Review of Battlestar Galactica RPG

Battlestar Galactica was a 70's sci-fi TV series about the last of the human race skedaddling across the galaxy to escape genocide at the hands of the Cylon Empire. A quarter century after its premier, the show gets its own role playing game. The game, however, is completely based on the new, "re-imagined" Battlestar Galactica series on the Sci-Fi Channel, and not the original single-season show from almost three decades ago. While the original show was kinda' campy and geared towards children, the new version is darker, grittier, and geared towards those former children who are now in their late 30's.

The Background

The humans in BSG are natives of a planet called Kobol, and they've spread out to inhabit 12 planetary colonies in a star system far, far away. Their legends tell of a fabled 13th colony, known as Earth, but most humans consider that colony a myth. Anyway, these colonists developed robots, called Cylons, to do their dirty work as slaves, basically. The 'Centurion' model served as miners, laborers, guards, and warriors for the humans. Until one day the robots got smart, and got pissed. They gained a sentience of sorts, and got it into their heads that they could form a perfect society if they killed off all their human overlords. So en masse, they revolted.

Thus began the First Cylon War. For years, humans fought against their robot "toasters". The machines were amazingly tough opponents, since they needed no sleep, fought on when injured, and were mathematically precise in their strategies. Plus, being partly computers themselves, the Cylons hacked into the human warships' computer systems, and disrupted functions and communications, making it hard for humans to coordinate and effectively fight their own greatest technological prodigy. Eventually, though, mankind forced the robots from the solar system, thanks mostly to the Battlestars; monstrous human starships that served as battlecarriers and mobile weapons platforms. The Cylons pulled back, and for thirty years, disappeared into the darkness of space.

After a generation or two had passed, the humans had become a bit lax in worrying about their metallic foes. They kept an eye out, with satellites pointed into space, but no one really expected the Cylons to return. The last of the aging Battlestars, Galactica, was even being decommissioned, to much fanfare. It was during this ceremony that the Cylons emerged from hiding… and they came back with a vengeance. Simultaneous planet-wide orbital nuclear missile barrages on all twelve of the colonies killed off most of the human race in the first minutes of the Second Cylon War. Cyclon Basestars and their Raider fightercraft decimated the human's space fleet within hours. And most appallingly, the Cylons now had cybernetic android forms that were virtually indistinguishable from humans. These imposters had been infiltrating human society for years, and helped bring about its downfall from the inside. It was obvious; this time, the Cylons had won. No place was safe.

Commander Adama, veteran of the first war and senior officer of the battlestar, took the Galactica, gathered any military and civilian spaceships left in the area, and led mankind's exodus into the stars. They left their worlds behind and just ran, pursued by the implacable Cyclons, who wanted nothing less than the annihilation of the human race. The story of BSG is the story of this small fleet, the last 50,000 humans alive, desperately trying to outrun their robot nemesis, and find the only safe haven in the galaxy… the legendary lost colony of Earth.

The Game

The BSG rpg puts you in the fleet, as one of the last of mankind. You design a character that fits in to the spaceborne society that the survivors now make the best of, and help do your part in the search for Earth and the fight against the enemy.

BSG uses the Cortex System, and it's a simple and smooth game system, good for beginners. I'll get more into the central mechanics later, but for now, let's make up a space man!

Your GM first decides how bad-ass she wants your PCs to be. Characters are created using a point system, and the more points your GM gives you, the more experienced and heavyweight your PC can be to start off. These starting levels are Recruit, Veteran, and Seasoned Veteran. "Recruits" start with 42 points to buy Attributes, for example, while at the other end of the spectrum, "Seasoned Veterans" start with 54 points. Veterans will therefore have better starting stats, more skills, and cooler scars than newbies.

To design your PC, you spend your points to buy your basic physical and mental Attributes first. These are Agility, Strength, Vitality, Alertness, Intelligence, and Willpower.

An Attribute is rated by die type, from d4 up to d12, with higher dice types being better. An attribute of "d6" is average for a human. The higher the die type you buy for your stat, the more it costs in points. (A d12, for example, costs three times as much as a d4.)

