Stellar Adventures review

The author's bio note at the end of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain made mention of the "big three" roleplaying games of the time: Dungeons & Dragons, RuneQuest, and Traveller. With Stellar Adventures (Graham Bottley and Jonathan Hicks), the Advanced Fighting Fantasy (AFF) Second Edition rules makes the jump into science fiction, and just as AFF makes as good, or better, a fantasy game as D&D and RuneQuest, Stellar Adventures is an excellent, fast, flexible system in the mode of Traveller and other sci-fi systems.

Character generation is, if anything, slightly faster than in AFF. SKILL, STAMINA, LUCK, and PSI (the equivalent of magic) and TECH (the technology/engineering rating for android characters) are allocated from a pool of points. Then, the player selects special skills and skill levels from a list and a distinguishing Talent.

The rules of the game are the same as those for AFF, and very clearly explained. The small table on difficulty modifiers is a masterpiece of concise design. The basic system from AFF is simple and robust, it's just unfortunate that the "Roll over SKILL" option repeats an error from the original AFF book. The target number for a roll-over system for Skill tests should be 14, not 15, to duplicate the probabilities of the roll-under system.

Combat, of course, is a large section of the rules, and it's here that Stellar Adventures takes a subtle but radical step. In AFF, combat is resolved by opposed rolls, and this makes perfect sense because most combat is hand-to-hand, a series of sword blows, claw swipes, and so on. Stellar Adventures retains the opposed roll mechanic – but the majority of combats are firefights, with ranged weapons. To a Traveller player, this is strange indeed. Surely aiming and firing a weapon is a test of Skill rather than an opposed test? But, on reflection, Stellar Adventures really makes this work. The opposed attack total isn't about taking a single shot; it's an abstraction of dodging, taking cover, finding the nerve to aim and shoot accurately in a chaotic exchange of fire. It makes sense that the more skilled combatant gets the first hit out of all this action, and a single combat roll handles this. The opposed combat roll still introduces some oddities, however, and in particular there's no penalty to hit when attacking out of a weapon's range (the penalty applies to damage instead). Personally, I would apply a range penalty to attack totals, giving the edge to longer-ranged weapons, and stipulate that a ranged attack must total at least 14 to hit, so that it's possible to roll the higher attack total and yet miss due to lack of accuracy.

As befits a multi-genre sci-fi rulebook, there are sections on equipment (including cybergear), robots (with a player character option), vehicles, and starships. The sections for vehicle and starship design are remarkable for their scope and simplicity. Unlike more convoluted system (High Guard for Traveller for instance), one just selects basic vehicle options like size and speed, adds weapons and armor, and then options in the form of modules, and then calculates the total cost of all features. This is a fast system that allows you to design almost any kind of vehicle or starship. Of course, the GM will have to keep a close eye on the armaments and enhancements, lest the PCs quickly assemble an unbeatable vessel, but the system provides the ability to build anything appropriate to the setting, from a motorbike to an Imperial Titan to a free trader to the Liberator. And there's a somewhat free-form vehicle combat system that follows the same conventions as personal combat, making it easily scaled and interesting for all players.

Setting design is handled in a similarly descriptive fashion, with "place characteristics" such as Size, Tech, and Society given a 2-12 score (either by rolling or assigning directly), with the GM interpreting these scores depending on the context. There's also a dice-drop method for determining star maps and solar systems, which has a nice element of random inspiration.

Reading Stellar Adventures, the Classic Traveller system often sprang to mind, as Stellar Adventures shares many general ideas with Traveller. Indeed, Stellar Adventures would model Traveller's sprawling stellar empire, mercenary companies, meandering tramp traders, and morally dubious sci-fi adventure well. But with a little GM adjustment, I think Stellar Adventures could scale up to space-opera, and even grimdark science-fantasy, or down to hard sci-fi, and the nice part is that the rules permit, even encourage, this. The only genre it's less likely to accommodate is broadly speculative transhumanism, and since there are no rules for hacking, cyberpunk would be a stretch (though doable). Stellar Adventures isn't perfect – no game is – and there's certainly something in here that I would tweak or tinker with, but Bottley and Hicks have adapted the AFF framework with great success to provide an easy, highly adjustable system for science fiction gaming.

[This review is based on a reading of the PDF rulebook, and not actual play.]

Advanced Fighting Fantasy damage matrix

A while ago, in a review of Advanced Fighting Fantasy, I mentioned that the weapons damage and armour matrixes (seven digits in a row) are the least elegant part of an otherwise elegant combat system.

