This is not your father's MA. It is still an Old School RPG, 64 pages, staple bound, and leaving lots of room for fleshing out.
The game engine is based on a 3d6 standard resolution system for everything. This helps to unify things, and makes learning easier.
Robots and androids get an expanded treatment and character generation, but humans and mutants are somewhat slighted. A large bestiary and a short mutation list are provided.
The phased play concept seems to be one of the strong points of the game. I usually hate metaplots, but this one I like. The Warden struck an asteroid filling it with the strange radiation that killed the crew and left it open to invasion by aliens. The first phase is robots doing cleanup, then androids are activated, finally human combat troops are thawed out of suspended animation to deal with the aliens. Play in any phase as long as you like, then progress the campaign to the next one.
More details on the aliens would have been nice, but the forthcoming Asteroid supplement may cover that. As it is enough hints and information are provided to run the game.
This is not a game for deep immersion play. There is no elaborate skills system and no experience system. This is Beer & Pretzels gaming. Kill aliens and mutants, solve traps and puzzles and explore the starship.
That is correct. No Skills! Robots get some nifty built in equipment and
Androids get access to programs that give situational bonuses, but no
skills.
Action resolution is based on the "Doing Things Table" a matrix of the
character's ability score vs. the difficulty level of the action. This chart
works like the Chaosium games Resistance Table. Cross-indexing the two
sides gives a target number; roll this number or higher on 3d6 to succeed.
The same method is used to determine the effects of poison, radiation and
mental attacks. Combat uses weapon class versus armor class to determine
the "to hit" number needed. This can include automatic hits or misses.
It is definitely an old school game, it would be easy to add a skills
system if you wanted one, skills would simply provide a bonus to the "Doing
Things Table"
A quick and easy system, but it may take some getting used to for players
of more Modern games.
I liked it, and found many old friends from the original game still with us.
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