Taking 20 Podcast - Ep 137 -Lore Series - Starfinder Gap & Empty History

Episode Date: August 14, 2022

The Gap is an aberration in the lore of most RPG products:  a time where history is completely broken and no records remain.  What do we know about this time period and how can you use similar empty periods of history in your campaign world?  Tune in to find out. #Starfinder #Paizo #Dungeons and Dragons #DnD

This week on the Taking 20 Podcast. Paizo isn't telling us an official canon reason why the Gap exists. But personally, I kind of like the mystery. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to episode 137 of the Taking 20 Podcast. This week, continuing the lore series all about the Starfinder Gap and using empty history in your campaign. This week's sponsor, headphones. If this podcast doesn't sound right, consider purchasing some new headphones. That's just sound reasoning. If you haven't already, please like, rate, and follow my podcast wherever you found it.

Spotify, Podbean, iTunes, Google Podcasts, and looking at the statistics, iHeartRadio is surging up the charts into fourth place last month with more than 11% of my listens. If that was you, thank you so much for those of you that helped that happen. Jeff Murphree sent me an email from,

oh shit, there's no location on this email. So I'm going to say the town of Shitterton in Dorset, England. Asking how I use the Gap in my Starfinder campaigns. Sorry, Jeff, if that's not where you're from, please feel free to email me and let me know where you're actually from so I can thank you properly. To understand this week's topic, though, we need to dive into a little bit of Starfinder lore, which you can tell absolutely breaks my heart. Oh, doggone it. A quick explanation about the gap in Star Finder. The gap is a period of time of indeterminate length in Star Finder lore

where history is lost by all civilizations, all planets, regardless of the format it was stored in. It ended everywhere, but not at the exact same moment. That's the interesting thing. It was close to 300 years ago for the Pact Worlds, which is kind of the focus of a Starfinder universe. But for some civilizations, it was as recent as 250 years ago and as long as 500 years ago. The interesting thing about it is that written and digital history isn't immune to this lost history. Much of it is lost or contradictory in nature. What few records still exist are either garbled, unreadable, or have portions of the records just deleted without explanation. Images could be fully or partially blurry or scrambled. Multiple records found throughout

the universe contradict each other. History is effectively missing for a time. I mean, like a long time. And we don't even know exactly how long. In doing some research, I found a number of people who think that the gap was only 300 years in duration. But that's not right. It ended 300 years ago. We know people and civilizations were alive throughout the gap because, well, they were even thriving when they woke up from it. Many had developed space travel sometime during the gap,

and some crews were even traveling using conventional engines from far-flung star to far-flung star. Any sort of magical divination spells that attempt to determine events that happened during the gap simply fail. If magic users stretch their magical vision back before the gap, exact time has been impossible to determine, but all that's known is that the gap lasted for millennia. This fact has been confirmed with carbon dating and astrochronology. The gap was thousands of years long, and no one knows exactly

what happened during those thousands of years. They know technology progressed because many of the ancestries had developed space flight during that time. It was expensive and it was very, very slow. But you may be asking, Jeremy, what about those long-lived races like elves and dwarves? Wouldn't they remember into the gap? Well, when the universe woke up or rebooted or history began functioning again, they remembered the skills and the knowledge that they had, but they had no memory of how they learned them. They remembered their relationships, the names of friends and family, but they didn't remember how the relationship was formed.

Like, we'd remember we were buddies, but not how we met or any shared experiences before about 300 years ago. If two groups happened to be in the middle of a war when the universe woke up, they'd forget why. If a ship was heading to a distant star or other location, they wouldn't remember their purpose for going there. I mean, are we reinforcing people there? Are we exploring, settling a new location? I don't know. Believe it or not, the shorter-lived races like humans and skittermanders handled the gap a lot better than the longer-lived races did. handled the gap a lot better than the longer-lived races did.

To humans, only one short generation had to deal with the emotional toll caused by a partial memory and a part of your memories that was just gone. The next generation heard about it from their parents. The generation after that, it would just be a distant memory, and by the fourth generation, it's a thing of myth and legend. A lot of these shorter-lived races treated this as a do-over, a reset, an opportunity to re-establish who and what they are and why they exist. It was an opportunity for this younger generation to be untethered from the past and forge their own path. Meanwhile, the generation of elves who were alive after the gap ended, they would have to deal with the loss and lack of

knowledge for hundreds of years, and many of them didn't take to that very well. The elves went all xenophobic and withdrew into their culture and pretty much became almost isolationist for a long time. Some societies, when the gap ended, completely collapsed. Wars, famine, death spread in these societies, and some of them are just now recovering, and some of them are just now recovering while others are simply just gone. No one knows what caused the gap. Clerics and other divine casters have tried to beseech the gods for the information and the gods aren't telling if they even know. The popular theory is that it happened because of the discovery of something known as the drift. And okay, here comes some more lore for you.

