Many science fiction games offer, expansive genres where intrigue and political maneuvering with galactic noble houses, empires, governments and the forces of good and evil teetering on the knife’s edge. Or they are highly realistic ordeals with STL drives and nihilistic cyberpunk ideals showing just how cruel the unforgiving vacuum of space can be. If you are expecting this from Red Dwarf the RPG, you really are barking up the wrong tree. Deep & did an amazing job of turning one of my favorite BBC comedies into a rather workable and quite enjoyable role playing experience. How? Well firstly they found an interesting way to jump over one of the biggest hurdles of running an RPG based in an established universe. Often times RPGS based on an existing property, are not extremely RPG friendly. Take the ill Fated Indiana Jones RPGs. To be honest there is simply little to distinguish the Indiana Jones universe from any other pulp action game. So why spend $30 to buy the “official” Indiana Jones Game, when you probably have a system of choice, which offers a pulp action Genre book that will simply do the Job. The other Problem many licensed games have is finding exciting stories in a world built for one story. After the War of the Lance or the Destruction of the ring, your actions feel kinda lame. So how does Red Dwarf get over this? Firstly they set the game in one of the thousands of alternate universes available in the Red Dwarf game world. Alternate universes where your characters are the last vestiges of humanity aboard the small rouge one! Or perhaps a bizarre universe where Ringo was a good drummer! Secondly they offer a lot of character concepts from evolved house pets, Mechanoids (series 4000 or Hudzen 10) Wax Droids (allowing you to play any famous person in history (Kinda.)) or even run of the mill humans. Hell you can even play Skutters!
The system is a simple system of roll under stat + skill on 2d6 plus or minus any modifiers. I was a bit put off by the fact that the core rules for a game I spent $35 for fit on one friggin’ page (you can even download said page from the deep 7 website!) but the other 167 pages do have a lot to offer Including complete vehicle rules, cosmic viruses, evolution and complete write-ups of the characters and beings that make the Red Dwarf universe fun(I was disappointed by the lack of stats for Dwane Dibbley however.). Character Creation is a compartmentalized point based system (I.E. Spend X amount of points for Stats, X amount of points for skills, and X amount of points for advantages and disadvantages) and while many may argue that it could/should have been done in d20, I would like to point out that as a comedy game the create a character in under 10 minutes approach and super simple task resolution works a lot better and makes more sense for a world where killer curry monster and creatures like Mr. Fibble are the norm.
Physically the book is a sturdy enough little hardback with 168 pages printed in black, white and red (with the occasional color plate) With art comprised mostly of snapshots from the series’ 8-year history and some pretty swanky drawings. Red Dwarf is both well organized and humorously written and is a treat for any Red Dwarf fan.
