Cultural Conflict

Hearts and Minds: Saving a World on the Brink of War! A Mindjammer Adventure is a sourcebook and scenario for Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, the Space Opera setting with a harder, more contemporary Science Fiction edge published by Mindjammer Press. Set some fifteen thousand years into the future during the Second Age of Space, it takes place on the world of Olkennedy whose society stands on the brink of civil war. Originally settled eight thousand years ago during the First Age of Space, like so many planets settled then, the original colonists were forced to survive with no contact from Old Earth, a local astronomical event forcing some into stasis, the others to survive as best they can. When the surviving original colonists awoke, their reappearance led to tensions between them and the society which had survived, regressed, and was building anew. These tensions have been exacerbated in the last two decades when long spread rumours of aliens were confirmed with the arrival of the Commonality.

In the Second Age of Space, the New Commonality of Humankind presides over an expanding sphere of influence and control, seeking to maintain and protect its culture as it maintains and protects those of other worlds through the offices and agents of the Security and Cultural Integrity (SCI) Instrumentality. Yet not every world wants or is ready to accept the influence of or integration into the Commonality. So it is with Olkennedy. There are many on the world who do not believe that the Commonality when it says it protects the rights and cultures of those worlds it adopts and in particular, they fear the loss of individuality should they accept implants which grant them access and membership of the Mindscape, the virtual world which connects the Commonality. There are a great many who would take up arms to protect the loss of such rights and culture, and there even more who could be persuaded to join them. Opposing views clashes, tensions rise, and civil war  looms. It is into this febrile situation that the player characters step.

The first half of Hearts and Minds is devoted to detailing and describing the world of Olkennedy, its people, history, and culture. Or rather it focuses on the area which can support life, a crater deep enough to hold an oxygen-rich atmosphere and which has a subtropical climate, including a sea, with snow layers to the north. The planet has a high gravity, is subject to high winds and storms, and has a short day. The generally self-reliant inhabitants have had millennia in which to adapt to this. The planet is home to five distinct nations. Columbiana is youngest, but the most advanced and most dominant, its citizens mostly descended from the colonists—known as the Awoken—who emerged from stasis a millennia ago, whilst Van Kuvrai is home to the descendant of the colonists who did not enter stasis. Nwasha and Omianto are home to the Nwasha pithecines who were originally developed as labour by the original colony. Nwasha is primarily an arboreal culture whilst Omianto is more industrialised. Lastly, Akantack hominids, similarly developed as a labour force by the original colonists are nomads who live in the Snow-Layer which runs around the rim of the Crater or the Akantack Sanctuary. Although the five nations of Olkennedy have existed peacefully for a century, now their planet’s membership of the New Commonality of Humankind threatens to bring them into conflict once again.

As well as the inhabitants and cultures of Olkennedy, Hearts and Minds details the colony’s ecology, flora and fauna, major cities such as Craterport Down, technology, and more. Scenario hooks and random events are provided for both wilderness and urban settings, such that there is more than enough information here for the Game Master to run her own adventures. Together with the Genotype for the Akantack hominids, there is also information enough to create characters native to Olkennedy and perhaps explore some of its history, for example, why the Awoken emerged from stasis when they did or what were conspiracy theories surrounding the Commonality’s presence prior to the Disclosure, the traumatic event which revealed the existence of the New Commonality of Humankind to the Olkennedians. 

Of course, Hearts and Minds is designed to explore a clash of cultures, that is between the Commonality culture and a relatively newly found culture, that of Olkennedy. Whilst some Olkennedians accept the presence of the Commonality, many do not and they have coalesced around the Fiver separatist movement, named for the five nation on Olkennedy. In the years prior to the arrival of the player characters, its activists have been actively attacking the Commonality presence on planet, fomenting riots, causing unrest and engaging in acts of ‘terrorism’ or ‘freedom fighting’—depending on your point of view. This is not helped by factionalism within the Commonality itself. Two factions are detailed. The Integrator faction want to bring newly discovered planets into the Commonality, whilst the Dialogic faction wants to maintain a conversation with each newly discovered world rather than simply bring into the Commonality.

