Pathfinder 2e and Starfinder - My Impressions

    My life issues got compounded with a death in the family and I have not been posting for several months, so I want to throw this out there to remind everybody I'm alive.  I've been keeping an eye on the news about Pathfinder 2nd Edition (by reading the Paizo blog) and a friend asked me to take a closer look at the Starfinder campaign I've been playing.  From that I wanted to share a few random thoughts about both.

Pathfinder 2e
    I did not switch to D&D 4th ed, I was at a time when I wasn't role-playing at all.  when I did start playing again a nice game shop owner told me about Pathfinder, and I have played quite a bit of it over the years.  At first I really liked Pathfinder, I thought they made some good decisions to expand and improve on D&D 3.5.  Over time that began to wane, with book after book and more and more classes and spells and feats and rules on top of rules - it all started to feel like too much to keep track of.  Feats in particular are a problem for me.  You get very few feat choices, so to me that means that each feat should be a significant benefit - but there are tons of feats that only work in rare edge-cases, and that you can argue should be abilities everyone has or that are tied to skill use.  It just doesn't seem like Paizo has any solid idea of what a feat should be (I know Wizards didn't with D&D) so since every new book has to have more feats (god forbid we get a break form them) not only do you have a ton of new stuff to remember and think about, you also have to question it's worth.  And then with so many feats you get some unexpected interactions, I've seen my players make some pretty wicked feat and ability combos that made it hard to keep them challenged.  Spells are the same problem, too many, too many unexpected interactions.  I've had to stop multiple games to read the description of a spell a PC got form a supplement that I didn't remember or had never heard of.
    Basically, for me there is just too much Pathfinder.  The game it too big, making characters for it is too much work, and running it is too much work.  I liked 13th age when I first saw it (though that changed after examining the rules more closely) and I like D&D 5th Ed. for it's simpler approach (though I foresee it having the same bloat problem, just at a slower pace).
    From that standpoint there are some things that I am encouraged by about Pathfinder 2nd Edition.  The simplified action economy, simplified (kinda) skills, and it really feels like they want to do the D&D 5th what they did to D&D 3.5.  Overall I'm hopeful, but given that my friends have 17 books (that I can see in the living room, and I bought a few of them for the communal pool) I hate the idea of throwing away everything for a new edition.  I think one of my players who really likes it is going to have a hard time changing too (he's not been fond of our few games of D&D 5th).

Starfinder
    Which brings me to Starfinder, and the question that immediately popped in my mind when I heard about Pathfinder 2e - why didn't they sit on the 2e rules and roll them out with Starfinder?  While Starfinder is a lot like Pathfinder, it is a different game in several ways (aside from the sci-fi elements).  Given that it just came out, I'm surprised that Paizo is going to basically have 3 different rules systems out, all of which are related but you can't really just drag and drop them together.
    Also, Starfinder has not impressed me.  I love science-fiction and fantasy.  I also really like physics (I asked my Dad what a magneto-hydrodynamic drive" was after reading it in the Battletech RPG - which entailed a trip to the library), so I've read some hard SF, not just "science fantasy" like Star Wars and (to be honest) a fair chunk of Star Trek.  And you notice that there is a different feel between hard SF, and I'm including cyberpunk, and fantasy.  Which is one of the things I don't like about Starfinder, it feels like it was written by a bunch of fantasy guys.  For all that the setting has far-future technology it really feels a lot like a fantasy game instead.  Which may be great, if that's the game you want, but I was hoping for something a bit more SF myself.  And the first Adventure Path sucks, really sucks, which I'll go into with some later posts.  As an example though, there's a spot where somebody is kidnapped.  The adventure is written with a focus on the PCs and how they investigate.  Which is fine in a fantasy setting where the PCs are a law unto themselves, but doesn't work with an advanced society.  At least, I don't think it should.  The adventure should have talked about the reaction of the law and how the police and PCs interact (for better or worse).

    Anyways.  I have to say that overall I am not a big fan of Paizo right now.  1e Pathfinder is too bloated and complicated (from a guy who likes rules-heavy systems mind you).  Starfinder is a strange duck that is neither SF or F really, and while I like some of the changes I'm not a fan of most of them.  And 2e Pathfinder sounds interesting, but I wonder if it's going to have too much of the legacy of 1e to be a really good system in it's own rights.  Still, I'll keep an eye on 2e, and I'll have some thoughts on what's wrong with Starfinder and how I would fix it coming up later.