Munchkin Starfinder Designer’s Notes
Andrew Hackard, Munchkin Line Editor
Munchkin Pathfinder and its expansions have been a big success for Munchkin. The game world that Paizo created is detailed and vast; the hardest part in writing the Munchkin sets was choosing among the many great options to make a game that’s true to Pathfinder while still being very much Munchkin. Based on sales and the comments I’ve seen online and heard from fans in person, we succeeded.
Early in 2016, Paizo announced that they were working on Starfinder, a science fantasy roleplaying game using the Pathfinder engine. As we followed their announcements and the development of the game, we became more and more convinced that we wanted to add Starfinder to the Munchkin family. We had preliminary talks at Gen Con in 2016 and decided to wait until the Starfinder Roleplaying Game was released to see what the reaction was.
It was . . . wait for it . . . stellar. (No, I’m not even a little sorry.)
Paizo’s supply of the Starfinder Core Rulebook sold out on Thursday — the first day! — at Gen Con 2017. It was impressive and made us even more certain that we wanted to work on Munchkin Starfinder. Luckily, Paizo felt the same way, so here we are!
Ch-ch-ch-changes
The Starfinder Roleplaying Game is far, far more than just Pathfinder with chrome and lasers. The team at Paizo worked hard to ensure that Starfinder works on its own, whether or not you’ve played Pathfinder. Some things carry over (SPACE GOBLINS!), but they’re more like Easter eggs for dedicated fans than necessary parts of the background. Paizo even got rid of Golarion, the world containing the Pathfinder setting, to make it utterly clear that Starfinder stands on its own.
Honoring that approach, we decided to make Munchkin Starfinder clearly its own set, even giving it a new card design. There are a few callbacks, such as the Luggage Got Routed to Golarion card, but by and large this game is Starfinder-specific.
As part of this, we knew we wanted to incorporate the new classes and races introduced in the Starfinder Core Rulebook. There are seven new classes and six new races in Starfinder and all of them look to be fun to play. After some hard thinking about which of these to include and which to omit, we made a bold choice: we included all of them. Munchkin Starfinder has seven Classes and six Races, the most we’ve ever put into a stand-alone game. There are two copies of each, rather than three, so there are still roughly the same number of Class/Race cards as a usual stand-alone Munchkin game, but there’s more variety, and playtesters have enjoyed the larger set of choices.
Three of the Classes share names with previously published Munchkin Classes, but except for the Mystic, which translated very well as it was originally published in Super Munchkin, we’ve tweaked those Classes to be more suitable to Starfinder. The other two revised Classes are Soldier, from Munchkin Axe Cop and Munchkin Oz, which had to be changed because Munchkin Starfinder doesn’t include Allies, and Mechanic, from Munchkin Steampunk, which was so steampunk-specific that we rewrote it from scratch. By contrast, all of the Races are completely new.
About those monsters . . .
The Starfinder game has lots of really cool monsters (SPACE GOBLINS!) (we’re getting there, relax), and we’ve brought many of them into Munchkin Starfinder. The main antagonist of the setting as it’s presented in the Core Rulebook is a mysterious race known as the Swarm, which is absolutely tailor-made for Munchkin and its monster-stacking mechanic (like the Undead) (AND GOBLINS!) (sheesh, seriously, be patient). You’ll see Swarm monsters in core Munchkin Starfinder and the expansion, and we have plans for even more if those do well enough.
What we don’t have in the core game are Space Goblins.
(WHAAAAAAAAA…?!?)
We wanted Munchkin Starfinder to stand apart from Munchkin Pathfinder, and this was one way to keep them distinct. However, the base Space Goblin will be the free promo card for Munchkin Starfinder, and we’re talking about ways to make sure Space Goblins are well represented as we move forward with more Munchkin Starfinder. We love our goblin friends!
In place of Space Goblins in the “cute and deadly” ecological niche, we present the Skittermander, an adorable little guy who is quite capable of ripping you a new face if he gets a mind to. You’ll see this monster a lot on the Munchkin Starfinder cards.
There’s Treasure, right?
You know it! Lots of lasers and grenades and more exotic stuff you can use to bash monsters. People who have already played the Starfinder Roleplaying Game will recognize a lot of these weapons, but you don’t need any familiarity with Starfinder in order to throw down some cards and start playing.
As you might expect, starships are important to the Starfinder Roleplaying Game, enough so that parties in that game are assumed to start with a basic ship. We obviously wanted to honor that in our game, and so Munchkin Starfinder has a selection of Ships in the Treasure deck.
Who’s illustrating this game?
We’re very lucky to have Howard Tayler illustrating Munchkin Starfinder for us. Howard’s Schlock Mercenary is one of the longest-running comics on the Web, and he is very familiar with roleplaying games. We can’t wait for you fans to see what he brings to this game!
Howard wrote down some of his thoughts about the experience of illustrating Munchkin Starfinder. We’ll link to his article here when it’s posted.
OK, I know you said Munchkin Starfinder is distinct from Munchkin Pathfinder, but I really want to play them together . . .
They’re both Munchkin games, so you certainly can play them together if you want. I’ve written an article about combining Starfinder with Pathfinder and with some other games as well, in case you want more guidance than “just shuffle them all together.” We’ll be posting that article soon.
Anything else we need to know?
Nope! Except that I’m grateful to Paizo Inc. for once again giving us a lot of freedom to play in their ball pit, to Howard for his fantastic and amusing illustrations, and of course to you fans for making all this possible. Y’all are the best. See you in the Pact Worlds!
Back Munchkin Starfinder on Kickstarter today!
