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Thousand Suns: Rulebook
[978-0-9796361-1-0] |
$24.99 $9.99 |
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Publisher: Rogue Games, Inc
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A truly impressive science-fiction rpg which stands well apart from the pack, largely for the intentional and intelligent simplicity of its rules.
At a time when most SF games seem to be massive catalogues of rules, supplements, and niche-appeal setting detail, Thousand Suns takes a page from classic rpg design, and delivers a simple, smart, and aggressively streamlined all-in-one rules set designed to be transparent -- that is, to be easily understood and easily adapted to the specific needs of the gamemaster and the players.
I've tried repeatedly over the last couple of days to put together a review of reasonable length for Thousand Suns, explaining why I think it's such a worthy product -- particularly for time-pressured GMs and players who'd rather spend their few game hours together actually playing a good SF game, rather than wrangling over yet another endless set of game rules.
The problem is, all my earlier review drafts ended up being novel-length epics, talking about every single cool design decision in nerd-painful detail.
So, I'll try one last time to cut things short -- but if you've read my other reviews, you know I can promise nothing …
WHAT'S REALLY GOOD?
Thousand Suns has possibly the fastest, most painless SF character generation system I've ever seen. The way it handles skills as plug-and-play stackable "packages", based on player choices, particularly impressed me.
Most skill-based games become a huge time-sink during character (or NPC) generation, as newbie players painstakingly hand-pick every last skill point while asking repeatedly, "Is this a skill I'll need?". Not Thousand Suns.
Players make choices based on their character concept, and plug in skill packages based on their homeworld type, and which SF career archetype(s) their character history includes. Ten minutes or less, and a character's skills can be ready to play.
As I mentioned above, Thousand Suns is relentlessly streamlined and transparent throughout. If you don't like the idea of customizable plug-and-play skill packages -- or you don't want to be bothered with archetypal character classes -- you can treat it all like one big point-buy system.
It will take more time, but it's not hard to do, and the rules spell out how it all works very plainly. If you simply want to add new skill packages, or make the existing ones even more varied, you can do that too.
The character-generation system is indicative of the design ethic of the rest of the game: it's designed to cut every last inch of deadweight from the rules, while also putting full control over how the rules work into the hands of the players and the GM.
Instead of burying you in a rule for every game situation, Thousand Suns intentionally shows you exactly how it does what it does, so that you can make up your own additional rules, if and when you need them.
WHAT ELSE IS GOOD?
* Thousand Suns is actually issued under the WotC Open Game License (just like Mutants and Masterminds, et al), and even though it doesn't use d20 (it uses a pair of d12s, actually) the game does retain the one dice mechanic familiar to most gamers; namely: "Roll the dice, add the relevant plusses, subtract the relevant minuses, and see if you can hit the target number".
In other words, even if your gaming group is shy of anything that isn't branded d20, Thousand Suns shouldn't be a tough sell. The stripped-down rules, and the familiar central dice mechanic should keep them feeling safe.
* Psionic powers are optional, depending on the GMs campaign, but the example powers listed are divided into "power" and "super-powered" categories to make it easier for GMs to know at a glance what each power might bring to the setting.
* Equipment with no set "Progress Level" or "Tech Level" arbitrarily assigned. Obviously, certain tech will be more advanced than other tech, but it's your decision as Gamemaster as to where, and when, each piece of tech exists (or doesn't exist) in your campaign.
If you want slug-thrower weapons and FTL drives to co-exist, a la "Firefly", then that's your choice as GM. Thousand Suns provides the tech examples (adapted largely from the Future SRD), but it's left up to you to decide where, when, how, or if, any technology should appear in your game.
The tech-gadget build rules from d20 Future also make an appearance.
* No Wealth Checks! It's a currency-based game!
* No mapping or figures required for ground combat. Taking a cue from original Classic Traveller, all you need to know at the beginning of a firefight is the general range between opponents (Long, Medium, Short, or Point Blank), and from there it's all dice rolls and situational modifiers.
You certainly _can_ play on a map or a grid easily enough, but you're not required to do so. It keeps the battles fast and fluid, and makes those sudden, unexpected outbreaks of violence players always seem to stumble into a lot easier to handle on the fly.
* Armor stops damage. You get hit for thirty points damage, and your armor has a value of 20? You take ten points damage. Gotta love the obvious.
* Starship combat is abstract, and ultra-simple, and it works.
No maps, counters, or miniatures are required (although you certainly can use them).
