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Archives of Nethys

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Infinite Worlds / Building Worlds

Step 3: Biomes

Source Galaxy Exploration Manual pg. 46
Terrestrial worlds are usually predominantly composed of one or more biomes, while other types of astronomical objects might have artificial or magical regions of a particular biome. You can select or roll a single biome on the Biomes table (a solely aquatic world could represent an ocean planet, for instance), or you can roll several times to produce a world with multiple prominent biomes, ignoring any results you don’t want to include. You can treat any duplicate results as an indication that the duplicated biome is more common than the others. For example, if you rolled aquatic twice and forest once, you might have a forested world that’s 60% water or a world of underwater forests with canopies that extend above the waves.

Biomes

D12BiomePage
1Airborne48
2Aquatic52
3Arctic56
4Desert60
5Forest64
6Marsh68
7Mountain72
8Plains76
9Space80
10Subterranean84
11Urban88
12Weird92

Biome Subsections

Source Galaxy Exploration Manual pg. 46
Whichever biomes your world has, pages 48–95 provide detailed information about each, including tables for inhabitants, adventure hooks, and player options that, while related to the biome, can be used anywhere in the galaxy.
Biome Overview: Each biome provides a wealth of flavorful information that can help GMs and other players immerse themselves in fantastical adventures. Also included is information about adventurers that might hail from such places, what worlds of that biome might look like, and other general details. Finally, a rules and reference section highlights existing rules that will come in handy for that biome.
Biome Inhabitants: A world’s inhabitants are presented in this book as either sapient or threat creatures. A sapient creature can generally think and reason, and they’re likely to form civilizations, interact meaningfully with PCs, need help, or even serve as archvillains. Threat creatures are generally (but not always) non-sapient creatures that serve as a threat to the world’s inhabitants or the PCs.
Using the inhabitant table provided with each biome, you can roll a world’s inhabitants as you would a biome: once for a world that contains only a single such species or multiple times for a more nuanced world, again using repeat results as indicators of, for example, relative population size or political power. Roll separately for sapient creatures and threats.
Note that inhabitant creatures are followed by superscripts that indicate the books in which you can discover more information about them. In such superscripts, “AP” followed by a number refers to a volume of the Starfinder Adventure Path; for example, “AP10” refers to Starfinder Adventure Path #10.
Biome Adventure Hooks: Each biome has a table of related adventure hooks. These open-ended story prompts can be combined with other adventure hooks, especially those in the Cultural Attributes section (below) to create unique adventures based on your world’s particular composition and culture.
Player Options: Each biome presents thematic player options available to any character who meets the prerequisites. Furthermore, these options aren’t restricted to such biomes, although PCs might want to incorporate such connections into their backstories!