You also calculate your Life Points, which tell you how many bullets, shrapnel shards, and punches to the face you can take from a Toaster before you die.

You need some skills next, my little space cowboy, or you're not gonna be of any use to anyone, except maybe as a vacuum plug for a hull breach. Skills are rated like Attributes, in terms of die types. You'll buy your skills with an allotment of Skill Points, also based on your starting level. Generalized skills can only be bought up to d6, and anything higher than that must be a specialty skill, which can then be rated all the way up to d12+4. For example, you can buy "Guns" up to Level d6, but then you'd need to specialize to get better than that, like, say, by taking the "Pistols" specialty. So you'd have the skills of Gun d6 (Pistol d8). Given the choice, you'd want to use a pistol over other firearms, because your die type is better with them.

A d6 rating is competent, a d8 is professional, and anything above d10 is expert or master level proficiency. The choices are pretty standard sci-fi talents, such as athletics, heavy weapons, leadership, mechanical, scientific, medical, and survival. There aren't a lot of skills, really, but they're pretty broad in application, because of the opportunities for specialization that are supposed to hone the focus of a PC's skills during play.

Now, if you've seen the TV show, you know that the new series is filled with moody angsty characters. Everybody's got some annoying quirks that may not be noticeable in normal circumstances, but after being cooped up on a spaceship with them for six months, those quirks make you want to put an explosive 9mm round in their brainpan. So to emulate this, you can choose Traits for your PC, either good ones or bad ones.

Traits cover whatever talents or mannerisms your PC has that aren't explained by Attributes or Skills. Traits are broken up into Assets and Complications. Assets help you, naturally. You can be Ambidextrous, be Cool Under Fire, or Fast on Your Feet, maybe have a Hideout on the ship, or even have a Destiny in the grand scheme of the cosmos. Complications…um, make things more complicated. With those, you can have an Allergy or Addiction, maybe be Crude or Cowardly, perhaps Broke, Overconfident, or Lazy. Taking Complications gives you Trait points, which you can use to buy the more helpful Assets. (Always there is balance, young one…)

Now, the Traits are purchased using the "dice" system again. Sometimes you get actual bonus dice, like with Split Second Timing, which adds to all your initiative, dodge, and reflex based rolls… but in most cases Traits don’t add actual dice to task checks. Instead, the higher the die type you buy in a given Trait, the more prominent it is in your personality, purely as a role playing opportunity. For example, you can buy a tobacco addiction for d4, which means you smoke during the day, but it poses no real immediate threat to you. But if you go wild and buy the d10 heavy prescription drug addiction, you're most likely affected somehow by the addiction while under its influence, and you also suffer withdrawal symptoms if you go without it for any length of time, including possible death. You and the GM get to hash this out during PC creation, so often the details of high-die type drawbacks are up to each group.

Complications serve another point besides giving you the opportunity to role play a Sadistic Mute Kelptomaniac with a Weak Stomach. By abiding by your complications, you can earn Plot Points. (You can also earn them by simply completing the adventure successfully, or doing something impressively heroic during the game, but complications can rack them up much faster.) You can have a maximum of 12 PPs at once, and can earn them at any time during the game if the GM feels you've done something worthy, so you shouldn't be shy about spending them.

Plot Points can be spent to add dice to any task roll you want help with. The more Plot Points you spend, the bigger the die you get to add to your roll. A single PP will get you a meager d2 bonus, while spending all twelve of your maximum allotted PP will get you a hefty 2d12 bonus. (You wanna use *that* bonus when the Cylon Basestar's reactor core vent shaft is in your Viper's missile lock…) You can also spend PPs to affect the adventure storyline. 1 PP may assure that you smoothly win a hand of poker against the Raptor pilots in the barracks, while 8 PPs might just turn a hostile raider bogey with a missile lock on your crippled shuttle into (ta-DA!) a Search and Rescue craft locking onto you with a locator beacon instead.

