Paizo has released the galaxy exploration manual it's been out for a little while now but it's been
a little difficult to get my hands on a physical copy if you're watching this
you're probably wanting to know is it worth it should i pick this up and is it any good
well I'm hoping to answer all of those questions about the galaxy exploration manual and give my
thoughts my review on this let's get into it hello everyone welcome to the table my name is Nathaniel
this is a channel where we discuss your favorite role-playing games in the Paizo
verse as well as world of darkness if that's something you're interested in i would love
to have you join me at the table first things first if you're looking to pick this up there
are several things that this book is there are many things that this book is and what it covers
and there is a couple things that it does not the galaxy exploration manual or the gem as I'm
going to refer to it from here on out because it is it is a gem it is the closest thing to
a dungeon masters guide that exists currently for Starfinder but even saying that doesn't really
encapsulate what this book is about so what's in this book and who is it designed to target
what you will find when you get into the book is you will find some character creation background
some tables that you can use for character creation how to create a better backstory if it's
something that you're struggling with these tables are all the d100 percentage dice so you need 2d
10s to roll these for new players and folks who are new to Starfinder who are just starting a new
campaign this could be a good source for you for some interesting character stories or at least to
give you some ideas if you don't know what to do it also gives some ideas on how a party can
know each other maybe you're not all starting from square one maybe you all know each other or some
of each other from some place and this does give you some ideas on a table on that as well these
are great ideas not just for star finder although you may have to tweak some of the information
in these tables if you want to use them for a different game but they are usable in this way
after the character creation tables we're getting into some more of the meat for players there are
some different class options that you can take for every single class that exists up until this point
biohackers envoys mystics mechanics operatives Solarians soldiers Technomancers vanguard and
the Witchwarper they all have some new features to their class some new whole skill sets that
you can use and all of them are geared around specifically exploration and doing sandbox i
found that some of them were a little situational at least as i interpreted them when i was reading
them i could be wrong about that some of them will definitely have use no matter what type of game
you're playing next comes some starship options so there are new systems designed specifically for
exploring and mapping out new planets scanning new planets if you will so that you can find
out what's on them there's also some new downtime activities that are geared again
towards exploring a planet and learning more about it very useful when you jump out of the drift for
your party and you're randomly over a new planet that you want to learn a little bit more about
I've talked a little bit about the drift there should be a video here and there will be one
in the description as well now from here we start to move into the equipment section now throughout
this book there is dispersed items and feats and different magical spells the back of the
book does have an index for these as well so you know what page they're on and exactly what you're
looking for like spells or feats whatever it is documented at the back with some nice pictures
and it makes things somewhat easy to find so that you know that it's in the book but you don't have
to do a ton of digging to find it and again some of the feats and the magical spells i feel that
they're quite situational as well not all of them many of them are designed around the concept of
this book which was exploration so if you're not doing that in your campaign if you're not actively
going out and exploring new worlds you may not get as much value from your characters out of this as
you would maybe something else like the character operations manual I've also reviewed that one so
the link will be in the description as well the back half of this book is dedicated to world
building I'm going to talk to you a little bit about what's in there and just why it's so amazing
why it needs half the book before we get into that if you are finding some value out of today's video
i would encourage you to hit the subscribe button as well as the bell notification so that you never
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now the world building section is phenomenal this is very very meaty stuff keep in mind these are
all optional systems they're not new rules that you can layer in for complexities of your game
they are simply tools for a dungeon master or a game master to create planets on the fly now Paizo
released a accessory to their game called the deck of many worlds and it does kind of accomplish the
same thing this is a little less expensive and it's easier to create some planets on the fly
but if you're looking for something that just takes your planet building or your world building
and just takes it to the next level then you're definitely going to want to get the gem now the
deck of many worlds will give you a planet type it will give you some species and whether it's
a high or low tech just some ideas where the gem takes this and absolutely runs with it
is it gives you full fleshed out ideas to create full worlds we're talking different biomes
desert aquatic arctic boreal even in space there are specific I'm not going to say rules but there
are specific tables that they have that give you some ideas to create planets or spaces for your
players to interact with not only does it give you those spaces that your players can interact
with it gives you world building ideas around this it goes right down into the nitty-gritty
once you have a biome and you know what a planet is going to be it then progresses into a system
that Paizo has called a chord and what they mean by this is how cooperative are your citizens
there is high medium and low accord and Paizo really does try to give you as many ideas as
possible around these different levels of agreement what does society look like when
they all agree with each other and when they all disagree with each other and are
actively hostile with each other what kind of magic exists in this society or on this world
is it a high medium or low magic society and then again they go into ideas on each of these concepts
what does a society look like when it has high magic what does a society look like when they are
low or medium magic what are the types of things that you can run into or that you should expect
not the end-all be-all but definitely enough to get the thought process going they also
try to give you as many ideas as they can around the religious beliefs of a society
how religious are they how much technology exists within this society i would argue
that you wouldn't want uh a high magic and a high tax society i mean you could do that
just for me personally i would usually have one or the other but it's your worlds you do what you
want these are the tools that Paizo has created for you and even within these sections after