The second half of Hearts and Minds is the adventure itself. The most obvious role for the player characters will be SCI Force agents, sent to Olkennedy because of the deteriorating political situation, but they might also be diplomats, soldiers of the Armed Forces Instrumentality, merchants, scientists, or a mix of all six. Their roles of course will colour their approach to handling the situation on Olkennedy. For example, soldiers of the Armed Forces Instrumentality are more likely to commit to a military solution, whilst diplomats will seek a more conciliatory solution. Whatever their roles, throughout the scenario the Game Master will be tracking the effects that their actions have using Mindjammer’s Plot Stress mechanics. Essentially, through their actions, it is entirely possible for the player characters to sway the opinion of the Olkennedians towards or away from accepting the presence or membership of the Commonality—or somewhere in between.

The adventure is played out over four episodes and an epilogue, the latter being when the Game Master will assess the actions of the player characters and determine the ultimate outcome of events on Olkennedy based on them. There are plenty of opportunities for both roleplaying and conflict, but Mindjammer being a Transhuman Space Opera roleplaying game, there are lots and lots of opportunities for action. Now much of the action may well look a little like a cliché in places, but the action scenes are well handled and once the player characters get involved, with their wide array of Aspects being brought into play, the action will be anything but. If there is an issue with Hearts and Minds, it is that running it is a challenge. This is because it explores numerous options and their consequences as the scenario proceeds, and it is all too easy for the Game Master to get lost in them. The likelihood is that the Game Master will need to work harder to keep track of everything, especially of the consequences of the player characters’ actions and decisions, and when combined with having to present the scenario and roleplay its many NPCs, she may well find she has a heavier workload than is the norm.

Physically, Hearts and Minds is well presented behind its Eugène Delacroix’s ‘Liberty Leading the People’ inspired cover. The book is mainly done in black and white, but touches of colour are used to bring out its maps. The artwork is excellent, although a little dark. The writing and editing are well done, but if there is one thing that the book lacks, it is an index. Although less than a hundred pages in length, there is a lot of information in Hearts and Minds and having a better means of finding things would make it easier for the Game Master to run.

Originally published in 2015, the politics present in Hearts and Minds, although set on a Science Fiction world in the far future do feel relevant today. The adventure and situation explores deeply polarised political views, threats to cultural identity, loss of status, and so on, which escalate into civil unrest, acts of violence, and even terrorism. Of course, Hearts and Minds is a fiction, but undeniably there are parallels with contemporary politics, whether in the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, and elsewhere. How much a gaming group wants to read into the scenario is another matter. It can be played with or without the group drawing the parallels.

Hearts and Minds can be played as one-shot or a convention scenario, and there are guidelines given to that end. Yet to do so, would be to miss a lot of the depth and nuance to the scenario’s set-up, to all too easily and quickly side with one polarised faction or another. Played as a full scenario, and what Hearts and Minds does is present an exploration of Mindjammer’s core themes—cultural conflict, the rediscovery of strange new worlds, and the personal conflicts which arise from them, all played out against an advanced Space Opera background. Simply, Hearts and Minds: Saving a World on the Brink of War! A Mindjammer Adventure is the ideal first scenario to showcase what the roleplaying game is all about.

Your Own Tales of a Thousand and One Nights

After Monsters & Magic Roleplaying Game and Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, the third roleplaying game from Mindjammer Press is Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked: Fantasy Roleplaying in a World of Arabian Nights, Argonauts, and Adventure!. Originally published in French by Studio Deadcrows, it is a roleplaying game inspired by One Thousand and One Nights, Greek mythology, and Crusader legends. The Capharnaüm of the title is a land at the centre of the ‘The Known World’, lying on the Jazirat peninsula, the meeting point for many trade routes, making it the strategic target for numerous powers over the last five millennia. These include the Agalanthian city states to the north whose leaders can only dream of the world-spanning empire they once were, whilst beyond them the barbarian tribes of Krek’kaos on the cold Northern Steppes cut through the mountains to regularly raid the warm and sunny lands to the south. Great trade in silks and spices from the east with Nir Manel and Asijawi have made the merchants of the Jazirat peninsula wealthy. The south, dominated by the dangerous Southern Seas, remains the province of only the maddest of sailors and criminals with nothing to lose. To the west, the worshippers of the Quartered God—the Quarterian nations—prepare their next Crusade of the Knights of the Quarter, whilst the continent of Al-Fariq’n jealously guards its secrets.

