Starfinder Second Edition cover reveal

With 2025 promising a number of highly anticipated releases, the second edition of Paizo’s flagship sci-fi setting Starfinder is among the most exciting new additions to the tabletop landscape. Polygon recently sent some questions to Starfinder’s senior developer Jenny Jarzabski to learn how this new iteration of the game will distinguish itself in a crowded year and what major updates players should expect.

This interview has been edited for length.

Polygon: In a year of big releases, how do you design a cover that distinguishes its unique identity while maintaining a sense of familiarity?

Jenny Jarzabski: The Starfinder team collaborated with Kent Hamilton, Paizo concept artist, to create an iconic illustration showcasing how fantasy and sci-fi elements harmonize in Starfinder’s high-tech, magical hyperspace-traveling setting. What could be more iconic than an adventuring party battling a dragon? For the dreadful foe we chose the laser-eyed Akashic dragon, a new creature designed for Starfinder Second Edition. For the battle’s setting we selected a futuristic museum full of artifacts from the era of Paizo’s other game, Pathfinder. There’s even a few easter eggs that longtime Pathfinder players might recognize!

With a universe as expansive as Starfinder’s, how do you keep a cohesive identity and vision through the larger art direction?

One of the best things about collaborating with real people (and not generating images using a computer program, for instance) is that they always bring their own personal style and perspective to an art piece. Every illustration you see in a Paizo book is a collaboration, which is part of why it’s so good!

The characters fighting that Akashic dragon on the Player Core cover are our iconic characters. All of them have their own names, backgrounds, and personalities. All the art you’ll see features situations that can happen in the game, whether it’s Zemir the iconic witchwarper casting a reality-shattering spell or iconic soldier Obozaya making it rain bullets on a pack of laser wolves. Hopefully those scenes inspire players and give GMs a piece of art they can show off at a key moment in the campaign.

What major updates should we be expecting from these new books, both for players and GMs? Was there a guiding philosophy for you when shepherding these new editions into existence?

Starfinder is now fully compatible with Pathfinder Second Edition, meaning if you already know how to play one game, you just need to learn about the new ancestries, classes, gear, and other options (like computers and starships) to play the other. You can even mix and match them if you want, creating an epic time traveling campaign or your own magnificent world of magitech.

The team’s philosophy is to streamline Starfinder’s rules for new players who enjoy playing PF2, while keeping the essence of Starfinder alive. The rules are changing (and you can get a sneak peek at those changes at www.starfinderplaytest.com), but we’ve followed a different approach to Starfinder’s setting. We are some of Starfinder’s most avid players, so preserving the original lore is important to us as stewards of the setting. The goal is to keep First Edition books like Pact Worlds and Near Space relevant in Second Edition while updating the galaxy to reflect big events like the Drift Crisis. Starfinder first launched in 2017 and a lot [has] happened in-game [since]. Adventurers have saved worlds, elder gods have hatched from planets, rebels won their independence, and galactic war broke out in an unexpected place. Galaxy Guide is your primer for all these exciting changes and more.