Elite: Dangerous Tabletop RPG Announced

Spidermind Games is a brand new British company who have officially licensed and developed the Elite: Dangerous Tabletop Role Playing Game. A 50-page introductory adventure is already available to download and a Kickstarter is being launched on the 16^th January 2017.

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Elite: Dangerous is a massive multiplayer space adventure, trading and combat simulation video game that was the fourth title in the extremely popular Elite series by Frontier Developments. The latest instalment, Elite : Dangerous, was funded on Kickstarter in late 2012 and is available across multiple formats, with a PlayStation 4 version launching in 2017.

They’ve already announced a few of the writers for the supplements too, including Michael Brookes who is the author of Elite: Legacy (an Elite: Dangerous novel) as well as being the Executive Producer of the Elite: Dangerous computer game. Michael will be writing the games Imperial Sourcebook.

“Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game seeks to immerse the player in the same fast paced, cut throat galaxy experienced in the hugely popular MMO, Elite: Dangeorus.

There are three separate, fast paced combat arenas.

In Spaceship Combat each player owns their own spaceship, which is completely customizable. It becomes a second character that you can gradually improve with multi-cannons, plasma accelerators, enhanced shields and super-fast Frame Shift Drives. When you earn enough money, why not upgrade to something larger, more manoeuvrable and with more firepower!

In Vehicle Combat your characters can land on alien planets and get behind the wheel of your Surface Reconnaissance Vehicle (SRV) to explore, or strap yourself into your own battle tank and storm pirate bases.

In Personal Combat, whilst the ranged weapon can deal the most damage, the ancient art of sword play or the trusty club (Melee Combat) gains the player multiple attacks per round. Equally potent is using your fists (Fighting Combat) as this allows to attempt to disarm your opponent at close range.”

For more information on the game, the preview downloads, and the forthcoming Kickstarter please check out the games website.

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[pming]

Hiya!

(This turned into a sort of mini-review-once-over...)

Huh. Never played the video game. Took a look at the PDF rules/quickstart/test. Honestly? Not that impressed. From the looks of it it will be 'too swingy' (basically you roll a d10 for any action, add your bonus, beat a target number of 5, 7, 10, or 12... easy to very hard). Doesn't look like there are any "Stats", just "Skill Catagories" (Personal Combat, Vehicle Skills, Intelligence, Social, Espionage), that each have a list of skills under them. The provided pre-gens have skill scores of between 1 and 4, with most being 2 or 3. If this remains true...then most characters will not 'stand out' from eachother much. Their typical skill score will be 2 or 3, meaning the d10 die roll is much more important than their skill score. Even with a difference of a 1 to a 4, the chance of the 1 guy rolling a 7+ vs the 4 guy rolling a 3- is, well, 30%. So roughly 30% of the time, they will not succeed based on their presumed skill level...it's just blind luck.

Anyway, yeah. I also didn't like how some 'interaction' sequences basically had 4 or 5 pre-planned reactions based on the Skill used by the PC.

Example: PC's are dealing with some NPC's. The "Player Tactics Choices" are Bluff, Charm, Diplomacy, Insight or Intimidate. Not horrible, most RP interactions will fall into these categories. No worries. However, the Difficulties listed for them are, in order, 10, 8, 9, Automatic Failure, Automatic Failure. Yes kids, that's right, no matter how "Elite" or "Dangerous"... see what I did there? ... your character is, you will NOT succeed if you try and 'figure them out' or try and 'intimidate' them. Period. Done. Move along. Or, in video game terms, you hear "BZZZZ!!!" when you push the button.

The idea of everyone having their own ship is cool...and as the game takes place in the 34th century, this kind of makes sense. Having a starship would be like owning a bicycle or car. From the looks of those rules, it's taking a page out of the old Star Wars D6 WEG system; shooting a guy with your gun is the same as shooting a guy with your starship. Jumping over an obstacle is the same as dodging an asteroid. In other words "Roll d10, beat this number". No subsystem of any real "meat" that I could see with regard to space combat. On the plus side, this will/should make for very fast and loose, exciting space combat. On the negative side...we are dealing with a TABLE TOP role-playing game. And this means players will try and do crazy, off the wall things. I'm not sure if the systems very 'macro system' will hinder the players feeling like their ideas/choices make a difference. I mean, if a rule gives +1 to Defense, will a players unusual idea also give him that same +1? If so, then why bother trying to come up with unusual ideas, if the net effect is "+1"? Will the players idea be a cumulative effect? So he gets +2? If so, does that mean that the rather hard to get 'normal rule' bonus of +2 is rendered less "skilled/unusual"? As I said in the beginning...too swingy ("I'm an expert pilot with a 4 skill"..."Yeah, I suck at 1, but I got +2 for this idea and +1 for this situation...so I'm, effectively, just as good as you this round").

I'm sure that fans of the video game may very well enjoy it...and it looks like they are going for "newbie" players who may have never played an TTRPG in their life but have played the video game; hence, 'simplistic' rules with some 'absolute success/fail' being in there on occasion. Maybe they'll hit their mark with this game...but I think seasoned RPG'ers may find it a bit too simplistic for a space game.

