Coriolis: The Third Horizon

[Mezuka]

I'm old fashion guy. I prefer a slow layered striptease to a full monty in the first few seconds.

 

[Teo Twawki]

The Coriolis ks came along at a time when we were suffering a periodic bout of rpg-burnout. We’d recently moved and our long-term group was broken up. Didn’t feel comfortable with a couple of groups we tried in our new location. Saw the ks for this and the husband told me one morning he had been dreaming of the insectoid space ships from the artwork. We backed the project that day.

He (the husband) started the Coriolis G+ group before the crowd funding finished. Ran it until Google decided to dismantle one of their greatest projects (may the Icons bless that pile of ruined electrons).

We watched the tracking on the shipment of books and were angry when the local delivery dropped the box off at the wrong address. We lived in very rural Washington state--five houses on two miles of gravel road. The monotone locals warned us not to go to that house. Foreigners, the monotone locals said. Be careful.

Well, I’ve been a foreigner where I’ve lived for more of my life than I haven’t, so I hiked up my proverbial petticoats (never actually worn a petticoat), put on my boots, and hiked down to these suspicious types at the end of the dark wooded path.

They were a multi-generational house of Mali-Americans (two vets of the USMC among them) with Tuareg heritage. I was raised somewhat in a shared religion, so I then understand both wariness of the monotone locals as well as a smidgeon of the family's own culture. We drank tea and talked about what’s in the box and it intrigued them; we were intrigued by each other as well. I left a copy of the core book (both collector’s editions were in the shipment) and we agreed to set up a game soon.

Our two best games--two of the best rpg experiences I’ve been involved with--happened over the next couple months. A play group ranging in age from 17-72! One memorable evening was a zero-prep evening where the GM riffed off Escape From NY -- Coriolis Governor, intent on showing off progress in the nether regions of the station, makes a walking tour for media down in the bowels of the lower levels and gets kidnapped. Clocking is ticking to save them… It was a gloriously naughty word up mess in-game, complete with explosive cliff-hanging ending that was never sequeled. Sorry, Gov. You had to die so others might live.

The Damoclesian blade of such a glorious-but-temporary play-group is that when they moved away--as we did shortly thereafter--even when rejoining our previous long-term group, we never equalled the focus and intention of gaming as we had with that family of strangers-become-friends. Thank you UPS mis-delivery; without a lazy and/or inattentive driver, we likely would have never gamed with them!

Love Coriolis. Miss the magic of playing in that rich tapestry of setting, art, and imagination. The game revived my love of role-playing games at a much-needed time in life.

Alas! We must currently settle for a handful of other rpgs to enjoy until the Third Horizon calls out to us again.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I'm old fashion guy. I prefer a slow layered striptease to a full monty in the first few seconds.

My problem with it is that settings built around a secret are kind of pointless, because if the secret is in print, at least one player will know it. So since I'm going to have to change the secret, so I want it up front. My players will have to peel the onion, but as a GM, I need the data up front. I'm not starting a campaign without knowing the complete setting.

Secondly, too many gaming companies go belly up before revealing the secret.

 

[Yora]

If critical information to run the setting will be released later, I feel I will have to wait until it comes out, so I won't have created my own answers to questions that later turn out to be wrong, or have the players kill NPCs that still have to play an important role later.
It's the same old problem as with metaplots. You can only really use it as it's supposed to once the thing is wrapped up.

I first saw the game and the setting after I already started working on a campaign, and the Coriolis setting being a pretty similar take on a very close concept made me look further into it.
I think the only superficial "change" I need to make is to call the Icons instead as Fates, and it should all work very well as is. With icon talents, praying for more dice, the GM collecring Fate Points for that, and getting XP for playing towards your Fate.
Even vulcan and accelerator guns match with what I had already settled on for weapons.

 

[Staffan]

I think that the core aesthetic of Coriolis - 1001 Nights in Space - is fairly interesting, but I find the execution weak and not too thrilled that one of the big meta-setting questions about the Icons is answered as part of the big adventure. That IMHO doesn't really give the setting much steam for me now that I know it.

