RPGPundit Reviews: Starblazer Adventures

At long last it is here, and being reviewed. I've been waiting something like two fucking years to do this.  Now I can say, without a doubt, the print edition of SA is brilliant and beautiful; not entirely with out its flaws, but damn near.

Ahem. This is a review of "Starblazer Adventures: The Rock And Roll Space Opera Adventure Game", by Chris Birch and Stuart Newman, published (eventually) by Cubicle 7.

The worst thing about this game was the wait. The best? Just about everything else.

The book itself is a beautiful, heavy, gigantic hardcover with 632 pages. It is chock-full of b&w illustrations inside, all taken directly from the Starblazer comic. For those who don't know, Starblazer was a UK comic-magazine not unlike 2000 A.D., which presented different sci-fi (and sometimes fantasy) stories; the art was in the european comic style, and some of the greatest names in British comics cut their early chops there, including Grant Morrison. The stories were pretty classic, pulpy space-opera, which varied in range from nearly-hard sci-fi to all out sci-fantasy depending on the episode.
The SA RPG tries to recapture the feeling of that style of space-opera setting; and the book, while full of details from the different stories in the magazine (113 pages of worlds, storylines, characters, aliens, monsters, villains and monsters, plus an episode guide), it is set up with a ton of guidelines for creating your own setting, universe, galaxies, systems and worlds, monsters and creatures and organizations; making SA more than just an homage to the magazine, but one of the best generic Sci-fi Space-opera RPGs ever produced.

System-wise, SA uses the FUDGE system, in its "FATE" variant. Some may remember that I was highly critical of the "Spirit of the Century" game, which ostensibly uses the same system. There are some significant differences between that product and this one. For one thing, SoTC failed utterly to really understand Pulp, and what Pulp was about. SA, on the other hand, totally understands what's important about Space Opera and how to make it really work. The Fudge system is simple, open, and sufficiently modular to be perfect for this kind of game; it could have been so for a pulp game as well, but unlike SoTC, SA uses Fudge's strengths effectively; by presenting different options for how to modify the system to your taste. Yes, there's all of the same "story-making" nonsense you see in SOTC, but right besides that, you have an alternate method of character creation that removes the need for that. Yes, you have Aspects that can make the game into a nonsensical "narrativist" forgey-game, but you have the options to use Aspects as just basic triggers for actions without all the pretentious bullshit. You can even very easily get rid of Aspects altogether. But I'm getting ahead of myself, I'll explain what all this means shortly.

Meanwhile, I should note one other thing: many people are put off Fudge-games for the simple reason that it requires those stupid special dice. SA does not; it is set up by default to use 2 regular six-sided dice, one to "add" the other to "subtract" (not unlike Feng Shui, Qin, Two Fisted Tales, and many other systems), to get a range of results from -5 to +5. NO special dice required.

The game's basic mechanic involves having a skill bonus (from -3 to +8), circumstance modifiers, and then rolling the dice, to get a total result in the form of a bonus or penalty; tasks having a minimum result indicating success.  So if what you're trying to do requires a +4, and you get a +5, you succeed. The difference between your result (if successful) and the difficulty represents the degree of your success.

One nitpick I can make at this point is that the game is a little too enamoured with Naming Things, creating unnecessary complexity.  For example, instead of just saying your "total" or "result" from a roll, its given the title of "Effort". Instead of calling the difference just a "difference" or "degree of success", its entitled "Shift". There's too much of this stuff: jargon that adds nothing substantial and just requires the reader to remember what the hell the jargon is supposed to mean.

In combat or conflicts, your "Shift" is usually translated into damage (enjargoned as "Stress"). Characters can only take a certain amount of stress before being taken out of action, but they can reduce their current stress by accepting "Consequences" (essentially, injuries; physical or not).  The bigger the consequence, the more stress it absorbs, but the more damaging the consequence is (and the longer it'll take to "heal").

