This 1's so good that I choose to use Rules for making your own character from The 2nd Legendary Kingdoms Gamebook to create A Legendary Kingdoms version of my favourite character from the very old TV Show Knightmare that only appeared in 1 of the shows 8 Seasons, The Warrior-Thief Stiletta, here she is, what do you think?

With her being A Warrior-Thief and clearly being A better Warrior that she is A Thief, being reasonably good at survival, reasonably charismatic and having a average intelligence the stats I give her are Fighting 6, Stealth 5, Survival 3, Charisma 3 and Lore 2 and she automatically has 9 Health

Given her personality of the stuff we start Book 2 with it makes sense for her to have 100 Silver Coins, 1 Iron Shortsword that gives +1 Fighting, the suit of Leather Armour that gives 1 Point of Armour and the pair of soft boots that gives +1 Stealth

So to sum up she’s A Warrior-Thief, including Modifiers from some of her equipment her stats are Fighting 7, Stealth 6, Survival 3, Charisma 3 and Lore 2, she has 9 points of health, she has 1 point of armour and she’s equipped with 100 Silver Coins, 1 Iron Shortsword that gives +1 Fighting, the suit of Leather Armour that gives 1 Point of Armour and the pair of soft boots that gives +1 Stealth

Excellent book. With more content than the first (which already had a lot of content). The writing is good and there is a lot to explore. Certainly, a few parts of the book touch on dark themes, so I don't recommend it for minors. A simple warning on the book would go a long way.

I mean, seriously, gamebooks now have the female character getting RAPED and impregnated by orcs unless she makes an insanely hard combat test?

Words fail me.

The writing is great and some of the ideas are thought-provoking, but... come on. This feels like weird fetish fuel. I know you can do better than this.

I mean, when I read the Sorcery series, I never once thought to myself: 'you know what this series really needs? More orc rape baby plots.'

Could you put a trigger warning on it, at least?

Yet another 'SpecOps in Spaaaaaccccee'. Nothing special to recommend it.

A review based on entire pdf, in progress:

Good

Bad

A lot of interstellar travel is going to be about trade, and this book is filled with resources to help those groups who want at least part of their game to be about furthering that trade - presumably as small-scale independents, given that the game is centred around individual spacecraft. With spacecraft ownership proposed on the scale that we own cars, these are probably the van-men of space in the equivalent of a step-van or small truck. It's also something that can be modelled well for someone wanting a solo game.

First up, Advanced Trading. If you are a role-playing group, a lot of trade will be relegated to the Between Adventures phase. Let's face it, commerce - however necessary and valuable - isn't really the stuff of adventure. However the rules as laid out in the core rulebook make for quite a lot of work, especially for the GM. Unless your GM has unlimited prep time, you probably want him to be creating exciting adventures not writing out price lists. So a more flexible system for working out prices in a given system based on what they specialise in and a bit of die rolling for that random element is provided, with the intention that (provided you like it) it will repace the version in the core rules. Interestingly, this includes an element to model a place that is good for trade being over-exploited, ensuring that the characters move on and don't just run a single profitable route without exploring anywhere else. You can make things more complex, but that really defeats the purpose of using this system.

Next comes New Spaceships. Everyone is always ready for a few more... and the ones presented include large bulk carriers - think 'container ship' rather than 'truck' - for those who want to take cargo-hauling seriously. There requite multiple-person crews, but come with 'hangers' for personal vessels, so characters won't have to abandon their pride and joy if they take service on one of these big boys (the price tag is likely too much for most characters to contemplate owning one). There are also smaller one- or two-man ships optimised to carry cargo at, of course, the expense of speed, manoeuvrability or weaponry.

This section is followed by another on Fighter Escorts - as the big cargo haulers are not able to fight well, they need to have escorts to defend them. The concept here is the small specialist fighting craft, carried aboard a larger vessel and loosed when the need arises. They are smaller than the regular personal vessels previously discussed in this game, basically a flying weapons platform - some are even controlled remotely rather than having a pilot aboard. They have limited life support even if designed to be piloted, and no Frame Shift drives.

