Starfinder Second Edition breaks through in a busy year full of releases
With 2025 promising some highly anticipated releases, the second edition of Paizo’s flagship science fiction setting Star Seeker is one of the most exciting new additions to the tabletop landscape. Polygon recently sent some questions to Star Seeker‘s senior developer Jenny Jarzabski to learn how this new version of the game will stand out in a busy year and what major updates players can expect.
This interview has been extended.
Polygon: In a year full of major releases, how do you design a cover that differentiates its unique identity while still maintaining a sense of familiarity?
Jenny Jarzabski: The Star Seeker team collaborated with Paizo concept artist Kent Hamilton to create an iconic illustration that showcases how fantasy and sci-fi elements harmonize in Star Seeker‘s high-tech, magical hyperspace-traveling setting. What’s more iconic than an adventurous party fighting a dragon? For the terrible enemy, we chose the Akasha dragon with laser eyes, a new creature designed for that purpose Starfinder second edition. For the setting of the battle we selected a futuristic museum full of artifacts from the era of Paizo’s other game, Scout. There are even a few Easter eggs that are that old Scout players may recognize it!
With a universe as vast as Star Seeker‘s, how do you maintain a cohesive identity and vision through the larger art direction?
One of the best things about working with real people (and not generating images using something like a computer program) is that they always bring their own personal style and perspective to a work of art. Every illustration you see in a Paizo book is a collaboration, and that’s one of the reasons it’s so good!
The characters fighting the Akashic Dragon on the Player Core cover are our iconic characters. They all have their own namesbackgrounds, and personalities. All the art you see features situations that could occur in the game, whether it’s Zemir, the iconic witch hunter casting a reality-bending spell, or the iconic soldier Obozaya raining bullets on a pack of laser wolves. Hopefully these scenes will inspire players and give GMs a work of art to show off at an important point in the campaign.
What major updates should we expect from these new books, both for players and GMs? Was there a guiding philosophy for you in creating these new editions?
Star Seeker is now fully compatible with Pathfinder Second Editionmeaning that if you already know how to play one game, you just need to learn the new ancestors, classes, equipment, and other options (like computers and spaceships) to play the other. You can even mix and match them if you like, creating an epic time travel campaign or your own beautiful Magitech world.
The team’s philosophy is to streamline From Starfinder rules for new players who like to play PF2while retaining the essence of Star Seeker alive. The rules are changing (and you can get a taste of those changes at www.starfinderplaytest.com), but we took a different approach Star Seeker‘s setting. We are some of them Star Seeker‘s most avid players, so preserving the original lore is important to us as administrators of the setting. The goal is to keep first edition books that way Pact worlds And Close to space relevant in second edition as the galaxy is updated to reflect major events like the Drift Crisis. Star Seeker was first launched in 2017 and a lot has happened in the game (since then). Adventurers have saved worlds, elder gods have emerged from planets, rebels have won their independence, and galactic war has broken out in an unexpected place. Galaxy guide is your preparation for all these exciting changes and more.