Starfinder: A Horrific Introduction

I've always loved Megalodon Sharks.

Sit down. This is going somewhere.

Like I said, I love Megalodon sharks! So, finally conquering my inner voice of self-loathing, I read The Meg, and found that I was pleasantly surprised. It was very enjoyable trash! Not high art by any means, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't giggling like a little kid throughout most of it, even the incredibly stupid opening of a Megaladon eating a T-Rex. Impossible? Yes. Awesome? Absolutely. And the rest of the book did not disappoint.

A few months later I decided that I wanted to read The Trench, the second book in the series (there's six of these glorious books), which promised to be an even bigger, trashier, awesomer experience! Just thinking about it get me really exited. So I went to the library with my family and looked for it.

Empty. They didn't have it!

The library had books one and three through six of The Meg series, but book two? No, of course not.  I was told by my friendly librarian  that there was a surplus of cash. So I decided I would ask for the library to order the book! That made me really excited, cause I really wanted to read The Trench. But, I won't lie, I was a bit bitter. I wanted the book now. So, in a rather strangely sarcastic move, I ordered the Starfinder RPG as soon as I was done ordering The Trench. I'd been interested in reading the game for awhile, but hadn't been willing to spend money on a 3.5 clone. I mean, I figured as long as I was ordering the book I actually wanted, but if these jokers had a surplus of cash I figured I'd at least try to get Starfinder. I mean, why on earth would they even order it?? It's a 45 buck book on Amazon. I wasn't seriously invested in Starfinder, but I figured why not? It would be a fun read. I figured I'd get The Trench first.

I figured wrong.

Shrugging at the mysterious ways of the universe, I opened up the book and sat down to Chapter One. And it is a mess! An incredibly awful mess! I've not raged at a Chapter One like this... well... ever, really. I had to teach myself how to GM, nevermind learn the game. The original 3E Dungeons and Dragons books had their flaws, but clarity was not a problem, by and large. I could and did use them frequently. And that actually included Chapter One! I was looking up modifiers and how stats worked. I didn't look it up terribly often, but I still was able to get info from the first chapter whenever I needed it.

So what makes Starfinder's opening chapter so terrible? A confusion about what the heck to put there in the first place. You start with the usual spiel about a roleplaying game, which was nicely written... and then there's a Glossary. Written in the most text-bookish way possible. It was drier and more boring than Liam Neeson's reading of The Polar Express.

I tried to skip the chapter. That was a mistake. Turns out the core mechanic for the entire game is hidden after the Glossary, and is never explicitly referred to. It's hidden under the "Roleplay" section. Not "This is What You Do" (as a new player I'd really have liked that) or "When in Doubt" (cause I was!), or even "The Rule to Rule All Others" (I think that one's the best). Nothing, and I mean nothing, indicates that you should care about reading this part of the chapter, especially after that awful Glossary. The first chapter is labeled Overview, but the central mechanic to the game is hidden in the text! Yes, there is an example of play, which is relatively well written. If it had been put into any other chapter it would have been fine, but any good play example needs a good setup in for it to show an example of in the first place.

Now, some of vets may be saying "Yeah,  but most people don't learn role-playing games from a book, they learn from someone else". But with text like that it's no wonder, how on earth could any new player read this thing? It's not a question of pandering or whatnot, but being cognizant that anyone should be able to pick up the tome and play it without someone else there to help him. Would the fact that it was a heavy tome have driven some off? Yeah, probably, but that's not the point. If we want new folks in the hobby we have to make our major-tier rulebooks not read this badly.

And what's weirder? The rest of the book reads perfectly fine, great even! The examples after chapter one are clear and concise and not intimidating in the least, or so I think. The rest of the book is laid out competently enough, and one can figure out how to play from the rest of the book. But they shouldn't have to figure it out. It could have been spelled out. It wasn't.

The entirety of this chapter has me baffled. I've never read an opening chapter to an an RPG that was even half as bad this... whatever this is... I'm still not sure why they decided to put a glossary before you even get to page ten. Actually, I'm not sure why they even bothered to have this chapter at all, given how poorly written and edited it is. It is a bad day when The Meg has clearer and more technical writing than any RPG book. Yeesh. Be embarrassed, folks. Other designers, take notes: do not write an opening chapter like this one. Garbage.