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In Short

The Good: The FATE engine focuses in on what's really interesting about a character, bringing it to the forefront time and again. Conflicts feel like kick ass movie scenes. Game participants are frequently rewarded for thinking outside the box and coming up with clever ideas. While some of the material is cheesy, it still manages to be very inspiring for play.

The Bad: There are a few artifacts from Spirit of the Century that really should have been excised, most notably in terms of leftover Skills. The starship creation rules don't allow for enough stuff on starfighters in my view, though this is easily remedied.

The Physical Thing

The editing is good, though occasionally I noticed a missing word or other small issue. The index is incredibly useful and even aided me repeatedly in play when I doubted it could. More importantly to me, this book is sturdy as hell and could take a beating as it was passed around, had dice rolled on it, tossed on the floor, and generally survived play. It's fantastically well done, from the inspiring artwork to the helpful presentation, and I wish all of my RPGs were as expertly crafted.

Under the Cover

Starblazer lacks a particular setting as it draws from a long running series of comic book short stories for inspiration. Generally speaking, however, action and adventure science fiction featuring stories of doomsday weapons, lost alien fleets, and larger than life heroes are frequently present in these tales. Some of the recurring tales receive additional attention throughout the work, but Starblazer's default setting is best thought of as butt kicking space adventure of all types.

In support of this the book goes far out of its way to provide lots of plot hooks and adventure ideas. While there is a generic science fiction aspect to them they tend to cover a huge variety of hooks and scenarios, such that any reader will leave Starblazer with more neat ideas than they know what to do with. In addition to explicit fluff the whole book is filled with implicit suggestions in the form of excerpts from the Starblazer comic. I found this material to often be inspirational as I read through.

It should be pointed out that the actual system provided here is much more versatile than even the broad science fiction fluff material would suggest. I had no trouble tacking on a few simple house rules and using advanced starfighter combat rules as mecha rules, and a Jedi duel on Nar Shadda required little more than deciding the rules for lightsabers (+3 damage, can defend vs. blasters, damage bonus does not apply vs. lightsaber). So while the included material is very flavorful, it certainly does not restrict what Starblazer can do.

Speaking of what the system can do, let's start by looking at character creation. Characters have Skills, a named area of expertise typically rated from one to four. Characters have Stunts, special techniques that expand on Skills and enable them to do new things. Characters have Aspects, statements about the character that can be used in play to generate bonuses or earn FATE points. All characters also have two Stress Tracks for damage, FATE points to keep the action flowing, and Gear to do all that neat sci-fi hero stuff! Let's look at how a character is made from all of us and then move on to talk about exactly what it all does.

Starblazer offers several different character build options depending on how badass the characters you wish to portray are. I found the options to work well in general, making use of the more limited one for my gritty Mechwarrior game and the more awesome one for Star Wars. I like the thought that went into them, but since there are three options I'll just tackle the middle option for now. Do be aware that the game has completely workable rules for building characters as the group actually plays the game, and it's a rockin' option.

A standard character has 8 Aspects, 4 Stunts, and 20 points of Skills in a Skill Pyramid, so most commonly a level 4 Skill, two 3s, three 2s, and four 1s. Characters are created through several Phases to determine their 8 Aspects, beginning with Training and then Starblazer Legend, Guest Star, and Guest Star. These last three involve creating an epic tale your character was central to solving and then showing up in another player's epic tale. This results in the characters all having some connection to one another, with Aspects drawn from their adventures. After these steps a character adds additional Aspects and then chooses appropriate Stunts.

The Skill list in Starblazer is quite large, though Skills do remain broad in what they can do. I find the Skill list to be the biggest flaw of the game. Spirit of the Century had a Skill list appropriate to pulp action and adventure, but while the action is the same the sorts of Skills being employed in Starblazer should have necessitated a varied list. As it stands the list still contains Art, a somewhat vague Skill that covers being artistic in all ways, alongside artifacts like Drive and Pilot where three Starship Skills have now been introduced. Even with generous Skill defaulting, it's just too much for a character to deal with. Meanwhile, the Science Skill still covers medicine and given how useful it is now that it also covers computers and hacking it would have been ideal to split medicine off at this point.

All griping aside, the Skill list works just fine in play and it's incredibly easy to create a new Skill for anyone that cares to. The broad nature of the Skills tends to result in characters that are very competent at whatever it is that they excel at, and a lot of the details are happily encompassed. Players will always be able to zero in on ideal Skills, and hopefully the GM tends to create adventures that focus in on what makes the heroes so kick ass.

