MY BIASES
(lest someone accuse me of giving this product less than a fair shake).
- I prefer my RPGs to be rules-light.
- Combat is a means to an end, not a game in itself.
- The more background colour, the better.
When I received Alternity: Starcraft from the fine folks at rpg.net (I love you all), I had some idea that it was essentially an attempt to transfer the popularity of a hugely successful computer game to the role-playing world. That the product was released in 2000, some two years after the game in question, would lead me to believe that perhaps some of this time had been invested into fleshing out the concept.
Nope.
Starcraft was released at the beginning of 1998, and quickly earned quite a number of accolades for presenting what was at the time probably the most accessible and entertaining variation on the real-time strategy formula (I gather ore/gold/crystal with my peasants/peons/drones, use it to buy archers/mammoth tanks/zealots, and send my military to my opponent’s base to wreak havoc before he does the same to me). The game was based on an interstellar conflict between three species – terrans (space rednecks with big guns), protoss (expensive, slow to build, but supremely powerful psi-wielders), and zerg (kinda like the Aliens of sci-fi movie fame, only with eyes). It was also somewhat revolutionary in that it took all of these disparate factions and the conflict in which they were embroiled, and personalized it. There was a story – and a fairly good one – which unfolded over the course of the missions, complete with underdogs, evil empires, betrayal and so forth. There were also hints at a depth of content below the chaos and killing.
None of this depth appears to have transferred to the RPG version.
So I grabbed the box, unwrapped it, and took a good long look. It’s styled to look like a computer game box, but with red disclaimers all over the place reading, “Tabletop RPG: No Computer Required.” In fact, where one would normally expect the system requirements on a computer game, there is a little yellow box in which a picture of a desktop is crossed out: “SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS Paper, Pencil, and Your Imagination. No computer required."
"Cute,” I thought. “Strike one.”
With that I delved into the game material – specifically two pamphlets of some 45 pages each, and an additional pamphlet of pre-rolled characters which can’t be much longer than 20 pages – and came to the realization that Alternity: Starcraft misrepresents itself all over the place. Firstly, this is no “Adventure Game” as the box would claim. Perhaps it’s a matter of semantics, but when I hear “Adventure Game” I tend to assume that what I am holding represents a self-contained RPG milieu in which many adventures can be set. This is better described as a “Fast-play game” – a few skimpy adventures and the bare basics to run them with pregenerated characters. Don’t want to play as one of eight ready-made characters? Too bad. Talk to your GM, because all of that information is in the original Alternity set. Hence “Includes everything you need to play,” also appearing on the back of this box, is stretching the truth quite a ways.
PAMPHLET ONE: Rules Book.
“… Easy, Terran,” the Protoss High Templar cautioned, unleashing another volley of psionic bolts into the nearest Zerglings. “We must remain patient. If we give in to our fears, we will be destroyed.”
“Screw that,” the Marine exclaimed, slapping another ammo pack into his Impaler. “I’ll show you patience! Eat spikes, bug breath, and be afraid…”
Strike two. The prose appearing in these books, consisting of the introduction from which that excerpt is gleaned and some of the standard boxed text appearing in adventures, remains that infantile throughout.
The 45 pages of the Rules Book are devoted to elucidating the game system, providing a few monster profiles for the various denizens of the Starcraft universe, and providing background information on the campaign and the various races that inhabit it. Specifically, 4 pages are spent on background info, 14 are spent on monsters, and the remainder is a very brief encapsulation of the Alternity game system. I’m afraid I’m not qualified to comment on the system, because I do not own the Alternity game material. While this did not prove to be an obstacle in reading the excellent Alternity: Dark*Matter, Alternity: Starcraft is just too devoid of content to provide ideas for use in other campaigns or for a plain old interesting read.
PAMPHLET TWO: Adventures Book
Read the following four times: The heroes are dropped into a hostile environment, beset by aliens of one sort or another, and fight their way out. There are some puzzles of the “find-a-key” variety.
Oh, this pamphlet also includes rules on experience. Apparently, if the heroes “completed the adventure and defeated the villain in a spectacular fashion, give each hero 3 achievement points,” and if they “completed the adventure but had a few problems of their own creation, give each hero 2 achievement points,” which, of course, are used to improve skills and stats. Apart from logic which would imply that creating problems and then solving them would cause heroes to learn from their mistakes and hence grant them more, not less, experience, one has to love the “defeated the villain in a spectacular fashion” clause. Alternity: Starcraft appears to make no bones about the fact that it is about nothing other than combat.
PAMPHLET THREE: Character book.
There are 8 characters in this extra-slim pamphlet, and the pages regarding each of these, along with a brief explanation of the game rules, detach from the book. So far so good.
Unfortunately, if you would like to play a different character than the 8 presented here, you’re out of luck unless the GM owns the regular Alternity rules. Even then, you cannot design Starcraft-specific characters, because no rules for creating a terran or protoss character exist anywhere in the set (the book does not even talk about playing a zerg, likely because their insectoid hive-mind is a mite difficult to role-play). That’s a really big strike three.
It is interesting to note that the pre-generated characters have various social skills, including bargaining and indimidation. Funny, considering the prepared adventures do not provide a single hostile situation which can be defused by parlay, trickery or basically anything other than flat-out combat. Apparently, the game creators expected players to write their own adventures for the Alternity: Starcraft milieu instead of tossing the box away in disgust.
ODDS AND ENDS AND ART
A tiny GM screen comes with the product, with the basic rules
written on it. So far so good. You also get dice.
Art is so-so. The layout and design are nothing special, although the various illustrations are decent (minus some of the character portraits, which are just downright awful). There’s some sort of robotic thingy-dealy in the background of each page, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is supposed to be.
Ultimately, Alternity: Starcraft misses everything that made the computer game the success it was. Combat-focused role playing is not my favorite thing in the world, which I suppose is a bias not every player will share, but even the most combat-focused of RPGs generally include some background information to make it look as though you are slaughtering things for a reason. There is no depth, no story, and no flexibility to Alternity: Starcraft, and it certainly is NOT a self-contained adventure game.
So the verdict: If the Starcraft world sounds interesting, by all means buy the computer game – it retails, complete with expansion pack and strategy guide, for some $20 USD nowadays – and give this a miss. The best thing about Alternity: Starcraft is that it comes with a free set of dice.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)