It is said that in the world of Capharnaüm the gods inspire both men and women, even said to have walked amongst them in ages past, but since the dawn of time, they have sent their agents, the dragons to watch over over men and women. They do more than that though, marking out those who have the potential to become great warriors and warchiefs, philosophers and thinkers, explorers, heroes, lovers, and more, to become the divine agents of the gods. Such men and women are born with the birthmark of a dragon’s claw upon their backs and so are known as the Dragon-Marked. This mark gives them great powers and potential, the ability to draw upon the stars themselves—known as Lighting Up a Constellation, but six centuries ago, the Dragon-Marked stopped being born. Only in the last few decades have the Dragon-Marked begun to appear again. It these Dragon-Marked that the players will roleplaying in Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked: Fantasy Roleplaying in a World of Arabian Nights, Argonauts, and Adventure!

A character or Dragon-Marked in Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is defined first by his Blood, three heroic virtues—Bravery, Faith, and Loyalty, his Heroism, five attributes—Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Intelligence and Charisma, and which of eight archetypes he favours—Adventurer, Labourer, Poet, Prince, Rogue, Sage, Sorcerer, or Warrior. The three heroic virtues are rated between one and six, as are the five attributes, whilst Heroism is equal to the average of the three heroic virtues. A character will also have a number of skills, again ranked between one and six, gained from his Blood and the archetypes.

His Blood are his tribe and clan into which he was born or raised. The Hassanids, the Salifah, and the Tarekid make up the three Great tribes, and then there are Tribes of the Shiradim , the Agalanthian City States, and the Quarterian Kingdoms, each of which consists of three different clans. Now whilst the Great Tribes are the equivalent of the Arabic peoples of Capharnaüm, and the  Tribes of the Shiradim its Jewish people, the Agalanthian City States its Greeks, and the Quarterian Kingdoms, its Crusaders, these are not intended as exact parallels of own history. Rather they are fantastical versions designed for background and culture rather than as a source of bigotry and prejudice. This is something that the roleplaying game flags early on, making clear that the heroes or Dragon-Marked are beyond such attitudes.

Each of the setting’s eighteen clans gives attribute and skill bonuses as well as a path, a discipline that the character follows. This can be training, a school, a sorcerous college, mystical tradition, and so on, but is a discipline rather than a character’s occupation.  The character does not have to follow this path, but may instead rebel and study a path connected to his clan, but not of his clan. For example, those from the Clan of Yussef, Servant of Salif who follow the Path of The Saffron Dunes are merchants with great skill at Unctuous Bargaining when their constellation is lit up; those of the Tribe of Ashkenim of the Shiradim are elite warriors who follow the Path of the Red Lions of Shirad gain greater results when they Light up a Constellation and they enter a mystical trance; and the Occidentia of the Quarterian Kingdoms who follow the Path of the Occidentian academy of the Order of the Temple of Sagrada, are knight monks who gain a bonus to their combat skills or Sacred Word skill when they Light up a Constellation.

To create a character, a player selects a Blood, a Clan, and a Path, which will give the character his first path ability. Ten are divided amongst the three heroic virtues, which are then averaged to determine the value of his Heroism virtue. Six points are divided amongst the five attributes. Then instead of simply picking one of the eight eight archetypes, the player ranks according to how he sees his character. The first five grant bonuses to various skills. There is an elegance to making this choice, a means of the player signalling and emphasising the type of character he wants to play in the roleplaying game. A player also some free points to assign and lastly, rolls on the legends table to create dramatic background and storytelling aspects to the character. Lastly, the player answers some questions about the character’s involvement in recent events and determines his wealth and possessions.  The process is not complex, but it does take a little time as a player works through the various steps and it is supported by a good example.

Our sample character is Muhdati Sala, a thief and former street rat who defended Capharnaüm against the Quarterians on the Holy Crusade to retrieve the Mirabilus Reliquiae—the holy relic of Jason’s skull, the Quartered God—not out of loyalty to the kingdom, but of his band of thieves and the peoples who would suffer under the invasion. The leader of his band directed raids and guerrilla actions against the invaders. Towards the end of the war, he was captured and taken as prisoner. Whilst in gaol he learned to read and write and even compose poetry from a fellow prisoner. Since his escape and his long journey home, he has begun to look beyond being a mere thief.

