For the last 6 or so months I’ve been saying all over the internet (this blog, enworld, Blue Sky) that the Cosmere TTRPG’s use of the 3 action economy had piqued my curiosity in Paizo’s 2e *finder systems. This last Friday, I FINALLY got to run the Starfinder adventure that I’ve been dying to run for my Cosmere group for the past few months - Murder in Metal City. (Buy it directly from Paizo if you are part of Paizo Plus and want the points OR want to bundle it with the PDF or Buy it directly from FoundryVTT’s marketplace). I have to say that I was not disappointed.

I was an early adopter of KDE’s activities when they were first introduced in KDE 4. From what I read of various blog posts by KDE developers I’m in the minority. It’s hard enough for folks to get the concept of virtual desktops (although now with both OSX and Windows including the features maybe more folks are getting used to it), but activities creates an orthogonal virtual set of desktops. I wrote a blog post back in 2015 where I spoke about how activities helps me focus on my computer. Nowadays, I might make an analogy to Vivaldi’s workspaces and tabs (which has recently also been adopted by Firefox and Zen).

Usually I do these review videos completely off the cuff. (With maybe an outline to go off of) This time I actually wrote a script so you can read the script below the video if you’d rather do than than watch the video. I did go off script here and there to elaborate on things, so it’s not verbatim what I said, but it’s pretty close.

Introduction

Up to this point, if you’ve seen any of my TTRPG videos, you’ve mostly seen me talking about D&D or Tales of the Valiant. However, Cosmere’s 3 action economy combined with a desire to get back to my Science Fiction roots led me to check out Starfinder second edition.

Three years after my first triathlon, I finally got to do the triathlon that was supposed to be my first triathlon. When I was considering the idea of a triathlon, having one nearby where the swimming portion was in the pool seemed like the ideal first one. However, different life events always conspired to keep from from registering. This year I saw at the last minute that I would be able to actually participate this year. So I signed up about 2 weeks before the race. Unlike the one I did in 2023, I haven’t been training specifically for a triathlon, but I have been doing swimming, cycling, and running exercises since last fall.

In addition to watching the video below, scroll beyond the video to see some of the questions/answers I’ve gotten on reddit and YouTube as well as some recommended extra videos to watch.

Topics in the video:

• My background as a GM
• The players we had at the table
• Scheduling
• My thoughts on the story aspects of Stonewalkers
• A small section about how “on rails” I ran the campaign
• My thoughts on the game mechanics of the Cosmere TTRPG
• What my players thought about the lore drops and artwork
• How well Metalworks did with the FoundryVTT port

The story section obviously has spoilers that players might not want to hear. If you pay attention to the video (rather than have it on in the background) there will be some spoilers as I have various combat encounters as run in FoundryVTT while I’m talking over those visuals.

I blazed through The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI. It’s not too hard, as the audiobook is only 5 hours long, but it was also incredibly engaging and I didn’t want to stop listening. I first found Cory Doctorow through his fiction which was what convinced me to try ebooks. His books were available under a creative commons license for free from his own website so it was risk-free. Since then I’ve continued to read both his fiction and non-fiction books.

It’s good to have Dresden back. I prefer to practice “death of the author” when it comes to reviews or analysis. To me it doesn’t matter what they intended or what kind of person they are (mostly). But this book truly seems inseparable from Jim Butcher’s experience exorcising his personal demons. We know he had a hard time in his personal life and it’s at least part of the reason that the Dresden Files books suddenly stopped coming out so frequently.

While this book is not structured in the best possible way to teach a newbie how to play Starfinder Second Edition, the fact of the matter is that this is a reference book. One might use it one time to learn how to play or, perhaps more likely, one will learn from YouTube videos, a Beginner’s Box product or being taught by friends around the table.

As a reference book, the Player Core is very well organized. It has the most likely stuff that the player would look up (character creation) up front. Based on how I’ve consulted the Player books for Tales of the Valiant and D&D, this is the most likely use for the book.

I was a Kickstarter backer on this (or it was a stretch goal for an Apex mag kickstarter - I can’t remember). Since these are micro-fiction I am not going to do my usual per-story review for the anthology as the stories are too short for that.

Perhaps unsurprisingly for an anthology themed around recipes for alcoholic drinks, the stories were overwhelmingly sad and/or angry. Since each story is only about a page long, this might be a good anthology to dip in and out of. Reading it straight through was a bit much. Also, some of the themes are repeated in a way that is made more obvious when reading it straight through.

This is a fun book that takes place on Golarian, the world of Pathfinder. The author does a good job presenting the TTRPG elements - like Zae needing to prepare her spells each morning - without bogging the story down in these things. But for a few things like that, I think it could be handed to any fantasy fan and they would enjoy it without realizing it’s based on a TTRPG.