Next up is It Takes All Sorts, a selection of backgrounds suitable for people who want to specialise in trade. People have all sorts of reasons for becoming independent traders, these provide some of them - often involving a desire (or a need) to escape the past. Additional Karma Capabilities round out this section.

The Eternal Foe comes next. This section talks a little about pirates before provided a selection of adversaries at spaceship, vehicle and individual scales... mostly pirates but also some other traders to provide a bit of competition!

Finally, this is all linked in to the Random Gemeration System (RGS). There's an explanation of how to use it to create a solo game - this dupliates notes in the Military and Espionage supplements, as you may not have them - of course if you do you can have a very varied solo game indeed! It then moves on to creating encounters suitable for a trading game, as useful for the GM wanting to create appropriate challenges as to the solo gamer, including pirate attacks, police boarding actions and general spaceway encounters. There's a selection of trade missions - all of which could be developed into full-blown adventures, with plenty of supporting notes. In places the other sourcebooks are mentioned, but alternatives are given for those who don't possess them.

There's a lot of good stuff here, particularly if you are on your own or want to run a game in which trading and commerce provides the background to the adventures you want to run. A lot would be useful whatever science-fiction game you run, even if it's not Elite Dangerous, but if you do it captures the very essence of the video game well.

The opening pages (backed by an atmospheric double-page illustration) paint a world that's post-post-truth. Everyone knows not to leave secrets on computers where hackers can break in... so if you want those secrets you have to break in physically to steal them. Espionage is part and parcel of doing business, with corporations even more likely to indulge in it than nation-states.

Slightly oddly, the first section is addressed to Engineers, and talks about upgrading spaceships by tinkering with the systems - in flagrant breach of the warrantry if not the law. Pilots are advised not to fiddle, a case of 'no user-servicable parts inside' which to those of us who like playing starship engineers is anathema! It is considered best to go to a professional if you want to supe up your spaceship, and the first trick is to make contact with a reputable and competent one. In terms of game mechanics, use your Repair skill in the Between Adventures phase if you want to do it yourself. It's probably best to visit your tame professional engineer then as well, who wants to spend role-playing time waiting for your spaceship to come out of the shop? Either way it's going to be expensive. There are tables to roll on for various components, giving a chance of improvement... or of causing a fault (and sometimes both!).

Next comes a selection of New Spaceships. It's noted that agents tend to like ships that are speedy and agile, but which don't stand out in a crowded starport, then presents several new ships (each with variations) that may be chosen during character creation, or indeed picked up later on in the game.

The next section is Perks of the Job. This contains useful equipment that the best-dressed espionage agent wouldn't leave home without. Some are quite innovative - poisonous lipsticks or bodyspray for example (just remember to take the antidote before applying or you'll poison yourself!). There are weapons, cybernetics and othe gizmos as well.

Then we have The Perfect Agent where new backgrounds appropriate to someone wishing to enter the shadowy worlds of espionage are provided. These range from a former downtrodden worker-drone who knows in great detail how a corporation operates to security guards, and an 'insurgent' who may be a prankster, an activist or an outright terrorist. New enhancements and Karma Capabilities appropriate to these roles are also there.

After a rather creepy piece of fiction which I hope won't give any players ideas we move on to The Bad Guys, which provides a whole bunch of ready-made opponents. These come in both Spaceship and Individual scales and range from soldier/mercenary and security personnel to criminals, and of course assassins.

The final part of the book focusses on the Random Generation System (RGS) and concentrates on running solo adventures when you are without a GM. Of course busy GMs can also use it during planning or even mid-game if they need ideas in a hurry. There are infiltration challenges - complete with outcomes based on success or failure - and step-by-step paths through various types of espionage mission. Then there is a system for generating Corporate Bases through a series of die rolls.

There's plenty of useful stuff if you want to run espionage games, but the whole thing has an air of being thrown together, random nuggets added because they might be useful, rather than a coherent exposition of the espionage aspects of the game. It even manages to make espionage sound dull and mechanical... the very thing most people take up this line of work to escape! Pick out all the bits you want to use and throw them into the mix, remembering that the real excitement of an espionage-style mission comes with role-playing it, not just rolling dice!

