Finding Stars and Paths

The past few months have been great playing Pathfinder and Starfinder, and I think they're my new main TTRPGs. (Though Dragonbane is still my favorite.)

Jun 13, 2025

In early 2025, I had a fantastic opportunity: I applied to a Starfinder Second Edition (SF2e) developer job at Paizo, and I was chosen for the design test they give to some applicants. Unfortunately, I didn't get the job.

It was, however, some of the most fun I'd ever had designing for a TTRPG, and it taught me a lot about game design in general.

Maybe more importantly, it was a great opportunity for me to force my regular gaming group to shift from D&D Fifth Edition (5e) to the Pathfinder Second Edition (PF2e) rules that the new Starfinder edition is based on.

A Long Time Coming

Here's the thing: I love D&D, and I really like 5e. But I've been wanting to regularly play Pathfinder for years. I looked back, and I've been collecting PF2e content since May 2021, but I could never convince any of my groups to play.

This is a running thing for me, apparently, because in high school I would get AD&D books to read and have on my shelf, but never play because my friends were too into Magic: The Gathering and other card games to do it.

Same thing happened here. I wanted to play something, but my friends were already too invested in something else. D&D 5e.

They didn’t necessarily want to learn a new system, and it was partly because the PF2e system seemed unruly and overly complicated. At the time, the Pathfinder Core Rulebook was 638 pages long.

For reference, the 5e Player's Handbook was 316. So literally half the size.

But that's really a bad comparison because the PF2e Core Rulebook also contained not only the player-facing content like the PHB, but also all the stuff that was equivalent to the Dungeon Masters Guide, which clocked in at 320 pages.

So, despite its bulk, the Core Rulebook was only 2 pages longer than the same content for Fifth Edition. And cheaper, too, because it was only one book and not a duo. The PF2e Bestiary and 5e Monster Manual were separate purchases in either case.

Even with that kind of logic on my side, my groups never wanted to give a crunchier system a shot.

(Both my online group and in-person group have gone nuts over the more rules-lite systems that Free League Publishing has done, such as The One Ring, Pirate Borg, and Dragonbane--which is my absolute favorite TTRPG of all and not only because of all the great duck miniatures I have collected over the past year).

Regardless, I kept buying Pathfinder and Starfinder content and prepping for the day when one of my groups would be up for it. I did have some luck with the Starfinder Drift Crisis adventure path, but the group fell apart after that and went back to D&D.

My Time Has Finally Come!

With my being chosen for the Starfinder design test, I could finally bring my group into Pathfinder. And guess what? They love it.

I knew they would. I have been reading the books, prepping, and learning the base PF2e system for years. There's even a solo adventure in the Pathfinder Beginner Box that teaches the basics. It's a lot of fun.

My point in all this is that we are now playing this system twice a week, and they like Starfinder Second Edition even more than regular Pathfinder. Despite it still being in playtest.

Unfortunately, twice a week means that we had to cut Dragonbane for the time being, which sucks because it's such a great system. We'll go back to it, though, and get into the Path of Glory adventure path before the next couple of books come out.

What I don’t know, however, is if I’ll ever return to DMing a D&D 5e game. I have a Monday night online game that only meets for a couple hours, in which I’m a player.

And after being so involved in the -finder RPGs for months now, I see a lot more of the dings and dents in 5e that I may have overlooked previously.

I Still Love D&D

And I enjoy playing it with the people I love. I’m just not sure I want to be the one behind the wheel anymore. While I know the 5e system much more readily than I do Pathfinder/Starfinder, I find that I enjoy looking up the rules and keeping things going as-written, keeping the flow with the tight math and prescriptive ruleset.

But honestly, the thing that makes me most hesitant to return to 5e as my main game is the slow release of content. Paizo has monthly releases that will often include new classes and rules and systems, on top of adventures, while Wizards releases just as many books for D&D 5e across the whole year.

I may not play all the adventures or use all the new rules, but I read them and see what cool stuff I can adapt. Getting that dose of official, playtested content as a GM so regularly is incredible.

I wish D&D did that. It’s Paizo’s Dragon magazine roots showing, I guess.

That said, I am super excited for the next D&D book, Dragon Delves. A whole book that’s nothing but dragon adventures? Just put that stuff directly into my veins, WotC.

Anyway, I guess my point is that after 4 years of collecting and reading Pathfinder and Starfinder books on my own, I’m glad that I was finally able to get my group to play it despite their reservations about the system being overly complicated.

Because it’s not. It’s more complex, yes, but not that much more so when you really dig into what the rules say and don’t handwave a bunch of stuff away in 5e.

I Want to Make Starfinder 2e Content

The Paizo design test made me want to internalize the systems a lot more and familiarize myself with the rulebooks in a way I haven’t yet. I’ve read a bunch of it, but I haven’t read it, if you know what I mean.

I’m excited for the release of Starfinder Second Edition at Gen Con this year. I’ll be talking more about it over the next few months, too; I also need to get some stuff written about the playtest modules and adventures I’ve run over the past few months.

I am currently working on a duckfolk ancestry because, as you know, I love them. I think it’s pretty good, too. Here’s the potential cover. What do you think?