#sometimes i forget to have fun in games and instead i optimize the enjoyment out of them

[quirkle2]

fav shot of reigen in this comic i think

[nullset2]

Modern Japanese Action Game Design

I'm currently playing through Platinum Games's Nier:Automata (which, by the way, it's a fucking masterpiece holy shit I love you Yoko Taro) and I can't avoid but notice a trend in the Gaming industry and the AA/AAA games it's produced as of late and I wanted to talk about them here.

First, I reiterate, I'm in love with that game. It has layers upon layers upon layers of depth. Of meaning. Its characters, its gameplay design, the lore, the world, the numbers, Mason! What do they mean!?!?!?, HOT DAMN! I love it... it may actually be a better Death Stranding than Death Stranding ever was (by the way, Kojima, you cheeky dude! I can see that you played Nier Automata and you got inspired by it ;)!) --AND it has a cute robot babe!.

(Say it with me: CUTE! ROBOT! BABE!)

Not to say that this is something inherently bad by all; you know what Ebert said, on the subject of everything being a repetition of something else: it's not about the "what", it's about the how, in storytelling.

How many stories in total does humanity have in its aquis? Like, for real, when you actually boil them down to the archetypes? You got the hero's journey, rags to riches, comedies, tragedies... all other stories are just permutations of these, aren't they? What matters is the values with which each of them are presented to you --I can watch Snow White 10,000 times, if there's a new, cool directoy behind it every time, right?

But anyway.

Since FROM SOFTWARE's Demon's Souls (yes, with an apostrophe) came out and souls-likes became popular, I think it set a trend and we've entered a new era for the Japanese action game and I wanted to discuss their aspects in this article, briefly. Cue the game journo saying it's the Dark Souls of...!. Yadda Yadda, right?

Japanese action games since Demon's Souls have the following elements, in my opinion:

Strong emphasis in Single Player design

This, I actually really like! Because, as much as multiplayer-only games are great, sometimes you need a fucking break. I want to be immersed in a Creator's vision of the World. I want to be told a great story. I want games that will still be amazing to play --not to mention, actually playable-- 20 years from now. I want to see speedrun communities form around new games.

The Single Player game must not die!

An element of pseudo-"permadeath".

Modern games use "permadeath" with small benefits, borrowing from rouguelikes, to engross the player. There's more at stake if losing to an enemy means that you lose all of your progress (even if this is superficial, like in Nier, where losing means that you have to collect your previous items and Experienve Points from your old body). It is usually rather easy to restore your previous condition, so the game implements this as a "minor penalty" to the player for not understanding its mechanics instead of a full blown game over.

Focus on hard, unforgiving enemies

Which leads me to the next point. It is very common that Japanese games have several different OHKOs, or enemies that can spawn on you unpredictably and without warning, which can work as a very ~bullshit~ succint way of setting up player expectation and direction/conveyance for the game. Don't go that way if there's a horde of skeletons waiting to fuck you up in one hit, until you're stong enough to bear it, capice?

Uncancellable animations that leave you open for long periods of time and for which you have to plan ahead

Which means that the player has to not be a superman who can take tons of bullets on a whim. Movement has to be slow and demand attention from the player. Triggering the right or wrong movement can make or break the current run. You have to be mindful of your stamina/estus flask/Mana at all times and plan ahead. The game demands dedication from its players and asks them upfront to learn its mechanics and play by its rules.

Hybrid, Internet-powered "multiplayer" features

Let's not forget that people do want Online games, but maybe... let's not do what everyone else is doing! Dark Souls' Signs and invasions, Death Stranding's Structures, Signs and Likes. You can drop a poem when you die in Nier, for the enjoyment of everyone! Wow! Emergent play is the name of the game.

Can I just mention tangentially, by the way that Nintendo actually implemented the memetic "Green Demon" stuff in Super Mario Maker 2? Japanese game designers are well aware of the Internet, my dudes.

