Some time ago (what is time in this apocalyptic age?) I got the Core Rulebook for Starfinder, as well as the first Alien Archive, the game's repository of creatures, with stat blocks and many rules for making the creatures within playable races.
Starfinder was created as a science-fantasy adaptation of Pathfinder, itself an RPG created after the introduction of 4th Edition D&D, intending to replicate and synthesize a D&D-like fantasy adventure RPG that hewed closer to 3.5 Edition's model, rather than the dramatic changes of 4e.
Like Pathfinder, and D&D in 3rd edition and beyond, Starfinder's a d20 system, so the very basics of it should look familiar to players who have played 5e - when you want to do something that could succeed or fail, you roll a d20, add the appropriate modifier, and the GM tells you whether or not you've succeeded. It has races and classes, feats, equipment, skills, and other familiar elements.
Spelljammer is D&D's space-based setting/meta-setting. First published in the late 80s, the setting was a flop at first, only getting a new publication... like a couple weeks ago.
What I find interesting is that the two games take wildly different approaches to the concept of "fantasy RPG in space."
Spelljammer is built around the idea of preserving familiar D&D rules as best as possible. This goes to the extent that space even works differently than it does in the real world. Space ships are literally ships that sail in space, and have open decks that one can walk upon without the need for a spacesuit.
Ultimately, Spelljammer is a setting rather than a new set of rules, and the only real modifications to what we know of D&D is how things work in that environment. If your spelljammer vessel lands on Toril, and you get out to do some adventures there, there's nothing whatsoever that is different from a Forgotten Realms-set adventure or campaign, other than that when you're done you can hop in your ship and leave the planet.
Starfinder, on the other hand, is genuinely a different rules system than Pathfinder. It's similar enough that the Core Rulebook gives you a guide to converting existing Pathfinder characters to work in the system, and also gives you the stats for the base, classical fantasy races (elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, gnomes, halflings) in the back of the book.
The distinction, I think, is that Starfinder really wants to build a futuristic setting. Skill proficiencies like Computers and Piloting place this firmly in a sci-fi, or at least technological realm.
Starfinder's default setting is, in fact, the same solar system as its Pathfinder game, except that the primary world has mysteriously vanished and been replaced by a giant space station.
Starfinder's rules are comprehensive to allow for science fiction tropes. Not only are there many different kinds of weapons, including many types of firearms that deal different sorts of elemental damage (also melee weapons that do,) but there are items like cybernetic implants and body modification and modules (some magic-based) that can be installed in armor and weapons to add various effects.
Vehicles also get extensive rules systems - there are rules for land-based vehicles, but the real centerpiece is the rules on Starships - allowing a party to customize their ship with various elements, automatically getting to install fancier upgrades as the party's average level goes up (and divorcing this system from Credits, the sci-fi equivalent of gold).
While magic and deities and planar outsiders are still very much part of Starfinder, the game leans in hard on the science fiction tropes popularized in the 1970s and 1980s onward. The ships are futuristic, and indeed the technology behind faster-than-light travel is explicitly technological and not magical (there's a god who prevents magic from being used to enter The Drift).
Comparing the two systems - one of which is not even a system of its own - shows, again, markedly different approaches.
Personally, as someone who grew up on Star Trek the Next Generation and later Star Wars (and who lists The Expanse as one of my favorite TV shows ever,) I really love to sprinkle in some true science fiction into my fantasy.
Spelljammer's approach is mostly more whimsical (though there are some truly terrifying aberrations in Boo's Astral Menagerie). The weird conception of space in it seems more like something someone in the late 19th Century would imagine - there's a certain George Melies vibe to the idea of tall ships sailing among the stars (or, as a more recent reference, Disney's Treasure Planet, which came out when I was at that age where I felt Disney movies were behind me, so I never got around to seeing it).
So, honestly, I've got to say that I prefer the approach Paizo took with Starfinder, letting players go all in on sci-fi tropes without really losing any of the fantasy elements.
But.
Starfinder, like, I assume, Pathfinder, is a really fiddly, crunchy system. And D&D 5e has so many resources at this point to build off of. It's also, crucially, a system that both I and my players are familiar with.
I've heard a lot of people on social media constantly bemoaning people complaining about things in D&D and recommending they check out Pathfinder 2e or the like. And I get that. D&D looked fairly complicated when I first started playing it, but now it's mostly instinctive to me. (Though I've been beating myself up for the past week after doing a little bit of railroading in my last Ravnica session - I'm hoping the next session will make up for that.)
But even though I'm game to try to figure out Starfinder and run at least a short campaign/adventure, I doubt that my friends, many of whom even after years playing D&D are still shaky at it (because they don't obsess over it as much as I do) would want to learn a new system.
So, what I think I'm probably going to do is try to cannibalize elements of Starfinder and work them into the limited (I think) Spelljammer game that I'm going to be running for my Sunday group (which is a "game while we're on a break from the main campaign" for a "game while we're on a break from the main campaign.")
The first, and simplest, thing to implement, is that I'm going to allow for four kinds of elemental weapons - Cryo, Plasma, Sonic, and Shock weapons will work the same as normal, except that they do cold, fire, thunder, and lightning damage, respectively (Sonic I might make rarer because there's way less resistance to Thunder damage). The weapons will cost 3 times the usual amount and are not magical items. Also, renaissance firearms are available at their normal price, but also have elemental equivalents. (Likely these items won't be guaranteed available, but I'll toss them in at shops that the party comes across).
I figure this isn't game-breaking, but can give us some sci-fi flavor. A Plasma Greataxe, for example (inspired by the Plasma Doshko from Starfinder) is a pole at the end of which is an array of jets that shoot a fan of superheated plasma in the shape of an axe blade.
I'm tempted to do a similar thing with the cybernetic implants - at least the ones that just add storage space. We'll have to wait and see how necessary those become.
Starfinder's ship-building system is very cool, but I'm going to play cautious and simply take the Spelljammer approach for now. While I was tempted to simply pull the whole Starfinder ship system into the game wholecloth, given that it's somewhat divorced from individual player power, the fact is that it does still rely on skills like Computers and Piloting, and furthermore expects the much higher progression of such skills that Starfinder grants (even at level 1, the Operative - equivalent of a Rogue - that I made has a +15 or something to Stealth, and had to hit a 21 on Stealth in order to get its "Trick Attack," roughly equivalent to Sneak Attack.)
I still really want to try Starfinder at some point, but there are so many games piled on top of one another that I have no idea when I'll get a chance to.
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