Name: Muhdati Sala

Blood: The Children of the Souk

Path: Path of Aziz, Servant of Salif

Heroic Virtues

Bravery 4 Faith 2 Loyalty 5

Heroism 3

Attributes

Strength 2 Constitution 2 Dexterity 4 Intelligence 2 Charisma 3

Skills: Acting 2, Assassination 3, Athletics 1, Charm 2, Combat Training 2, Command 1, Elegance 1, Endurance 1, Fighting 2, Flattery 2, Intimidate 1, Intrusion 6, Music 2, Oratory 2, Poetry 3, Prayer 1, Riding 1, Save Face 1, Stealth 5, Storytelling 2, Survival 1, Thievery 5, Unctuous Bargaining 3, Willpower 2

Hit Points: 20

Soak: 5

Maximum Initiative: 3

Passive Defence: 11

Path Ability: Light up constellation on difficulty 9 INT + Thievery to recruit Charisma✕Loyalty henchmen

Archetypes: The Rogue, The Poet, The Adventurer, The Prince, The Warrior, The Sage, The Labourer, The Sorcerer

Legends: Crossed the lands of the Djinn unarmed to prove your love; of distant Hassanid origin; escaped from a terrible prison; read an original great manuscript owned by a thespian; fought a demon in astral space; the Muses whisper in my ear

Equipment: City clothing (three outfits), lockpicks, khanjar, jambiya

Mechanically, Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked uses six-sided dice in a ‘roll and keep’ similar to that of Legend of the Five Rings, Fourth Edition. Typically, to undertake an action, a character’s player typically rolls a number of dice equal to an attribute plus a skill and keeps the best results equal to the attribute, with the total ideally being equal to or greater than a difficulty set by the Al-Rawi—as the Game Master is known. An Average difficulty is nine, Difficult is twelve, Heroic is fifteen, and so on. So for example, if Muhdati Sala wanted to cut a purse from a passing wealthy merchant, his player would make a skill roll of ‘difficulty 9 DEX + Thievery’. Which would be roll nine dice (Dexterity plus Thievery) and keep five (Dexterity). One of the dice should be different colour. This is the Dragon Die and when a six is rolled on that die, a player can roll it again and again as long as it keeps rolling sixes. Another way to modify the difficulty of a task is to increase or decrease the number of dice a player rolls.

Managing to roll and beat the difficulty number only determines if the character has succeeded, not how well he succeeded. To determine that, the player looks the dice results which did not go towards the successful roll. Results of two or more generate points of Magnitude, a measure of how well the character succeeded if the roll was a success or how badly he failed if not. Generate six or more points of Magnitude and the character has achieved either a critical success or a critical failure. When determining success and Magnitude, the player can choose to keep the Dragon Die and count it towards his success or not keep it and use to add more Magnitude. 

A player can increase the Magnitude before rolling by having his character swagger. When a character does this, his action is done with great bravado, but the player reduces the number of dice he keeps and so actually making the task more difficult, but increasing the number of unkept dice, which generates more Magnitude. These extra unkept dice are known as Swagger dice. Of course, if the roll is failed, the order of Magnitude towards the failure is even greater.

Lastly, if a player rolls three or more dice with the same result, he is said to Light up a Constellation and have activated a Path ability. These results can come from either the kept or the unkept dice. Alternatively, a player can use points from his character’s favoured Virtue to Light up a Constellation.

For example, Muhdati Sala has spotted a mark in the Souk, a merchant accompanied by a bodyguard. The merchant appears to be carrying a heavy purse on his belt. The  Al-Rawi sets the difficulty at Difficult or twelve. So this will be a skill roll of ‘difficulty 12 DEX + Thievery’. Muhdati Sala’s player would roll nine dice (Dexterity plus Thievery) and keep five (Dexterity), but decides to make two of them Swagger dice. This means he is rolling seven dice and keeping three. The results are 3, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, and 6 on the Dragon Die. He rolls the Dragon Die again and gets another 6 and another 6 and another 6, and lastly a 2. This means that if he kept the Dragon Die and the best results, he would keep 5 and 6, and then 26 on the Dragon Die for a grand total of 37. Which is definitely a success.