Open world design with few, if ANY, instructions as to where to go

This one is very important and --as I'll elaborate about in a bit--, I think this was created as a direct response to modern game trends. Players want to feel like the game respects their intelligence and is not just a covert Rollercoaster ride of a single player game, of which, all of us have already played a ton of in the PS2 era. Allow people to discover the game world on their own terms, at their own pace, however they see fit. If they can sequence break --great! Allow them to do so, makes for cooler speedruns anyway, and keeps people talking about your game more, right?

"Environmental Storytelling"

And since players want to take charge and take things into their own hands, present the story in small nuggets scattered through the game world. Make them connect the dots and go online to talk about it instead of subjecting them to 80 hours of cinematics that try way too fucking hard to play like a Hollywood movie but end up feeling like cheesy deviantart fanfiction written by a 16 year old (Kojima games, for example). Make them go on message boards and talk to other players about it.

Progressive uncovering of the game world by "chunks", usually triggered by visiting a landmark or completing a mission

(This is totally borrowed from Assassin's Creed, by the way)

Focus on big, bombastic enemy design that cover the whole screen

You gotta showcase your tech at some point! Let people see how far games have come since Super Mario World for the Super Nintendo!

Fun mechanics for traversal, emphasizing engagement with the player inherent to the movement itself

Finally, make movement interesting in some way. Give the players a really cool car, make every step be physically simulated in painstaking detail, let them ride their shield like a snowboard down a mountain or let them glide beautifully down sand dunes. There's probably something very Zen and phillosophical in the middle of all these instances of great movement in games.

My thesis is that the Japanese industry started developing games like these in direct reaction to the American game industry and its production values. Games that exhibit traits of the previous at least in a couple ways: Dark Souls, Monster Hunter, Xenoblade, Zelda Breath of The Wild, Final Fantasy XV, Nier, Death Stranding, Sekiro, Bloodborne, et. al.

It's not that American (British? European?) games are bad, I love GTA and Red Dead and I got Fallout in the backburner. I have heard tons of great things about the Assassin's Creed, Elder Scrolls, The Witcher series. I am totally going to play Cyberpunk 2077 and Sleeping Dogs and Saints Row got me curious. Supposedly Just Cause is the best shit ever. I can appreciate very deeply narrative games, like The Walking Dead, The Last of Us and new experimental ideas like The Order (not very hot about that one).

But as of late and as I grow older, I get the feeling those games have been made more for the aesthetic value of it rather than the game design value, to put it some way, and to be blunt about it, American games are optimized for easy play. Don't think I'm being pedantic. On the contrary, variety is the spice of life, my friend.

Western games have a different strategy for design. They fill hours for the sake of filling hours with cinematics and exponential expansion of its game world rather than to seeking engrossment from the player in the form of, deep, highly skillful games to play.

The reason why this happens, is that now more than ever, the American game sees single-player as a nuisance, or a boring obligation at best --perhaps, merely a way to present a tutorial for newbies, to get them into the Multiplayer ASAP (where the real $$$$$$$$$ lies). Therefore, you shouldn't hold the player back or keep them in the SP for very long. You should make it so the players derive enjoyment from the game from its flow, its fast succession of change, and from the formation of online communities rather than from intricacy.

When you actually want intricacy, you give players................... fucking crafting. Just copy Minecraft, fuck it. Just add a skill tree and a million random classes to make players feel like they're progressing by filling up bars. Trying to appeal to everyone's internal MMO gamer.

And the ultimate concretion of the previous: most games let you skip entire sections if you wish.

Tired of retrying a certain section in Red Dead? Just hit SKIP. Booyah! No obligation, no demands from the game.

Case study: Red Dead Redemption plays itself.

Hahahaha.

Rockstar has used the same loop in all of their open world games for the last 20 years. Every single fucking GTA mission to have ever been releasedfollows the same structure: you drive around to a spot in the game world, watch a cutscene, then drive to another fucking point on the game map while listening to characters blab, watch another cutscene, go through a shooter/stealth section, then watch another cutsccene, and you're done. Wash rinse repeat.

And I think someone sort of confronted them and told them the truth, that nobody really likes just driving around and doing nothing else but listening to rants, if you just want to watch the story unfold. Might as well just "cut to the (literal) chase", right? Or might as well just start shifting GTA into an always-online game at this point, right? (Which they've done kind of majestically with GTA:O btw).

