Fulminata reviewed Ashen Stars by Robin Laws
Review of 'Ashen Stars' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The best one line description I can give of this game is "Star Trek after the Federation collapses."
The players are freelance law enforcers, hiring themselves out to handle problems that the Combine Fleet handled prior to the war. It's people like them that keep the Bleed, the former frontier of the Combine, from collapsing into total anarchy.
This is a very interesting game. It uses the GUMSHOE system, which is designed to emulate investigations in an RPG environment. It then uses this system to recreate the kinds of stories you'd find on a serial science fiction television show. Most such shows boil down to some mystery that needs to be solved, either criminal or scientific, and the GUMSHOE system is designed to handle just those kinds of situations.
Motivation and Reputation rules keep the players focused on doing the job, even if they're tempted to be too cautious, or …
The best one line description I can give of this game is "Star Trek after the Federation collapses."
The players are freelance law enforcers, hiring themselves out to handle problems that the Combine Fleet handled prior to the war. It's people like them that keep the Bleed, the former frontier of the Combine, from collapsing into total anarchy.
This is a very interesting game. It uses the GUMSHOE system, which is designed to emulate investigations in an RPG environment. It then uses this system to recreate the kinds of stories you'd find on a serial science fiction television show. Most such shows boil down to some mystery that needs to be solved, either criminal or scientific, and the GUMSHOE system is designed to handle just those kinds of situations.
Motivation and Reputation rules keep the players focused on doing the job, even if they're tempted to be too cautious, or too greedy. The game mechanics reward the players for following the tropes of the genre.
There's also an interesting starship combat routine. It's a bit more complex than most of the other mechanics in the game, but it looks like it will do a good job of involving all the players while also recreating the kind of combat that is shown in genre TV shows.
There's been a lot of good space opera games to come out lately, but this one is still definitely worth a look.