With the basics of character creation out of the way, let's examine how it all works. Skills are tested very frequently and tend to range from 1 to 4. All die rolls are 1d6 minus 1d6, thereby resulting in a spread from 5 to negative 5. Fate points can be used to modify the outcome of these rolls (more below), but generally speaking characters tend to perform fairly close to their Skill level most of the time. For most actions either the GM sets a difficulty of 1 to 5 or so or two characters make opposed rolls to see who does best. Beating the difficulty can generate Shifts which may be used to further benefit the action, such as by doing it faster.

To provide players and the GM with a little more control over the scene PCs and certain powerful NPCs have Fate points. Fate points can normally be spent for a single +1 bonus to a roll or to edit a scene (perhaps by adding in a friendly NPC). However, when those points are used to Tag an Aspect then the bonus increases to +2 or a complete reroll of the dice (potentially a 10 point shift). A character could gain both of these benefits by Tagging two different Aspects, as happens occasionally in play during very dramatic moments.

Fate points are absolutely integral to play. When a game really starts to be awesome, if you pay attention, what's driving the awesome is the exchange of Fate points between the players and the GM. Speaking of the exchange, getting more Fate points in play is very important for all players. There are a few ways this can happen. First, the GM can just award them for great contributions. I hand them out anytime someone describes something and it's an extremely cool description. Great in character jokes, wonderful scene framing, or completely buying into the game's theme during a scene are all worth awarding additional Fate points.

The more common method, though, is to hand out points through Compels. When a character has an Aspect that can be negative, such as Greedy at Heart, then I can offer the player a Fate point to act on that Aspect. This often creates interesting complications or problems within the story, and it highlights a part of the character that the player finds interesting, and on the whole the entire exchange is wonderful. The player can pay the GM a Fate point instead of accepting the Compel, but the vast majority of the time the player is already sufficiently interested in that negative Aspect that they want the exchange.

Characters aren't the only thing that can have Aspects. Starships and organizations have them but places, scenes, and even the entire campaign can also have Aspects. What's more, characters with certain Skills can either detect existing Aspects or, more fun, make a roll to narrate the existence of an Aspect. Just encountered a Hutt crime lord that needs to be taken down? Roll your Academics and then tell everyone about how Hutts are known to tire quickly in battle, thereby giving everyone an advantage if they can just keep the Hutt on the ropes. This is a wonderful use of the Skill, advances the game, and as a thank you the player gets a free tag off of Hutts Tire Quickly in Battle.

Before moving on to Stunts, let me say a few last things about Skills. The Skill coverage in Starblazer enables Skills to do a whole lot of neat things within the system. Not only can they find and place Aspects, but most Skills have unique uses that are fun in play. While most situations are likely covered by the GM simply picking a Skill and asking for a roll, proactive players with the Skill list in hand can bring an enormous additional contribution to the game.

Stunts are small, packaged bonus abilities that play off of a given Skill. They might allow the character to have a sidekick, shoot a gun better, own a starship, or command an organization. They take care of all the tangible things that Skills and Aspects don't, though a group could play the entire game without Stunts and still manage to do just fine. They add a bit more mechanical crunch as well, and they further help to differentiate between characters with the same Skills.

Conflicts flow gracefully and strongly encourage a flavorful, narrative approach to the situation. Characters roll for initiative and then take turns performing a single action. This action can be supplemented by another action. For example, a character at a party might move to a different group of party goers and take a -1 to their primary action for both moving a bit and performing another action. Movement is abstract, making use of zones that each hold different portions of the scene. In play I found the use of a simple piece of paper or dry erase board to set up the zones dramatically improved play by enabling the players to take better advantage of the environment in their descriptions.

On a character's turn they can do a huge variety of things, but most often an aggressive action of some sort is performed. For example, in a Star Wars game a character might engage a dark Jedi in a lightsaber duel. The Weapons Skill is rolled (d6 – d6 + Skill), opposed by the enemy Jedi's Weapons Skill. If the aggressor is successful then Stress is inflicted equal to the difference, plus the damage value of the weapon, minus any defensive benefit of armor or shielding. Characters normally have five Stress boxes and may take up to three Consequences to reduce the Stress from an attack. These come in the form of Minor, Major, Severe, and Extreme, each reducing 2, 3, 6, and 8 Stress. They offer the aggressor a free Tag off of the Consequence, thereby functioning as Aspects, and they also have a real impact on the character's options. A Severe Consequence of “Broken Leg” is going to stick with the character for a while until the leg can be healed.