And what was their answer?

"How about... when you start a mission, um... just hit X button to go into "Cinematic Mode". Voila! You don't have to drive anymore!!!!!!!!!!!! Wow! Just take in the sights! And remember you can skip the game if you want! Just watch the cutscenes! Please play GTA:O please!"

Most other games have variations of this. A "super easy" mode that just emphasizes the storytelling experience.

Some Japanese games do this too, though (particularly Nintendo games). Maybe it's just a sign of the times, of gamers being old enough that they have families and responsibilities to attend to, and whose time should be respected by the video game.

In conclusion, this is definitely a trend to watch. Souls-likes have definitely become influential like no other, for the better. Great games they are. I get the feeling that this is the anthithesis to the "game that plays by itself". It's like they wanted to "come of age" and deliver robust games like their counterparts in america were, but they'll be damned if they lose the soul. The soul which gave us Famicom games. The soul of the arcade game, if you may, with several degrees of derivation, adapted for a new era.

[yoags]

Why we play games

Where Paragon is going wrong

The original ‘legacy’ map was open and expansive.

Around April 2016 Epic Games started releasing promotional videos to Youtube and IGN regarding a new third-person MOBA called Paragon. It looked sensational. Amazing graphics, beautiful open world, interesting strategic interactions. I had never played a MOBA before and was not really sure what it meant, but Paragon looked too good to pass up. I paid for Early Access and entered a wonderful world with which I was enamoured for over a year, up until recently. However, much has changed in the development of the game. The entire map/world changed and the speed and pace of everything changed, the itemisation changed, and finally my feelings towards the game changed. I am writing this essay because I am not sure exactly why my feelings have changed so much, and to try to get to the bottom of why we play games at all; what was so addictive about Paragon; and if they are anything more than a pastime.

In Paragon I experienced what I think was my first real addiction. You could say I am addicted to carbohydrates, caffeine or sugar, but taking them away from me would not affect me the way Paragon did. I would go to work angry after a loss and the whole day would be ruined because I played too long and left ten minutes too late, losing in the process. I stayed up late in games lasting 75 minutes or more getting a bad night’s sleep and annoying my girlfriend in the process. She hates this game, with a passion. She has threatened to leave me because she does not like to see the person I am when playing it. But I could not stop. I played almost every day and every day that I did not seemed like an eternity. On the train I would read about it, listen to podcasts about it, and wake up and play a game every day if I had time. But that stopped in early October 2017.

It's hard to say what exactly made the difference in the end, because so many things have changed with the game. We must not forget that when I first played on the ‘Legacy’ map of Agora, everything was novel and exciting. The big open spaces, the blue sky, the old gnarled tree looming over the big crystal towers, the canopy covering the jungle, the black minimal game menus, the minimal electronic music brooding and ominous. Entering a match of paragon felt big and cool and like nothing else on the market.

The jungle of Monolith: dark, plain and cramped.

The new Agora map ‘Monolith’ is much smaller (30% smaller) and feels much more compressed. The scale alone brought the impression of the game down dramatically. The jungle before was a real jungle covered by foliage so you could not see into it. It was exciting to dive into the jungle and with some heroes you could leap out of it and make a play. That was gone and the card system was also changed. Though I think the new card system is more interesting than the older system and also simpler for new players, everything else that has changed has been negative for me. The pace of the game has sped up dramatically. Paragon was slow and methodical on Legacy and it was like moving chess pieces on a board; you could see what was happening and you knew that you had been outplayed and that there was nothing you could do except prepare for the next move, or make a counter move. But Epic decided it was not action-packed enough so they made the map smaller, increased movement speed while removing the sprint function (basically a net increase in map traversal), decreased cooldowns across the board, decreased relative mana costs, and turned Paragon into an action-MOBA.

