Starfinder: "Near Space" [RPG]

After Pact Worlds was released, the next logical gazetteer-style hardcover for Starfinder was Near Space.  Like the other Starfinder hardcovers, this one is pricey—a $ 40 cover price for just 158 pages of content.  It’s certainly an attractive book, however, with lots of great interior art and maps.   And speaking of art, you can’t go wrong with that cover—Obazaya tearing off a rocket launcher from an armored vehicle is pretty impressive!

The book starts with brief introduction, “Welcome to Near Space”, that provides a useful reminder that saying a planet is in “Near Space” doesn’t mean it’s close in any geographical (astronomical) sense to any other planet, only that there’s a sufficient collection of Drift beacons to make it a relatively brief hyperspace jump away.  The rest of the introduction is an overview of the book’s four chapters: “The Veskarium”, “Worlds of Near Space”, “Starships”, and “Player Options”.

Chapter 1, “The Veskarium” (56 pages) is the longest section of the book.  Starfinder team, we need to talk about the Veskarium.  It is, quite canonically, a ruthless imperialist and expansionist military junta that committed genocide on its homeworld before invading and subjugating the native peoples of every other planet in its solar system.  It then tried to do the same to the Pact Worlds.  So why have I played multiple Starfinder Society scenarios where the PCs help the Veskarium (including by killing pahtra rebels in one!) and Near Space glosses over any moral or political implications of the Pact Worlds being allied with such an empire?  In a sort of “dark and gritty”, morally ambiguous setting, having adventures in the Veskarium could be great storytelling—but to give it the same Disney treatment as the rest of the Starfinder setting just strikes me as a design team that hasn’t thought things through carefully.  Anyway, ranting aside, this book devotes four to six pages to each of the eight planets of the Veskarium plus the mobile super battlestation called Conqueror’s Forge.  The section provides a real deep dive into Vesk culture, which is really useful even if not necessarily containing a lot of surprises. The history of the Veskarium is interesting, and the section talks about the organisation of its military, economy, and more.  I really appreciated how much setting lore was integrated from previous Alien Archives and Adventure Path volumes, and loved the little shout-out to Nakonechkin Salvage from the Free RPG Day adventures.  There are a lot of adventure hooks here, and I’ve already seen some of them form the premise for Starfinder Society adventures.

Chapter 2, “Worlds of Near Space” (42 pages) covers twenty different planets, each with a two-page spread.  I took notes on every planet, but it’d be a bit crazy for me to go through each one here.  I’ll call out some of my favourites, though.  Daegox 4 is a prison planet, something really useful if you need to plan a “great escape” or “jail break” adventure.  On Daimalko, you could have a whole campaign dealing with the colossal monster apocalypse.  Embroi is the homeworld of the embri and is secretly ruled by devils—good thing my embri character, Speaker for the Dead, doesn’t know!  The Gideron Authority and the Marixah Republic were introduced in SFS scenarios, and it’s great to see them integrated here.  Helfen-Thel has thousands of magical portals going to who-know’s-where, and exploring some of them could be the premise for a nice campaign formed by unrelated adventures.  I’ve used the university planet of Pabaq in a campaign before, and had an adventure on Phoskar (home to giants).  It’s a really nice selection of planets, with tons of adventure hooks and intriguing bits to unpack, and I’m pretty sure there’s something for pretty much everyone in the collection.

Chapter 3, “Starships” (12 pages) is the shortest section of the book.  It includes some new starship options like a cloaking field (for non-combat use only) and a ramming prow (that does disappointingly little damage).  The Gideron Authority, Szandite Collective, and Veskarium each receive a couple of pages of new ships.  The Veskarium flagship Conqueror of Worlds receives a full stat-block.

The artwork is a bit rough in spots in Chapter 4, “Player Options” (34 pages).  The section starts with a single page of options for each of the following races: damais, embri, ghorans, hobgoblins, ijtikris, osharus, pahtras, skittermanders, and vesk.  Some of the options, such as the feats, aren’t race-restricted.  Everything looks reasonably balanced, though some are just too minor to be even worth taking.  Five new character themes are introduced: bureaucrat, giantblood (I like “hurl debris”), prisoner, quartermaster, and stormrunner.  Of the five new archetypes (assassin, battle leader, commando, doshko specialist, and mediator), I thought the assassin was interesting but that the save DCs were *really* low, and the battle commander was excellent.  Next, there are six pages of new weapons, shields, and armor.  Nothing stood out to me, for better or worse.  The book ends with a couple of pages of spells—one of them, defrex harness, seems overpowered.

And that’s Near Space.  The production quality is high, the artwork is generally really good, and the writing is strong.  Although pricey given its limited page count, it’s a pretty good book overall.