Of course, Starblazer Adventures has additional systems in play beyond those just for characters. The most important for space action and adventure are the rules for starship creation and combat. Starships are built in a manner similar to characters, with the size of the starship determining Aspects, Skills, and Stunts. Starship Skills are different, covering different types of weapons systems, defensive systems, detection systems, and other qualities all butt kicking starships need to have. Play is somewhat similar to character Conflicts, except here there's more emphasis on detecting an opponent's starship and starships are able to make multiple attacks depending on the number of weapons systems they're armed with.

Beyond starship mechanics, Starblazer also introduces organizations and planets as entities with distinct Skills and Aspects which can be brought to bear. The organization rules are particularly nice as not only do they model Star Rangers or the Pirates of Orion or what not but they also serve as an easy way to generate NPCs using simple mechanical additions that provide normal members of the organization with Skills reflecting what the organization is good at. If you want to bring organizational politics and conflict into your game, maybe even mixing in planetary governments along the way, then all the tools you need are provided here.

What else do we have here? An incredible amount of material. Rules for cyborgs, robots, and alien species of all sorts that are well considered and nicely executed. Excellent GM advice, tons of plot hooks, example planets, example starships, plenty of gear, and everything else you might expect a comprehensive science fiction RPG to have.

I've already used Starblazer to run several Star Wars and Mechwarrior sessions and I have some observations from those games I'd like to share. First, the way Consequences are used to soak the Stress dealt by an attack is wonderful. Major villains don't go down quick, but when the player does land a strike it's a telling blow that may even leave a scar should the villain survive the battle. The same goes for characters, and if you've ever wanted to chop off a Jedi's arm but have it be an interesting loss then Starblazer is there to provide support. Weapons and armor work well enough, and games that don't want to use armor can simply discard weapon damage values. As it stands, though, armor is very important as weapon damage combined with a lucky roll can quickly produce so much Stress a character gets taken out.

The weakest single addition is definitely the starship mechanics. More discussion of and support for using these mechanics with different scenarios would be nice, especially considering how broad the Starblazer setting is. By the core rules we had trouble representing X-Wings and some other starfighters, due to the small number of Skills allocated to starships of this size. However, this was easily remedied through a simple house rule and with a few more Skill points our X-Wings were engaging TIEs just as we wanted. Though I consider the starship mechanics to need a little tweaking at times, they're still very good and result in a fun time at the table.

In play the entire game ran extremely well, and for those who are willing to tweak the mechanics a little here or there a broad variety of science fiction can easily be handled. What's more, the game improves upon it's predecessor (Spirit of the Century) by further refining the mechanics so that combat flows even faster now. The starship mechanics worked well for running mecha with their pilots, and my Star Wars sessions would easily move between starship battles, investigation, and epic duels on planets known for scum and villainy.

My Take

Example Characters

Name: Karish Dors

Aspects
A Life Full of Regrets
Episode I: Invasion of the Mandalorians
Form VI: Niman
Golden Double Saber
Hero of the Sith Invasion
I'm Getting Too Old For This
Jedi Master
Karish Dors in The Secret of the Sith Holocron
Known Far and Wide
Murder on Dantooine, staring Karish Dors

Skills
Athletics 1
Empathy 1
Endurance 1
Force 4
Investigation 3
Lightsaber 2
Pilot 2
Resolve 3
Stealth 2
Survival 1

Stunts
Cold Read
Force Lightning
Lightsaber Proficiency
Mental Influence
Telekinesis

Gear
Jedi Robes, Lightsaber, Communicator

Name: Reisha

Aspects
Ambassador Lushorae's Friend and Advisor
Episode I: Invasion of the Mandalorians
Form III: Soresu
Jedi Knight
Krayt-bone Purple Lightsaber
Master of Battle Meditation
Ohd'Mantoo's Holocron
Reisha in The Dark Crystal of Empec Shirie
Republic Commander
The Last Fleet of Hador starring Reisha

Skills Alertness 2
Athletics 3
Endurance 3
Fists 1
Force 2
Intimidation 1
Lightsaber 4
Pilot 2
Rapport 1
Stealth 1

Stunts
Battle Meditation
Feel the Burn
Lightsaber Proficiency
Mental Influence
Telekinesis

Gear
Lightsaber, Jedi Robe, Communicator.

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