Many passionate Paragon fans on reddit or the forums will tell you that Steve Superville leaving the project was when things changed, and this seemed to correlate but there are many people behind the wheel of Paragon and for whatever reason Paragon changed so much that it is not the same product that many people bought into. Since the Monolith change my enjoyment of the game has progressively decreased and recently I have seen little point in playing. I have been playing a completely different game instead. I do not think I am just bored with Paragon as I sometimes try to play a game and see if it is fun, but it is not. Elite: Dangerous, without being “action packed”, is so much more enjoyable a game than Paragon is, but for the same reasons Paragon is not. I will explain why.

As the pace of paragon increased, the fun factor decreased. Yes, there is more happening at any one time. Yes, it looks good (since the recent visual update). Yes, there are many heroes and build variety is probably better than it was before the card rework (but there are always optimal builds that the top players go for). However, the faster pace has brought about many bugs. I played a game with countess the other day, a burst caster who relies on being able to execute a string of ability, in the right order, in quick succession. It was impossible; I died a lot. Every ability I used caused lag, I used my ultimate on one player and he appeared five metres away and just completely ignored the damage and root of my ability. But this is not just one hero or just one game. Whenever you are in a grouped-up situation, a team fight situation, or something, there is so much going on the game cannot handle it and neither can players.

The game works now that you farm and get strong and try to win a few decisive fights to get ahead. The once ahead you group as four or five and you take objectives. Nothing can stop you at the point; if you have a decent composition and more numbers then you will kill the other team just by spamming abilities. That is all that happens now. Towers offer no protection, the map is too small for you to get away and there are too many abilities or cards to slow you or root you and stop you from getting away, and so you chase down enemies as a group and you kill them wherever that may be. If you have numbers you usually win, and then you take objectives. There is nothing that a defending team can do except retreat and try not to die. The problem with this is the pace.

Everything happens too fast to react. There are cards and abilities to use to save you. Serath, for example, an attack damage carry, has a short immunity ability that stops her movement but timed correctly can save you. Before the card rework and further ability pace changes, I could use this ability very effectively to dodge attacks and heal myself back up with lifesteal; it was amazingly powerful and satisfying to use it properly. Since the changes I do not remember once seeing an enemy prepare an ability and using this ability to dodge it. That does not happen anymore. It is too fast. When Epic moved to Monolith, abilities became more valuable, and you could effectively escape if you wanted to with movement abilities, or immunity abilities. Now you need cat-like reactions, or you have to have magically predicted that the enemy team was about to jump on you from stealth and unload all of their hard crowd-control and damage abilities on you at once. In this case, if you did not see it coming (by map awareness or warding) then you are dead; there is nothing you can do to prevent it. That, there, is it. That is frustrating. That is unpleasant. That is unenjoyable. Team fights should be fun tactical affairs with play-making and counter-play. But it all happens too fast. You have no control. If you cannot control your game, it leads to frustration, and that is why my entire friends list that used to all play paragon have all but quit, myself included.

Teamfights on Monolith.

The second major general change that Epic Games have slowly implemented is to raise the skill floor and lower the skill ceiling. Most of the changes have been justified as removing confusing mechanics (harvesters > amber link > nothing) or making things fit better on the new smaller map. In other words, making it easier. This has become the subject of intense debate on the reddit and forums recently because of several changes made to the game that have brought higher skill cap heroes, like Kwang, down by making their skills easier to hit and easier to use. Most recently, Epic thought it would be a good idea to make last hitting minions (the mainstay of MOBAs since forever) significantly easier with an execute mechanic that kills minions on any last hit below 20% health. They have explained that these changes are to benefit new players and claim that it does not change the game for people are the higher level. However, it has created uproar and some high profile competitive players of the game have come out against it.

Why is this significant? Surely making the game accessible to more people is a good thing, right? Well, accessible - yes, but easy - no. A tutorial would make the game more accessible but it would not raise the success rate of bad players, thus making good players feel better. Furthermore, if Epic thinks that player retention is low because of a high barrier to entry then they should consider the popularity of other MOBAs like League of Legends and DOTA, which have players in the millions and at this stage a much more complex game with more heroes, more items and abilities and years of development that has created a deep and interesting interacting system.

