Can politics, intrigues, and para-military activities satisfy fans of space opera RPGs? A game set 200 years in Earth’s future, when wars and resource depletion ravage humanity but hope exists in the form of an FTL drive to escape a dying world.
Science-fiction Role Playing Games have a very unenviable task: trying to convince the gaming community that their version of future events and technologies make sense. Fantasy RPGs don’t have this onus, with magic and gods being represented as powerful forces, so that almost anything that happens can be explained away by declaring A Wizard did it! or It is the will of <insert deity name here>. But Sci-Fi RPGs have to step wisely and carefully, the authors having to measure themselves against decades of science fiction novels and short stories, scores of episodes from television series, and tons of sci-fi feature movies.
Of course, an author could project a Sci-Fi RPG’s setting into the far distant future, where everything is super-high tech and technologies its power nearly limitless. But then, a science-fiction game setting of that ilk has already blundered into one of Arthur C. Clarke’s Three Laws: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Congratulations, you’ve invented a new fantasy RPG.
About a year ago, Jolly Roger Games completed a Kickstarter for a new sci-fi role-playing game: PARSEC. The authors describe the RPG on their main website as “…a sci-fi roleplaying game of insurgency, interplanetary politics, corporate espionage and space piracy in a solar system on the brink of war.” Sporting a setting at the dawn of interstellar travel and colonization, Jolly Roger Games peers only a little ways into humanity’s future and offers a game based upon their vision of things to come.
PARSEC RPG
PARSEC RPG is a science fiction role-playing game set 200 years in Earth’s future, when wars and resource depletion ravage humanity but hope exists in the form of an FTL drive to escape a dying world. The game comes complete with rules for character generation and ship generation, as well as rules for handling conflicts and combats of all types – social, personal, ranged, zero-g, and ship-to-ship. There is also setting information provided to the Director (Game Master) to run a campaign, along with NPCs, ships, and organizations from which newadventures can be created. PARSEC RPG also includes a sample adventure, Stealing the Drake, serving as an introductory module for new players and Directors.
Production Quality
The production quality of PARSEC RPG is good to very good, with solid writing and a decent presentation and layout. The contents of the RPG is presented in a logical fashion, and there are shaded boxes to add addition information on a topic, or as an insight into the author’s thought processes for a rules. The rules and information are pretty densely written on the pages by using a small font, which was a bit troublesome for me to read at times (but then again, I’m cursed with bifocals).
There is a fairly complete table of content, and each page as a chapter notation in the upper right corner to quickly flip to the chapter of your choice. There is no index however, and some chapters are filled with information, so an index would have been a nice addition to the rulebook.
The artwork in PARSEC RPG is really cool, from the full color cover to numerous illustrations in the interior of the book. The art is black-and-white sketch work, with a strong hand at inking and shading. I particularly liked the ship designs found in the third chapter (see left)
and I think the artist has a firm grasp of what this particular RPG is all about.
A New Age of Discovery
PARSEC RPG is rules-light-story-heavy role=playing game. The setting is after years of terrorism, resource depletion, overpopulation, and economic upheavals cause a massive collapse of Earth’s society across the globe. As governments collapse, large corporations step in to fill the vacuum, ushering in an era of neo-feudalism and wars. But the invention of a FTL engine called the Baeder Drive changes the course of the downward spiral of civilization, and rekindles nationalism with the help of the remnants of the United Nations. Baeder Drives are massive and costly, but humanity finally has a way to spread off the dying Earth to the stars.
PARSEC RPG is divided into six chapters, each one dealing with different facets of the game, from character creation to rules to Director notes and tips. The first chapter introduces the game, and offers a quick overview of the type of system and setting being presented in the rulebook.