Is there a better way to do this? One method would be simply to roll d6, plus any modifers, for damage, which would probably result in roughly the same average damage, but perhaps lose some of the fine balance of the current damage system.

Is there a better way to represent the damage and armour table on the character sheet?

Some simply write out all seven damage values in order:

S. Sword: 1,2,2,3,3,3,4

But note that damage values only ever change by one point, and so instead of repeating figures, we could generate something like this:

S. Sword: 1 [2] [4] 4

What does this mean?

• The left-most number is the minimum damage: that's the damage from a roll of 1 on the die.
• The numbers like this [4] are the rolls on which damage increments by one point.
• The right-most number is the damage on 7+, the maximum.

To use this damage profile, roll the die and check the result against the sequence. For each increment value in the table the roll is equal to or greater than, add one point to the minimum damage, and of course, if the result is 7+, use the maximum damage.

Hence, a sword profile is:

Sword 2 [2] [6] 5

This one takes longer to explain than to read. Is there yet a better way to set it up?

Crossing the streams

The Tinkerage is all for adapting and combining the best of different systems, hence BRP Middle-earth and other rules hacks, but here are some recent wild ideas for combining systems and settings.

Magic World & Dragon Warrior's World of Legend

Magic World, although it has some faults, is an excellent BRP-based system customized for gritty, medieval fantasy. Dragon Warriors, the classic British fantasy RPG, has a gritty medieval background with plenty of intriguing details, an authentic sense of the Gothic, and is rich in faerie and folktale lore. The adventures, providing for scenarios and campaigns, are excellent.

Dave Morris, who authored Dragon Warriors with Oliver Johnson, remarks that the essence of the game doesn't lie in the mechanics but in the world itself. So, Magic World's tested, accessible rules could be a perfect match for the world of Legend.

The only rule I would change directly would be limiting the skills of new characters to something near 75%, perhaps by limiting skill point allocations to around +50 at most during character creation. As written, it's possible for a new Magic World character to have at least one skill of 80% or more, and this doesn't fit with Dragon Warrior's characters at Rank 1 being capable but far from over-powered to meet the supernatural foes that inhabit Legend.

BRP & Advanced Fighting Fantasy and Allansia

Thinking along the lines above suggests a step further. BRP is the quintessential rules toolbox system. Advanced Fighting Fantasy, featuring the perilous lands of Allansia in the world of Titan, is the essential eclectic "dungeon and wilderness" fantasy adventure system and setting combined.

Advanced Fighting Fantasy is a great introductory system with a wide array of options, and like BRP it's a skill based system. So it's possible to see a way to quickly create or convert Fighting Fantasy style characters that will use BRP rules and mechanics:

• Generate the basic characteristics, damage bonus, Magic Points, Hit Points, and so on as usual.
• Assign skills and skill percentiles using the AFF rules and skill list as guidelines. In AFF there are only four skill "categories", so these could be based directly on one attribute. For example:
• Combat: STR
• Movement: CON (representing general fitness)
• Stealth: DEX (with the exception of Awareness skill, which should be INT)
• Knowledge (includes Magic): INT
• Characters in AFF start with either 1 or 2-point special skills. For a 1-point AFF skill, add 30% in BRP, and for a 2-point skill add 50% to the category modifier above. Allocate three 2-point skills and six 1-point skills on this basis.
• With a little tweaking, the GM can also assign AFF magic styles as Sorcery (a single skill, fixed list of spells) or Wizardry (a skill for each spell, but no limit to the spells that can be discovered or learned).

These ideas are completely untested — cross the streams and who knows what might happen?

Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2E review

This is a long review, as befits an interesting and playable system with genuine appeal.

Overview

The Fighting Fantasy gamebook series has long been the first, most memorable step into fantasy RPGs for many players, and the Tinkerage has long thought that SKILL, STAMINA, and LUCK, and two dice, can encompass an accessible, rules light RPG system. So a true Fighting Fantasy RPG carries a lot of promise. The Tinkerage still has the books of the first version of Advanced Fighting Fantasy, and though the system is fundamentally flawed, the books are a great resource and a strong introduction to roleplaying. So how does the second edition in one volume from Arion Games, substantially rewritten and revised by Graham Bottley, compare?

