I actually backed their first kickstarter project for the corebook, and so I was more than happy to see that they’re getting their first full-sized supplement with the Spymaster’s Toolkit now currently on Kickstarter.

What it has to offer is a whopping 16 new character archetypes for the character classes in the game, and also introduces a new downtime system that fills in the gaps between the missions. Add more toys in the form of gadgets and a reworked hacking system and it feels like quite the hefty addition to the already excellent game.

Overall it seems to be quite the catch, and an excellent way to get into it as some of the reward tiers will include the corebook, a GM screen and dice to go with it as well!

So if you’re interested in checking it out, please visit their Campaign page and pledge if you think it’s up your alley!

Untamed Worlds is clearly a product of love for 90’s anthropomorphic cartoon adventures, but seasoned with more than a little bit of gritty realism that elevates it beyond just being a simple homage.

What we get is a compelling setting where the PCs play the role of an underdog class of people who, by virtue of the society they were birthed in are sent to do the tasks that humanity would rather avoid. But instead of wallowing in it, the game actively spurs the PCs on to make a choice to do what they feel is right, whether within the system, or by breaking from it.

This makes the game suited for both kinds of play: You could have a beer-and-pretzels one-shot affair where you have a badass bunny with blaster gunning down dozens of Roguebots while spouting 80’s action movie one-liners. On the other hand, you could also play a game to the point where your PCs decide to fake their deaths and seek out their future as a band of pirates that strike out against the interests of evil megacorporations.

Ultimately, it’s all about the freedom to choose, and that in itself is a key theme in the game.

Artwork and Layout

The Artwork in Untamed Worlds is almost purely character work by Logal Stahl, and it strikes the perfect middle ground between anthropomorphic characters and gritty military sci-fi. Every character portrait was pretty solid, but I do wish that there was more artwork of the setting and vehicles.

The layout of the book is a single-column affair with textured backgrounds. The fonts are decent and readable and the tables are all formatted with ease of readability in mind.

Mechanics

The rules that power Untamed Worlds is a masterclass in lean writing. There’s almost no fat on the rules for the game, every rule is there for a reason, and anything that wouldn’t serve the intended tone and purpose of the game is simply not there.

This results in a game that is easy to understand, and to implement. Taking away from complexity is a difficult thing to do in sci-fi where its possible to do too much. By keeping the tech and vehicle section relatively short, and taking away a massive shopping list of gear and extraneous items, the game sticks to what it wants to be.

Final Impressions

The Untamed Worlds firmly belongs to a very small list of games I would consider to be artistic in the sense that it feels like it truly has something to day about society. The fact that it’s in a game only makes it better because it allows players to actually do something about it, even in a virtual fashion.

With excellent rules, crystal clear writing, a setting that does a remarkable amount of heavy lifting for its pagecount, Untamed Worlds is easily a must-have recommendation for me if you have any interest in military sci-fi. Don’t let the anthropomorphic characters fool you into thinking it’s just a lighthearted romp with laser guns (while it can do that too!)

With the right group, it can be easily be a very interesting and even cathartic experience at play.

Moving on from yesterday’s articles we’re taking a look at the Advancement Systems and GMing Chapters for Untamed Worlds.

Experience, Commendations, Promotions and Influence

Rewards from play take a number of forms. The most basic would be Experience points. For every 10 experience points earned in play, you can purchase from a list of Advancements. These Advancements are:

• Learn a new Trick
• Learn a second new Trick
• Learn a third and final Trick
• Increase three skills by 1
• Increase one skill by 2 and one by 1
• Increase one skill by 3

These Advancements are ticked off as they are earned, and once you’ve bought the entire list, you stop gaining Advancements altogether. Instead, your Veteran character permanently gains 1 Action Points. Every further 10 Experience gained will instead add 1 to the party’s Momentum Pool at the start of a session.

Aside from personal advancement, one thing that Outer Wilds also pays attention to are the societal rewards. Commendations are medals and recognition given by the UEF for outstanding service. These aren’t guaranteed, of course, as stellar performance in the field could still be ignored by political reasons by those in power.

