Quick Look at Star Adventurer

John Tarnowski just released his take on sci-fi adventure gaming for the multiple-polyhedronic dice D&D format, or OSR, through his periodic release platform, RPGPundit Presents. In the product line's one hundredth release Star Adventurer. As for one of those releases, it is souped up and even a little fancy which is what anyone expect from the 100th issue of anything. It's also not a bad S-F RPG system framework at all.

Like any good piece of fiction, the title tells you what you need to know up front. In RPGs it works especially well, if it tells the reader what the PC is most-likely going to be doing. So without any ado, Star Adventurer tells the reader where they are going to be, among the stars, and what they are going to be doing, adventuring. The subtitle "Old School Science Fiction Rules" tells the reader what a page to four of introduction would in another work. After some credits, the work gets into things right away. The title works for me better than a lot of s-f works of late.

Characters can be as exotic or humanocentric as the players and GM likes. The Races are listed types not specific species with descriptions and some background notes. If such details are needed, the group at the table if not the scenarios authors can come up with those details. The Classes are the D&D tropes that one can find in sphere fantasies especially since the release of Star Wars back in 1977. The Experience mechanics define not only predilections of Race/Class optimization, but a clever GM can work out a whole universe tone from setting up the narrative for how the advancement takes place.

The work is economical in covering areas that RPGers expect to be reading about. Skills, combat concepts, and technology level setting equipment are done up as one would expect, but in quick single paragraph explanations. Especially succinct is the Starship Combat section, and the "ship as a PC" is handled without any explanation by providing a Character sheet for the vessels. The whole product is about thirty-five that can be read and played in about half an hour, given a quick crowd.

As much as I want to find something wrong with this product, I have my own SFRPG core rules dammit, I can't. It is a Godzilla of science fiction role-playing products, by sticking to the OSR framework and avoiding the temptation to fill in a few blanks here and there. The atmosphere can implied from the artwork and the equipment listed, or it can be worked around. I hope to read at least a couple settings for the RPG in the future that aren't just expansions from the Gonzo campaign.