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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Piratecat" data-source="post: 5670090" data-attributes="member: 2">Back before GenCon I was musing on Twitter about what game I should run at the con. Simon Rogers from Pelgrane pinged me and suggested I look at their new Robin Laws game '<a href="http://www.pelgranepress.com/?p=2330" target="_blank">Ashen Stars</a>.' I was a little doubtful; I'd tried Esoterrorists (which uses the same GUMSHOE system) and it hadn't particularly wowed me. But what the hell, I've never found a space game that really sang to me before, so I figured I'd give this one a try.I'm so glad I did.Ashen Stars is Firefly, with Jayne played by a 7' tall voracious alien locust. It's the best Star Trek, if the Federation had been destroyed by mysterious alien enemies and you were stuck out on the fringe of civilized space. It's an episode of CSI sci fi, mixed with Aliens and Pitch Black and any science fiction movie that involves some sort of mystery and investigation. In other words, I kinda dig it.Things I love:- The GUMSHOE system is both simple and flexible. I'm sort of amazed by how much I like it, as I didn't really grok it when playing Esoterrorists. Maybe it has just grown on me. Either way, the players in all 4 games I ran picked it up within 10 minutes.- The game moves fast, both for combat and investigation. There's almost no bogging down. - A reason to adventure. The PCs are freelance law enforcers, forced to balance their reputation against their effectiveness when solving crimes. Sure, you can just disintegrate a criminal without solid evidence of wrong-doing, but that's going to do a number on your rep and how much you get paid for jobs in the future. There's also no spaceship captain, so the group works like an adventuring party instead of a hierarchical military structure. - The assumed history is so loaded down with good plot hooks that it's astounding. Even better, it's potential history with lots of space for the GM to decide exactly what happened during the war. - Good, creative races. They bear similarities to classic sci-fi races on TV but are different enough that they don't feel unoriginal. It took me a couple of readthroughs before I realized that the Balla are Ashen Stars' Vulcans, for instance. There are also cyborgs, the aforementioned insectoid locusts named Kch-Thk, and three other alien races (including my favorite, the psychic vas mal). - Fun tech. From cyborg implants to designer mutated viruses that grant quasi-psychic powers, the tech system is both simple and creative. Things I like less: - I find the concept of pulling mysteries out of my butt to be intimidating, especially the concept of constructing the clue chain. - Robin Laws is a brilliant designer who has a predilection to create too many, too specific skills. He did so in Feng Shui, he did so in Skulduggery, and he does so here. It slows the learning curve.- Spaceship combat uses a different subsystem from normal skill use. There's a great reason for it: it gives every member of the crew a vital role in combat. Nevertheless, the extra learning curve means that one-shot games won't feature space battles, and that's a shame.So, I like the game enough that I'll be running a three session mini-campaign of it this winter after Sagiro's regular campaign finishes up. I'll let folks know how it goes.Anyone else played it?</blockquote>

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