Issue 9 - The Trouble with Space Marines (Part 3)
Today on the blog, Extinction and Warpstar!
Righty-ho, a long weekend, and a bit of free time to work on the blog!
Editor’s Note: Alright, I started this blog post back on Labor Day Weekend, but now it’s later and the opening line somehow seems less punchy. Oh well!
Let’s return to the subject of my finding my Goldilocks1 space marines game. You might remember in Issue 6 I discussed my love for the genre, and how I’ve never really dug in and run a game focused solely on space marines. Then in Issue 7 I took a fairly close look at Stay Frosty, a well-known and fairly beloved indie space marines game.
Today, on the heels of just having watched Alien: Romulus2, I’m going to knock out the next couple of games on that original list: EXTINCTION and Warpstar!
Up first…
EXTINCTION
So a few things about EXTINCTION are evident right from the get-go — just look at the cover. There’s a Traveller vibe. It’s based on The Black Hack (TBH). It’s written by Kobayashi, a French RPG designer I have a lot of time for3. These are all, in my opinion, good things.
But!
Bit of a whiff from your author here. I forgot, when putting this game on the list, that it’s actually more of a space survival game than anything. There is a Marine characters class, but it’s just one of eight4. Also included in the svelt, 76-page, A5-formatted game are the Corporate Drone, the Deck Officer, the Marine, the Medic, the Science Officer, the Security Officer, the Synthetic, and the Termite. (Termites are a great term for space miners.)
Influences are cited: Alien, Outland, Bladerunner… you can see from this and the classes that this is shaping up to be more like those movies than the space marine romp I’m looking for. So, let’s not spend a ton of time digging in on this one; it’s just not going to cut the mustard.
It is a cool game and it has lots going for it, so I’ll feel bad if I don’t share some highlights before we move on:
I like the implied setting. It draws on current themes many of us worry about — climate change, pollution, corporate greed, you know the drill. Space colonization was and is ugly. Technology is primarily functional. There’s little sense of wonder in it, making it come off as very workmanlike. It leans away from cyberpunk and transhumanism, and there’s no intelligent alien life… yet! The author calls out something that happens to be a mantra of mine in many games:
No trace of intelligent alien life has been discovered yet. No contact has been made. This will be the privilege of the players.
Yup, dig that. If there’s going to be first contact, put the players on center stage.
The game adds a nice “Adrenaline” mechanic to the usual d20 roll-under + advantage / disadvantage sleekness that TBH brings to the table. This is a finite resource players can spend, and it’s modeled using the usage die (Ud12, Ud10, Ud8, etc.) we will later see Kobayashi use to good effect in his game Black Sword Hack. Adrenaline can be used in three ways:
Take the same action twice in a turn — move twice, attack twice, etc.
Power a talent (these are class-specific abilities)
“Burn” adrenaline by rolling the current usage die and using the result to improve another roll.5
There are some solid and rather modern design considerations. For example, failed attribute tests can be treated as “success at a cost.”
There’s a middling panic system, plus decent rules for group tests, ongoing damage, defending, vehicles, space travel, parasites and viruses. For being a small book, it covers a lot of ground.
The armor and weapons are a little underwhelming, which is part of why I’m just dusting this system now in terms of my search. Armor is ablative and useless once the Armor Points (AP) are gone; considering the heaviest armor has AP 8 and weapon damage often consists of rolling a d6 or a d8, that’s not much staying power for a marine.
In the end, there’s lots to see in this game if you’re someone who digs dissecting hacks of The Black Hack like I do… there are lots of ideas here to make off with for your own purposes. But for space marines? We’re moving on, soldier.
Hut hut hut!
WARPSTAR!
Ah, now here’s a game we should look at carefully. It’s from Greg Saunders, the designer behind both the flawed gem Golgotha and the criminally overlooked RPG Warlock! The latter is a favorite of mine; it embodies the British OSR for me, dialing right in on that grim, black and white, mud and blood, die in a ditch, earn your crust aesthetic that I so dearly love. (Delightful miserabilist OSR!) Greg’s original design intent with Warlock! was to create a quick-playing system he could use for running classic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay adventures like The Enemy Within — but the game’s grown a fair bit since those early days thanks to a small but absolutely rabid fanbase, a group that has been cranking out content for the game.
But we’re not here to chatter about Warlock!, we’re here to look at Warpstar!, its even less-known sci-fi sibling.
