[REVIEW] Diaspora

Title: Diaspora Author: B Murray, CW Marshall, T Dyke, B Kerr Publisher: VSCA Publishing ISBN: 0-9811710-1-2 Published: 2009 RRP: US$35/US$27/US$13 (HC/SC/pdf @Lulu)

Description: Diaspora is one of two* recent science fiction games that use the FATE system of Spirit of the Century (and the upcoming Dresden Files RPG). The FATE system is an interesting outgrowth of FUDGE that adds the ability to tag and compel various Aspects of a character using Fate Points and Stunts to the basic FUDGE system. There is an SRD for the FATE system that can be found here (as well as rumours of an upcoming FATE core book from Evil Hat). FUDGE and FATE traditionally use a set of 4 unique six-sided dice (although an alternative method is to use 2 normal six-sided dice).

This game is also interesting because the publishers refused to produce a pdf version for a very long time, citing that they felt that the game had been designed and laid out for a physical book, and that they would only produce a pdf by laying out the game specifically to that format. Given their attitude that "they didn't care if they made a profit" and where "just doing it as an act of love" sparked a great deal of interesting internet discussion over the status of amateur and professional game publishers and the role that pdfs have in the game industry. Which is interesting, because the recent pdf release (which is the source of this review) doesn't really feel like it has been released with this in mind), and feels more like a POD source for the original book, with some additional explicit content linking, rather than something specifically designed for ease of use in an electronic version.

[* The other being Starblazer Adventures.]

Setting: The setting is probably the most important thing about Diaspora, simply because there is no setting. Instead of a wide galactic mileau, Diaspora creates a small isolated cluster, with one unique system for each player, as the initial part of the character generation process. Each player rolls dice to determine the basic "attributes" of each system, those being Technology, Environment, and Resources, and then provides the system with two Aspects, such as "Balkanised," "Waterworld" or even something like "Famed for the beauty of it's women" or "Best shopping malls in the cluster." These systems are then linked randomly by slipways (think wormholes that require a "slip drive" to trigger). The players then work out how each world is involved in the microcosm of the cluster and should then add a third and final Aspect to the system to represent this, after which they should right a paragraph or so describing the system. This then becomes the universe in which adventures take place. Each system is likely to be quite different, representing the infinite possibilities that were realised as humanity spread to the stars. Hence Diaspora.

And actually I was lying when I said there was no setting. There are several basic assumptions built into the universe. Firstly, it is a "hard SF" setting that presupposes no paradigm shifts or accidental discoveries in the future, with the exception of the availability of the slipstream FTL drive (which apparently defies explanation). Thus there are no reactionless drives, anti-gravity, force fields, cloaking devices and other examples of technology that requires such assumptions. It postulates a continuous improvement in material science, nano-manufacturing, energy generation, artificial intelligence and ubiquitous quantum-scale computing, biosciences and genetic engineering, but nothing that can't be described by current theories. Except, of course, the slip drive. It also postulates a technological singularity (cf Vinge et al), with the highest tech level being presumably insular Pre-Collapse societies, which are doomed to either extinction because of a failed science experiment, or inevitable ascension.

Character Generation: Fairly standard for the FATE system. Character's start with a pyramid of 15 skills ranging from Superb to Average in ability. They get to choose ten Aspects for their character, two in each phase (Growing Up, Starting Out, Moment of Crisis, Side-Tracked, On Your Own). And three Stunts that aid your character in becoming more awesome than the average character. Stunts are handled much more mechanically than in Spirit of the Century and Starblazer Adventures, where they tend to be much more evocative.

Like Spirit of the Century, this game assumes that characters are really at the height of their abilities, and there is no mechanism for improving the character once it has been generated (although it may be altered). However this is not a problem, after all, Traveller, one of the oldest (1977) and most popular science-fiction games had no mechanism for character advancement.

Mechanics: Standard FATE. The Fudge Dice alter the character's standard ability to gain a result level (eg, a roll of +1 converts a Superb ability to a Fantastic result). Characters and the gamemaster can tag an Aspect to either gain a bonus or reroll, or to compel the character to do something appropriate to the Aspect, by using or awarding Fate Points (which is the effective currency of the FATE system). Damage manifests on one of the character's Stress tracks (Health, Composure, Stress), or a character may elect to absorb damage by taking an appropriate Consequence (which affects future play).

There are interesting applications of the basic system to space travel and combat (a large focus of the game) and, more importantly, economics (something often missing from narrative-based systems), but vitally important for the typical player trained by Traveller. It is interesting that they make a distinction between personal combat and social conflict. The objective of personal combat is to damage something, whilst social conflict acts to maneuver the characters involved in it. In normal FATE these are identical, albiet with different sorts of Consequences taken when one fails.