In addition, the characters also earn Influence. By succeeding in missions, PCs gain a measure of Influence Points that can be spent to affect the setting. There are Trivial, Minor and Major changes that can be begun by leveraging Influence, ranging from establishing resupply lines to a distant outpost, to something more significant like forcing an abusive corporation to abandon its interests in a world and leave the native people there alone.

GMing Untamed Worlds

The GMing chapter opens up with a very frank discussion about how the game is structured. Untamed Worlds is designed to evolve in terms of it’s campaign structure. If first opens up with a mission-based model, where you’re a team of commandos and you go out and do what’s asked of you. This is great for one-shots and for the opening bits.

But as you can tell already, Untamed Worlds has baked in points of friction in terms of an unfair society and treatment to Uplifts. You’re passed on a promotion. That worthless sack of sh*t of a Human is designated as your team’s commanding officer. The only reward you get for a suicide mission is to get sent off on an even riskier job.

Sooner or later, the players will realize enough is enough.

That’s when the game opens up towards the second model: the Objective-based model. Rather than shutting the door on them and saying “Nope, that’s the crapsack nature of the world, deal with it” the game instead says, “So you’ve finally decided to take a stand. Here’s what it will cost, but at least you’ll be free.”

Whether they decide to go rogue, or fake their deaths or do something else, Untamed Worlds gives your players the opportunity to make their own future, and the game supports this wholeheartedly.

To help with this, the chapter has ton of advice, and provides quite a few handy tools like a random mission generator as well as several pregenerated missions for a GM to just simply pick up and run.

Enemies

The next chapter covers enemies, which includes a beefy selection of known threats to the setting. These include Dissidents, Extremists, Marauders and Pirates, but also other threats outside of society such as the insectile alien Bugs, and entirely separate arachnid threat called Nids. Also included are escaped hybrid experimental uplifts called Chimeras and Roguebots.

Each of these gets a selection of pregenerated writeups, as well as a few secrets baked in whose discovery could be the turning point of your PCs to finally break with the UEF.

Needless to say there’s a whole lot of things that want to get into scrap with your Uplifts, and there’s enough here to fuel more than a few campaigns focused on each particular threat.

Known Space

The last chapter includes writeups of the planets of known space, along with any secrets and details that you could latch on to. In addition to these the game also includes a planet generator, ensuring that there’s always something new to see when your characters make landing on an undiscovered world.

Impressions

It’s very clear that Untamed Worlds is one of those games that has a very good hold of what it wants to be. From the setting structure, to how the rewards system has friction built-in to frustrate people who work within the UEF, there’s a brilliant bit of design to encourage players to eventually strike out on their own.

It’s a compelling decision, and one that I’ve only seen once before in Engel, an old TTRPG that also had PCs that were intended to grow into understanding with greater nuance how the setting was essentially against them.

Join me on my next article as I put together my final review of Untamed Worlds!

Welcome back! Today we’re looking at Character Creation for Untamed Worlds. While the game allows us to make Uplift or Human characters, I’ll be sticking with an Uplift for this one.

Just off the top of my head I’m thinking of a Chameleon Survivalist character, the kind that gets dropped into hostile environments and is expected to come back alive and successful.

Pick a Heritage

The first step is picking a heritage, the game has a ton of options here, but I’m looking to do something a little stereotypical, so I’m going for a Saurian heritage. This grants me the following:

• Skills: CQB 1 and Recon 1, and 2 skills that I choose to spend on Espionage 1 and Survival 1.
• Tricks: I decide that I want my Saurian to have the Escape Artist and Hunter Tricks.
• Permissions: Resistant to Heat, and possesses Chemoreceptors

Pick a Background

Uplifts (and Humans) come from a variety of backgrounds which represent their upbringing. The Uplifts can come from Fostered, Farm and Feral backgrounds, all of which have their own advantages and disadvantages. Being the most common, I decide my Uplift to come from the Farm background.

Despite the name, Farm background isn’t so much agrarian as it is an educational facility that raises Uplifts that make good soldiers. Being from a Farm, my Uplift gets:

• Skills: 1 Rank in Marksmanship, Medic and Athletics
• Tricks: Any one Trick, in Fade’s case, I chose Sharpshooter

Pick a Specialty

Specialties reflect the Training that the Uplift has received and the role they’ll play in the group. While the book has a good number of different options to choose from, the framework for them is also exposed, with express permission granted for players and GMs to work together to make their own if they want to.