The drift is a plane of existence that allows for faster-than-light travel, much faster than you can with a conventional interstellar drive. Three years after the gap ended, three deities, Cassandalee, Bri, and Epoch, that were artificial in nature, interconnected to form Triune, a new machine god.

Triune sent out a signal to every spacefaring civilization, and they got access to this dimension called the Drift, shortened distances between far-flung areas of space. The Drift, by the way, is incredibly complex and could be an episode all its own. All you need to know is faster-than-light travel via the Drift. As an aside, by the way, I know why Paizo added the gap to Starfinder lore, creating a period of history that no one remembers.

Many of the races and locations from Pathfinder are reused in Starfinder, and it would have been exceptionally difficult to come with thousands of years of history that led to the starting point of Starfinder, which, by the way, the planet of Galarian, where Pathfinder takes place, disappeared during the gap, replaced in the solar system by a space station called Absalom Station. No one knows where the rest of the planet went. The gods aren't talking, histories are conflicting. Theories include the space-time manipulation of the drift

thousands of years later destroyed causality in and history for a period of time. Galarian could have spun out of control, and the gods realized that unless they did something, the great destroyer Rovagug, imprisoned at the center of the planet, would be released, ending the universe. Fuck, that needs to be a lore episode too. Rovagug. Well, okay, look for that in the coming weeks. It could have been a war between the gods, great old ones from beyond the veil. Hell, maybe McDonald's brought the McRib back year-round. You know, I'm a portly gentleman, and you'd think I would love the McRib, but not a fan. I'd rather have a good pulled pork sandwich. Now, good fried chicken sandwich? All about it.

You know, I think I'm recording while I'm hungry. Other theories include that there was some sort of magical tinkering that went awry, like a time spell that went out of control or something. There was a corruption of reality, Thanos got the infinity stones, a god of insomnia finally got a good night's sleep, whatever it is. Paizo isn't telling us an official canon reason why the gap exists. But personally, I kind of like the mystery. I mean, especially in the official lore. So every single GM at their table are free to make up whatever reason they want for the existence of the gap until a canon reason is listed. But regardless of what caused it, the gap is a period of history in Starfinder lore where history is lost completely, which is a very strange concept. I mean, imagine

having a huge empty space in Earth's history. Or imagine we all wake up tomorrow with no memory of why anything's going on. Troops from one country is in another one, not knowing who started the war and what the ultimate goal of the war is. People know the skills that they have and maybe where they work, but the circumstances leading up to why they work there and any emotional attachments they may have based on past decisions and past happenings, just gone. You come to and you're eating a McRib with your sister. How the hell did I get here?

It could cause tremendous upheaval in your society. Like people may decide not to report to work or decide their existing memories that they do retain can't be trusted. So they isolate themselves from family and friends and forge new paths. Now, let's fast forward a few hundred years, and the gap in history would just be accepted as a fact that happened. I'm kidding. Someone would turn it into some weird conspiracy theory that involves, I don't know, the lizard folk Illuminati vampires releasing chemtrails to control the weather or some other crazy bullshit. The history is there, man. It exists and somebody

knows it. They just don't want you to know what happened. Anyway, if I could get back to the actual topic at hand, suppose you have an empty period of history in your universe or you want to make one or just sounds cool. First thing you've got to ask yourself is, what would cause something like that? Well, I've got a few ideas. So, maybe the death of an entire... something. An ancestry, a region, a planet, a universe. A genocide occurred of the centaurs of the Upper Spire Plains. No survivors lived to pass on what happened.

They were there one summer and then never returned. No one knows if they're dead, sheltering, at war, or just chose a different place to roam for a time. Death could also mean absorption, by the way. Brought into the nation of X and made citizens. For example, the Samnites of Earth that were defeated by Rome, they were eventually brought into the Roman Empire and made citizens. We shall have peace, take each other as spouses,

and over time our differences will be forgotten. Oh, forgotten. Wow, I can't talk today. Another example, the Nabataeans that were destroyed by the Roman Empire, Carthage that wiped out by the precursor of the Roman Empire, and wait a minute, I'm seeing a pattern in my examples. Another thing that could cause empty history is the disappearance of an entire civilization that maybe even wasn't conquered,

like the Rapa Nui from Easter Island, or the Olmec in modern Mexico, or the Minoans of Crete, or the Scylla of Korea, or even something small like Roanoke Island where the only clue left about all the people's disappearance was the word Croatoan. A gap in history could be caused by the destruction of the written word, caused by,

