Review of Tech Revolution

Shirren and a Vesk standing around a holo war table.

If you've been wondering if Tech Revolution is worth it, I’m going to talk about what's in it and what you get for it when you buy it. is it something that's going to be right for you? There's a lot to unpack here so let's get started with the first major highlight, the brand new Nanocyte class.

My first impressions of this class are it's going to be a great support for any party, and it's going to be useful. By that I mean that the Nanocyte is going to be very capable of holding its own in a fight while also being able to boost party members or provided needed healing after long combat sessions. The existing classes also gets some new abilities and new play styles with the Tech Revolution. With the new ability paths, I’m going to oversimplify some things but here's essentially what the new class features can do

New Class Options

The Mechanics can now become the party taxi as they now gain access to an experimental vehicle. There's a few new drone chassis for them as well.  

Mystics start to blur the line a little bit between them and Technomancers.

Solarians can now be Thor of Asgard

Technomancers can now pretend that they are a drone mechanic.

Vanguards can now use entropic strike from a distance, that means they can use guns effectively at a distance.

Witchwarpers can pull weapons and armor from different realities and leave whoever in that reality suddenly ill equipped.

Soldiers are even better with heavy weapons.

Operatives can now be your very skilled getaway driver.

Envoys can basically gain the Brenneri trait of favoured object, and then this whole theme is built around that concept.

And Biohackers can be actual doctors now.

Biohacker

Expansive World Building

If you like lore there's so much of this in this book. Well more than I was expecting. There are still lots of items with flavor text that give you a better insight as to what a day in the life of someone in the Starfinder universe is. Paizo went ahead and put in a massive compendium of lore and flavor into this book. World building tools including a table to use if a GM needs a store, names, what they trade in on the fly. one of my favourite things on this list is a pet store called Nebulous Pets.

If D&D can have a battle chair then so can Starfinder, it's glorious. One other item included in this book that stood out to me was this programmable plushy. It's one of those items that you take with you as a hacker, it reviews your code, makes sure things are up to snuff. If it's not because you’re having an off day, or just under the gun (Figuratively and literally) it recognizes that you are out of sorts. It learns each hackers coding style and can tell if there's something wrong with your code. It picks up on your mood and it encourages you it is literally a mini cheerleader plushie that sings your praises when you need them.

We all need some of these in our lives I would think.

Tech Revolution makes adds some staple Sci-Fi items to its repertoire, for instance power armor is now available for you to use. Battle armor but it doesn't have to be used for just battle it could also be used for science, obviously these science power suits are designed for one person. there is also a neat D12 table so you can give technological items a weird characteristic or quirk. Very fun concept DMs. For those DMs who are more mischievous you could easily modify this table for your very own cursed items.

Drow with purple hover bike.

Optional Game Systems To Deepen Stories

Have you ever felt that there weren’t enough explosions when it came to Starfinder? well now there's a solution. Explosives and demolitions get a set of rules for Starfinder as well. If you design your stories around movies from Michael Bay, then you will not be disappointed by this section of the book.

Hacking got a bit of a refresh as well, taking some inspiration from the shadow run games. There is a whole subset of rules now around dynamic hacking. It becomes a version of combat; hacking happens in rounds. In each of those rounds you can perform actions that give you an advantage or disadvantage to your opponent. This goes back and forth until someone loses and then you win the hacking encounter.

Now this brings us into vehicles, this section is quite a bit of fun. Dedicated vehicles custom vehicles, creating whatever you want. The tools are here to unleash your Sci-Fi future imagination. Boats, tanks, submarines, cycle bikes, and motorbikes. Let’s also not forget about things that fly and not just over like helicopters. It is possible to run a mad max style game with Starfinder now because you know the goblins are into some of that kinky stuff.

Now let's get into the reason you probably already bought this book, and if you didn't, then it's probably the reason you’re going to buy this book.

Giant bad-ass battle mechs…

Large battle mech fighting giant creature.

Giant Killer Robots

Not just Evangelion style mechs there's also transformers. Every 80s kid eats your heart out. Mechs are another fun game system that you can choose to include or not. This also comes with a new type of mech combat so you can also run your Pacific Rim fantasies. If you're into the classics Godzilla is easy to work into stories now too. This section looks like it will be a lot of fun. I will need to incorporate it into a game and just see how it goes. I don't know if it will make a large appearance in many of my games because I'm one of those weird ones where giant battle mechs just aren’t my personal preference.

Contained withing the pages of the killer robot section you're also going to find some common builds or designs used throughout the Pact Worlds as well as the Veskarium. There's even a little bit more information around the Hell Knights and we don't know much about the Hell Knights even now, several years on.

At the back of the book there's a very fun lore section. What’s contained here is lots of “A Day in the life of” stories. This is going to be great for GM's and their world building. It’s easy to get some ideas on how to flesh out your game worlds as a GM or understand how the everyday Starfinder society works. Even if it’s just the Pact Worlds. These entries are usually about two pages long and they cover various processes in life, like obsolete tech what happens with it. Robots, what do people do with them and why do robots exist? It’s also discussed how common they are.

Have you ever wondered what the music industry like or what the medicine of the future looks like? What about the internet or all the advertising which the internet is known to contain? What happens with food production? How is energy produced, stored and what is it all used for? What's on T.V.? because they still have reality shows in the distant future and they are awful, but they exist.

Battle mech being overrun by insect swarm.

My Final Thoughts

I’m really enjoying these stories and maybe as a player they can help you get a better feel for the game world you are playing in. For Game Masters this the amount of information here to sprinkle in will expand your worlds and really immerse your players.

This is a fun supplement and the staggering amount of creativity that went into the writings of these stories shows. The mechanics that have been introduced have added to the game, not subtracted. Even if you decide to never use giant battle robots or the class that has been added to the game, all of these systems and additions are just layers of joy to an already delightful TTRP system. Use them or don’t, they are there to support your games and your fun not to hinder enjoyment behind dense rules.

I enjoy a decent blend of magic and technology. Blending these two concepts together is one of the reasons I’ve been drawn to Starfinder. I feel that it finds a decent balance for me. Tech Revolution does not deal with any of the magical side, you know exactly what you are in for based on the titles alone. I am excited about the new additions though it's not the one that I'm looking forward too. However, if you are one of the GM's or the types of person who doesn't want to have a lot of that magical mumbo jumbo in your games, you are going to enjoy every page of this supplement.

That's why my final rating for this supplement is four out of five stars.

4/5 Stars Highly Recomend