The second chapter provides information about the setting, and touches on a wide range of topics from history to current events, as well as technological advances, life on Earth and in space, colonies in the solar system, and dangers the player characters could face. All this is accomplished in a mere 24 pages, so some topics feel a little sparse in their content. For instance, although the Earth has extra-solar colonies, only one is mentioned (Eden) and is little more than a paragraph in length. A great deal of the universe is left for each Director to develop, however, there is a wikia site for PARSEC gamers to post their own content to the Universe for others to use. You can find the wikia here, but it is a bit sparse with only 56 pages of added content. I was intrigued and a bit concerned about how FTL was handled in the game. The idea that a Baeder Drive is so massive and expensive that no ship can contain one, but that it can be used to carry non-FTL ships to new stars and colonies, is quite interesting. But by the same token, limiting characters to the solar system seems a bit dull, and getting to a new star system seems to be beyond their reach, unless the team is specifically designed to be explorers, colonists, or surveyors.
Chapter 3 discusses character creation, and overall it’s a fairly fast and logical process. Points are distributed between ability scores to form dice pools used for skills and combat resolution. Characters creation proceeds through a series of steps determining their birth, education, and work experiences. Each adds advances to skills, relationships, and even ability scores, and forms part of the narrative of the characters life story. Characters also get to define a passion, which provides a re-roll of a dice each session, so long as a situation comes up that matches the character’s passion. Characters can also create scars (physical or psychological) which can reduce pools in specific circumstances, but also can be advantageous as well. Finally traits provide edges for characters, offering them additional dice for their pool in many circumstances. Interestingly, weapons, armor, and equipment are not bought with cash, but are selected as traits, and act as bonuses to skills and combat situations. This chapter ends with rules for creating ships, which have stat clocks similar to characters. The author provides some pretty nifty character sheets and ship sheets in the back of the book, and also on the official website.
Chapter 4 discusses the rules and “crunch” of the system, including skill resolution, combats, and advancement of characters. The game is based upon dice pools with a target number which determines whether a dice is a success. Basic training in a skill offers a target of 5, while a character with a mastery of a skill has a 2 as a target number. Rolling dice pools and counting dice which meet or exceed a target number is a success, with multiple successes showing the magnitude of the success. Both physical and spaceship combats are covered here, as well as social conflicts and information conflicts. I particularly liked that the authors included rules to handle combats with a single roll of dice pools, as well as methods for abstract combats and fully detailed combats. The narrative can often be lost in multiple prolonged combats, and the game has ways to avoid that pitfall very well.
The fifth chapter of PARSEC RPG provides advice to Directors on how to run a game session and a campaign. There is some good solid recommendations in this chapter, but I was again concerned with the shortness of the chapter, and how sparse the information on the setting was. Eight different kinds of settings, from slums to colonies are discussed in just two pages, making the setting feel underdeveloped and placing considerable burdens on the Director to invent and present the solar system and the Universe.
Chapter 6 ends the rulebook by presenting information on major organizations in the setting, including cults, governments, religious organizations, and corporations. Suggestions are provided for how they might be used in a campaign, and what their goals might be when interacting with the characters. There is also places and characters (NPCs) of note, providing the Director with a few resources useful to adventure building. The chapter finishes off with the introductory adventure, Stealing the Drake, which can be used to start up a campaign.
Overall Score: 3.7 out of 5.0
Final Conclusions
I have to say that, overall, PARSEC RPG is a complete game with a reasonable set of rules, and is narrative-friendly. I like how easy character generation is, and how it assists players in designing a character with a backstory, and the combat / conflict rules are as complex as the situation requires – abstract to detailed.
But my own tastes in sci-fi RPG space operas tend toward space exploration and adventure, meeting and/or battling aliens, and encountering bizarre mysteries in space. Politics, intrigues, and para-military activities have their place in sci-fi RPGs as well, but PARSEC RPG feels as though that’s its only focus, with FTL a “black box” technology, unavailable to the characters for the most part. It has a post-modern dystopia sense about it, rather than a true space opera, and that would not be my choice for a setting for a long campaign. And the sparse coverage of the setting itself means considerable work for Directors to do as the campaign progresses.
But for other gamers PARSEC’s setting is undoubtedly an exciting prospect. And with a modest price point, you can get a complete game for little cash.
So until next Review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Author’s Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary copy of the product from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
Science-fiction Role Playing Games have a very unenviable task: trying to convince the gaming community that their version of future events and technologies make sense. Fantasy RPGs don’t have this onus, with magic and gods being represented as powerful forces, so that almost anything that happens can be explained away by declaring A Wizard did it! or It is the will of <insert deity name here>. But Sci-Fi RPGs have to step wisely and carefully, the authors having to measure themselves against decades of science fiction novels and short stories, scores of episodes from television series, and tons of sci-fi feature movies.