Character creation, as I mentioned, provides a couple of different options for use; basically, the lame pretentious version and the regular version. The lame pretentious version is basically identical to SoTC's; creating characters by the players all making up shared back-stories with each other. I'm not even going to bother going into detail about it, if you like that sort of shit, I'm sure you'll enjoy it, and should probably go fuck a weed-whacker. Meanwhile, the wholesome version of character creation involves rolling randomly to determine the type of planet you came from, and your social background, and the possibility of your background having some kind of special twist. You decide what type of career you want to have (not in the sense of a character class, but just an overall profession concept). Then you choose a number of aspects (depending on the power level of the campaign your GM wants to run) that reflect this background, then choose your skills and stunts appropriately, and you're done.

So, in the nitty-gritty of character mechanics, you have basically four areas of interest: Aspects, Skills, Stunts, and Fate Points. Aspects are a significant part of the FATE rules, but you will note that they're not truly essential to the game; if you really don't want to use them at all, you don't have to. You can run FATE/Fudge with just skills and stunts. Personally, I will be using Aspects, however. There's nothing bad about them per se, if they're used in a controlled mechanical way under the authority of the GM.

Essentially, Aspects are details of your character's background or career. You describe them as a phrase or line: ie. "Idealistic Sci-fi Scientist", "Brave star patrol officer", "intrepid investigator", "Dreamer", "girl in every starport", "silver spoon" or "consul of the Earth Empire". Aspects are used primarily to determine when you can use a Fate Point to maximum effect. Fate Points can normally be spent to give you a +1 bonus to your roll; but if it connects to an Aspect you can "invoke" that aspect to give you a +2 when you spend the Fate Point, instead, or use it to RE-Roll your original roll. Likewise, an Aspect can have a negative connotation in a situation; if the GM (or the player himself) wishes, he can make use of that Aspect in a disadvantageous sense (ie. "Consul of the Earth Empire" being used negatively when the Consul is in Separatist Territory), and the PC is then granted a bonus Fate Point for his trouble. Objects and NPCs can also have Aspects, and you can choose to "tag" that aspect, if you know about it, by spending a Fate Point to get some kind of advantage. For example, a floor might have the Aspect "slippery".  If a player knows this, he can spend a Fate Point to use the slippery floor to make his opponent unbalanced.

Aside from Aspects, Fate Points are also used to power certain stunts. Stunts are basically special feats that you can purchase, connected to skills or to your background, that can be used for special actions.  Most stunts can be used automatically if applicable, but powerful ones require a fate point expenditure. For example, a security officer might have the stunt "Cover me!" which requires a fate point, that allows you to get a bonus equivalent to your partner's Gun skill to his next combat action.

I'll note that Fate Points also theoretically allow you to "make a Minor Narrative Declaration", determining some aspect of the environment or the scene to your benefit (ie. "there's a barrel full of starship fuel in this hangar").  The GM has veto power over this.  I can't say I'm in love with this idea, but it only straddles the line between regularity and Swine-gaming, without going over it, so that's ok, and the game's writing is clear that the final authority lies with the GM.

Skills are straightforward from a list of various sci-fi appropriate skills, and provide a basic bonus (depending on expertise) to checks related to the subject.  The number of skill points (and aspects) you begin with depends on whether you are running a Gritty, Standard, or Heroic Campaign. Skills are selected as a "pyramid", in the sense that the number of skills you can have at any level is limited to being at least one less than the number of skills you have at the next level down. So in the standard campaign (where you get 20 points of skills) you can have 4 average (+1), 3 fair (+2), 2 good (+3) and 1 great (+4) skill; or you could have 2 good, 4 fair, and 6 average skills. Or 7 average, 5 fair, and 1 good. The skills section of the game is well-detailed, giving lots of examples of how to use each skill in certain conditions (again, enjargoned as "trappings", for no apparent reason); and the subsequent Stunts chapter provides a number of stunts connected to particular skills (though stunts can also be tied to your overall career choice). To give some examples, if you have the Scholarship skill, you can get the stunt "dizzying intellect", which lets you use your Scholarship skill instead of the Deceit skill when you want to lie or confuse someone by talking about your particular area of knowledge.  The Gymnastics skill has a stunt called "safe fall", that lets you reduce the harm of a fall by two levels if you are near a solid surface or ropes.  The Brawling(fists) skill has the stunt "dirty fighter" which gives you an extra +1 if you "tag" an aspect of the environment or your opponent.