Another aspect about making the game easier overall is longevity. Without a high skill cap, a game like this will always suffer, as it relies on people making it a part of their life and playing every day for years in order to get to an extremely high level of competency. Without a high skill ceiling too many players will lose interest and there will be no competitive scene. Epic set out to make the best competitive MOBA in the world, and now they are lowering their ambitions. Their statements have changed and their updates are all going in one direction.

Why is this important for games theory? What do I want from a game? What does it have to do with Elite: Dangerous? Well, basically, it’s the same for longevity. Paragon is reducing its longevity, giving long time players less reason to continue, and giving new players a leg up so that the older players will soon be playing with the new ones. And, significantly, reducing the amount of time it takes to reach a high level of skill. Raising the skill floor and lowering the skill ceiling only compresses the skills into a tight group and makes progression seem small. People play games because they give them the feeling of progression. Players of this kind of game want to be progressively challenged and when that stops they will get bored. But this goes deeper: the feeling of progression is essential to gaming. Some may say games are just about fun, but this is not true. Look at Tetris, Mario, Half-Life, and every other successful series that ever existed. The thing they have in common is that they get harder. Mastery of skills is the single most important factor in gaming. As the game gets harder you get better and you learn that you can do things that you could not before, that certain mechanics interact and that you enjoy the feeling of satisfaction when you complete a task that was difficult.

The Milky Way galaxy and the paths of players’ travels on the game. Some even deliberately making patterns that would show up on this map.

This is what Elite: Dangerous does very well. The difference being that it’s got a low skill floor and a high skill ceiling. That skill floor starts when you try to land for the first time in a space station and you crash your ship all over the place, perhaps get a fine for dangerous driving, or worse your ship could be destroyed by the station security just for loitering. This is quite a high level of difficult and for the first month of my play time landing was a challenge each and every time. I still make mistakes. I still know I can land better. And that’s just landing, one of the fundamentals of the game. Flying around fighting requires much more skill with the lateral/horizontal boosters as well as the propulsion throttle, power management of the variable pips into your different systems: systems, engine, weapons. Management of all of these things at the same time is difficult. But there are tutorials, and it is fun to learn. There is much to learn in this vast game. You can look at guides on the internet or you can figure it out yourself by trying it in solo play, or just play and never mind the huge costs when you destroy your ship. I recently started tinkering with flight assist off. The whole game I was thinking it was difficult to fly, but there are some people who never use the default flight assist. You drift like you truly would in zero gravity and your ship does not move in the way that you expect; it’s hard. But there is a very high skill cap. When will I stop playing? When I have every ship and I have explored everything the game has to offer. At present, I am a long way away from mastery. And the journey is enjoyable. The sounds and little actions that you perform in everything require a bit of technique and thought and it’s never unfair. Unlike Paragon, which is frustrating and buggy and still does not have anywhere for me to go without simply playing heroes I don’t enjoy. One small map that I know like the back of my hand, or the entire Milky Way galaxy to explore.

As we can see, reducing the skill gap is a bad idea from the games development perspective. Taking away agency and satisfaction in execution from the player makes a game frustrating and unenjoyable. Perhaps data shows that accessibility brings in more players and that those players stay on average longer than if it is difficult. Perhaps this is just another test in the long beta of Paragon. It could be that I am wrong, and that I do not speak for the general player base. Maybe I speak for hardcore gamers. But, I will tell you why Sony is winning this console generation so consummately. It is because they do not let the sales of their games completely dictate their policy. Uncharted does not sell as well as Call of Duty. They give money to small indie studios who create amazing games that not everyone will play. They also create masterpieces that may not be popular but go down in people’s memory as something of a very high quality. Companies in the games industry in this day and age are forgetting about quality. They are forgetting that people remember, and have opinions, that people talk and that word of mouth exists. Data points and statistical analysis is killing a section of the industry. If you want to create a Call of Duty which everyone plays and enjoys but has absolutely no effect on the gaming press or critics, that is never remembered except by some children who play it because their friends do and do not know any better, then do that. But if you want to create a competitive eSport MOBA, then you have to stick to a singular vision and you have to design it based on that objective. MOBAs will never be for everyone; why try to cater for people who might never play this game anyway?

