I can't believe I haven't written a review for this yet. I first discovered Old Skull by seeing Dark Streets & Darker Secrets on the DTRPG front page. I got it, loved it, and immediately went in search of more content for it. What I found was Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells.
Hoo-boy. How to even start. I've described this game as post-apocalyptic cosmic horror star & sorcery. I've told people it's like Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, Masters of the Universe, and Heavy Metal magazine all got blended up in one universe. It's a freakin ride, let me tell you. But, here's the thing... it only barely describes all the weird, wild, wonderful crap it mentions. A few things get a paragraph or two. The different sectors of space get a few pages of tables each, and I'll mention the tables again in a bit. And that's about it. All the background is sprinkled around in tiny crumbs all over the book. Nothing is given an extensive 'this is how it is' treatment. The Overlord (the GM) has so much room to add, delete, and modify, because it is all so sandboxy. No, that isn't a word. Reading the book, you get into the feel of the universe, without being bombarded by pages of names, locations, battles, rivalries, etc, etc. The tech level reminds me of 'demon-haunted Firefly', and the adventure creation section reads like 'H.P. Lovecraft's Stargate SG-1'.
The game system is so fun, as well. Four attributes, roll 1d20 and score equal or less than the attribute to succeed. The Overlord must roll over the PC's stat on 1d20 to affect the character. There are Tough, Nimble, Smart, and Gifted characters, each with special abilities that define that archetype. Vitality is this game's Hit Points, and they start kind of high, but only increase slowly. The powers a Gifted character can gain are varied, and dangerous. Mess up really, really bad on a Sorcery roll, and an evil clone of you might appear somewhere in the universe, intent on taking your place. Weapons and armor are abstracted into Light, Medium, and Heavy. Vehicles get a chapter, and that hoverbike illustration made me create a light transport just to have a hoverbike racing team drinking in the local bar. Which led to an entire session in an unplanned side adventure. Gear has a Durability, which is way more fun than simply marking off ammo or fuel cells. You roll 1d6, hoping to score equal or less than the Durability of the item. If you don't, the Durability drops by 1. If it reaches zero, the item is empty, used up, or even destroyed.
Yes, the book is 450 pages. There's about 100 pages of hard rules, including powers and vehicles. So. Many. Tables. Many entries have an additional 1d6 roll to give even more variety to that entry. There are tables for contents, features, encounters, and more for each of the 20 sectors. A sweet adventure framework creation section where you can randomly roll the goal, adversaries, complications, and locations of an adventure. This is, honestly, my favorite section. Near the end is a starting adventure, a prison break scenario that could end up with the party having their own starship. And enemies. More than a few enemies.
It's amazing. This game is amazing. The system is easy to use, and the setting is bonkers. Or not. Don't use the crazy stuff. No Undead Queen, no Star Gods, no Galactic Overlords. Just humans and spaceships. Maybe all the characters are from the same planet, and the game is straight fantasy. Until a spaceship crashes there. You can do so much with this game. I'm an unabashed fanboy, and proud of it. Get it. If you like alien wizards and cyborg gunslingers, this is your Happy Place.
|