For my character, I’m going for the Ranger Specialization which grants me the following skill package:

• Skills: Survival 3, Recon 2, Marksmanship 2, CQB 1, Athletics 1, Medic 1

Name and Rank

Uplifts usually have names assigned to them by the facilities they’re raised on. For my Chameleon, he was jokingly named “Wally” as short hand for “Wall-Eyed”. He never found that funny.

As for a callsign, Wally is also known as Fade, and prefers to go by that name instead. His rank is a Trooper 2nd Class, just above that of a Trainee.

Final Adjustments

At this point we wrap up with a few derived stats:

• Hits: 8
• Defense: 4
• Carrying Capacity: 5

Pick out your Gear

The last bit is to work out what kind of gear Fade brings to the field. Given his Carrying Capacity of 5, that means he’s limited to 5 significant items including armor and a weapon, as well as a few tools:

• Avery Arms M-26 Combat Rifle
• UEF Combat Knife
• UEF Standard Trooper Armor
• Advanced Scope
• Camo Cloak

And there we have it! Fade looks to be competent, fun and more importantly, has plenty of room to grow. The fact that his name was a product of discrimination against Uplifts will be enough friction to get him going in the future when things come to a breaking point.

Next up we’ll be taking a look at the Advancement and GMing chapters!

Now that we’ve had a chance to look through the setting of Untamed Worlds, we’ll be taking a look at the rules that power the game. Named the Lucky 7 system, the mechanics are pretty simple: Roll 2d6 + Modifiers, and if the roll is higher than 7, then you get a positive outcome. Rolling lower means that you get a negative outcome.

The game goes to stress that rolling lower than 7 isn’t a failure per se, but a directive to make things interesting through setbacks and challenges. The game also stresses that rolls shouldn’t happen because there’s a chance of failure, as it normally is with some games. Instead, players should only roll if there’s an opportunity for an exciting outcome.

It’s a simple change in perspective, but a strong one. This approach allows for people to focus on telling stories without being bogged down with a sudden downer of having roll fail even if the character is conceptually an expert just because of chance.

Permissions

Equipment and special abilities act as permissions. This is essentially a means of enabling characters to do things that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to. Having a parachute for example, allows you to land safely after jumping out from a plane (assuming you don’t have wings). No roll required, just permission.

Advantage and Disadvantage

Like a lot of action-adventure games Untamed Worlds has a mechanic where favorable and unfavorable conditions can grant an Advantage or Disadvantage. This is resolved by adding an extra d6, and keeping the highest 2, or lowest 2.

Action Points

In Untamed Worlds characters receive Action Points at the start of each of their turns. These are spent to perform actions. Most actions require 1 AP, while you have a few that don’t require any AP, and others that represent more dedicated effort that require 2AP. If ever you don’t have enough action points to cover the AP cost of the action you’d like to take, then it finishes on your next turn where you pay the remaining AP cost to complete the action.

Tasks

Getting things done requires a pretty simple process:

• Roll 2d6 and add your relevant Skill
• Add any Situational bonuses
• Subtract the Difficulty of the Task
• Deduct any Situational penalties

If the result is 7 or higher, then things go your way.

For quality of success or failure, that’s determined by just how much higher or lower than 7 the roll is. These determine your Effect, which is then spent on a table of good things and bad things.

For example, shooting an opponent and scoring 2 Effects, by rolling a final value of 9, allows you to spend those 2 Effects to trigger the “Got another one!” effect that allows you to deal 1 Hit to another target of the same or lower defense than the one you just shot at.

Momentum

The Effect Mechanic also feeds into Momentum. Momentum is a metagame resource that players and the GM have. Good Effects can be banked onto the player’s Momentum Pool, while the GM can bank Bad Effects to their own pool of Momentum.