There is also a heavy wargaming focus, both in the provision of a mass-combat system, and in the fact that things like societal manipulation is handled fairly abstractly. It is presumed that the players will be movers and shakers (or at least wildcards) in the events and social evolution of the cluster.

Thoughts: The fractal nature of the game is interesting, in that the same game system defines the nature of systems, characters, spaceships, and troops. Limiting play to a small cluster allows the players to interact more fully with the universe, rather than passing through a universe filled with cardboard cut-out planets. Putting an upper cap on the Technology index removes most of the "sufficiently advanced" magic-tech from the game and bases it firmly in the realm of physics as we understand it. But for such a small cluster where the worlds are in such close contact I think the negative tech-levels are far too harsh. After all, technology tends to transfer. I did feel that the environmental factors were a bit too generous though, but resources were just about right. Some of the implicit assumptions of the game are not neccessarily ones that I would agree with, but they do make life running the cluster much easier.

And this leads me to what i don't really like about the game, which is the marginalisation of the player character and activities that take place on the personal scale. The vast majority of the rulebook is dedicated to the big picture, involving the interactions in the cluster. Even the example for social conflict was trying to manuever two systems into war or peace by manipulating various political factions. Whilst I have no personal objection to this, it definitely moves it much more into the strategic gaming arena for me. In this regard it does itself an extreme disservice in seperating play into four distinct arenas, with very little interaction between them (say, compared to Reign or Aria).

I also felt that the Stunts were particularly uninspiring compared to the suggestions in Spirit of the Century and Starblazer Adventures. Similarly, whilst the suggested Aspects were more evocative, they did rather run to the pedestrian. In either case, I think the designers have relied heavily on the players of this game already being familiar with choosing appropriate Aspects from Spirit of the Century and felt that they didn't really need to cover it in any great depth. Then again, it is difficult to provide very many good examples of Stunts and Aspects when you really have no idea of exactly what universe the players will come up with.

Also I found the rules to concentrate far too heavily on detailing the mechanics, at the cost of failing to evoke a feeling about the game. In short, eading the rules didn't want to make me immediately want to play the game, which given the large number of other games that do make me want to run them, means that a Diaspora game will never see the light of day (it's not even really suitable for a short, off-the-cuff, pick-up game at a con).

It's a game with a single Great Big Idea, in that it allows the players to own the universe that the players are adventuring in, sharing the wonder of universe creation that was previously the sole province and joy of the gamemaster. This also effectively allows any of the players to take a turn at gamemastering the game, since it doesn't privilege one player over another. However I feel, now that the idea is out there, others will run with it more successfully.

Rating: Good (Minus). [But I'm much more likely to use the ideas contained in it in my next strategic space campaign than my next space-based role-playing game.]

Two space games, both based on the FATE engine, released almost simultaneously, was just begging for comparison, as unfair as it may be to both, because they are really designed to do different things. But it was interesting that one game had me wanting to design a hero of the Space Patrol immediately, while the other had me going "interesting idea" for a chapter or two, and then getting less and less interested in running the game as I read on. Although an obvious response is to combine the cluster building exercise of Diaspora with the the way Starblazer Adventurers handles the FATE system, filling in the holes each game has with the other. Oh well, roll on the release of Dresden Files RPG and the next expansion for Spirit of the Century for more FATE goodness.

[REVIEW] Starblazer Adventures

Title: Starblazer Adventures Author: Chris Birch & Stuart Newman. Publisher: Cubicle 7. SKU: 701 ISBN: 978-0-9555423-3-6 Published: August 2008 RRP: US$35 (book @MGP)/US$20 (pdf @OBS)

Description: Starblazer Adventures is one of two* recent science fiction games that use the FATE system of Spirit of the Century (and the upcoming Dresden Files RPG). The FATE system is an interesting outgrowth of FUDGE that adds the ability to tag and compel various Aspects of a character using Fate Points and Stunts to the basic FUDGE system. There is an SRD for the FATE system that can be found here (as well as rumours of an upcoming FATE core book from Evil Hat). FUDGE and FATE traditionally use a set of 4 unique six-sided dice (although an alternative method is to use 2 normal six-sided dice).

[* The other being Diaspora.]

Setting: Starblazer Adventures, subtitled "The Rock and Roll Space Opera Adventure Game," is based on the 1970/80s British comic book Starblazers. Each issue had a seperate story, although common themes and ideas tended to reappear between stories. It is very much space opera, with blasters, force fields, laser swords, antigravity, and reactionless drives (as well as roaring reaction drives that make no appreciable use of reaction mass).

Given the source material there is no real consistency to the setting, which is fine. After all, it is a Rock & Roll Space Opera game. If you want a planet of giant carnivorous plants, or a mad scientist with an army of uplifted gorillas in powered armour, go for it. This is a game where a single heroic player character agent of the Space Patrol can make a difference and defeat the nefarious schemes of the evil aliens.