[origami-goblin]

The Great Space Race - Races in Starfinder

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Yogi's Space Race was a wacky Saturday morning cartoon by Hanna-Barbera that featured an eclectic range of characters who competed in an intense intergalactic race for fame and glory. Notable stars included Huckleberry Hound, Phantom Phink, and even Fred Flintstone. Each character had their own unique spaceship, alignments, and quirks (see where I'm going with this?), which made for an entertaining bit of programming for kids to enjoy as they kicked off their weekend.

Starfinder launches with a similar array of brand new races for us to experiment and explore with. Without considering the "grandfathered" or "legacy" races like Dwarves and Elves, players have the opportunity to expand their design horizons with these fresh, shiny character-suits. Just like Pathfinder, each race grants special abilities and adjustments that may make them more inclined to pursue specific classes, but players are encouraged to not let optimization (aka min-maxing) completely railroad their character-building ethos.

Without further delay, onto the races of Starfinder!

Android - If you want your character to look like a human, but don't necessarily want to play AS a human, the Android is for you. No Apple fanboys here - just a blank mechanical canvas on which you can apply your robotic impulses. As a race, androids each house a soul, which means that they are considered to be living, sentient beings in Starfinder. The "bodies" housing the souls are often passed to subsequent generations. Apart from complete obliteration by a laser blast, androids are essentially capable of living ad infinitum, and so this soul-swapping practice is considered the death of that specific consciousness. The naming/numbering convention used by androids will sometimes reflect the number of souls who have inhabited the body (i.e Teppid-3).

The level to which the android wishes to blend into society and hide their mechanical nature is completely up to the player. There may also be some bitter feelings towards humans for past history of enslavement, although not all androids share this sentiment. Within the Starfinder system, android characters are also given the ability to install an armor upgrade into their body as a character feature, exemplifying android uniqueness and their mechanical infrastructure.

Human - Ah, the most polarizing race choice! In my experience, people either love playing as a human or want nothing to do with it. For the former, players may picture their RL selves as the protagonists of the story and want to share those epics moments by living vicariously through their characters. I fall more into the second bucket; I've been a human my entire life and I want to stretch my (shorter) legs by rolling up a Dwarf or a Ysoki instead.

Humans in Starfinder are described as being the "glue that holds the rest of the solar system together," meaning that they are culturally diverse and are generally accepting of the other races. This could be seen as an inevitable outcome of not having their own home planet, but Humans in RPGs usually fit well into a mold where they can adopt other cultures and let their individuality shine through.

Kasatha - If General Grievous had been more...fleshy...his frame would be incredibly similar to that of the Kasatha. Built upon the ideologies of historic families, the kasathas are deeply entrenched in cultural tradition and they tend to honor the past with great conviction. Described as intergalactic nomads, they arrived in the Pact Worlds system on a quest to populate a 'promised land' of sorts, known as Akiton. Unfortunately, they were unable to do so without the likelihood of severe casualties to their entire race, and so now their home planet isn't really a planet at all; their colony ship, the Idari, serves as the self-sustaining ship on which many kasatha still live.

Due to their history-loving background, kasathas are gifted with bonuses to Culture checks. They also, obviously, have the ability to use their four arms simultaneously to manipulate the world around them. As a race as a whole, kasathas are introverted when it comes to openly recounting their cultural practices, which leads to an aura of mystery that surrounds them.

Lashunta - A penny for your thoughts? Lashunta are characterized as the telepathic race, and feature two distinct subtypes - the korasha who are focused more on physical attributes, and the damaya who spend time developing their mental faculties. Education is at the forefront of their culture, and all lashunta share a love of learning and discovery, regardless of their subspecies. In this way, there is a faint resemblance to gnomes, who also take great pride in personal and cultural discovery. The lashunta culture is especially unique in that, by having two subspecies, they also have two main strengths. Everyone within the society has a specific role to contribute to the greater well being of the city-state.