The number of stunts you start with are also based on the level of the campaign.  One important note is that your Fate Points "refresh" at the end of each game to a total equal to 10 minus the number of stunts you have. So if you are playing in a standard campaign (with 4 stunts), you would have a Fate Point refresh rate of 10-4, or 6. That means that if by the end of the session you're down to less than 6 fate points, you reset your fate points at 6.  You can have more than your "refresh" rate in Fate Points, if you've been judicious in your use of Fate Points or if you've gained fate points through play (in which case no refresh occurs, since you already have more fate points than your refresh rate).

Starting equipment works with the concept that items also have ratings (just like skills).  So a piece of equipment might be "mediocre" (+0), fair (+2), good (+3), etc. You start the game with any basic items you'd be likely to have (uniforms, clothing, communicators, etc), plus one "mediocre" item for each aspect or stunt you have, related to that aspect or stunt in some way. You can then try to get items rated ABOVE mediocre, by making a roll of your "Resources" skill. You can theoretically get as many items of these superior levels as you have aspects and stunts, BUT as soon as you fail a resources check you can no longer get more items.  This means that trying for more difficult (powerful or useful) items will involve greater risk.

I hope that it will read as though I've been quite thorough with detailing character creation. But you should keep in mind, in fact, I've just summarized the first TWO HUNDRED pages of this book. The book is chalk-full of details and information to assist with making characters, information on aspects, skills, and stunts, plus loads of gear.
Character advancement is pretty straightforward: at the start of each session you can replace or change an aspect, OR swap over two skill levels that are at adjacent levels (ie. a +3 and a +2), OR change a stunt. At the end of each game session, you add 1 to your maximum Fate Point refresh, OR add a new aspect, OR add a new stunt (the latter two options have a maximum tied to one's refresh rate, preventing excessively fast character bloat).

The Combat rules (which are really more a "how to do things when opposed" rules) are fairly simple, but sufficient; and can be ported to represent combat in spheres other than the physical. So yes, if you want to you could use it in social conflicts; where you make an "attack" with the appropriate skill, and this generates stress and consequences on an opponent's social situation.
The latter is not entirely without its utility, though obviously I think that using it in place of actually roleplaying the damn scenarios would be immensely stupid. But it does allow to you to have some rules to regulate how you might handle a situation requiring, say, bluffing, where you don't want it to be just a question of making one roll.  Instead, you would use the deceit skill, the "defender" his "resolve" or "empathy" skill, and in order to successfully deceive him, you'd need to get enough "damage" to him for him to take the "consequence" of believing your lie. In each exchange you could involve the attacker using "deceit" in his turn, and then the "defender" using, say, investigation to try to ascertain the truth of the situation. This exchange could happen over several rounds, until one or the other is defeated.
The game also has some clever "minion" rules allowing for the Space Opera theme of a single tough Hero fighting a swath of goons at a time.
Combat-specific rules for conflict are fairly modular; you could keep the combat system ultra-simple, or you could use the various options to make combat fairly sophisticated.

The rulebook provides a great deal of guidelines for play in general, as well; dealing with things like range in abstract "bands" rather than specific feet/meter ranges (I like this, it is in keeping with genre and avoids anal retentive players choosing weapons because they have an extra 10ft of range or whatever), time and size in terms of increments, and rules for special conditions like zero-gravity, radiation, fire, and explosions (the rules for explosives are very clever, in that they do not guarantee that the Player will be able to predict the exact moment a bomb goes off).