An excellent product all around. Getting this out of the way: If you're a fan of the Elite Dangerous game and universe, this is what you're looking for in a tabletop RPG. The writers are clearly fans of the game and have gone to great pains to bring the game as directly into the mechanics of the RPG as possible (particularly where ships and their components are concerned), and it comes out really well. Overall it's a sleek system with tons of options for customization, yet minimal numbers crunch.

The PDF itself is just magnificent. The art is nice, the fonts and layout are easy on the eyes and aesthetically pleasing, everything is nicely color-coded to quickly draw your eyes to what needs referencing... It's one of those PDFs that made me realize just how important aesthetics can be on the reading process, despite not usually thinking much about it. It doesn't lack for content, either. There are at least two dozen background options for your characters, which you'll pick from to put together a unique individual whose experiences have shaped their skillset right out of the gate. Ships all come with several different stock models - for example, the Adder "Aspire" Coupe is kitted as something of a personal cruising vessel, while the Adder Raider feels more like an interceptor - and of course, you can hand-craft your own ship by mixing and match components and balancing power needs the way you would ingame. There are even rules for creating your vessel from the video game, if you played, in the RPG. NPCs are fairly easy to make, and the book comes loaded with numerous stock encounters; different strengths of foe graded by their rank (from Harmless to Elite) for each of three groups: soldiers and mercs, police and security, and criminals.

I tend to ramble and I'm trying to abbreviate as much as possible, so I won't gush on, but it's absolutely worth the money. As a space RPG on its own, it does a really solid job, on par with some of my favorite spacefaring tabletop RPGs. As a way for fans of the video game to transfer their experience to a fully fleshed out universe complete with planetary interactions, personal-scale firefights and of course, exciting space dogfighting (or even mining if that's your thing!), it does its job almost perfectly.

I have only two complaints: One is the lack of comprehensive ship listing, which I believe is remedied in some of the expansion material but I haven't purchased those to make sure yet. Make no mistake, what's here gives you a ton of options. The Adder, Anaconda, Asp Explorer, Cobra Mk III, Diamondback Scout, Eagle Mk II, Fer-de-Lance, Hauler, Krait, Python, Sidewinder, Type-6, Type-7, Type-9, Viper Mk III, and the Vulture make up the ship roster in the core book, and that's nothing to laugh at. Particularly when you consider that each of these models come with something like three or four different stock configurations (and again, can be modified to your heart's content!). That said, I'm hoping to find the faction ships and cruise liners in the expansions. If not, I'm hopeful that the faithfulness to the source material will make them easy enough to translate homebrew!

The other complaint I have is the slight lack of depth in the mission generation tables. I don't want to call it "lack of depth", really. The mission generation system is really cool and it does its job very well. The only thing that worries me is... Within each of the three mission types, there are a handful of missions, each with a handful of scenarios and a handful of twists that could be rolled. The positive in this is that the generated results tend to feel really exciting and unique, but the downside is... Well, I was sort of hoping for D100 tables rather than D10's. This, however, is a personal gripe and a minor one at that. I'm fairly certain these generated missions will help my table get rolling and our own ideas will carry it from there, so they'll likely do their job just fine!

All in all, I can't recommend this product enough. I'd been waiting for this since I first took the controls of my crappy stock Sidewinder some year and a half ago, and the folks at Spidermind have delivered in a way that almost feels tailor-made to my wishes.

The Preface and Introduction between them set the scene and evoke long-lost memories of early gaming in childhood (OK so I am a bit older than the author so there were no videogames to play with, and D&D didn't turn up until I was 18!). It all captures the magic of the alternate realities we inhabit as role-players, and gets you ready for this one, which you might have met before if you have played any of the Elite videogames. They were quasi-role-playing of themselves, but now with this game, that universe comes to life as a full-blown role-playing game. In a nutshell, your characters inhabit a universe where spaceship ownership is as common as car ownership is today, where there is vast inequality between rich and poor, weapons are easily available, life is cheap but opportunites for the brave and fortuate are endless...

There are basically three types of game that you can play. There are exploration games, espionage games (these include the police procedural ones like in the quickstart adventure The Worst Intentions that is bundled with the core rulebook), and military ones. Or in the true spirit of Elite itself, you can be 'Lone Wolf' individuals who nibble at the edges of civilisation to make your living. These are just ideas, of course, this is a rich canvas in which you may tell any story that you please.