they've given you all of these ideas all of these ways that a society would work given the specific
thing you're looking at religion technology whatever in each of these sections Paizo then
takes it one step further for the gm by giving you a plot hook table what kind of adventures could
you run in these types of societies they have plot hooks for your high medium and low range options
in all of these categories they have even added an alignment section for better or worse whatever
your opinion on the alignment system is there is one in it what does a society look like when
it is lawful good when it is chaotic evil what do corporations look like when they fit inside these
boxes or inside this grid of the alignment system whether you actively use it or not it is there
for ideas these tools in the hands of even an uninspired gm will not go to waste once Paizo
finished getting through showing you how to build great worlds with in-depth societies they take it
one step further and then they show you as a gm how to design a whole campaign how to design a
campaign setting one of the biggest things to talk about when you're designing an exploration based
setting a sandbox setting is having a home base for your players and this would either be your
starship primarily because this one moves with you or you would have some home base somewhere
maybe exploring a whole system i can see something being done around that once they
lay out the framework of what a setting would look like they then help you fill that out with
what should an adventure look like what should an encounter look like they have encountered tables
in these books as well did i mention there's a lot of tables there's almost a table on every page
not quite true but there are a lot of tables Paizo also included a lot of their inspirations for the
various ideas their sub-genres of Sci-Fi if you will which they titled sub-genres
they give specific references to movies books anything that related to the specific setting
that was their own inspiration these are not the end-all be-alls of the sub-genres but again
use your inspiration draw from your various sources as we get towards the end of the
book there are more tables for npc creation names species it's all very good stuff to have
because i now i don't have to create my own lists there's also more tables for settlement creations
names of those settlements important areas that you might want to visit within those settlements
and names and types of establishments that they are like a butcher or a tavern a space tavern lots
of tables to help with not only your adventure design but your games and your encounters as well
and once you get through all of that that brings you basically to the end of the book so here's a
couple of things that i really liked about gem for me I've never really used tables before so i liked
having access easy access to tables rather than trying to create something on my own it gives me
some nice tools for easy access on the fly one of the other things that i liked around this was the
sheer number of plot hooks and the ideas for plot hooks that they have given I've never really
struggled with ideas for creating a story but i have found some challenges in keeping that story
going i also really liked the world building tools what biome is your planet what does a society
look like and what kind of technology and magic religion influences their decision even their
moral compass if you choose to use the alignment system some of the things that i did not like with
this book and i feel that they're mostly minor some tables have the option to re-roll twice on
them for example if you get the bottom percentiles one or two percent and then the top percentiles 99
or 100 percent they both have the re-roll on this table option i don't know why you would need two
of those on there as i mentioned earlier i haven't used tables before so i know that in some cases a
re-roll on this table is is used I'm not sure if it's worthwhile having it on there twice though at
least from my own mind why re-roll just have two more options in there and then you don't have to
do anything different on the table it's more nit-picky on my end and i again don't have
a lot of experience with using pre-generated tables for my games I'm definitely planning to
start using these ones one thing that i also did not appreciate with my physical copy and this is
really isn't the fault of Paizo but my book actually has a misprint in it i got pages 41
through 48 twice i don't know how well you can see this but you go from page 40 here to 41
42 43 and then you get the cross fold cover art which this is this is some really nice art 46 47
48 back to 41 and then it just redoes those pages again
until we get back to 49 on this side so it's just an interesting misprint on this one the
only other negative that i can say around this book is i wish it was longer it's about 163
pages when you don't count in the misprint that i got of the duplicated pages but if you look at
some of the other supplements that are coming out for pathfinder pathfinder 2e specifically
the advanced player's guide as an example was 60 larger than what this one is some of the
other lost omen guides they're probably closer to the same size maybe a little smaller i guess but
like with any good supplement that comes out for a role-playing system that you enjoy you always want
more of it so what are my final thoughts and my final score and who should pick up the gem i
really enjoyed this supplement it doesn't really fill in any blanks for me on the lower part of
things but it does give as a gm so many campaign creation tools world-building tools that you don't
have to use specifically for Starfinder if you are a writer and you just need some inspiration
or how to create a world these are excellent tools they go beyond just creating campaigns
in Starfinder they are excellent tools no matter what creative outlet you're trying to use them for
you could even use some of these in a dungeons and dragons setting if you really really wanted
to this book is mostly geared towards the GMs and the people who want to build their own adventures
they want to create their own campaigns if you're running an adventure path you're
not going to get as much use out of this as you would if you were making your own adventures on
the player side of things you will get some more character options which you could use
for your campaigns or your adventure paths that you're running but i would say if you're looking
for more character options then please go with the character operations manual first and then
look at this as a second if you are a gm who is looking to run Starfinder in a sandbox capacity
this is absolutely a 100 must-have book for you my final score for the gem will be a five stars
out of five this is phenomenal book Paizo has totally done another home run with this
the quality of the writing that's been coming out from Paizo around Starfinder has just been
amazing if you haven't checked out Starfinder yet i would highly encourage that you do so as this
is a phenomenal system and those familiar with d d 3.5 will be right at home with star finder
if you would like to learn a little bit more about Starfinder i have a playlist on the screen for you
now specifically around Starfinder i also have my gm series with tips and tricks on how to run
not only Starfinder but any other game i try to keep my tips as system agnostic as possible
my name is Nathaniel this has been the maple table thanks for stopping by everyone