That being said, Cubicle 7 have recently released a formal setting for Starblazer Adventures, called Mindjammer, which appears to be a much harder SF universe than that portrayed in the core rules, but very far future SF (AI ships, mental interfaces, reactionless drives, force fields and the like).

Character Generation: Standard FATE. Character's start with a pyramid of 15 skills ranging from Superb to Average in ability. They get to choose up to ten Aspects for their character, two in each phase (Training, Starblazer Legend, and each time they Guest Star in another player's story). They also gain one Stunt for each phase they partake in. In addition to many fine Stunts being listed for specific skills, a character may elect to take a Career track and choose special Stunts from that. Stunts are handled more evocatively than with Diaspora, with titles suitable for a pulp hero, such as "Now You've Made Me Mad" and "Thump of Restoration," and, similarly, there are a lot more Aspect examples, such as "Architect of Destruction" and "Girl in Every Starport," and much more importantly, a deeper explanation of the reasons why you should choose them.

There is also a random character generation system if one wants to start getting a handle on the character, although it is rather superficial.

Starships, Space Monsters and Aliens are treated in the same manner as characters. Alien powers work through the same Stunt system as characters 9although these Stunts may only be available to the specific aliens). Starships have Aspects and Stunts of their own. And Space Monsters combine the two philosophies.

One thing to remember is that the game is much more open to advancement than either Spirit of the Century or Diaspora, since each further grand adventure undertaken would grant two additional Aspects and a Stunt. The Aspects should probably relate the the previous adventure, and may actually be forced on the character. For example, don't go blowing up any planets unless you want the "Oh My God, What Have We Done!" Aspect.

Mechanics: Standard FATE. Although the game primarily uses the 2d6 method of rolling as standard (roll two differently coloured d6 and subtract one from the other), which gives a much sharper distribution of results. Again the main focus is on the use of Fate Points to compel and tag Aspects, rather than just testing abilities. There are only two Stress tracks (Physical and Composure), and again, the emphasis is on taking Consequences to avoid being stressed out.

The interesting addition here is Scale. With organizations this is the extent of the organization (in the galactic arena); with starships and space monsters it is the physical size of the ship or creature. The interesting thing is that things are generally limited to interacting with things that are within two steps of their own Scale, although sometimes specific abilities might counteract this. For example "Torpedoes" ignore the scaling rules when attacking large targets. And thus you'll find antishipping fighters equipped with torpedoes if they want to do anything other than scratch the paintwork. I find this gives a much finer control of interaction than Diaspora split playing fields. For example, a single person will be unable to affect a planet. But if they recruit a large enough organization, that organization will be able to influence the planet (whilst the character influences the organization). And so on.

As mentioned previously, spaceships are designed like characters, except their abilities are defined by their Scale (size). This gives them the size of the pyramid that they use for their Systems (in place of Skills), the size of their Stress tracks (Systems replacing Composure), and the number of Aspects they can have. And like characters, ships will have an apex System at the top of their pyramid which tends to readily define their role. Ship Systems also have Stunts that allow them to violate the normal rules, as well as Aspects that can affect their performance, such as "held Together By Gaffa Tape" and "I've Got A Traaz In My Hold And I'm Not Afraid To Use It."

Thoughts: This is a massive book, and it was apparently rather stressful to put together, which was probably why it's arrival was greeted with less enthusiasm than Diaspora in some quarters. It also didn't feature any real new advances to the FATE system, apart from the Scaling mechanic, so it missed a lot of the Great New Idea surge. But overall I can't help thinking that it is actually the better game. Diaspora just comes over far too mechanical for me, whilst these rules spark ideas aplenty.

The problem is, like the source material which copiously illustrates the book, is that there is no consistency or real direction provided by the base game, which is why I think the addition of a defined setting is vital for the future of this game (although I have yet to fully peruse my copy of Mindjammer enough to decide on the quality of that), even if it just forms a suggestion on how to set up a Starblazer campaign. You have a good toolkit for building any space opera universe, but there is no real seed around which you can form one (but lots of little ideas). But reading the book does makes me want to run (or play in) a game of it. Which is something that, for me, defines the basis of a good game.

And really, I still have no idea what Rock & Roll Space Opera is (apart from Tommy in Space). <grin>

Rating: Very Good.

Two space games, both based on the FATE engine, released almost simultaneously, was just begging for comparison, as unfair as it may be to both, because they are really designed to do different things. But it was interesting that one game had me wanting to design a hero of the Space Patrol immediately, while the other had me going "interesting idea" for a chapter or two, and then getting less and less interested in running the game as I read on. Although an obvious response is to combine the cluster building exercise of Diaspora with the the way Starblazer Adventurers handles the FATE system, filling in the holes each game has with the other. Oh well, roll on the release of Dresden Files RPG and the next expansion for Spirit of the Century for more FATE goodness.