The book is a Campaign Inspiration book and I ADORE it because it set my brain on fire. Making campaigns in the Crisis is evergreen if a GM years from now is interested in it.
The 3 big takeaways I get from the book are 1: the Drift is not always stable, 2: the Drift can be hacked, 3: Drift crisis can be any size, be it the entire setting or just one Drift Beacon, apply that any time any place you need as a GM. It is an odd book, not much to compare it to, it's not a reference book you'll need at the table at all times, it's not a lore book with a set timeline of events, it's flexible and can be added to any existing AP or homebrew. It doesn't add a lot of new game mechanics but does give new purpose to many from other books that didn't have much use like all the other FLT travel technologies. It's got lots of adventure seeds which I also see as examples of just how strange the drift can get. I think it's too soon to tell how the book will sell, but if it does end up a miss it will be one with a cult following.
It will used more alongside the Drift Crisis 3-book AP than anything else imo. Oh, and SFS depending how much it's impacted. Maybe it would have made more sense to include all of this into a 6-book AP instead of a separate settings book, but I get the need for a foundation.
@@TheMapleTable Totally agree, would have been better received as a Drift Crisis Box. Box including the HC, AP, Flip-map and more! How cool and fun would that have been!?
@@crastestpixles5972 awesome. Box set would have been nice, but would have been expensive with everything put together and less profitability for Paizo. Looking forward to all the content as I'm a SF subscriber :)
I have not played through this one as I am new, and seems to have poor reviews. However my head cannon for Akiton is that they start ramping up again, and about 10-15 years of their boom. They get hit again with the drift working lol. So ppl might keep some fuel options available, but will mostly go back to drift travel. So ppl on Akiton get hyped, then boom economy crash again... lol
it has a place i feel in society play and if you want to mess with your players once they are familiar with everything, just because it fun to shake up things. But its not a go out and buy for me.
I've tied a number of the adventure modules together to make a very unique homebrew game and this has a place. I like the adventure spins they offer. My main dislike is of the proposed reasons why, the one they seem to have landed on, makes some sense but is the more boring and less intuitive of the options at least imo, as for others ymmv, avoiding spoilers for those whom have yet to pick it up.
This sounds like one of the old school "splat" books that you'd find for Shadowrun and the like, a bit of a small adventure/setting, some added bits and bobs, and some other things for DMs or GMs. The only thing that hurts it is itself since it doesn't have a clear "focus" of sorts. Which is a bit of a crying shame since they could have added more to the Drift.
As I mentioned in the video it's the first miss for me, I do appreciate some of the additional information but if you wanted a dedicated drift book, this ain't it
This almost sounds like a book that could have come out AFTER they did all their other stuff with the Drift Crisis to help GMs tie everything together! I'm guessing this is light in a LOT of areas because they know information is going to be in other products, at least I HOPE! Though if this is a miss, it happens and Paizo DEFINITELY hasn't had as many, from my PoV, as... let's just say "the folks behind the world's 'greatest' roleplaying game" have the last few years!
I agree with the conclusion. The book is not on the must-have list. But it has some good ideas indeed. - The official reason for the crisis goes well with my hypothesis about the Gap. - Like what happened with the Gap, the Hobgoblins gain more power. (It is almost a sidenote, but I shows that the Gideron will be sooner or later a major threat.) - The Drift Lanes (especially useful after the "Horizon of the Vast" AP) - The protomander, because Vesk-3 fauna wasn't nightmarish enough. ----- In fact, there is already an illustrated index in the G.E.M. for the player options. It is nice looking but it lacks the details of a real index, therefore its usefulness.
A supplement that expands on everything is not a bad thing, and docking it because it doesn't fit into a specific category speaks more to the reviewer's inflexibility than it does the quality of the product. If the other aspects of the game are already well fleshed out in separate books, and this one adds things not in those books but are of similar topic, that is fine, and all the things within can be tied directly to the exploration and solution of the Drift crisis. It is an expansionary book with many adventure hooks and well explores the implications of its premise, giving a creative GM a scaffold to craft some great campaigns off of.