When I first picked up and flipped through Warpstar!, I saw how similar it was structurally and mechanically to its predecessor, Warlock!, and I immediately presumed it would be to the Warhammer 40k universe what the prior game was to the first two editions of Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. To my surprise, that was not quite the case. But that’s kind of getting ahead — let’s talk about the game first, the mechanics.
Mechanics Overview
Warpstar! is a d20-powered game, but it’s not much like the one you might be thinking of. Here, characters lack attributes, levels, hit points and armor class. Instead, they are defined by their Stamina and Luck scores, one or more careers, talents, equipment, and the results of rolling on some d6-powered background tables during character creation.
In Warlock! and Warpstar!, you’re always rolling a d20, adding your skill value and trying to hit a 20 or better. Starting characters might have a couple of +8s or +10s, but most skills will be in the +4 /+5 / +6 range. Do the math… these are fairly low starting odds, but Saunders recognized that whiffing in combat is no fun. So for melee combat at least, the author switches things up by making that an opposed roll. The winner always deals damage, and it’s worth noting that the aggressor gets a +5 (25%) bonus.6
From what I can tell, Saunders pulled this approach from Advanced Fighting Fantasy, where fighting was similarly two-way; if you fail the roll you don’t just miss, you take damage. If you haven’t played with this kind of mechanic before, you might be interested to know that it can both speed play and really amp up tension in each individual combat roll. No more missing, pouting, and just telling the GM to move on! I adore this mechanic, which is also present in things like Troika!, Rangers of the Midden Vale, and even to a degree in games like Delta Green. As much as I like the cut-to-what-matters damage roll in the ‘Mark of the Odd’ games like Into the Odd, Cairn, Mausritter, Liminal Horror and Electric Bastionland, these two-way combat rolls where taking damage is always on the line are, for me, more exciting.
Let’s put this in context a bit — in a space marines game, it’s generally going to mean that the marines will own lesser foes (dig that), and have serious concerns about going up against creatures and enemies that are truly dangerous to go hand-to-hand with. Really models the fiction I want nicely.
The Warpstar! Character Sheet
Warpstar’s sheet is a simple one. Have a gander.
I don’t love this skill list (I think Warlock! does a better job), but it’s serviceable and pretty easy to fine tune. The skill levels are tied into the character’s career; they can only improve in the skills that their currently chosen career supports.
Careers
Speaking of the careers, they are pretty brilliant little bits of game design in the twin Saunders games that use them. They are rooted in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, but are pretty breezy in terms of how they are implemented.
Check it out:
Note the system-as-setting here, in those careers. This table is indicating to us what kinds of stories the game supports telling. And even better than that, once you’ve decided which of the four careers you rolled you’ll be playing, you then roll a pair of six-siders on that career’s background tables. It’s slick and easily modifiable if you want to tune your setting or lean in to some specific things that are not well-represented. (Like space marines!)
Let’s look at the Scout as an example, and you’ll see how easy these careers are to mod:
So a career sheet lists the skills that go with the career, the maximum skill values allowed in that career, a description of what the career is all about, some equipment, and a couple of juicy tables. Warlock! does the same thing with these, and frankly I think that really helps differentiate it from the other five thousand OSR games out there — especially the ones where you’re just generating 3d6 down-the-line PCs you might not even name at first level. The folks coming out of the Warpstar! character generation already have a bit of wear on the tread — it’s easy to latch onto who they are and what they’ve been through.
Anyway, I could go on and on about the system, but this isn’t meant to be a full-on review, but rather a tire-kicking to see if this game can handle a space marines campaign. I’m here to tell you that despite the fact that the core book doesn’t have a space marines career, it most assuredly can. There’s actually a whole separate book that features them heavily called Hegemony, but let’s save diving into that for later.
The Cool Bits
So in closing, let’s just briefly examine some of the cool bits that support what I’m after in a space marines game.
WEAPONS & ARMOR
Quite like what’s going on here. Armor is either light, modest or heavy, and each of those reduces / soaks incoming damage by a variable amount: 1d3, 1d6, and 2d6. Considering that personal weapon damage tops out around 2d6 as well, those in heavy armor are generally in pretty good shape… though there’s almost always some risk. It feels right for marines to be able to wade in when they need to, without being invulnerable in a not very interesting way.
ACTION / COMBAT RULES
Lots to like here. Initiative is simple — the GM decides who acts first (or might call for a simple d6 face-off roll), then each side takes one turn / spends one action with a character or foe who hasn’t acted yet.7 It goes back and forth until all parties have done their thing.