We then dive straight in with Chapter 1: Character Creation. The process is summarised in a single page, but of course it's a bit more complex than that as you need to choose backgrounds and skills - even if you do get Trained Pilot background for free, 'cos zipping about in a spaceship is core to the game. You need to pick four backgrounds, which feed into the skills you bring to the game. These can be chosen or rolled for on a random table. A background generally gives you about four skills or their equivalent - some give eight and occupy two slots in your list of backgrounds. Each is described in a few sentences which build up to give an outline of your character's past.

One of the more interesting choices for a background is 'partner' - this gives you a whole other person who tags along with you, and has a character sheet of their own. It's suggested that the GM may role-play this individual, but another method - especially if several players in the group have partners - is to trade them amongst the group, playing each other's partners. One of the things coming out of the process already is a strong sense of 'You are the hero of your own story' and it's going to be interesting to see how this fits into the group or party oriented mindset of most RPGs, as characters are developed in isolation. There is a Karma point system which reiterate that 'You are the hero' view, with Karma Capabilities (you choose from a list and get Escape Death as a bonus one) and points which you can use to reroll a bad die roll... and all are consumed if you call upon Escape Death! They do regenerate, though...

Finally there are eight starships to pick from. They are all one- or two-person craft (if you have a partner you'll need a two-seater), or you can design your own with a 100.000 credit budget (which doesn't go that far...) if you prefer. But EVERY player-character has his or her own ship. You then need to give your character a name and decide what he looks like, and get some basic equipment. Then, adventure awaits...

Or at least it will once you've got through Chapter 2: Playing the Game. This begins by talking about the overall objective (to have fun and make a vast fortune whilst having exciting adventures) and the various GM-set goals you will need to achieve along the way. Several examples are given, all more or less open-ended as to what you're going to do about the situation. Then on to using those skills you just determined that your character has, a matter of deciding what skill you wish to use, getting a difficulty number to roll over and making your attempt by rolling a D10 and adding your skill bonus. If you use a skill, even if you are not successful, you put a tick beside it and at the end of the adventure you can raise it by 1 until you reach the level cap (40 for a starting character) - but only once per skill per adventure however many times you use it. There's a brief description of all the skills so that you can decide which one you want to use, and an explanation of how characters advance to higher levels - you don't want to go around labelled Harmless for ever, after all! This is done by amassing Rank Points, awarded by the GM for things like defeating a foe or succeeding with a skill that materially advances the adventure.

Chapter 3 is devoted to Combat, and it explains how combat works in space, between vehicles (planetside ones, that is), and in person. Combat in person is often conducted at a distance with firearms, but you can also brawl with fists or wave a sword around if you are feeling a bit mediaeval! When engaged in a fight, you may or may not choose to use a map - it depends if you like freeform fighting or a more 'miniatures skirmish' style. Both styles are accommodated here, it's really a matter of personal choice which your group will use. Combat proceeds through a turn-based system, with initiative determined by die roll. During your turn you can move up to ten metres and take an action, with numerous special cases according to circumstances. Note that artificial gravity has not been invented in this universe (although large ships and space stations can generate it through rotation) so characters will often find themselves in a micro-gravity environment. Most folk wear magboots, which keep your feet secure yet allow for movement: if you have them you can move normally in a low gravity environment - but if you're caught without yours movement can get a bit tricky! Wounds and healing are also covered here, before the discussion moves on to space combat. In this game, it's conducted at very close range - a few kilometers at most - and bears a lot of simularity to an aerial dogfight or naval ships in the age of sail exchanging broadsides with the added feature of fighting in three dimensions. A rough map does help here, whether or not you like them for personal combat. Again there is a whole range of actions you can perform both in preparation for combat and once the furball begins. It's also explained how you take (or deal out) damage and how it is repaired during combat. If things go too badly wrong, you might abandon ship by taking to the escape pods (if your ship has them). Finally vehicle combat is covered. It's similar to space combat except there are far more obstacles to crash into, and the ground limits the directions in which you can move.