I have to disagree. I love this book, it definitely is different but it's an event book, it expands on the entire universe through the lens of a hypothetical event. The starship operations manual though? Absolutely a miss, like it had a few good pages then all of the starships were completely useless. Why? Well because they don't have maps. For me to consider using a starship it NEEDS a map. It needs to be a dungeon, a home, and a town all in one because what if the party chooses to be a boarding party? There's like no info on their interiors to go off of. So basically it's just lore on starship designs and statblocks without the parts of a starship that makes them special.
Personally this is one of my favorite books. It's just so different, it has a lot to love. It's an event book, much like an AP but this is a universe wide overarching event. It has to be a bit of everything because events encompassing the whole universe will have a bit of everything involved.
I have to agree with your review after getting this book. It reminds me of some of the books WotC put out for 3.5 back in the day. I still enjoy the content of the book but I dont feel I will use 90% of it. Maybe some of the gear and spells but over all I wish it had more lore about the Drift and like the Pact Worlds book did for, well the Pact Worlds.
I really wanted to like this book, Paizo has put out some amazing work not only with Starfinder but Pathfinder too. I was disappointed with this as it didn't seem to fit the mold or the expectations that had made with previous releases.
I'm not overly interested in Drift Crisis (no table, and am not a GM), but some of the Paizocon discussions around it were curious.. IIRC, one of the presenters seemed to be suggesting that this was a framework on which you could build plots that were normally not possible due to the ubiquitous availability of the drift. I dunno if that means you'd want to have multiple drift crises every now and then, if you came up with new plots you wanted to run, but I guess it's possible. (I guess it sort of works if you think of a Drift Crisis like it's the equivalent of a power outage..)
"that this was a framework on which you could build plots that were normally not possible due to the ubiquitous availability of the drift", huh! Wonder if there were more people who thought it would have been cool to have their players land on a teleporting planet just before it vanishes from it's location to go THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of miles away only to find out that the Drift and knowing the location of Absalom Station meant they could get back in no more than six days from ANYWHERE! I was SO UPSET when I discovered that, I'm too lazy to create another FTL form of travel just to make it work!
10:32 IS it temporary though?! Probably yes, since that is the major form of travel in the galaxy! It reminds me of that Star Trek: TNG episode(s?) where they found out they were harming the universe by traveling at high speeds so they made "laws" reduce the damage but after only a couple more episodes it felt like they just ignored it and went back to business as usual! When I learned about the Drift and how it works I was also VERY sad because I had an idea for a Star Trek: Voyager like campaign that I thought could have been cool, the idea spawned out of one of the cards from the Deck of Many Worlds! Unfortunately the way the Drift works means that you can't be lost in an unknown and/or very far away are of space, you can ALWAYS get back to Absalom Station in 1d6 days, meaning it will take a WEEK tops not weeks, months, years, ONLY days! :(
The Expanse has a couple of episodes where the charecters are stuck on a planet with some weird alien artefact that rewrites the laws of physics so their ship reactors don't function while near the planet. If you want your players to be lost in space you can do it anyway you please
The Drift Crisis offered me another very flexible but telling Arrow in my quiver. Apply the drift crisis as a universe shattering whole -- sure, maybe use it individually w/APs of in individual adventures - definitely. Use the Drift Crisis as a seasoner across campaigns - yes indeedy. Is this a must-have for vanilla SF - no, but is it mighty nice to have - Oh yeah! Feels like a solid 3.5 :: shrug :: YMMV
It does create a situation where all the alt FTL travel in the Starship Operation Manual could see more use. The end of the crisis looks to end with new Drift Lanes which could have a big impact on travel.
So, what are the plot hooks with Attack of the Swarm? I was eyeing this book up thanks to my desire to have a Science Fantasy Setting for my Homebrew world (Tho, looking at it, Spelljammer for 5e might work better since it was originally a 5e setting). I'm just curious about the plot hooks with Attack of the Swarm if I find people who wanna play.