Well, for starters, Advanced Fighting Fantasy 2E is an eminently playable RPG, with a fun, evocative setting that can be broadly adapted and simple, direct rules which nevertheless enable plenty of options. The rulebook, however, looks and read more like a dedicated fan project than a professional publisher's product. Though this is part of its charm, that the core book could also stand to be significantly edited only points to its inherent potential.

Characters

After a brief introductory adventure in the spirit of the original Fighting Fantasy rules, with incompatible creatures lurking in a magical dungeon complex, the character generation section is the first substantial revision of the rules, and some of AFF 2E's best work. Bottley was absolutely right to make character generation points-driven rather than random (which led to hugely unequal characters in the first edition). The system allows players to select and customise their characters, but the limited pool of points drives some interesting decisions, as well as quite flexible design (as the sample characters demonstrate). Skills, or special skills, have been rationalised and cover a variety of character approaches and pursuits. Although I doubted the value of Talents at first, Talents, as particular character knacks or abilities, allow another level of individualisation. And since they fit within a page and a half, they are hardly challenging to scan and select from. Overall, the character section gives players the power to imagine, build and run a character that fits their intentions, and I can see this working for any number of fantasy styles, from High Fantasy to gritty dungeon-delving.

Rules

The rules of play are simple, based on the roll of two dice with modifiers where appropriate. That tests require a low roll under the governing ability (usually SKILL) and contests require a high roll over the opposing ability (as in combat) does not seem inconsistent as much as a clear way to distinguish the two basic sorts of action (although there is an optional rule to make all checks roll-high). For a rules light system, there is an extensive set of guidelines for the use of skills and special situations, such as sneaking, traps, trickery, hazards, and so on.

Combat is simple and fast, based on an opposed roll. The only weakness in this section is that damage and armour effectiveness are based on a die roll where the results are read from a table. Although it is easy to roll all the dice at the same time, this requires an awkward look up, and the weapon damage lines are the most fiddly part of an otherwise clean character sheet. While it is clear that the designers have wanted to keep weapon damage and armour protection fairly bounded, there is perhaps a more elegant way to do this. Despite the quick resolution of combat, there are several combat options which encourage a tactical approach and situational awareness, and some interesting tactics implicit in the Combat Situation table for GMs and players to explore.

An oddity buried in the combat rules is that shooting attacks with bows and arrows are also an opposed roll, rather than a test. This means that, correcting for range and size and so on, your chance to hit also depends on the SKILL of your target!

Magic

In the spirit of light rules with many options, there are three magic systems: wizardry, a very workable system based on Magic Points and learned spell; the flavoursome sorcery system, based on Steve Jackson's Sorcery series, where magic is fuelled by STAMINA; and priestly magic. Priestly magic uses a new system, which no longer draws on the same spells as wizardry, and introduces unique powers based on allegiance to certain gods. It's an elegant system that gives priests unique powers, and is an excellent addition to the rules.

Setting and adventures

There are the usual sections on equipment, encounters, world, and notes for designing adventures. The advice on adventures is refreshingly straightforward, running over hooks, locations, enemies, and possible subplots. There is also a random dungeon/location generator system. Shifting focus to locations and encounters, a little like the old gamebooks, means that adventures feel less scripted. The world of Titan is a glorious patchwork: it's meant to be a world of monsters and magic and strange places, not an exercise in faux-Medieval realism.

Other matters

Since the rules are so good overall, it's disappointing that the text is riddled with errors that should have been caught with proof-reading. There are also some larger mistakes in the expression, such as labelling the villain or antagonist in the scenario section the protagonist. And although the layout is attractive overall, with good use of the illustrations from the original AFF series, the justification is a mess, with distracting and erratic spacing between words on almost every page – which makes the text look like it was set in Microsoft Word, even if it wasn't.

Finally, there are some oddities or inconsistencies in the rules which could stand some clarification. For example, the target number for the optional roll-high method is 15+, which is actually harder to reach than the same combination of SKILL and Special Skill for roll-under. And the rules suggest in several places that it is possible to substitute LUCK for SKILL in certain rolls, including attacks in combat, but there is no plain statement or example of this rule. Of course, with such a simple set of base rules, it is easy enough to patch or house-rule the right option, and AFF 2E encourages this. But because AFF 2E really is an ideal introductory game, this is a potentially puzzling to new players.

All this means, though, is that there is an excellent system and game-world here, with genuine scope for a revised edition (not a new edition) that addresses some issues, and gives AFF an even better foothold as the favoured system for beginners or players who first picked up a sword and lantern in the shadowy passages of Firetop Mountain.