The way I see it, Coriolis is essentially Firefly with the Chinese elements swapped for Middle-Eastern ones. And then mixed in with a big chunk of Cthulhu Mythos.

If critical information to run the setting will be released later, I feel I will have to wait until it comes out, so I won't have created my own answers to questions that later turn out to be wrong, or have the players kill NPCs that still have to play an important role later.
It's the same old problem as with metaplots. You can only really use it as it's supposed to once the thing is wrapped up.

This is a thing Free League their partial predecessors, Järnringen, have done quite a bit of. They started with the game Mutant: Undergångens Arvtagare in the 00s, where the game was essentially built around a major series of adventures which revealed many secrets and fundamentally reshaped the setting. They're doing the same thing now with Symbaroum as well with Coriolis.

I respect that some people don't like meta-plot. However, in this case I think it's more just... plot. The setting changes and the secrets are revealed through adventures in which the PCs participate, not by putting the cart before the horse by having novels rewrite the world. It does mean that once you've run through the Big Campaign the world is kind of used up, but I don't really mind that. There are always more games to try out anyway.

It's basically the same thing as with something like the CRPG Dragon Age. Ferelden after the events of the game is not the same as before, which means that your game has "real" stakes. A setting like the Forgotten Realms, by comparison, is designed to be an ongoing concern, so every adventure has to either be about restoring the status quo or make changes to parts of the setting that are so small that no-one cares. I very much doubt that Wizards of the Coast would publish an adventure series focused on taking down the corrupt Masked Lords of Waterdeep and replacing them with a council that's actually accountable to the public, for example.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm old fashion guy. I prefer a slow layered striptease to a full monty in the first few seconds.

My preferences comes more from the influence Eberron had on me: provide intentional blanks in the setting that will never be answered. This gives some room between setting metaplots and table personalization.

 

[nyvinter]

In this case, I feel it's very easy to just run it with the core book and ignore the campaign. Sure it ash twists and turns but a lot of those are not what makes the game good — quite the opposite even, the meta plot of the campaign removes some of the cool stuff in the setting IMO.

As for houserules, we used only one I think. Success at a cost when you roll no sixes but any five shows up. We like to roll the dice far more than the Free League designers does (they're basically only touch dice as a worst case scenario, hence the success at 6s only.)

 

[Aldarc]

As for houserules, we used only one I think. Success at a cost when you roll no sixes but any five shows up. We like to roll the dice far more than the Free League designers does (they're basically only touch dice as a worst case scenario, hence the success at 6s only.)

I am definitely curious now whether people have tried to experiment with hybridizing Forged in the Dark dice resolution system to Free League's games: i.e., 1-3 complicated failure, 4-5 complicated success, 6 full success, and 2x 6s critical success. But that is probably best discussed for another time and thread.

 

[nyvinter]

An full on FinD resolution is probably easier to do with the two dice and step up sizes rolling mechanic of the newer Year Zero variant than the old d6 pool one.

 

[Yora]

The more I keep looking at the combat rules, the more fun it looks. Certainly something you don't want to do casually two or three times every time you play, but I think that's actually a cool change. In many ways, this system feels quite similar to Scum and Villainy, but in that game, like all FitD games, players basically get to choose if and when their characters get seriously hurt. You can't die unless you put your character deliberately into the blender or the GM is playing particularly mean. Which can make for fantastic and absolutely great adventures.
In contrast the Coriolis rules mean that when you pull out a gun, you might not be walking away from the scene. And having a PC getting actually shot leads to a wide range of specific injuries with various specific consequences. When your friend is on the ground shot in the face, or has a foot ripped off, that's a very different kind of thrilling space adventure experience for the whole goup.

Also a simple question: A weapon with a crit range of 2 requires rolling four sixes for a critical hit? One 6 to hit, one 6 to get an additional effect, and two sixes for the critical hit. And if I got five sixes, I can roll critical effect twice and pick the one I like, right?