There's better ways, dead sun's or against the Aeon throne I hear good things. This is not a full adventure either... Just hooks you would have to build out on your own
My group is brand new and we're only on our 3rd game. The idea of using this book this early is ridiculous. We have barely scratched any of the pathways Or any of the lore and to throw this on top of a bunch of brand new players struggling to learn the basic rules is just pure folly. Maybe 3 years down-the-line will be able to access this book and enjoy some of the ideas but right now it was like breaking your favorite teapot so you could get all the tea at once.
It's hard enough to get players interested in Starfinder without altering the setting. I won't be getting this. It's a very divisive release in my opinion.
I think it makes the setting more interesting. Before this book, the drift was to me just the way we traveled in Starfinder, now for me it's a selling point for why Starfinder is cool. opinions very nothing wrong with that. Now, how to find more new players...
@@crastestpixles5972 I will never criticize someone who liked something I didn't. Drift travel for me is as interesting as you make it, it can be hand waved or an interesting event. Im glad you got some inspiration from it though.
As with every other hardcover they have released(slightly less so for Armory and Alien Archives), it suffers greatly from being so small. Everything is watered down and spread so thin. This, Galactic Magic, and Tech Revolution could have been smash hits if they just had more room to give an adequate amount of love to each topic. Otherwise they feel largely unsatisfying.
Galactic magic and tech revolution I feel delivered what they set out to do. I got exactly what I wanted from GM and although TR wasn't my cup of tea it delivered on the tech promise. All the starfinder releases have been fairly consistent in size but if you compare them to pathfinder they certainly seem small
In the snow, sometimes my car moves sideways and I have a drift crisis.
unless you are in tokyo.
The book is a Campaign Inspiration book and I ADORE it because it set my brain on fire. Making campaigns in the Crisis is evergreen if a GM years from now is interested in it.
It wasnt for me but im glad it lit a fire for your creativity!
The 3 big takeaways I get from the book are 1: the Drift is not always stable, 2: the Drift can be hacked, 3: Drift crisis can be any size, be it the entire setting or just one Drift Beacon, apply that any time any place you need as a GM. It is an odd book, not much to compare it to, it's not a reference book you'll need at the table at all times, it's not a lore book with a set timeline of events, it's flexible and can be added to any existing AP or homebrew. It doesn't add a lot of new game mechanics but does give new purpose to many from other books that didn't have much use like all the other FLT travel technologies. It's got lots of adventure seeds which I also see as examples of just how strange the drift can get. I think it's too soon to tell how the book will sell, but if it does end up a miss it will be one with a cult following.
I agree with you
It will used more alongside the Drift Crisis 3-book AP than anything else imo. Oh, and SFS depending how much it's impacted. Maybe it would have made more sense to include all of this into a 6-book AP instead of a separate settings book, but I get the need for a foundation.
It might have been better to release it with the adventure paths included? More substance and would make it fit better into the "event"
@@TheMapleTable Totally agree, would have been better received as a Drift Crisis Box. Box including the HC, AP, Flip-map and more! How cool and fun would that have been!?
It's not just one 3-part AP there are 2 3-part APs coming out for it, one stand-alone, one Oneshot, and 2 to 3 scenarios.
@@crastestpixles5972 awesome. Box set would have been nice, but would have been expensive with everything put together and less profitability for Paizo. Looking forward to all the content as I'm a SF subscriber :)
fair rating though I do think the book isn't a MUST have I did really enjoy it and felt it brought some much needed level of dynamism to the setting
I have thought about doing this
I have not played through this one as I am new, and seems to have poor reviews. However my head cannon for Akiton is that they start ramping up again, and about 10-15 years of their boom. They get hit again with the drift working lol. So ppl might keep some fuel options available, but will mostly go back to drift travel. So ppl on Akiton get hyped, then boom economy crash again... lol
it has a place i feel in society play and if you want to mess with your players once they are familiar with everything, just because it fun to shake up things. But its not a go out and buy for me.
I've tied a number of the adventure modules together to make a very unique homebrew game and this has a place. I like the adventure spins they offer. My main dislike is of the proposed reasons why, the one they seem to have landed on, makes some sense but is the more boring and less intuitive of the options at least imo, as for others ymmv, avoiding spoilers for those whom have yet to pick it up.
