At the end of 2025 I predicted I would play a lot of Starfinder and Pathfinder this year because I am getting stuck in my ways. That is half right; I would say that is true, but part of my ways include being fickle and annoyed with the systems of choice. Right now, after the last month of running both Pathfinder and Starfinder each campaign is hitting a story arc conclusion which means I could comfortably take a break and try something else for a while....or keep going to the next story arc.
The problem with Paizo's two systems is that they work best with a serious time investment in absorbing the rules and really meshing yourself in an understanding of the mechanical elements of both the structured intention of play and the possible emergent play. This is a problem when you have tiny slivers of time in your daily life to actually devote to preparing for such elaborate game sessions; one can run games off-the-cuff or with a mildly structures campaign arc as I tend to do, but its a rough ask in a game like Pathfinder where a GM should plot out scenarios to include suitable downtime, or to consider carefully the wide array of magical items that could eventually be distributed as useful loot by the level-based mechanics of the system. If you don't take the time to do this, your game can rapidly devolve into loads of encounters mixed with roleplaying that may (at least to me) feel like stalling before the next set-piece encounter.
Sometimes, in fact most of the time, I really prefer a more relaxed emergent gameplay element. I love game systems where I don't necessarily have to think about every encounter in advance, and so systems where random encounter tables where the element of chance plays an important role are quite appealing. I love random treasure table options because it is never that fun to me if you simply have zero chance by the system as written of getting an amazing magic device just because you're not the right level for it. You can technically break the mechanical design of Pathfinder by granting higher level magic items as loot, but the system starts to creak at the seams when you do this, and it creates power disparities that are evident in play.
Indeed, with Pathfinder and Starfinder I have at least a couple players who are often absent, but by the rules as written their characters need to keep leveling up even if they are non-participatory for a session or two because the game design is so tight that it really can't handle PCs of varying levels very well. This has always been a bit of an issue in D&D and its cousins with level-based design, but it was generally handled better in prior editions; PF2E and SF2E both only really work well when everyone is on the same page in terms of level and power.
I have also complained about how Pathfinder handles skills in the past. While I have mellowed on this (or more accurately, just gotten used to it), this continues to be a rough spot for the players who often want to do something interesting, only to be told by other rules lawyers at the table that no, in fact, you cannot do that because you lack the requisite skill feats and such for it. This is a severe drag on the players' creativity. My last pathfinder session only had the old veterans who know Pathfinder very well, and they had a good time because everyone was sympatico, but the absence of the players who want to think out of the box was noted by me, at least, as a sign that they may not be showing up because its hard to have fun in a game system that needs that fun to fit neatly into the mechanical box and is not into the creative expression elements.
That led me down to the rabbit hole of realizing that as a GM while I can run the mechanically rigorous system, I would really rather be running a game system that was neither mechanically rigorous nor so procedural; a system which actively encouraged creative expression and emergent gameplay. Obvious systems exist for this purpose: Cypher System comes to mind, but any game system which encourages this style of play will work. Shadowdark, for example, and even Tales of the Valiant, which offers plenty of randomization and does not lock content such as magic items behind level-based mechanics.
A good example of what I am talking about: my level 1-4 range group includes players who want characters who have skills that let them tinker with and make or install augments (magical and cyberware stuff). But actually doing this seems to be rather heavily gated by a range of skill, feat, and tool requirements that are incredibly difficult to achieve at these levels, even though a majority of the augments are meant to be for this level. It also requires parsing out multiple different sections of the book to get the full picture on this. It is, in short, complicated.
To contrast, imagine doing this in Mothership, Savage Worlds, Traveller or Cypher System: it is essentially a non issue, and the absence of structured mechanical prerequisites means that the system itself can breathe a little, and let these things happen more organically according to the needs of emergency gameplay and story.
So yeah....I think for February I really need to think about some alternative systems that fit the play style I am more in the mood for.
