starfinder mechanics to simplify the game. Gone are two different armor classes, thank the gods. Starfinder 1E had separate armor classes for kinetic versus energy weapons, with certain armor as being better or worse than one or the other. Now it's a unified single

armor class, but certain armors will give you resistances to certain type of damage. That makes sense. Another welcome change was the removal of the stamina mechanic from 1E. In that version, there were two pools of hit points and your stamina pool depleted before your actual hitpoints started to diminish from damage. Now it's a single pool of hit points, just like other Pathfinder games. Also carried over from Pathfinder 2E are the four traditions of magic, arcane, divine, occult, and primal. This makes mystics and witch warpers much more versatile in Starfinder 2E and much more powerful

than they were in 1E, wider variety of spells available to them. The three-action economy, encountered design, and balancing rules, general crafting of encounters feels like it was lifted straight out of the Pathfinder 2E books. If you're at all familiar with those rules, StarFinder will feel like an old pair of jeans, so it just fits perfectly. One thing I am concerned about is that the Starship mechanics are nowhere to be found in the Player Core book. There aren't rules for Starship Combat or Design released, but my assumption is that

these rules will be in the GM Corps book, which releases in September. If there were any rules in StarFinder First Edition that needed to be reworked, it's definitely starship combat. The idea of party members having dedicated jobs and making skill roles during combat is great, but dear Lord, did it make combat drag? Hell, one of my groups that I was leading through a Starfinder one shot spent an hour and a half arguing about who should do what job. I'm hoping for something that's just a complete overhaul of those rules.

Now, all this to say, is the Starfinder 2E player core any good? Absolutely. If you like sci-fi adventures or are thinking about playing in a Starfinder campaign, this book is invaluable and as always the art is gorgeous. That being said, Paiso, like they do for all of their games, releases the rules online for free. They're on a website called The Archives of Nethys, that's N-E-T-H-Y-S, which is a Paiso-O-approved site to get the rules.

You have everything you need to build characters and run games directly on that site. you missed the artwork and you miss some of the lore. I'll put a link in that site, by the way, in the description of the episode so you can check it out. Is the book worth $70? Well, the artwork is amazing and the book is beautiful. There are a few things in the book that might not be on the archives website,

but I completely understand it if you don't want to drop 70 bucks on a book of ideas and pretty pictures. The PDF for $20 feels more my speed, but I will admit being a sci-fi fan, I'll probably eventually purchase the hard copy when and if my financial situation improves over the next few months. Running adventures in space can feel very similar to traditional fantasy RPGs. While there are differences to consider, like easier communication and more information availability in sci-fi,

a lot of your fantasy adventures can be re-skinned and dropped into your sci-fi game. We also delved into a review of the Starfinder 2E player core, discussing mechanics, ancestors, and some welcome changes that it brings to the game, including strong ties to Pathfinder 2E. Consider designing and running an adventure among the stars in one of your up climbing games. If you do, I'd be willing to bet that you and your players would have fun doing it. Thank you so much for listening. We do have a coffee, ko-fi.com slash taking 20 podcasts. This podcast survives solely based on donations from you. It's been kind of a light year and I'm running way behind on expenses, so if you wouldn't mind donating, I would greatly appreciate it.

In two weeks, I'm going to focus on some advice for my players out there. We all hate when the game drags and is going slow and we're getting bored. There are some things you can do to help the DM keep the game moving, and we're going to talk about it next episode. But before I go, I want to thank this week's sponsor, Watches. My analog watch thinks that 630 is the best time of day. hands down. This has been episode 259, talking about adventures in space and a review of the Starfinder 2E player core. My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game.

The Taking 20 podcast is Copyright 2025 by Jeremy Shelley. The opinions or views expressed by guests are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of the host. References to game system content are copyright their respective publishers. Thank you.