However, the player wants to find out how well Muhdati did and looks at generating as much Magnitude as he can. He already has two Magnitude from the Swagger dice. He decides to switch the result of the Dragon Die to unkept dice because results of six generate two Magnitude, though only the first six counts, not the rerolls. This means that he keeps the 5, 5, and 6, which still generates a result of 16 and a success. It means that he has the 3, 5, and 5 from the roll which generate a point of Magnitude each, plus the two from the Swagger dice and the two from the Dragon Die, which gives a grand total of six Magnitude and a critical success. Lastly, there were four fives in the roll, so Muhdati Sala’s Constellation is lit up and so he has fifteen henchmen ready to help him…

So in this instance, Muhdati Sala does not so much sneak up on the merchant, but exaggerates the sneaking in a fashion that everyone else in the souk can see but not the merchant and his bodyguard. With a quick slice of the khanjar, Muhdati cuts the purse free from the merchant, and with a wide grin in front of everyone pockets a few coins before grabbing the rest and throwing it up in the air to the delight of the urchins which stream into grab the coins and cover his escape.

There is a cleverness to these mechanics, the Swagger dice in particular fitting the genre, but they there is no denying that they are not as elegant and are perhaps too stolid for the type of action-orientated, heroic style of play that Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked and its genre calls for. Extracting not one, but three pieces of information from the one dice roll and then having to work out the arithmetic of the success, the Magnitude, and the constellation is neither quick nor intuitive. It is also not easy to teach, so more than most roleplaying games, it takes time to get players to the point where they will work through these steps unassisted.

Combat uses the same mechanics, with initiative rolled for each round, and combatants allowed two actions per round, such as attack, defend, parry, cast a spell, and so on, whilst Brutal Attacks and Charging take both actions. The Combat Training skill can be used at the start of a fight to grant a character bonus dice equal to the Magnitude, and really skilled fighters can use two weapons. Damage is reduced by a character’s armour and Soak value, but should a character lose half of his Hit Points in a single attack, then he suffers a major wound. The combat system is designed to be both cinematic and heroic in nature though and to that end includes a couple of nice touches. One is that player characters do not involuntarily kill NPCs. Instead their players have to declare that they are delivering a coup de grâce. There is even an optional ‘Epitaph Rule’ which encourages a player to deliver a panche-filled phrase when dispatching a foe! The other is that opponents are graded according to the threat they represent and are treated slightly differently in combat. So Babouche-Draggers are the mooks of Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked and fight as groups, but are quickly vanquished, Valiant Captains are henchmen and are automatically eliminated from a fight with a critical success on an attack, and Champions are the major villains—infamous knights, princes of thieves, evil vizirs, and even fellow Dragon-Marked, who use the same combat rules as player characters. 

To be even more heroic, a character has access to three Heroic Virtues and his Heroism Virtue. They can be gained for intense roleplaying in keeping with the Virtue and lost for intense roleplaying against the Virtue, as well as actions such as saving another’s life, dedicating a poem to the gods, lying to save your skin, and letting someone disparage your gods without encouraging them to repent. The primary use of Virtue is to Light up a Constellation and activate one of a character’s Path ability, but higher Virtues grant an increased Heroism and that has more uses—to consult the Stones of Fate which enable the character to modify the narrative slightly, to make a double attack, to avoid a major wound, to avoid environmental and encumbrance penalties, and so on. What this means is that the more a player roleplays his character in keeping with the Virtues, the greater his Heroism and the more chances the character gets to be heroic.