This sounds like one of the old school "splat" books that you'd find for Shadowrun and the like, a bit of a small adventure/setting, some added bits and bobs, and some other things for DMs or GMs. The only thing that hurts it is itself since it doesn't have a clear "focus" of sorts. Which is a bit of a crying shame since they could have added more to the Drift.
As I mentioned in the video it's the first miss for me, I do appreciate some of the additional information but if you wanted a dedicated drift book, this ain't it
This almost sounds like a book that could have come out AFTER they did all their other stuff with the Drift Crisis to help GMs tie everything together! I'm guessing this is light in a LOT of areas because they know information is going to be in other products, at least I HOPE! Though if this is a miss, it happens and Paizo DEFINITELY hasn't had as many, from my PoV, as... let's just say "the folks behind the world's 'greatest' roleplaying game" have the last few years!
Agreed
Appreciate the review, been looking forward to it. As interesting as the book seems, I don't really feel it'll be much use for campaigns I run
I was looking forward to this one to, its not what I thought it would be.
I agree with the conclusion. The book is not on the must-have list. But it has some good ideas indeed.
- The official reason for the crisis goes well with my hypothesis about the Gap.
- Like what happened with the Gap, the Hobgoblins gain more power. (It is almost a sidenote, but I shows that the Gideron will be sooner or later a major threat.)
- The Drift Lanes (especially useful after the "Horizon of the Vast" AP)
- The protomander, because Vesk-3 fauna wasn't nightmarish enough.
-----
In fact, there is already an illustrated index in the G.E.M. for the player options. It is nice looking but it lacks the details of a real index, therefore its usefulness.
thanks for reminding me of that one in GEM, i had forgotten about it.
A supplement that expands on everything is not a bad thing, and docking it because it doesn't fit into a specific category speaks more to the reviewer's inflexibility than it does the quality of the product. If the other aspects of the game are already well fleshed out in separate books, and this one adds things not in those books but are of similar topic, that is fine, and all the things within can be tied directly to the exploration and solution of the Drift crisis. It is an expansionary book with many adventure hooks and well explores the implications of its premise, giving a creative GM a scaffold to craft some great campaigns off of.
I have to disagree. I love this book, it definitely is different but it's an event book, it expands on the entire universe through the lens of a hypothetical event.
The starship operations manual though? Absolutely a miss, like it had a few good pages then all of the starships were completely useless. Why? Well because they don't have maps. For me to consider using a starship it NEEDS a map. It needs to be a dungeon, a home, and a town all in one because what if the party chooses to be a boarding party? There's like no info on their interiors to go off of. So basically it's just lore on starship designs and statblocks without the parts of a starship that makes them special.
Personally this is one of my favorite books. It's just so different, it has a lot to love. It's an event book, much like an AP but this is a universe wide overarching event. It has to be a bit of everything because events encompassing the whole universe will have a bit of everything involved.
I have to agree with your review after getting this book. It reminds me of some of the books WotC put out for 3.5 back in the day. I still enjoy the content of the book but I dont feel I will use 90% of it. Maybe some of the gear and spells but over all I wish it had more lore about the Drift and like the Pact Worlds book did for, well the Pact Worlds.
I really wanted to like this book, Paizo has put out some amazing work not only with Starfinder but Pathfinder too. I was disappointed with this as it didn't seem to fit the mold or the expectations that had made with previous releases.
I'm not overly interested in Drift Crisis (no table, and am not a GM), but some of the Paizocon discussions around it were curious.. IIRC, one of the presenters seemed to be suggesting that this was a framework on which you could build plots that were normally not possible due to the ubiquitous availability of the drift. I dunno if that means you'd want to have multiple drift crises every now and then, if you came up with new plots you wanted to run, but I guess it's possible. (I guess it sort of works if you think of a Drift Crisis like it's the equivalent of a power outage..)
If you throw one in every once in a while i it could be ok
"that this was a framework on which you could build plots that were normally not possible due to the ubiquitous availability of the drift", huh! Wonder if there were more people who thought it would have been cool to have their players land on a teleporting planet just before it vanishes from it's location to go THOUSANDS upon THOUSANDS of miles away only to find out that the Drift and knowing the location of Absalom Station meant they could get back in no more than six days from ANYWHERE! I was SO UPSET when I discovered that, I'm too lazy to create another FTL form of travel just to make it work!