Of course, an author could project a Sci-Fi RPG’s setting into the far distant future, where everything is super-high tech and technologies its power nearly limitless. But then, a science-fiction game setting of that ilk has already blundered into one of Arthur C. Clarke’s Three Laws: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Congratulations, you’ve invented a new fantasy RPG.
About a year ago, Jolly Roger Games completed a Kickstarter for a new sci-fi role-playing game: PARSEC. The authors describe the RPG on their main website as “…a sci-fi roleplaying game of insurgency, interplanetary politics, corporate espionage and space piracy in a solar system on the brink of war.” Sporting a setting at the dawn of interstellar travel and colonization, Jolly Roger Games peers only a little ways into humanity’s future and offers a game based upon their vision of things to come.PARSEC RPG
- Authors: Douglas Hagler; Jim Dietz
- Illustrations: Jacob Walker
- Publisher: Jolly Roger Games
- Year: 2012
- Media: Softcover (120 pages)
- Price: $20.00
PARSEC RPG is a science fiction role-playing game set 200 years in Earth’s future, when wars and resource depletion ravage humanity but hope exists in the form of an FTL drive to escape a dying world. The game comes complete with rules for character generation and ship generation, as well as rules for handling conflicts and combats of all types – social, personal, ranged, zero-g, and ship-to-ship. There is also setting information provided to the Director (Game Master) to run a campaign, along with NPCs, ships, and organizations from which newadventures can be created. PARSEC RPG also includes a sample adventure, Stealing the Drake, serving as an introductory module for new players and Directors.
Production Quality
The production quality of PARSEC RPG is good to very good, with solid writing and a decent presentation and layout. The contents of the RPG is presented in a logical fashion, and there are shaded boxes to add addition information on a topic, or as an insight into the author’s thought processes for a rules. The rules and information are pretty densely written on the pages by using a small font, which was a bit troublesome for me to read at times (but then again, I’m cursed with bifocals).
There is a fairly complete table of content, and each page as a chapter notation in the upper right corner to quickly flip to the chapter of your choice. There is no index however, and some chapters are filled with information, so an index would have been a nice addition to the rulebook.
The artwork in PARSEC RPG is really cool, from the full color cover to numerous illustrations in the interior of the book. The art is black-and-white sketch work, with a strong hand at inking and shading. I particularly liked the ship designs found in the third chapter (see left)
and I think the artist has a firm grasp of what this particular RPG is all about.A New Age of Discovery
PARSEC RPG is rules-light-story-heavy role=playing game. The setting is after years of terrorism, resource depletion, overpopulation, and economic upheavals cause a massive collapse of Earth’s society across the globe. As governments collapse, large corporations step in to fill the vacuum, ushering in an era of neo-feudalism and wars. But the invention of a FTL engine called the Baeder Drive changes the course of the downward spiral of civilization, and rekindles nationalism with the help of the remnants of the United Nations. Baeder Drives are massive and costly, but humanity finally has a way to spread off the dying Earth to the stars.
PARSEC RPG is divided into six chapters, each one dealing with different facets of the game, from character creation to rules to Director notes and tips. The first chapter introduces the game, and offers a quick overview of the type of system and setting being presented in the rulebook.
The second chapter provides information about the setting, and touches on a wide range of topics from history to current events, as well as technological advances, life on Earth and in space, colonies in the solar system, and dangers the player characters could face. All this is accomplished in a mere 24 pages, so some topics feel a little sparse in their content. For instance, although the Earth has extra-solar colonies, only one is mentioned (Eden) and is little more than a paragraph in length. A great deal of the universe is left for each Director to develop, however, there is a wikia site for PARSEC gamers to post their own content to the Universe for others to use. You can find the wikia here, but it is a bit sparse with only 56 pages of added content. I was intrigued and a bit concerned about how FTL was handled in the game. The idea that a Baeder Drive is so massive and expensive that no ship can contain one, but that it can be used to carry non-FTL ships to new stars and colonies, is quite interesting. But by the same token, limiting characters to the solar system seems a bit dull, and getting to a new star system seems to be beyond their reach, unless the team is specifically designed to be explorers, colonists, or surveyors.