The game also has lengthy rules on aliens, mutants, monsters, organizations (both in the sense of groups and orders, and societies and governments), vehicles, starships and robots. Each section has a couple of different ways that you can describe/design these things, and each have their own special aspects and stunts. One table I fell in love with here is the "random weapon effects" for weird dangerous alien monsters; this is totally in keeping with the Space Opera genre, where often an alien monstrosity will be immune to a specific kind of weapon, or even FEED on it and become more powerful, or will be particularly vulnerable to it.
Naturally, the starship section includes both starship combat rules, and lots of templates of sample starships.
The total page count for all of these special things covers about 150 pages.

There are also extensive rules for how to create a campaign. How to handle plots, and designing adventures. The latter includes a metric fuckton of random tables!  With this, you can go from "zero" to full-blown adventure with just a handful of rolls. Similarly, you get random tables for planet creation, a bit reminiscent of Traveller; but with a much more "Space Opera" and less hard-sci-fi vibe. It isn't all just random tables though, there's plenty of written advice on how to handle plots, plot twists, plot hooks, and setting elements; plus guidelines no how to keep it "space opera" in emulation-feeling.

A rough "history" of the galaxy based on trying to tie together the different Starblazer magazine storylines into a kind of loose chronology is also provided, mainly to suggest that you can play in different "eras" of human exploration (the early era of expansion when humankind is just starting to go into space, the middle period of wars and conflicts as the human empire seeks to expand, and the "late" era where humanity is just one of countless established races throughout a cosmopolitan galaxy).

Finally, at the end of the gamebook you have something that is very badly needed in a book this big: Every single table in the book is provided in the appendix, for quick reference. Likewise, quick-search summaries of the basic rules are also provided, as is a list of all skills and stunts. This goes a LONG way to making a book that could otherwise be quite unwieldy much more... well, wieldy. Character sheets, starship template sheets, organization template sheets, and some funky location maps (things like ruined temples, spaceports, landing bays, starship and starbase plans) round out the book.

To sum up, Starblazer Adventures is much more than just a licensed sci-fi RPG; its quite possibly the best generic Space Opera Sci-fi RPG ever made. The amount of stuff you can do with this book is just insane, and there are few, if any, bad points to it. It does go a little overboard with the technical jargon at times. I can also live without the more "storygamy" elements; but I can also entirely live WITH them, seeing as how the various options and the modular "toolkit" nature of the system and the book means you can pick and choose precisely how you want to run this thing. The main problems with the book are occasional overuse of Jargon, and the sometimes overwhelming size and content of the book meaning a potential GM will really have to pay attention when getting an education about the game, and understanding his choices. Though in the latter case, I've pretty much resolved that for you by telling you the RIGHT way to run SA right here: don't use the stupid pretentious-twat Swine-version of the chargen, Aspects are ok (though not obligatory) but don't pick them in a pretentious way, Fate points shouldn't let players control the narrative, and DO use all the cool random tables. There, fixed it for you.

I have a hard time imagining that anyone (at least, anyone who likes this genre) could ever possibly be dissatisfied with this book.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Castello Natural Virgin Oversize + H&H's Beverwyck

What's the vehicle combat rules like? How much does the Pilot matter, and how easy is it to have an encounter between say an atmospheric fighter craft and a human?

Well, the whole thing is set up with "scale"; so that a Fighter Craft would work on a different "scale" than an ordinary human. A human could try to take on an atmospheric fighter, though, since the scale difference is less than 2.

There is more than one way to handle vehicle conflict. The simplest is opposed checks of the PCs' piloting and gunnery skills. But if you want, if you have fleshed out the vehicles in questions (essentially, as though they were characters), there is a more detailed system for vehicle (particularly starship) combat, which use a combination of the PC's pilot or gunnery skills, or the SHIP'S maneuver or weapon skills.
So the pilot does matter, but having a better ship can make up for a poor pilot or vice-versa.

RPGPundit

Very informative review!
Despite being annoyed by SOTC (and its fanboys) Starblazer Adventures does sound very comprehensive and evocative for that genre.

Would it make much difference if you had never seen the comic it's based off of?

No. I never read the magazine myself.
The game doesn't so much act as the "licensed SA setting" as it is a generic space opera game that uses the SA-universe material as its "sample setting".

RPGPundit