I was about 10 when I started role playing, my first game being Dungeons and Dragons back in 1979, but I also discovered Traveller back then and after that always preferred science fiction role playing games.

I had taught my kids some games in the past, both D&D and a few RPGs designed specifically for children, such as Mermaid Tales and Camp Myth.

My 10 year old daughter and 12 year old son discovered Solar Echos at Balticon this last year (2016) and after playing a few sessions there encouraged me to buy them a copy of the game.

The rules are simple enough to allow playing with minimum set up time for the players and were easy for my children to read and understand. My ten year old has run a few adventures for us since buying the game. The real depth of the system thought, I discovered when my son started to try to create his own content. In order to understand the information provided for each of the alien races, he read up on astronomy and star types, and he noticed how the spectrum of the parent stars impacted the creatures' vision. I saw how much thought was put into the science in this science fiction game, things that can be left as just background if someone is looking for just a fast pasted game, but that are also inspiring my kids to research astronomy and biology as they try to follow the examples in the book and create both realistic and interesting aliens of their own. It is encouraging both creativity and learning and I'm glad my kids discovered the game.

The system is level-based as well as skill-based, with some skills requiring a prerequisite skill in order to acquire. Rules include race specific abilities, cybernetics, and a large variety of equipment. The experience system has player characters to grow in strength and skill as they adventure. Combat is lethal, with characters becoming weaker and having greater difficulties accomplishing tasks as they take damage. Vehicle rules are simple and sufficient for car chases and combat, and like character-combat, vehicles that are damaged have their performance degraded.

Overall a good game system adaptable for one-shot adventures or a long campaign.

A game that seduced the players of our RPG club, with a simple and smooth rules system, that in my opinion needs to be used with miniatures and maps to experience the full potential of it's strategic gameplay.

I got a chance to play this at a con. The game advertises itself as a "tactical RPG." Usually games that try to be "tactical" result in a complicated mass of rules and slow combat, but to my surprise the rules were quite streamlined and combat moved quickly. It's a d6 system, so no need for a large selection of dice. Two things to note about Solar Echoes' combat style is that 1) the action phase for all characters take place at the same time and 2) characters have very few hit points. Don't get hit!

The seven playable races break away from the stereotype of all intelligent aliens being humanoid, which is refreshing. The setting's tone isn't clearly defined; the game we played was somewhat tongue-in-cheek (we fought hacked janitorial robots), and I got the impression that the creators were aiming for fun rather than, say, the grimdark future of 40K. While perusing through the handbook, the idea I found most interesting was the Void Space: an area of the galaxy where the rules of physics have been altered thanks to a war that took place between two ancient, absurdly advanced races.

If you're looking for a fun, easy-to-learn, combat-focused RPG with a sci-fi setting, this is a good pick.

I came across this game at a con and decided to give it a try. The alien races and setting are intriguing yet grounded. The game play is smooth and fast (though it took me a bit to get used to the d6 system, having been fully indoctrinated in the d20 system). The focus is clearly on role-playing instead of roll-playing, which is just where I like it.

If you are looking for a new science-fiction role-playing game with streamlined rules and interesting alien races to explore, then Solar Echoes is sure to satisfy!

After quite a bit of planing, calling, no shows, and organization, I was finally able to gather the gang and sit down for a much anticipated first game of solar echoes. I had read the rules. I had learned all of the races, archetypes, skills, scenarios and I'm not going to lie I was excited going into this. However, I wasn't sure if my friends would like it as much as i thought I would. So I figured I would start with just the introductory scenario. I passed out all of the character sheets and quick reference sheets of abilities and skills (Which are seemingly endless and full of possibilities). Luckily they were able to adopt the character management system fairly easily with little help from me. I also had to remind them that it is a highly team based game, so they wanted to have abilities that not only reflected the archetype they were going for, but fit instrumentally well with one another. Friend A, chose the Reln race (known for their way with words) named Salem Marsec (I don't know how he came up with that one). Mixed in some speech craft, a bit of stealth and deceit, with a nasty katana and a sniper rifle pair. Friend B, chose the Erwani race (a crazy looking sentient plant species), named Cloran Fyl. He was a techy that was good with hacking and had a floating orb companion that he named 'Bean Pod' as well as an arsenal of grenades. Friend C chose a Chiraktis (a praying mantis style bug class) This one comes in either warrior or worker. Naturally he chose the warrior. Equipped him with some biotech abilities so he could dole out quick heals, a quick use pistol and some martial art abilities and a tricky little grenade that has a deadly swarm of nano tech (that i will let you discover on your own). After spending about 30 mins nerding out over character building (which surprisingly is less time than we normally take) everyone was eager to jump in and use their new finely tuned avatars. Without giving out too much detail into the scenario. We were essentially sent to take out a weapons dealer. The combat in this game was very different compared to anything else we had tried. It is all about co operation, quick actions and reactions, and a fast paced all at once game play system that we found to be easy to pick up and fun to adapt to. If situations did not play out as they did I could for see a multitude of out comes at every turn. As the GM I ran through every trick in the book, and the players fought hard and achieved the goals set in front of them, of course not excluding loss, trial and tribulation along the way. At one point they used the Relns speech craft and a guards disguise they looted off of a dead body to sneak through a security clearance and hijack a space ship, which they had to hack into and override systems (also a fun mini-game attached to this). All in order to pursue an enemy that tried fleeing into space which then lead to an epic space battle. The game came with some pretty nice images that you could use for the space ships and vehicles, but we decided to use various ships we had lying around the house (made for a much cooler space battle). After completing the objective, rewards were doled out in the form of Loot and Xp for completing various achievements throughout the mission I.E. completing in a timely manner, RP MVP, killing/not killing certain NPCs, ect. We ended up having a great time and we are cycling sessions in for once or twice a month. This game is fun and keeps you interested. It feels like you are on the crew of Firefly or Cowboy Bebop. LOVED THIS GAME.