There’s a diminishing luck mechanic, there are rules for pinning and flanking opponents, there are ways to deal double damage by scoring well on your combat result, and there’s a fearsome set of critical injury tables8 that you go to as soon as you run out of Stamina. Recovering Stamina is pretty easy but still needs some management (recover 1/2 that you lost after the conflict), but critical injuries can take much longer to heal. Combine all these with the two-way melee combat I mentioned above and it makes for, I think, fast-moving and fun combat.
VEHICLES & SHIPS
There’s a whole chapter on this topic, covering everything from cruisers and scout ships to motorbikes and tanks. It’s light to medium on the crunch side of things, and I think plugs in nicely with the rest of the game. There’s no detailed system modeling, but the critical hit charts cover that kind of thing:
Bottom line, marines need dropships, APCs, tanks, trucks, troopships, assault shuttles — and Warpstar! has them.9
THE SETTING
Right. Lastly, the setting. Recall above I said that Warpstar! wasn’t just a Warhammer 40k rehash? It’s close, but it brings in elements from lots of other places, and generally speaking it is, to me, a more interesting place to adventure.10
In addition to an equivalency of the Imperium and the Emperor (the aforementioned Hegemony and a chap named The Autarch) and the fact that FTL travel uses the “warp,” which can corrupt people, produces terrible monsters and can be shaped and wielded by warp-sensitives… there are also elements of Dune in this. Right down to great noble houses, a merchant combine, a reliance on a spice-like resource… you get the idea.
In the end, it’s a nice mashup of themes, and there are loads of enemies (robots, monsters, aliens, nobles who have it coming) who need the what-for. I dig it.
Okay! If you’ve read this far, thanks for bearing with me. Bottom line — I’m putting Extinction back on the shelf, but Warpstar! is currently in first place for the space marine action I’m after.
Not sure if I’ll dive into 3:16 or some other game on the list next or turn to a different topic, but I hope to see you here next time and appreciate the support.
Cheerio!
Juuuuust right, not too big, not too small.
Short review: it’s okay. Some parts are pretty great, some parts are very dumb and derivative. <Time Passes> Okay, I re-watched Alien 3 a week later, and OOF. I think Romulus might be the third best movie in the franchise.
Kobayashi has created, among other things, The Rats in the Walls, Fléaux, INTO THE DARK, and Black Sword Hack.
Eight! Are ya paying attention, Mothership? As much as I adore you, I’d surely love some additional official classes. Eight is Enough, but four is not!
The book is a little turned around on this, saying to add to the result of any roll… but adding to the usual roll-under attribute tests wouldn’t be helpful. I think it’s just a phrasing issue.
A recent podcast episode of Analytic Dice dove into the topic of opposed rolls in RPG melee combat recently, and I have some thoughts on the subject that are crystalizing. Look for a deep-dive blog post on this topic soon. Maybe next.
There’s a little more to it for critters with multiple actions, but those are the basics.
Also a nod to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.
And lots more in Hegemony.
Because, you know, there’s a little less fascism in Warpstar!
Extinction sounds like a cool game (YOU are the lucky human to be there for First Contact), but agree that it doesn't work for Space Marines. Maybe if the ablative armor was less ablative? Multiply its rating by a factor of anywhere from 4 to 8 to get something that can take a fair amount of abuse. But I suspect that you're looking for something right out of the box without the need for House Rules.
Warpstar! also sounds good. Have to agree with Mirko that, based on what you've presented here, it really lends itself to space opera. I suspect that the Hegemony supplement is what really makes it possible to run a space marine game.
Nice post!
As you know, I have a soft spot myself for both Warlock! and Warpstar! (although I only had a chance to run the latter once, as a one-shot).
I really like what Greg did with the setting. Perhaps similar to Warlock!, but even more noticeable in this Sci-Fi setting, you can pretty much pick & choose which setting elements you want to focus on, and which ones you want to ignore. I think Warpstar! would do just fine with regular Space Opera, especially with a Space Truckers sort of vibe. But you can also really lean into the 40k-ish aspects and play (or confront...) Space Marines.
It's too bad that Warlock!'s awesome opposed roll mechanic likely won't come into play as much in Warpstar!, as it only applies to melee attacks. I would imagine that the vast majority of attacks are going to involve ranged combat using various sorts of pistols, rifles, etc.