Hits and Armor

In combat, weapons deal a number of Hits equal to their Damage statistic. Most weapons deal 1, but bigger weapons understandably deal more. Armor is ablative, reducing incoming damage, but at the cost of an equal number of Armor Ranks.

Situations

In order to portray a variety of interesting instances, the game also introduces Situations. These are defined by several factors as described by a SitRep which include the following:

• Description – What the situation is
• Difficulty – The Difficulty rating of tests used to resolve the situation
• Win Condition – Conditions needed to resolve the situation successfully
• Duration – Number of Turns to resolve the situation favorably before it defaults to failure. These range from 1 Turn (basically a 1 test event) to 6 or more Turns would be complex or difficult situations
• Reward – Consequences for successfully resolving the situation
• Penalty – Consequences for failing to resolve the situation

While this seems like a lot of detail, it’s actually quite sensible and I can definitely see myself using this with little trouble. Savvy GMs might realize that this just adds a framework to how things are done anyway, but I don’t really find that to be a bad thing.

That said, I kind of wish that the Situation rules had one or two examples of how this works, even something like:

• Description – The escape craft you’re using to ferry the Uplift slaves to freedom has taken a hit to its propulsion and life support systems, and you’re not even out of the asteroid belt yet!
• Difficulty – 5, Hard. Stress and exhaustion are catching up to you
• Win Condition – Resolve any 2 of the threats: Repair the Engine, Fix Life Support or Dodge the Asteroids
• Duration – 4 Turns
• Reward – You’re able to escape the slavers giving chase
• Penalty – The Slavers catch up with you, get ready to be boarded!

Impressions

The Lucky 7 System is probably one of the most interesting rules-medium mechanics I’ve seen in a while. There’s a lot of good design at play here, with ease of learning and play, while opening up optional rules to resolve other mechanics.

Sure there’s no rules to handle the characters mental / emotional landscape such as Stress or Bonds or anything else, but that’s fine by me.

Next up, we’ll be looking over Character Creation!

Today we’re having a quick tour of the Setting chapter for Osprey Games’ Untamed Worlds. As mentioned in the prior article, the game is all about Heroic space commandos (mostly Anthropomorphic creatures with the occasional human) fighting off the threats to humanity. These could be anything from pirates, extremist groups and even hostile aliens.

United Inner Systems Alliance (UISA)

At the setting’s core is the UISA, a multi-planetary organization of member states that provides protection and stability to its member nations. At least on paper. Jump Drives that allow for interstellar travel exist, but humanity as a whole has opted to remain in safe locations, instead sending proxies to frontier regions to do the hard work first.

These frontier regions are the Untamed Worlds, and where most of the game will be centered on. Far and away from the direct control of the UISA, brave and desperate settlers seek out opportunities that would otherwise be unavailable to them if they stayed within the core worlds of the UISA.

The UEF and You

The default assumption of the game is that the Player characters are part of the UISA’s United Expeditionary Force, or UEF as a task force assigned to go on missions in the frontier regions. These missions come from a variety of different types such as rescue, scouting, security or defense, but it’s a generally exciting kind of life.

The Devil in the Details

At this point, the setting chapter delves into the UISA’s nature and structure, from their council structure, to military rank and file. There’s also details on the Uplifts and their place in society… which is frankly, being relegated to unwanted service roles or dangerous jobs.

Corporations get a surprisingly large chunk of the chapter, and I say this as a good thing. Games like Untamed Worlds benefit greatly from running into corporate interests intersecting with Mission objectives and these entries do a great job bringing a sense of how the PCs might be affecting things. Also, a lot of (if not all) the Corporations have nice little Easter Egg names to the genre, such as Avery Arms and Eastman Aerospace.

All the Stars the Sky are our Enemies

There’s a lot of opposition to the PCs, and the chapter goes into a tour of many of them. Categorized broadly under dissidents, extremists, marauders and aliens. There’s a lot of examples, and each could definitely be enough to run a whole campaign over. As a GM, I loved this section the most because it was a strong way to spark interest in running a campaign, as some of these enemies are truly reprehensible.

Also I was getting some major Mass Effect vibes on this, which can only be a good thing.