Chapter 3 discusses character creation, and overall it’s a fairly fast and logical process. Points are distributed between ability scores to form dice pools used for skills and combat resolution. Characters creation proceeds through a series of steps determining their birth, education, and work experiences. Each adds advances to skills, relationships, and even ability scores, and forms part of the narrative of the characters life story. Characters also get to define a passion, which provides a re-roll of a dice each session, so long as a situation comes up that matches the character’s passion. Characters can also create scars (physical or psychological) which can reduce pools in specific circumstances, but also can be advantageous as well. Finally traits provide edges for characters, offering them additional dice for their pool in many circumstances. Interestingly, weapons, armor, and equipment are not bought with cash, but are selected as traits, and act as bonuses to skills and combat situations. This chapter ends with rules for creating ships, which have stat clocks similar to characters. The author provides some pretty nifty character sheets and ship sheets in the back of the book, and also on the official website.
Chapter 4 discusses the rules and “crunch” of the system, including skill resolution, combats, and advancement of characters. The game is based upon dice pools with a target number which determines whether a dice is a success. Basic training in a skill offers a target of 5, while a character with a mastery of a skill has a 2 as a target number. Rolling dice pools and counting dice which meet or exceed a target number is a success, with multiple successes showing the magnitude of the success. Both physical and spaceship combats are covered here, as well as social conflicts and information conflicts. I particularly liked that the authors included rules to handle combats with a single roll of dice pools, as well as methods for abstract combats and fully detailed combats. The narrative can often be lost in multiple prolonged combats, and the game has ways to avoid that pitfall very well.
The fifth chapter of PARSEC RPG provides advice to Directors on how to run a game session and a campaign. There is some good solid recommendations in this chapter, but I was again concerned with the shortness of the chapter, and how sparse the information on the setting was. Eight different kinds of settings, from slums to colonies are discussed in just two pages, making the setting feel underdeveloped and placing considerable burdens on the Director to invent and present the solar system and the Universe.
Chapter 6 ends the rulebook by presenting information on major organizations in the setting, including cults, governments, religious organizations, and corporations. Suggestions are provided for how they might be used in a campaign, and what their goals might be when interacting with the characters. There is also places and characters (NPCs) of note, providing the Director with a few resources useful to adventure building. The chapter finishes off with the introductory adventure, Stealing the Drake, which can be used to start up a campaign.
Overall Score: 3.7 out of 5.0
Final Conclusions
I have to say that, overall, PARSEC RPG is a complete game with a reasonable set of rules, and is narrative-friendly. I like how easy character generation is, and how it assists players in designing a character with a backstory, and the combat / conflict rules are as complex as the situation requires – abstract to detailed.
But my own tastes in sci-fi RPG space operas tend toward space exploration and adventure, meeting and/or battling aliens, and encountering bizarre mysteries in space. Politics, intrigues, and para-military activities have their place in sci-fi RPGs as well, but PARSEC RPG feels as though that’s its only focus, with FTL a “black box” technology, unavailable to the characters for the most part. It has a post-modern dystopia sense about it, rather than a true space opera, and that would not be my choice for a setting for a long campaign. And the sparse coverage of the setting itself means considerable work for Directors to do as the campaign progresses.
But for other gamers PARSEC’s setting is undoubtedly an exciting prospect. And with a modest price point, you can get a complete game for little cash.
So until next Review… I wish you Happy Gaming!
Author’s Note: This Reviewer received a complimentary copy of the product from which the review was written.
Grade Card (Ratings 1 to 5)
- Presentation: 3.5
- - Design: 3.5 (Good layout and writing; well organized.)
- - Illustrations: 3.5 (Evocative cover and interior art; artwork enhanced content)
- Content: 3.5
- - Crunch: 4.0 (Rules light and logical; easy character creation and play)
- - Fluff: 3.0 (What was there was good; but it needed more!)
- Value: 4.0 (Decent price – a complete game in one rulebook.)
