Review - Starblazer Adventures

As part of the New Year's sale at DriveThruRPG, Starblazer Adventures by Cubicle 7 was available for a mere $10, so I bought it out of curiousity. For those unaware of this game, it is slightly-pulpy, FATE-based space opera game based on a '70s-era British comic book series. The game setting is enormous, weighing in at over 600 pages, yet still manages to feel a tad light on crunch. I think this may be a function of the modified FATE system used in the game. Actions are resolved by rolling 2 d6s, one designated as a negative die before the roll. The positive and negative dice are added together to give a result from -5 to +5, with the highest probabilities being the closest to 0. Added to the result is a modifier resulting from skills and other factors. This modifier will typically range from +1 to +3, although higher modifiers are possible. In addition to skills, characters also have stunts and aspects. Stunts are a lot like feats (or in some cases, class features) in the d20 system. They typically allow you do something with a skill you wouldn't normally be able to do, or give you a positive modifier to a skill under certain circumstances by accepting a negative modifier on other skills.

Aspects are rather less well-defined. They are brief phrases that describe motivations, personality quirks or background information of a character that can be used under certain circumstances to cajole the GM to allow some benefit. Alternatively, the player can use an aspect to his character's detriment, in order to earn fate points. Fate points are at the very heart of the FATE game system. Spending fate points allows a player to temporarily take control of the story. They can be used for a variety of things from adding an additional +1 modifier to any dice roll to powering some stunts to compelling a negative result from an opponent's aspect. While GMs do have veto power over the use of fate points, they are encouraged not to use it unless doing so would cause serious problems for the story.

Not surprisingly, Starblazer Adventures borrows heavily from the Starblazer comic books, incorporating story arcs, recurring characters and technologies from the comics directly into the game setting. The setting itself is divided into three eras, although other settings are possible. The three main settings are the Trailblazer Era, in which mankind first takes to the stars (think Enterprise or Star Trek), the Empire Era, in which a human empire battles across the galaxy with other great alien empires (more like Star Trek: Deep Space Nine or Babylon 5) and the Cosmopolitain Era, in which a galaxy-spanning empire made up of many races including humans maintains the Pax Galactica (best analog might be the Old Republic era of Star Wars).

Overall, the game is pretty good, especially if you are looking for a bit of pulp or campy feel to your space opera campaign. The FATE system tends to encourage a bit of whimsy on the part of the players, so serious or gritty campaigns probably won't work as well unless the GM and the players are all on the same page. I would never use the FATE system for my space horror campaign setting, but if you're looking for "a wee bit o' fun", this might be just the thing.

-Rognar-