Daily Life

The chapter also goes into the everyday lived experience of an Uplift or a Human in the setting. It’s a brief, but informative primer, talking about the important bits such as food, communications, entertainment, medicine and how Uplifts and Humans are treated in society. I especially liked how compact writing like this was able to communicate mood and had enough broad strokes that I was comfortable with my ability to run the setting right away.

Impressions

There’s something to be said about a lean RPG system that has a laser focus on what kind of game setting it wants to be. Untamed Worlds has an economy of writing that feels like 3% body fat. Every paragraph conveys not just information, but tone and mood and attitude, without it being overwhelming.

The setting itself is wonderfully imperfect. Enough flaws to rankle even the most patriotic Uplift, but enough hope to make it worth bettering. It’s a great read, and I find myself more than excited to run this game.

That said we’re moving on to the next part, where we look at the rules of Untamed Worlds.

Untamed Worlds: Anthropomorphic Science Fiction Roleplaying describes itself as An action-packed roleplaying game of animals uplifted to serve as humanity’s agents among the stars. And if that doesn’t sell you on this yet, then clearly you didn’t quite grow up watching the same cartoons I did.

As someone born in 1980, I’m no stranger to Anthropomorphic characters in fiction. I was a massive fan of stuff like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, SWAT Kats: the Radical Squadron, and have passing familiarity with more obscure titles like Street Sharks and my personal favorite: Bucky O’Hare.

And so when Osprey Games gave me the opportunity to review this title, and I learned that it was done by Jack Norris, author of Tianxia: Blood, Silk and Jade, I had to check it out.

Born to Serve

What took me by surprise when I started reading the introductory chapter was the gut-punch of a premise. Untamed Worlds assumes a future where Humanity has settled the stars through the efforts of the poor, the marginalized and an entire subordinate class.

The player characters in the game are Uplifts, genetically modified animals charged with the thankless task of exploring worlds and fighting off threats so Humans won’t have to.

Wait. Doesn’t that… Suck?

Yep. And that’s the whole point. Themes of being grunts thrown into a meatgrinder to do thankless work for an uncaring upper class or authority is intentionally baked into the game. You’re meant to chafe at this, even as you achieve your mission objectives only to be sent to another, equally horrible one.

What happens when you break though? What happens when you and your team decide that enough is enough?

That’s the question that the game leaves you with. Whether you decide to try and subvert the system and go off-mission now and then for the greater good, go rogue and live a life in the stars as a pirate or seek out a remote paradise to start a society of your own where Uplifts aren’t treated as lesser beings, the players get to decide.

Hope Is a Sewer Rat

So why play this game at all? Well, to put it simply, because the player characters are Heroic. They’re in a bad spot, sure. They’re literally bred to be servile and expendable. But you’d be mistaken if you think that the Player Characters will just sit there and accept that situation.

Besides, you get to do so with Laser Beams and Spacecraft, in a game also geared for high-octane action.

So to inspire you I’m going to quote one of the best poems I’ve read as of late:

Hope Is Not a Bird, Emily, It’s a Sewer Rat

—
So I hope you all join me as I crack this game open and let’s see how Untamed Worlds delivers on this promise with a look at the Setting.

Legend in the Mist is firmly set in the concept that the game is a conversation. As such, majority of the game loop itself is set along the assumption that if it makes story sense, then it can follow. The GM, called here as the Narrator is in charge of managing the scene and its circumstances as well a in managing the spotlight as well.

Turn Sequence

The Narrator describe the scene and sets the stakes. This involves both a literal description, as well as noting any relevant Stakes, Challenges and Threats that need to be dealt with. At this point, the Narrator then directs the spotlight to one of the players and asks them what they’d like to do.

At this point the player describes their action. They might mean making a roll, utilizing any Tags they might have (and taking into account any Tags that might help or hinder their efforts.) Finally, the Narrator then delivers Negative consequences if the Heroes ignore a Threat, roll a Consequence or the Narrator chooses to invoke a Weakness Tag.

At this point the cycle repeats anew with the Narrator reframing the situation and then passing the spotlight to someone else. Each of these is a Turn, and once all characters have had their time in the spotlight, then that resolves a Round.