Tl;Dr: The game is fun, fast paced, original concept with varying environments, creative, and imaginative races with an easy to learn system. It feels like you are apart of the crew of your favorite syfy space craft with endless possibilities.

In my opinion the book is well organized and written in an easy to understand way. Every aspect of the game is being well thought off and covered. Rules are easy to find in the book, and aren't mixed with narrative. It gets right to the point, good for quick reference. It seems like a complicated system at first like any new game system, but once you start playing, it moves fast and is easy to understand. I also like the variety this game offer. You can customized the character that suits your style of play. Besides the routine combat talents. I also enjoyed the other, non-combat options they had, like Engineering, Persuasion, Biotech (Medical), Hacking, Disguise, Robotics, Resourcefulness, and Vehicle Talents. I also like the artwork at the beginning of each chapter and also all the art pieces through out the book. It gives you the right feel and set your mood to indulge in the game.

The following review was originally written at Roleplayers Chronicle and can be read in its entirety at http://roleplayerschronicle.com/?p=30510.

Solar Echoes Player’s Guide is the base handbook for the Solar Echoes core mechanics and a very high-level overview of the setting in terms of the history that has led to the setting’s present day and a look at the different character races. Everything else is core mechanics only, giving the player everything they need to play in an adventure or campaign. While not saying it outright, Solar Echoes is a space opera setting whereas the player characters are explorers or warriors of some type that travel the stars along with a host of others.

Solar Echoes utilizes a roll-over dice pool system whereas a player rolls a number of d6′s equivalent to the character’s base stat and adds any applicable modifiers (including those from skills) in hopes to meet or exceed the given target number. (Opposed rolls use a dice pool where the only the highest die rolled is considered.) The target numbers are fairly static meaning that as a character progresses, they do get better because the target numbers don’t continually increase. The base dice mechanics are very simple and straight-forward. Base attributes are determined by character race and then players choose the skills their character is going to have. There are no character classes and players are free to create whatever character type they want, given the inherent flavor of the character race. The game does include a number of recommended archetypes to help players get started.

As stated, this Player’s Guide provides all the basics and core mechanics. Outside of that and you’ll have to get the Mission Controller’s Guide.

OVERALL

Solar Echoes is a decent space opera system. I can’t say much about the setting as there is little information here in regards to the setting. The combat system utilizes an integrated turn sequence whereas the players and MC act upon and react to each other going back and forth without slowing down. It can definitely keep the game moving better and keep players from getting bored. However, there are a lot of mechanics and it almost seems as though there are too many situations attempting to be discerned in the core mechanics. In other words, too many modifiers for too many situations means too much memorization or constantly referencing back through the book.

RATINGS

Publication Quality: 6 out of 10 Solar Echoes Player’s Guide is a decent publication. The layout is smooth enough, but I was quite let down by the artwork. Each chapter has a two-page piece of artwork leading into the chapter, although none of them seem to pertain to what that chapter is about. Yes the artwork looks cool, but it has little to no meaning to the system or setting. While the cover art looks excellent and really draws you in, the large color pieces inside are let downs. The artwork in the character creation and equipment sections look awesome, and the rest of the artwork should have followed their lead. I also found a problem with all of the sidebars – none of them seemed to be legible. Either the font wasn’t right or they weren’t placed properly, but I really couldn’t read any of them without squinting.

The content formatting, however, was fairly bland; most of it read like a Power Point presentation. Each section has lots and lots of crunch, but there is very little narrative to either fully introduce the section, describe the mechanics, tie the mechanics to the setting or to other mechanics, or to simply give the reader something to read. There was definitely too much crunch and not enough narrative, and the setting doesn’t come through outside of History and Character Creation.

Mechanics: 7 out of 10 The base mechanics are interesting enough, but suffer from bloating in some areas. Although the character creation part is streamlined and the skills are kept trim, combat and talents are a bit much. The talents all seemed to be oriented toward combat leading to characters that may be useless outside of combat or at least the game falls short on exciting non-combat encounters. Additionally, a lot of the mechanics carried too many situations for penalties or bonuses whereas too many situations are trying to be compensated for instead of keeping it simple and consistent. Combat, while interesting and designed to keep everyone involved all the time, has a lot of fiddly rules that seem more like a miniatures war game than a role-playing game. All of the combat mechanics appear to be written exclusively with the use of a square-grid battlemap, otherwise they may break down. To me, this could slow things down. I would have preferred to see all the mechanics as trim and streamlined as character creation and skill usage.

Desire to Play: 6 out of 10 The core mechanics for Solar Echoes present an RPG that is interesting and unique. However, the setting information within this Player’s Guide does not; it completely falls flat and fails to present the player with enough information to immerse themselves within the game’s setting. If you want to try something new whereas combat is designed to be more interactive and presents itself as a grid-based system, then Solar Echoes is a great place to start. However, there is very little setting information and you would have to get as much out of it as you can or want to.

Overall: 6 out of 10 Solar Echoes Player’s Guide is obviously a great place for players to start should they be getting ready to play a Solar Echoes adventure or campaign. You’ll have to rely on the MC to provide additional setting information (hopefully) from the Mission Controller’s Guide, but you’ll definitely have no problem making a character. You may have some difficulty plowing through the combat mechanics during the first few sessions, but having a chance to act and react back-and-forth from PC to NPC can make for some excellent game sessions and you may find yourself preferring the integrated turn sequence over the basic initiative system.