Oh, and full colour glossy pages from the looks of it. *MAJOR FAIL* for me. I freaking *hate* full colour glossy page RPG's! Grrrrr!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Zaran]

I don't like the idea of a single 1d10. Gamers have lots of dice. Rolling one die isn't that fun.

I will say that if you think 1d10 is swingy then D&D is even worse. I don't really mind if good idea bonuses put up to the same skill as the Elite. They should also be getting the same bonuses for good ideas.

 

[pming]

Hiya!
[MENTION=56710]Zaran[/MENTION], Yeah, I guess technically D&D is more 'swingy' in that you might have +2 and someone else has +6, but the spread is 1-20. That said, at least D&D has more "stuff" going on at any one moment as far as adjustments/rules and ability of the players and DM to 'wing it' on a case by case basis that gives at least the feel/illusion of it mattering. This one seems 'swingy' in the sense that there isn't much wiggle-room for the DM or players to toss in temporary mods without those mods completely overshadowing the actual characters skill...and at the same time still be swingy. It's a hard thing to nail down...I guess running that game system would come down to a lot of trial and error where the DM will probably end up house ruling a bunch of modifiers to draw on (i.e., "1 round Aim = +1 // Brace Shot = +1 // Knee deep in water = -1 // Thigh deep in water = -2 // Dim light or shadows = -1 // etc...etc").

Still, it's got some potential overall...but I think it's going to need a bit more "optional" side-bar rules to really appeal to seasoned RPG'ers or non-Elite: Dangerous players. Maybe an option to use 2d6 in stead of 1d10, or giving some means of widening the gap between numbers, or maybe even steal from 5e and use some sort of Advantage/Disadvantage mechanic (If you are 'specialized' in some aspect of a skill you roll 2d10 and take highest, etc).

Anyway, if the PDF allows for me to remove the art and background I'll likely pick it up just for reading purposes...but if it's basically a full-on colour PDF with no actual use of the things that make PDF's great (re: printing options, reading options, etc), then I'll pass.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[MarkB]

Having read through the space combat rules, I can't say I'm keen. For an RPG based upon a detail-oriented space sim, an abstracted combat system feels like a poor fit. It also seems like it would reduce any combat to a massive free-for-all - I'm not seeing the potential for it to cope well with anything more tactical or objective-based.

 

[Elite Dangerous RPG]

By no way is this going to be an apologists post but do remember this 'Playtest' does not contain the full rules set nor the full character generation convention. Hopefully you will be pleasantly surprised by the full version.

 

[CapnZapp]

Having read through the space combat rules, I can't say I'm keen. For an RPG based upon a detail-oriented space sim, an abstracted combat system feels like a poor fit. It also seems like it would reduce any combat to a massive free-for-all - I'm not seeing the potential for it to cope well with anything more tactical or objective-based.

I am confounded.

Isn't the appeal of Elite to tinker with your ship? To collect innumerable little upgrades? To dream of the day when you've saved enough money to ditch your old rustbucket and to upgrade to the new shiny (and more powerful) model?

I would have thought any Elite RPG would be of the kind with lots of ship models loaded down with different stats, so that you could then purchase lots of gear that gave small but meaningful upgrades?

What you wouldn't want to do is reduce ship combat to rolling a d10 and adding some simple number to it. You would want the system to really reflect the different ways an Anaconda and a Cobra handles in space combat - turning, acceleration, rate of fire, hull strength and so on and so on... essentially the opposite of something cinematic, fast and simple like, perhaps, Star Wars where nobody's interested in whether the coils have a 29% or 39% risk of overloading or the difference between extra hull plating or a few more tonnes of cargo capacity.

What am I missing?

 

[MarkB]

I am confounded.

Isn't the appeal of Elite to tinker with your ship? To collect innumerable little upgrades? To dream of the day when you've saved enough money to ditch your old rustbucket and to upgrade to the new shiny (and more powerful) model?

I would have thought any Elite RPG would be of the kind with lots of ship models loaded down with different stats, so that you could then purchase lots of gear that gave small but meaningful upgrades?

What you wouldn't want to do is reduce ship combat to rolling a d10 and adding some simple number to it. You would want the system to really reflect the different ways an Anaconda and a Cobra handles in space combat - turning, acceleration, rate of fire, hull strength and so on and so on... essentially the opposite of something cinematic, fast and simple like, perhaps, Star Wars where nobody's interested in whether the coils have a 29% or 39% risk of overloading or the difference between extra hull plating or a few more tonnes of cargo capacity.

What am I missing?

I'm not sure whether this is directed at me or the game's designers. You're quoting my post, but your own comment seems almost entirely tangential to what I wrote.

For what it's worth, I agree that the system should reflect the qualities of the different ships, and the different builds available to each ship, essentially treating them as character classes in themselves. But the game is also about fun and tactical ship-to-ship combat, and the starship combat system needs to be flexible and concrete enough to handle a range of scenarios, without becoming so bogged-down in minutiae that the joy is sucked out of it.

 

[CapnZapp]

It was directed at the thread in general.

I needed to quote something that discussed the notion of the game being undetailed and generic; I chose yours.

Regards