Next, Chapter 4: The Galaxy is a guided tour of a spaceship, delivered as if you are taking delivery of a new one. This is followed by an overview of the galaxy itself, politically speaking. It's an amusingly ideosyncratic discourse, with an Empire and a Federation (both have advantages and disadvantages) and an Alliance of Independent Systems, as well as many independent worlds... quite a lot to take in but it all makes for a fascinating read. Under the guise of 'Good Citizenship in Space' it also explains what is acceptable behaviour out in the black.

Chapter 5: Personal Equipment follows, with details of all manner of items as well as the currency used. There are enough varieties of weapons to keep the most ardent gun-bunny content, with plenty of illustrations and descriptions as well as game mechanical information... and a selection of 'rare' items which could interest the collector or someone seeking a signature weapon. Armour - considered a bit crass to wear in public without very good reason - is also covered, as are cybernetic modifications, which again can have a negative effect on how people view the modified individual. Moving on to ordinary clothing we discover that in a very judgemental galaxy what you wear influences how others perceive you, via a Social Factor mechanic that quantifies the effect. There's all manner of other items of equipment here too, from communicators to cosmetics!

Next, Chapter 6: Spacecraft provides the lowdown on how cheap faster-than-light travel and the mass-production of ships has transformed the galaxy and the lives of inhabitants, with spaceship ownership akin to today's role of cars. All spacecraft come with weapons, as space piracy is rife. As already noted, it's a basic 'given' of the game that each player-character has his or her own ship, rather than the party sharing one as in most games. Here there are further details of the ships mentioned in the character generation section and of many more besides, and there are also rules for those who'd prefer to design their own ship from the keel up. A lot is based on the way the Elite: Dangerous videogame handles spacecraft, although some of the calculations have been simplified on the grounds that computers do sums a lot better than most role-players do! There is still an impressive amount to wade through if you do want to get into ship customisation, however. For the technically-minded, faster-than-light travel is empowered by a 'frame shift drive' although there's no real indication of what that does, just a few passing mentions of 'witchspace'. In normal space, thrusters are used. And yes, you can purchase a Docking Computer, which my husband, an Elite veteran, claims is essential as it takes all the bother out of docking with a rotating space station!

Chapter 7: Vehicles then does much the same for planetside vehicles as the preceeding chapter did for spacecraft. On normal inhabited and civilised planets, virtually all vehicles are autonomous and 'driving' consists of telling the vehicle where you want to go, however there are plenty places where the necessary infrastructure is not present and you still have to actually take control yourself. You do need, however, to make sure that your spacecraft has a large enough hanger to transport any vehicle you purchase... although no doubt it is possible to rent a vehicle for one-off use planetside. Some vehicles are designed for airless worlds, others operate in atmosphere while submarines and aircraft are also available.

That's it for the player section. We are now in to Gamemaster territory. It opens by explaining how daunting a first attempt at GMing can be... yet it's also rewarding and exciting as well. It discusses attitude and approach before getting down to mechanics like how to set difficulty numbers for task resolution... and how to handle the outcomes, good and bad, once the roll has been made. The discussion then moves on to the types of game you can run, with considerations as to how much preparation you can and want to do, how much you like freeform gaming compared to having a plot ready for the party to interact with and so on. Loads of ideas here. The first suggestion, for those who like very defined adventures, is a military or police campaign, then there's material about intrigue and espionage based ones. Then there's the major interstellar industry of exploring new worlds in search of places to exploit or colonise. There's frequent reference to the Random Generation System (RGS, detailed later!) which reduces the work of prior planning and preparation - it can even be used mid-game to create, for example, a new solar system even as the characters fly into it!