Outcome Resolution

Whenever a character decides to take an action, the Narrator has 3 options to use for resolving the outcome with increasing levels of complexity. They can choose to:

• Simply Narrate the outcome,
• Have the character roll,
• Have the character roll, and spend Power on results

Depending on what feels right, the Narrator can pick and choose these resolution systems to suit each action. Simple things like “I press my ear against the door and try to eavesdrop on the conversation” might not require a roll, while combat or spellcasting might merit spending Power.

Consequences

Consequences occur when a Hero fails to address a Threat, rolls a Consequence of when the Narrator invokes a Weakness Tag. Consequences are a catch-all for any of several different negative outcomes, majority of which are listed in the book. But for the sake of brevity: Bad Things Happen.

Whether it’s a traditional fumbled attempt resulting in injury, notice or insult, the Narrator responds to the action by introducing a complication.

Reactions

But hope is not lost, in order to mitigate a Consequence, the player may take a Reaction. Reaction rolls allow the player to spend Power to buy off the effects of Consequences to try to reduce them to something more manageable. Rolling exceedingly well can also result in being able to turn the tables, such as being able to seize the spotlight and take another action as a counterattack!

Story Tags and Statuses

Story Tags are temporary Tags that represent items, qualities or allies that the character has access to and can use to their benefit. Statuses on the other hand represent a character’s current condition, such as being wounded or stressed.

These can be lost or gained from successful Actions or as Consequences of failure.

Impressions

The system feels like a writer’s room of sorts. The guidance that the game is a conversation is a useful one, helping set the expectation that players are in essence writers in charge of a particular character.

The rolls inject an element of chance towards determining the nature of the outcome, with Reactions in place as a form of negotiation. What I found useful is to think of it as nothing is objectively True, until the Turn is resolved and the Narrator begins re-establishing the scene.

Overall the system feels light, but not necessarily *fast.* The tracking of Tags as multiple sources of bonuses and penalties to rolls, and multiple rolls tend to feel like they’re dragging the resolution of a situation down. I can see why there’s a simple option of just Narrating the outcome, just to avoid counting Power on all circumstances.

Next up, we’ll continue with the mechanics chapter with a look at the rules on Camping and Sojourns as well as Quests!

Coriolis: the Great Dark is everything that Free League does best: Moody, Thematic, and Beautiful. Much like in their other games, the writing and the artwork holds to a singular, powerful vision and executes it with such grim determination that it can’t help but be inspiring.

Even when it was first announced, people were ready to hate Coriolis: the Great Dark. It was everything that they weren’t looking for: set in a different place and another time, so far away from the glory of the Third Horizon that people were ready to dislike it without even seeing what it had to offer.

Much like those who stay behind and whisper about the folly of explorers setting off to the unknown.

The Setting

Free League took a massive risk bringing it to life, and I’m honestly glad they did. The result is a heady work of lush worldbuilding that combines pining for lost cultural touchstones with the pragmatism necessary for survival. Ship City might appear to be a tiny space to have a campaign in, but was written out with such a loving hand that you can be forgiven if you find yourself wistful for such a place to be real. It’s bleak, but it’s home.

The introduction of the Builders and the ruins they left behind is the call to adventure that exists in almost any location in the Lost Horizon. Each one pregnant with the promise of untold wonders and treasures, and the Explorers are the courageous men and women who go into the cave at the behest of the Guilds, wondering if this will be the time they find the magic lamp.

The Rules

Powered by the Year Zero Engine, Coriolis’ system is easy to teach, but also one where the odds never feel like they’re on your side. As with all Year Zero games, rolls are best reserved for crucial moments, giving the GM enough space to get creative about building mood.

Combat is deadly, and correctly so. Explorers aren’t all soldiers and so fighting is always a tense situation no matter if you’re up against some beast or a treacherous member of a rival Guild.

Exploration is given the loving treatment of the Delve, a minigame of sorts that allows for rolls to figure out how quickly they can explore, what events and hazards they encounter, and how much the Blight begins to affect them. It’s a bit procedural, but with the right mindset from GM and players, it can be more entertaining than it looks on paper.