I don't know, social pressure, political motivation, civilization decision, and so forth. What was being captured and written down was too painful or divisive to maintain, so they chose not to. An example would be the movie The Book of Eli where they chose to destroy all religious texts everywhere. And I still am a firm believer that all that should be documented, something, something, those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, something, something. It could have been a disease that wiped out an organization or civilization that took away their ability to record history. It could be a debilitation of a group that normally records history,

like the Gupta Empire in modern India was invaded by the Huns. But by the time they forced the Huns back out, the empire was so financially devastated that areas began splitting from the empire. It could be a disaster, natural or otherwise, earthquakes or nukes or something like that. By the way, yes, all these are beginning with a D. There's a theme here. Let's just keep going. It also could be what I think the gap is, divine intervention. The god or gods decided that the events were too horrible for all of

the ancestries to know, so they wipe it from all of history at once, or in Starfinder's case, over the course of thousands of years. So if there is a gap in history like that, you have to make a decision as to who was affected by the gap in history. Is it everyone everywhere like the gap? Is it just the clerics like on Kryn? See episode 114 for more on that. Was it just the halflings that were affected or the occupants of a particular island or mountain, dungeon, kingdom, or planet? The next decision you have to make regarding empty history is a very simple question. Did anything actually happen during the lost time of history? Did time move

like it then, like it does now, or was it in fits and starts, pauses and leaps forward? Was causality broken? Which, by the way, I keep throwing out that term causality, and I apologize. I should have defined it earlier. Causality at its heart is simple cause and effect. I drink from my tea right here, so now there's less tea in my cup. I started playing a favorite song, and now music is coming out of the speakers. I get in my car and drive to a place of employment, which is why my car is in that parking lot. This is causality. All action has a consequence, and the existing state depends on what came before. But did this gap of history happen to everyone or just selected groups? And if it did happen to everyone or multiple groups, did it happen at the same time for all of them?

So, for example, the lost history could be because all the creatures on the island were frozen in time for five years. The outside world moved forward five years, but everything on the island didn't. In those five years, technology advanced, wars were fought, love blossomed, and for some, and maybe even wilted and died. Tempus Fugit, time flies, and it flew for five years while everything else on that island was held in stasis. The lost history could be because all the bluefoot gnomes were wiped out by a disease, and when other gnomes find the lost colony, no one knows what, if anything, happened in the intervening two years. The lost history could be a temporal rift that sucked the centaurs of the green shale mountains into it and spit them out a hundred years

later into a highly advanced civilization sprung up where their capital once stood. Or it could be like the gap, where the universe just stopped working right for a time and the universe collectively woke up, offset by a few years from one another. Any of these four, by the way, could make for a really interesting adventure. Being frozen in time, discovering the history of the bluefoot gnomes, a group of peoples thrown forward in time and dealing with the changes since their disappearance, or yes, even the gap, having a period of unknown history. These things are seeds for great adventures that could follow. So let's suppose you do want to have a period of lost history in your world regardless of the cause. What are some tips to make that happen? Well, I got six of them. One, you need to ask yourself,

will the uncovering of this lost history be part of the campaign at all? If the campaign revolves around a warlord who's risen up since the event and the lost history is just background to the campaign, then it's really not that urgent that you fully flesh out what happened during the dark times.

It's purely history and would merely be a curiosity at that point. However, if one of the aspects of the campaign will be the PCs discovering events that happened during this lost history, or maybe even returning that evidence to those in charge, well, you better know what happened and how it feeds into the campaign that you're currently running. What I think would be really interesting, by the way, would be if the PCs discover some event that happened at the beginning of the lost history, by the way, would be if the PCs discover some event that happened at the beginning of the lost history and the people that are currently in power were directly or indirectly responsible for this cataclysmic event. So, like, maybe good King Nihal ordered the court wizard to send that

sphere of annihilation into the time portal, thereby breaking time for 20 years to cover up the fact that he took the throne by committing vile and desperate acts against his own family. up the fact that he took the throne by committing vile and desperate acts against his own family. Second tip. Even if it's just in the background of the campaign, and even if there's no chance it would come out in the middle of a session, I think you should probably decide what happened during that time of blank history. It's fine to say that all the characters know is that the age of woe in your game world contains precious little information. That's fine. You could just say it happened, no one knows why, and just wipe your hands of it. But behind the screen, in your notes, in your documentation, your gaming folder, your online notebook, wherever you keep your lore, did you note the reason for the lost history? It's absolutely not required to

have a definitive cause unless that's a key element of your campaign. But if it is, you better fucking know what and be ready to drop that secret at the right moment. Third tip. If there was some sort of catastrophic event that resulted in history being lost for a time, what was the world like leading up to that event, during the event, and immediately after the event? What was the world or area or solar system or planet like before the event happened? Was it an idyllic paradise where no one suffered and it was a golden age? Or was it a dark and barbaric time where atrocities were visited upon civilizations in the world? Were people descending into madness with the horrible things from beyond that were invading