Yet the 'default' setting for a game based on Elite has to be the Lone Wolf one, with each character in his own ship - as laid out in the character creation rules - each working for himself, an independent operator. The constraints of a traditional role-playing group demand that they have to cooperate, but because they choose to do so rather than for employment reasons (be it military, police, exploration company or whatever). While these can be difficult to run, because the characters can go where they want and do what they want, there are certain frameworks that you can set, such as mission-based games. Perhaps they freelance for the aforementioned organisations, taking discrete jobs when the opportunity arises. Military, espionage and exploration missions can work well, as can 'cargo delivery' tasks. Or you can run a sandbox game: give them an area of space and a starting point and let them go where they like. It does take a fair bit of pre-planning, although the crafty will have a series of generic adventures that happen in whatever place the party has decided to go, or ones which are tagged to certain places but have no timescale, they'll occur when the party enters System X, be that the first place they go or the last. The RGS can help, but it's best if there is some kind of overarching plot. The Elite Dangerous galaxy has some 20,000 civilised star systems, but you don't need to design them all at once! Start with a dozen or so, and grow your galaxy over time. A lot of GMing will involve making things up on the spot, if only because the most unpredictable creature in known space is the player-character! Fortunately there's help available here about some perceived common occurences, many combat-related... but there are notes on all manner of things from hiring crew for a ship to making up new Backgrounds for people to use during character creation, and much, much more.

Then a concept of Between Adventures is introduced. This is a time for all the housekeeping, trading, ship- and character-improving tasks you don't want to role-play out but which do serve the progrssion of character and game as a whole. Perhaps the characters earn some money through independent activities in between the times they operate as a group. This can be abstracted - if you find too much detail sneaking in it may be worthy of some playing time, although some folks do like a reasonable level of detail even in their 'off-screen' time. The trick is to abstract the stuff you don't care to occupy role-playing time with, and use it to set up the things you do want to play out. It's quite a neat rationalisation.

But there's more. Chapter 9: Opponents provides advice about creating and using the opposition - individuals and organisations. At the most basic level, they come in three kinds: personal, vehicle and spaceship. These, of course, are the ones that the party have to fight - but the discussion soon moves on to creating encounters and provides pleny of examples at all three scales, grouped as military/mercenary, criminal, police/security and so on. Alien animals are also included for those venturing planetside; and finally there are drones for the technologically-inclined. Chapter 10: Rewards discusses how to reward characters appropriately for what they do, both in terms of cash and in terms of character advancement.

Finally, then, we reach the long-awaited Random Generation System. It's been mentioned enough in preceeding chapters, and now here it is in all its glory: an array of tables to help you generate systems, missions, just about anything you might need. It's equally useful for planning a game or in the middle of one when you need something in a hurry, and just reading the options available can often spawn ideas... and of course you can ignore the result of a roll when a better idea occurs, even if you started out setting something up randomly.

A raft of Appendices to aid in creative processes, then we are done. There's great potential here and it's playable irrespective of whether or not your group enjoys the Elite videogames. The concept of having each player-character running his own ship may be a bit of a challenge: do they travel as a pack, or when they get together do they dock their personal vessels and embark on something big enough for all of them? The entire game system is very open and adaptable, but the GM is going to have to do some groundwork - even if it's furious die-rolling against the RGS - before you are ready to go. Unless your group wants a police proceduaral in space game, the Quickstart that comes bundled with the core rulebook is more to introduce the system than to kick-start your campaign. Have fun, and keep your blaster handy!

The Introduction sets the scene: as a citizen in a vast galactic civilisation of the 34th century, you start with the basics and claw your way up to - if you can get there - 'Elite' status. The galaxy is filled with perils: pirates, ruthless bounty hunters, heartless corporations and terrible creatures, lost cities and undiscovered planets. Cheap faster-than-light travel has opened up space to exploration and trade, humanity exploding across the stars, building new colonies, cities, nations and empires and discovering untold riches to exploit. But not all is well, there is terrible inequality and corruption and many who think the best way to make their living is to steal from somebody else.

In this PDF there is a brief adventure, intended to be played out in a single session, four pre-generated characters and enough of an explanation of the rules to let you play. Character generation, equipment (apart from specific stuff that turns up in the adventure) and the full rules will be found in the Core Rulebook. The intention is that you and your group can give the game a spin and see if it's to your taste before parting with your money.

The next section is How To Play which crams in a brief description of what role-playing in as well as explaining enough of the rules to let you play the adventure. The mechanics are based around the D10: task resolution involves rolling a D10 and adding the Skill Bonus of the appropriate skill, attempting to roll over a pre-determined difficulty number. In this game there are THREE combat systems: one for personal combat, one for vehicles and one for spacecraft. Rather than trying to explain them here, the relevant rules are provided in the body of the adventure as the need arises for them. Of course, this means that whoever is the GM is going to have to explain them, they cannot hand around copies of the rules section of the PDF for everyone to understand in advance! There's also something called Karma, used to power specific capabilities in a jam... each character starts with 12 points which normally are replenished, but for the purposes of this quickstart adventure, once they are gone they are gone.