10:32 IS it temporary though?! Probably yes, since that is the major form of travel in the galaxy! It reminds me of that Star Trek: TNG episode(s?) where they found out they were harming the universe by traveling at high speeds so they made "laws" reduce the damage but after only a couple more episodes it felt like they just ignored it and went back to business as usual!
When I learned about the Drift and how it works I was also VERY sad because I had an idea for a Star Trek: Voyager like campaign that I thought could have been cool, the idea spawned out of one of the cards from the Deck of Many Worlds! Unfortunately the way the Drift works means that you can't be lost in an unknown and/or very far away are of space, you can ALWAYS get back to Absalom Station in 1d6 days, meaning it will take a WEEK tops not weeks, months, years, ONLY days! :(
Its likely this could be some inspiration for this along with 40k
The Expanse has a couple of episodes where the charecters are stuck on a planet with some weird alien artefact that rewrites the laws of physics so their ship reactors don't function while near the planet. If you want your players to be lost in space you can do it anyway you please
The Drift Crisis offered me another very flexible but telling Arrow in my quiver. Apply the drift crisis as a universe shattering whole -- sure, maybe use it individually w/APs of in individual adventures - definitely. Use the Drift Crisis as a seasoner across campaigns - yes indeedy. Is this a must-have for vanilla SF - no, but is it mighty nice to have - Oh yeah! Feels like a solid 3.5 :: shrug :: YMMV
It does have value, it just felt so weird to me
I really just want to know if it has more info on other forms of space travel.
No it doesnt
It does create a situation where all the alt FTL travel in the Starship Operation Manual could see more use. The end of the crisis looks to end with new Drift Lanes which could have a big impact on travel.
So, what are the plot hooks with Attack of the Swarm?
I was eyeing this book up thanks to my desire to have a Science Fantasy Setting for my Homebrew world (Tho, looking at it, Spelljammer for 5e might work better since it was originally a 5e setting).
I'm just curious about the plot hooks with Attack of the Swarm if I find people who wanna play.
So it’s the Age of Strife from 40K when much of the galaxy lost the ability to access the Warp (aka the Drift) for FTL travel.
Basically yes but your adventures could fix it
SMASHED that like button, thanks for your review
Much appreciated! Welcome to the table
I was thinking about getting this as a first SF intro game.
There's better ways, dead sun's or against the Aeon throne I hear good things. This is not a full adventure either... Just hooks you would have to build out on your own
My group is brand new and we're only on our 3rd game. The idea of using this book this early is ridiculous. We have barely scratched any of the pathways Or any of the lore and to throw this on top of a bunch of brand new players struggling to learn the basic rules is just pure folly. Maybe 3 years down-the-line will be able to access this book and enjoy some of the ideas but right now it was like breaking your favorite teapot so you could get all the tea at once.
It wasn't my favorite release
It's hard enough to get players interested in Starfinder without altering the setting. I won't be getting this. It's a very divisive release in my opinion.
I have found the people who try it do like it but it is hard
I think it makes the setting more interesting. Before this book, the drift was to me just the way we traveled in Starfinder, now for me it's a selling point for why Starfinder is cool. opinions very nothing wrong with that. Now, how to find more new players...
@@crastestpixles5972 I will never criticize someone who liked something I didn't. Drift travel for me is as interesting as you make it, it can be hand waved or an interesting event.
Im glad you got some inspiration from it though.
As with every other hardcover they have released(slightly less so for Armory and Alien Archives), it suffers greatly from being so small. Everything is watered down and spread so thin. This, Galactic Magic, and Tech Revolution could have been smash hits if they just had more room to give an adequate amount of love to each topic. Otherwise they feel largely unsatisfying.
Galactic magic and tech revolution I feel delivered what they set out to do. I got exactly what I wanted from GM and although TR wasn't my cup of tea it delivered on the tech promise. All the starfinder releases have been fairly consistent in size but if you compare them to pathfinder they certainly seem small
HAIL SATAN!
taking the words right out of my mouth