Starships have a basic set of statistics, very stripped down from the Future SRD: Offensive Modifier; Defensive Modifier; Hull, Move, Turn, Crew, Cost, Weapons, and Damage Control.. These stats fit on the printable "ship cards" provided with Thousand Suns -- but, honestly, the stats could just as easily be written on a 3x5 index card, or a piece of scrap paper.
The card also serves as the physical indicator of the starship on the tabletop, Two d12s of different colors are set on or beside the card to represent the Z axis -- up and down, respectively -- thus making the 2D space battlefield effectively 3D. Starship combat movement is measured in "spans", and once a starship moves more than 12 spans in any direction, it has successfully fled the battlefield.
Player character skills modify starship-combat related rolls, of course, and it all plays fast and smooth -- and very much like the ground-based game.
Several archetypal starship types are provided, from single-person fighters, all the way up to 160-person Strike Cruisers. All the example starship types and weapons are adapted and streamlined from the Future SRD.
* World creation is all about providing a setting for the gameplay.
Thousand Suns is probably the first space SF rpg I've seen in years that doesn't try to model star system creation. And you know what? That's perfectly fine with me.
There's a metric tonne of SF rpg material out there which will do the cosmological stuff for you, with varying degrees of scientific accuracy, if you want it.
Hell, NBOS software makes a great little program called AstroSynthesis available right here on RPGNow, which will crank out more astrophysical data at the click of a mouse than most GMs will ever use or need..
Thousand Suns leaves the stellar-scale details to you. As usual, the game hones in on what you need most to run the game; namely, an interesting, identifiable place to play
Worlds in Thousand Suns are categorized more in terms of function, than astrometrics. What type of world is it? Agricultural? A Colony? Commercial? Is it generally Terrestrial (Earth-like) or not? If not, then what? What's the predominant terrain? The climate? The atmosphere? The population? The society?
Thousand Suns answers the questions players will ask with broad descriptive categories, as opposed to raw scientific data. Worlds can be generated with a series of random chart rolls, and these do cross-modify to some extent, but even the rules make clear that some "impossible" results may occur. Most GMs will likely choose from each category whatever result best serves their adventure plans, and save the random rolls for characteristics which don't impact the gameplay.
ANYTHING ELSE?
* Oddly, robots don't figure very prominently. There are a couple of example NPC robot examples (a security and a combat robot), but players who want to play as robots are advised to make up an appropriately customized Species under the rules, and simply treat it as a machine life-form
* Hardcore gearheads, and fans of the eternally oxymoronic "hard SF" probably won't like Thousand Suns, for its dogged commitment to an uncluttered, generalist rules system, but make no mistake --this is not a "space fantasy" game, a la Star Wars (although you could fairly easily make it into something like that, if you so chose).
It is, as I insinuated way back at the beginning of this review, an rpg which harks back to a lost style of game design, where the rules are intended as a means to enable the desires and designs of the gamemaster and the players, not to dictate them.
Thousand Suns presumes you have your own ideas for how you want to play the game, and seeks to help you realize them, instead of saying, "No, you have to buy all the canon supplements we put out, and play it only our way".
* Where does Thousand Suns fail? Not very often, and not very severely, in my opinion.
The stock art cover is so generic -- especially when shrunk down to postage-stamp size on the RPGNow website -- that I almost passed it by until I recognized game designer James Maliszewski's name on the credits.
The PDF version uses a horizontal (landscape) 11x8.5 layout, effectively putting two pages on each PDF page. I can only imagine that this was done to keep the PDF page-count down -- thus keeping the selling price to an affordable $10 US.
The interior layout is black-and-white, and yet the pages all have a border graphic which could well eat up an extra ink printing in black-and-white might normally save. As of this writing, no "printer friendly" version of the PDF was available.
That said, the document fonts and layout look very good. Interior artist Dani Kaulakis is not the flashiest illustrator I've seen, but has a knack for isolating the defining mood, and key point of interest, in every scene portrayed.
All in all, I have to rate Thousand Suns a 5 out of 5 stars. It has its minor problems, but the strength of its intelligent, streamlined appproach to SF gaming far outweighs any flaws.
My hope is that people seeking a less rules-burdened SF rpg will take a serious look at Thousand Suns, realize just how good it truly is, and give it a try.
Thank you to anyone who actually spent their allotted lifespan with me, reading this far. We're like family now, kid. Now, go buy the book and make yer old man -- and yourself -- happy!
Rating:  [5 of 5 Stars!] |
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