Next we are introduced to the characters, who are law enforcement officers in the Asellus Primus system. Each has a Viper spaceship, a police interdiction and enforcement vessel, which carries a Surface Reconnaissance Vehicle (SRV) which is pretty much like a moon buggy and is used for scampering around planetside. Each comes with a character sheet and some background, as well as details of their Viper and SRV. (Personally I find it a bit odd that, if they are a team, they each have their own spaceship, but given that the Introduction tells us that spacecraft ownership is a bit like car ownership today it makes a little more sense.)

The scenario itself opens with some background on a narcotics gane with a novel history, then play begins with the party being called in to see their captain in the precinct house, er, orbital platform. From there they are sent to investigate an apparent derelict space freighter... and the fun begins. Neatly, there's plenty of room for interaction and investigation as well as ample opportunity to get into a brawl or two. There's also an interesting sidebar: in this game there is no artificial gravity (well, not unless it's spin-generated).

Descriptions are good, conveying a good sense of surroundings and situation, and a good attempt has been made to anticipate likely player questions and actions. There's a space battle against pirates to be fought, and it's here that the relevant game mechanics are gone through. More fun and games ensue when they reach the derelict - getting aboard for a start, and then hand-to-hand combat is likely too. Again the necessary mechanics are detailed here. Clues aboard lead the party to a nearby planet and, although it is probably contrived to give an opportunity to demonstrate the vehicle combat rules everything comes together to produce an exciting police prodedural in space.

The adventure is intriguing enough in its own right, and provides a good introduction to a lot of the rules of the game (including all three combat systems), so by the time you have finished it you ought to have a good idea of whether or not this game is for you. Personally I think the details of the combat systems would be better in the rules section than embedded in the adventure, if only because the rules section would then serve as a good ready-reference for players of both this adventure and the full game. Otherwise, a good adventure and an interesting setting make me look forwards to the full game.

The Worst Intentions for the Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game, is a very good sampler and certainly does allow the players to partially play the ruleset and experience the universe of this exciting new RPG (from Spidermind Games) and get a feeling for how it works.

The sampler does not contain the full rule sets, but the standalone booklet contains a single adventure, to play. Included are four pre-generated characters including their ship and equipment. Partial rules for personal combat, spaceship combat and ground combat are also included.

As with the d10 format, it is easy to play and follow, and the game universe is wide enough for modular or free form play.

Very interesting ship combat mechanics, and a fantastic setting to tell some great stories. Going to be watching this one closely.

The potential here is huge!

This is exactly what it says it is, it is a taste of the full rules set and is presented in a very easy to follow and play adventure.

The rules are very well constructed allowing fast, imaginative game play with great cinematic action.

Where other SF systems get bogged down with complex rules, Elite Dangerous gets to the point and creates a sense of peril, cavalier daring and edge of your seat action.

In keeping with the Elite Dangerous universe, each player has their own ship so everyone gets emersed in the gameplay.

Vehicle and personal combat also follow suit.

I've played many, many systems over the years, some good, some not so good......this system is great! And it's just the playtest!

Looking on the Kickstarter page you can see that Spidermind Games have the scope for a massive amount of background and expansions here, but as with all projects of this type, it needs our backing.

Just try it....if you have the spirit of adventure inside you then get behind this project, I truly believe that this is what SF RPG fans has been waiting for.......

I know have!

This is a short adventure in the elite universe! its no ruleset, there are no real quick rules but everything you need to play. its railroading yes but then you can see every part of the game. Fight/roleplay/explore... and you get nice hints what the nsc will do if you interact with him relating to your method (charming/intimidate...)

the Rules will be published when the Kickstarter ends so no worry about full rules. its only to get the feeling of the setting!

i like this quick adventure and i look forward to more rules/setting infos...

so 5 stars from 5 for a quickstarter showing a setting and give a basic feeling of the rules!

nice NSC, nice char sheets, nice spaceships..

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.