Attacking is a skill use, like everything else. You normally roll your Agility plus your weapon skill dice, or whatever seems appropriate, and beat a Difficulty in order to hit your target. Your Difficulty is adjusted by range and cover and other common sense modifiers, but the basic Easy Difficulty (if your Cylon Centurion target is just standing there unaware that you're about to put a cap in his chrome-plated ass) is a "3". Of course, any sane target is gonna dodge or parry or shimmy or moonwalk or generally try not to get hit, so more often the Difficulty will be higher. Opponents aware that you're trying to pop them can roll their Agility die or maybe another defensive skill die and add it to the Difficulty number.

Once you hit, the Difficulty is subtracted from your attack roll, and whatever's left is the initial damage your attack inflicts, so in general, targets harder to hit will also take less damage once you do hit them. (That sucks, but nobody said fighting for your race's survival was gonna be easy, cupcake.) Weapons generally have a damage die rating of their own, though, so after the initial damage is figured, you get to roll your weapon's damage and add it to the target as well.

Damage comes in two forms: Stun and Wound. Stun damage are boo boos that may knock you out, like being pummeled by an angry technician who catches you with his wife in an unused storage compartment, but they won't kill you. These heal fairly rapidly (a few per hour), and only slow down the real pansy sorts of whining girly men in the Fleet. Wound damage is what you get when a Centurion runs 14 inches of serrated steel alloy knife blade through your pancreas during melee. Accumulating Wounds will get you a burial in space.

Under normal circumstances, when you take initial damage from an attack in BSG, you divide whatever injury points you receive evenly between these two damage types. This divided damage is called Basic damage. However, weapon damages are designated as one damage type or the other. For example, a sword does d6 Wounds when it cuts you, while a stun grenade does 2d6 only in Stun damage. Firearms always do Wound damage, while a concussion grenade's damage is always Basic.

That's about it. There's a chapter devoted to gear, armor, and weapons, but once you're equipped, you're ready to start fighting the good fight, my little Colonial!

Vehicles are designed using the same basic stats as PCs. They even get Traits. They have a short list of special vehicle Traits, such as Loved or Past Its Prime, but GMs are encouraged to add PC Traits to a ship as well (a particular Viper fighter that's known for being Tough and withstanding more punishment than normal isn't a bad thing at all!)

All the major space ships in the BSG TV series are statted out, along with numerous ground and air vehicles such as trucks, helicopters, motorbikes, and boats. Rules for vehicle combat, including space warfare and dogfighting, pretty much follow the personal combat format, with rules for zero-G maneuvers, missile locks, evading, and long-range combat tossed in for flavor.

The remainder of the book stats out all the important characters on the TV show, in case you have some players who abso-frakkin-lutely have to play Starbuck, or Adama. There's also a very useful section wherein a lot of generic NPC stats are provided, for random attorneys, deckhands, guards, technicians, bartenders, felons, prostitutes and priests, in case you need those stats on the spur of the moment. ("Hey, GM, what's the hooker's Agility?") Cylon Centurions are stated for you, and two of the "skinjob" Cylons.

A fun section on military rank and a primer on the lingo used on the show is included, so you can yell things at your players like, "The ell-tee says the clankers on that sparrow rolled in on the port CIWS an frakked it up before bug-out. The cheng wants you rooks to police the bay and make it copacetic, even if it takes PFM, got it?!"

There are also some cool full- color deckplans for Galactica, Colonial One, and a few other popular Fleet craft.

The GOOD

If you're a fan of the show, everything you need is right here in one book; all the characters, the ships, the weapons and background, plus complete rules for creating your own PC to join in the voyage. The Cortex system is complete and simple, and seems quickly intuitive for task resolution. I love games where one unifying resolution mechanic can adequately handle every situation.

The purpose of this game is obviously to allow players to mirror the TV series, and to that end, this game is done right. Very, very right.

The NEUTRAL

I prefer when games make advantage/ disadvantage rules optional. Unfortunately, this game *almost* makes the Traits mandatory. You could always decide to play the BSG rpg without using Traits, if you didn't want to have to worry about PCs with addictions, phobias, prejudices, and anger issues, but the rules don't suggest anywhere that you do this. It's assumed you'll use the complications. Indeed, it's really the only way to get the useful Assets.