our reality? Was it some sort of slow, inevitable decline of civilization becoming a shadow of what once was? What was the world like before the event? Then you have to ask, what was the world like during the event? Did it only affect sapient species or was all of time affected? If they were in stasis or frozen or placed in a time bubble, how did they survive? And if the world continued on,

is it just the memory of things that are gone, or are the choices and consequences, actions and repercussions gone as well? The latter is a lot more problematic unless there were no actions or choices taken during the empty time of history. Fourth tip. If you have a long lived species in your game world, how do you handle a gap in history that some of them would otherwise remember? Do the elves speak of the lost time as a time of troubles and sadness when so much was lost that they do not speak of it at all, pretending it didn't happen? Or maybe it's just a myth that they tell themselves that it didn't really happen, we just all collectively decided not to remember a certain period of time. Fifth tip, having a period of empty history allows you,

the DM, to untether the present from the past in a lot of ways. Your timeline can now be filled in with major happenings before the event, maybe major events, upheavals, disasters, wars, etc. Then a bunch of unknown shit happened or nothing happened during the event, and then you could have detailed happenings after the event. It'd be like us saying, the ancient Romans conquered most of Europe, we forgot what happened next, now we have electric cars. Well, did nothing happen in between? Shut up, it doesn't matter. There may have been a world war or two, but it was all pre-electric cars. It's freeing in a lot of ways, by the way, not electric cars, not being tethered to history is what I'm talking about. It's freeing not to have to worry, by the way. Not electric cars, not being tethered to history is what I'm talking about.

It's freeing not to have to worry about all that shit history in the middle. It's like not having to worry about the second movie in a trilogy. I mean, the first movie has an unknown beginning and an unknown end, but the second movie has to start where the first one ends. And if there's going to be a third one, it has to set up the third movie so it's more tethered, difficult to write, and generally not as fun, to be honest. Except for Empire Strikes Back. That's the best Star Wars movie. Come at me. Sixth tip. I would not recommend using a period of empty history as a weapon against the PCs.

The PCs are getting too powerful and you need a way to bring them back to Earth, or Kryn, or Galarian, or wherever, the Sword Coast. Don't use a weird time jump with no explanation and no history to strip items and power away from the PCs. That can cause a lot of hurt feelings and cries of it not being fair. I had a GM friend of mine do this to us years ago when we had all sorts of magic items, and I think he realized that he had been a little bit too free with the magic items, and we were about to steamroll the rest of his adventure unless he did something. So, he lured us down deep into a mountainous dungeon, and the last room at the heart of the stone had a swirling portal that gave little indication as to where it went. We got to the

boss battle. Somehow, the mountain started collapsing in the room. I guess that treasure that we took was load-bearing. Our only choice was to go through the portal, and when we did, we level 6 characters were left naked on a mountaintop surrounded by a bunch of surprised kobolds who had just attacked a family on a wagon cart traveling over the mountains to town. We killed the kobolds pretty much with our bare hands, and since the cart was laden with produce we could sell, we decided to push it into town. Through like knee and thigh deep snow. Remember, we're naked. And that's how the group got the name, the Shivering Wagon Draggers. In the moment, at first, we were kind of pissed at our GM,

but later on he explained the reason why he did what he did, and we understood his reasoning, so we got over it pretty quickly. I mean, we had built up years of trust at that point leading up to that moment. I think that was 20 years ago, and I think we were using the D&D 3.0 rule set at the time. Good time. Which, by the way, is why I started this podcast. I want every one of you that's listening to have memories like that with a gaming group. Unless, of course, those memories are lost in your game world. What a tragedy that would be, but you have to admit, lost history has the seeds for great adventures. Gaps in history can have a number of causes, from disease to the divine, to the genocide of entire ancestry or species. Depending on the

purpose and scope of your game, you can leave this empty spot in your world's history just that, a black void of history that won't be revealed, or some of the facts and causes of the gap could be a central part of the campaign, culminating in some horrific reveal that opens up more questions, reveals new potential threats, and most importantly, new avenues for adventure. Consider adding historical gaps into your history, even if they only affect a small group of people or region in your world's history, will feel more real, and I bet you and your players will have fun doing it.

If you like this podcast, by the way, please head over to ko-fi.com, that's ko-fi.com slash taking20podcast, and consider making a small donation. By the way, tune in next week when I'm going to talk about that juicy subject, trust, how to make NPCs that the PCs will work with and trust. But before we go, I want to thank our sponsor again, Headphones. Never plug your headphones directly into your keyboard. Otherwise, you might be stereotyping. This has been episode 137, continuing the lore series all about the Starfinder gap and empty history.

My name is Jeremy Shelley, and I hope that your next game is your best game. The Taking 20 Podcast is a Publishing Cube Media Production. Copyright 2022. References to game system content are copyrighted by their respective publishers.