Close
Close
Browse Categories
$ to $















Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions $0.00
Publisher: Spidermind Games
pixel_trans.gif
by Jordan R. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 01/26/2017 23:38:00

Giving a bad grade to a free product seems pointless : worst case is that someone downloads it and loses a bit of time before realizing it's not to their liking. I decided to do it anyway, since this free quickstart is used to draw people to the Kickstarter.

First, two disclaimers. First, I did not play nor GM the adventure, only read it, so my review is based on that. The mechanics are perfectly fine in theory (d10+skills VS DC; only the d10 is used, so all damages are multiple of d10s), but the numbers and other specifics may or may not be sensible in play. Second, I never played the computer game (but want to) and don't know anything about the universe it's set in.

So, why 2 stars? On the good side, the space combat rules looks promising : while still a bit rough at the edges (why would anyone snipe, seriously?) it's sufficiently abstracted to be interesting to run while still giving players meaningful and interesting tactical choices. Dogfighting actually looks pretty exciting, yet not overly complicated! The document also looks pretty good : while not gorgeous, it's full-color and have many images of good quality (albeit quite small ones). On the bad side, the adventure is sub-par, and the organisation of the document is absolutely terrible, making it uselessly hard to run the game.

[Spoilers] The story itself is pretty boring, and the PCs don't have much room to be inventive : the information they get is not enough to help them make meaningful choices (there are four blips on your radar, some bigger than other : which one do you investigate?), the enemies are basically zombies that can't give informations, the maps are uninspiring, the combat encounters are bland, there are some inconsistencies, plot holes and deus ex machina... It's mostly a railroad, with some "bonus places" to investigate if the PCs randomly chooses to go to a blip where the storyline does not unfolds. There is even a complete fail point midway : if the PCs land their spaceships directly at the points of interest on the planet (instead of landing 300 miles away and using a land rover, for reasons that just don't make sense), the adventure end early and in failure. The authors advise the GM to tell that to the players... So they know there is a problem, but instead of fixing it, just instruct the GM to either railroad the players or let them fail the entire mission. [End of spoilers]

But the real problem of the product is its organisation. Instead of putting all the rules at the same place, some are given at the beginning, while others are given the first time they're needed; in play, that's sure to be a nightmare. Because of that, the first personnal combat encounter is split in two by the combat rules, so you have the mooks initiative at page 17 and their tactics at page 20. The same problem happens for the first spaceship combat; even worse, the first land vehicle combat tells you to reference the space combat, but add some modifications, so you need to flip through two different set of pages just to know how to run it, three if you take into account the stats block at the end of the booklet. Add to that the fact that there is no rules summary for the players, and that the damage and special rules of their weapons are not on their character sheet, and you see how complicated running a simple combat can become.

Oh, yeah : simply printing the pages from the book to give them to players would also give them information about the adventure... and the advice to fudge die rolls given to GMs. The authors actually know that, advising players curious about the rules to not read the informations around it...

The same organisation problem plague the descriptions : a map is shown many pages after the room descriptions starts, and this description is given without telling the GM it refers to a numbered room on the map, or even that there is indeed a map; a super simple combat encounter takes more than a full page to describe; the background informations you would need as a GM to get the big picture is given only when the PCs might get to learn it, so at different places in the adventure. Another thing : the informations the NPCs knows are given as call-out text answers to potential questions. Lots of wasted space, and good luck keeping the conversations natural...

Oh, yeah : there is no table of content. I think bookmarks are supposed to be integrated in the PDF, but I don't see them (that still would not replace a table of content).

The whole thing give the impression to be written like a novel, not a game meant to be used and referenced by a GM. Here is a sentence taken from the description of a place the PCs might visit : "The players might also want to shoot the transmission aerial - this is both a good and a bad thing to do, as will be seen later." "As will be seen later"? Yes; four paragraphs of backstory later, to be exact, not that you could know that without reading all of them. It's not even the only time the text does that! As a GM, you need either to learn everything by heart or prepare some serious notes if you want to run this effectively.

If you are interested in the Kickstarter (or in the complete product, if you are reading this when it's out), I would advise you to seriously read this quickstart before, not just skim it.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
pixel_trans.gif
pixel_trans.gif Back
You must be logged in to rate this
pixel_trans.gif
Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
Click to show product description

Add to DriveThruRPG.com Order

0 items
 Gift Certificates