Telepathy will be huge draw for players, and the inherent ability offers automatic role-play potential. Because of the korasha and damaya choice, players also don't have to sacrifice their preferred class to play a lashunta and have access to some basic spells native to the race. I love the idea of creating a korasha who feels like they should have been a damaya and vice versa, since the Inner Struggle and characterization that can come from it would generate some memorable moments for the players. Building characters that are the opposite of their perceived 'best' path (i.e. an Orc Wizard or a Gnome Barbarian) is always a worthwhile challenge and an enjoyable pursuit for me.

Shirren - Finally! Shirren jumped out at me right when they were first revealed, mostly because of The Hive mind mentality. When it comes to insects in the real world (not saying that Shirren are insects...there are merely similarities), it is fascinating how an entire colony can react and communicate so effectively with itself. Shirren are obsessed with individuality and having agency over their actions. On top of that, shirren also take great pride in being a part of something that is greater than them; teamwork and a sense of community are generally a part of their individual identity.

Again, telepathy is featured as a racial trait for shirren. What sets them apart from the lashunta are their specialized antennae, which have a heightened sensitivity allowing shirren to sense creatures before being able to physically see them. They also receive bonuses when performing skill checks or ATTACKS near an ally; being able to have the effects of 'Bit of Luck' once a day is HUGE and can be a game-changer for parties in hairy situations. Creating a shirren character that will do whatever it takes for 'the greater good' will also be a fun avenue to tread down, as those actions could be detrimental to the party. How will players handle those interactions?

Vesk - I'll probably refer to the Vesk as 'Space Orcs' since they are the strongest and most combat-inclined of the new Starfinder Races. The similarities don't end there! Warlike and ferocious, the vesk arrived in the Pact World system with the mission of conquering planets and taking them as their own. They also value a meritocratic leadership system based around heroics and exploits in battle (just like orcs). Vesk will often find themselves in a militaristic profession, either a professional soldier or mercenary, in a personal quest for honor and glory.

Let's not put them all in a box, however, as there are plenty of vesk who are respectable merchants or diplomats. They are also not inherently evil; vesk tend to follow the rules and traditions set forth by their communities. Now, these regulations could directly conflict with those set by other planets or races, so even a lawful alignment won't guarantee roses. There will likely still be guns involved. Vesk seem to have the strongest opinions on the other races, and it will be interesting to see those issues addressed at the table.

Ysoki - Last, but certainly not least, are the Ysoki. Sometimes called ratfolk, the ysoki have an incredibly varied culture due to the lack of a common/shared home planet; ysoki originated from multiple planets and, therefore, each ysoki can have completely different traditions from the next. In a way, the ysoki share some overlap with RL humans, where ancient civilizations existed independently of each other before the entire world was realized. They typically hold a love for technology, gadgets, and anything mechanical (also gnomish), and this makes them suitable for any class and background. Ysoki also tend to be willing to whatever task is assigned to them, as they are hyper-confident in their own abilities and strengths.

The sheer abundance of Ysoki across the Pact World planets means that there is a very high probability of two ysoki being related to each other. It's interesting to think about that idea every time that two ysoki would meet; are their memories sharp enough to retain and recognize their extended, extended, extended family? I also love the concept of a squadron of ysoki pilots or a pirate/scavenging fleet of decorated pilots soaring through the blackness of space. The more I read about them, the more I enjoy the ysoki and how they share aspects of other fantasy races. I've already commented on humans and gnomes, but their impulsive nature and naming conventions SCREAM goblin - the top of my all-time list. Ysoki will be a real treat to play, and many players will find the 'grab-bag' nature of the race to be exciting and refreshing.

Don't forget that legacy races are also an option if that's more up your alley; I merely wanted to focus on the brand new races in Starfinder, as they are unique in the idea that players have yet to breathe life into them. Orcs, elves, and dwarves have been used in countless game systems, and I feel that it's time to give these newbies a try before settling back into something that's more comfortable. In a subsequent post, I will describe a loose character concept for each race including class, theme, and a vague background. These can help serve as diving boards into a more elaborate brainstorming session and will hopefully unearth other ideas on how to create some awesome characters!