Gameplay

I had the fortune of running this for a small group of friends who volunteered to try the Quickstart, and my experience has been very good. The games setting has enough cultural color to feel distinct from most sci-fi games, and the presence of the Guilds means that there’s always some sort of intrigue going on as well.

The Delve was accepted more readily than I had expected, with players being forgiving of the rolling as long as each of the hazards was played up properly. Don’t just read the entry of the Hazard, take the time to really have the players understand that in a Delve, they’re never in a place that they can be comfortable in. There’s always something strange or dangerous around them.

Much like the Caving, Deep Sea Diving and Polar Expeditions that inspired the game, make sure they never feel like they’re in a place that they belong when in a Delve.

Conclusion

As fearless Explorers looking for discoveries that might one day help their stranded civilization, Coriolis: the Great Dark is a sometimes somber take on the kind of madness required to explore the unknown.

Courage isn’t facing down a dragon, it’s willingly rappelling down a lightless alien ravine, with only the gear you can carry. It’s shimmying through tunnels too small to squeeze through without holding your breath and wiggling through, without any assurances that you’re going the right way.

Coriolis: the Great Dark is a fascinating exploration of the courage of the Explorers who brave madness and death. People who go forth knowing that each Delve they undertake is another light in the river of stars that could one day lead their people to freedom.

In many ways, this makes Coriolis: the Great Dark into one of the most unique games I have had the pleasure to read. Definitely a must buy from me.

—

Thank you for joining me in this full coverage of Coriolis: the Great Dark by Free League. If you’re interested in the game you can find it over at the Free League Website or order the PDF in DriveThruRPG for $24.99

If you’d like to see the rest of this series, you can find them on the links below:

• Introduction
• Character Creation 1 | 2
• Core Mechanics
• Combat 1 | 2
• The Birds
• Technology and Setting
• The Delve
• Solo Rules
• Review

If there’s one thing I really like about the new core books that Free League releases, it’s the fact that there’s always an appendix now for Solo Play. While no longer a “new” thing, solo rules are a nice addition to any game and serves as a neat way to extend the usefulness of you purchase if you can’t get a group together yet.

Meet the Outcast

In the Solo variant of Coriolis: the Great Dark, you play the role of the Outcast. Whether by betrayal or accident, you’ve lost your crew and friends and now you’re alone. Whatever happened, you’ve chosen to work alone from this point forward.

The Explorer’s Guild doesn’t normally endorse delving outside of a team, but they’re not about to deny any artifacts you manage to extract.

Of course, this means that you’re not an ordinary explorer. As a solo character, your Outcast is built different. You start with more experience, wealth and attributes than the normal character. This also reflects in your ability to carry more things, and execute Crew Manuevers by yourself. You’re a force to be reckoned with compared to the normal starting character, but you’ll certainly need it where you’re going.

Welcome to the Garden

The Solo game assumes that you’re doing your Delving in the Red Garden, a massive valley of Builder ruins. While most of these have been already picked clean by Explorers, the Outcast knows that somewhere in the far depths there are still things to be found.

Delving into the ruins alone is different from the normal Delving procedure. Since it’s a solo game, you are given a host of tables to roll on for determining the Mission you’re going on, and instead of being handed a Delve Map, you roll on a Delve Depth table that determines how far it will take for you to get to your objective.

In addition to tables for handling the Delve details, the game also provides tables for inspirations and events and encounters. It’s a pretty hefty series of tables, and definitely enough to enable a very detailed delve.

Impressions

The Solo Play Rules feel a little chunkier than I remember the ones in The Electric State and Dragonbane, but no less interesting. There’s plenty of inspiration and I might give it a try sometime to see what trouble I can get into.

Join me in the next article as I wrap up this series with my review of Coriolis: the Great Dark!

—

Thank you for joining me in this full coverage of Coriolis: the Great Dark by Free League. If you’re interested in the game you can find it over at the Free League Website or order the PDF in DriveThruRPG for $24.99

If you’d like to see the rest of this series, you can find them on the links below:

• Introduction
• Character Creation 1 | 2
• Core Mechanics
• Combat 1 | 2
• The Birds
• Technology and Setting
• The Delve
• Solo Rules
• Review