I'm not a fan of advantage/ disadvantage rules in rpg's. In fact, if you've read this kobold's earlier reviews, you may know that I am usually frothingly antagonistic about them. Too often in ad/disad systems, you can get away with taking something like "mildly unpleasant body odor" and get the advantage "expert sniper" in exchange. That always seems a tad… unbalanced… to me, like a min-maxer's heyday. But in the milieu of Battlestar Galactica, the characters just wouldn't be the same without about four overly melodramatic personal quirks each. I'm giving the Traits rules a pass this time, because they fit the series so well, and since there's a lot of leeway for a GM to decide exactly how some of the more potent Traits will work in her game, this helps keep the potential abuses under control.

The EVIL

OK, listen up. The bad characteristics of this game aren't even about the game, per se. What I mean is, like I said in the Good section, this rpg emulates its source material exceedingly well. Top notch. Super duper. If that's all you wanted to hear, you can stop reading.

But what it doesn't do is allow anyone to easily play a sci-fi game that differs significantly from the BSG storyline. And I think that anyone looking for a generic sci fi game who may be considering this particular rpg as their system of choice simply because of the name recognition had better be aware of this fact, that's all.

Because the TV series takes place mostly in deep space, aboard the same vessels, in an environment known for having a finite and dwindling supply of resources, the rule book is a little light on diversity of gizmos. There is a sparse list of weapons, which fits the setting, of course, but does little to pique my interest as a gamer. And most weapons do the same damage as every other weapon in their class (pistols, automatic rifles, shotguns, heavy weapons, etc.) So except for range, there's no real reason to use one over the other.

As an example, the Aquarian PM and the VZ 52 are both semi-auto handguns. They both do identical damage, at identical ranges, hold identical magazine sizes, with identical availability to buyers. But the VZ 52 costs half the price of the Aquarian. Um… what? Do we really need these listed separately? And the other half dozen pistols listed by random names differ mostly in range and cost. The text descriptions of the weapons tell us who built them and some other flavor tidbits, but again give us no reason to differentiate between most weapons. So really, the entire pistol chart could have been edited to one listing, "Pistol, semi-auto", and we could have been done with it.

Some more detail-oriented players may be a little nonplussed at the lack of info on certain aspects of the skills and equipment lists, too. Computers are handled generically, and there's no info in the book at all on creating or using specific programs. (That's not important in the TV series.) So what if a player wants to have a hacker/ computer wizkid type PC? Well, there's just not much for him to go on. Which is weird, on a space ship, in a sci fi setting, no?

The entire equipment chart takes up one page, and the most exotic listings include "sleeping bag" and "handcuffs, steel". Like the series, there's no high-tech sci-fi doodads from the fuuuuuuture! Of course, dudes playing this game as the Colonials from the show should expect that, but again, it makes the game rather unsuitable for anything except emulating the TV series. If you're just looking for a sci-fi rpg to use with your own campaign world, the BSG rpg is not going to help you, despite its cool, smooth Cortex system goodness. There are no lasers, no lightsabers, no alien races, no robots (that aren't trying to exterminate you and your extended family utterly, that is).

There are no star system/ world creation tables for exploring planets for resources, so a GM is on his own to design those when the need arises. Hell, even though FTL technology is used constantly on the show, there are no solid rules for hyperspace travel. There are rules for plotting courses, but no explanation for where you're going or what happens if you screw up. I guess you just say, "GM, I want to plot a course so that in two hours the fleet all jumps … um, that-a-way." If the GM decides you end up near a planet, then, ok. If not, well, what have you really accomplished? And if you screw up, are you lost, or is everyone else in the fleet lost? And where are they, anyway? Out of the game for good? And how many are lost? Gotta make it all up.

I like the Cortex system well enough. I like the game as a fine, faithful imitation of the series. The book is also nice to look at, with color pictures throughout. It's packed with character material and suggestions for imitating the basic BSG plotline in your own campaigns. But, that said, I find it too limited by that same source material to be a truly worthy selection to satisfy one's more general sci-fi game itch. So it comes down to a rather bipolar summation:

Good basis for a generic science fiction role playing game? NO.

Good Battlestar Galactica role playing game? FRAK, YES!