As with everything else in Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked, Terpsichore, or magic and sorcery, is treated differently according to the culture. Agalanthian Chiromancers bake their spells into clay tablets which can be broken later to cast the spell, Jazirati or Saabi Al-Kimyati manipulate the alchemy of word and art, the Shiradi Sephirim practice a purely spoken form of sorcery, the Quartarian Thaumaturgists practice miracles rather than sorcery. Although several examples of Saabi workings, Shiradi covenants, and Quartarian miracles are included as examples, mechanically, in Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked magic is designed to be freeform, primarily improvised by the player who decides on a spell’s outcome, the Magnitude of a Scared Word skill roll determining the spell’s duration, range, number of targets, and so on. In the case of Chiromancy, the roll is made when the tablet is broken in order to find out how well the spell was baked into it. The basis of the magic is formed by three verbs—Create, Destroy, and Transform—and by learning elements such as Agility, Will, Sand, Proof, and more, which a sorcerer can incorporate into his magic, he can create a wider range of effects.

There is plenty of rich theme and flavour to this magic system and no doubt, there are players who will relish the opportunities for improvisation and flavour it offers. The improvisational nature means that a player should also keep notes about the spells his character has cast, literally creating his own spellbook! The system though is not going to suit everyone though, and in some players hands, it has, like the rest of the system, the potential to slow game system down as decisions are made and the aim of any one spell discussed.

As much flavour as there is in the mechanics, Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked, the setting comes alive in ‘The World of Capharnaüm’, a lengthy exploration of Capharnaüm and its five millennia old history. It opens with a series of beautiful maps of the various regions before going to present each of the cultures, nations, and peoples in no little depth. There is a wealth of detail here in what takes up of over a third of the core rulebook, indeed a surprising amount given that there is enough here to take up a whole supplement of its own. It is followed by ‘Al-Rawi’s Guide to Capharnaüm’, not just advice on running the roleplaying game, but exploring some of secrets and the signature elements of the fantasy of Arabia and One Thousand and One Nights. So it looks at the Djinn and Mirages, then Agalanthian Ruins left by their many invasions, and the gods of Capharnaüm. It includes a good set of monsters and adversaries, including animated statues and skeletons, Chimera, Djinn, Ghul, Golem, Roc, and more, all feeling as if drawn from the best of Ray Harryhausen’s filmography. Lastly, there is a look at the danger of magic and some of the setting’s secrets.

Physically, Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is a stunning hardback book, drawn from an artist’s palette of sun-drenched rich browns, oranges, and ochres enlivened by sparkling blues and other colours. Some of the artwork is perhaps a little cartoonish, but all of it captures the fantastic and fantasy nature of this world of Arabian adventure. The writing in general is also good, though slightly odd in places, an issue with the translation in the main.

Tonally, it should be noted that being a translation of a French roleplaying game, Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked does deal with mature subjects, obviously differing faiths, but also sexuality, for example, the Path of Mimun enables its followers, known as Paper Virgins, to extract the heroic essence from they make love to. That said, the tone is never salacious, but always mature and measured, and the roleplaying game’s artwork is of a similar nature.

Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked does lack a scenario. This is really its only omission and really, there is such a great deal of background to Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked that the Al-Rawi should be able to develop something of her own. Nevertheless, it would have been interesting to what a scenario for this roleplaying game looks like and perhaps what the designer had in mind.

Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked is a rich, deep, and enthralling treatment of Arabian myth, fantasy, and adventure, evoking the films of Ray Harryhausen. It aspires to be cinematic—and it can be—but the mechanics, though clever, are an impediment to achieving that, presenting prospective players with a steep learning curve in order to be comfortable enough with the mechanics for it to be cinematic. Overcome that, and Capharnaüm – The Tales of the Dragon-Marked: Fantasy Roleplaying in a World of Arabian Nights, Argonauts, and Adventure! is a fantastic fantasy, all ready and waiting for the players to make their Dragon-Marked the legends of Capharnaüm.

The Fate of Transhumanity

It has been 193 years since the discovery of 2-space and the invention of the planing engine granted humanity with the ability to travel faster than light. It reinvigorated Earth culture—moribund for over ten thousand years—lifting it from introspection within the Mindscape and driving them out to explore the universe once again. Within days and months, the new explorers made contact with worlds that had been first discovered millennia before by the wave upon wave of slow and generation ships during the First Age of Space. What they found were colonies whose inhabitants had diverged from Earth, both culturally and biologically, having either evolved or been engineered. This included a range of hominids such as post-human and para-human subspecies, xenomorphs or uplifted animal species, new cultures and those based on old Earth cultures and even fictitious ones, wholly synthetic species, even alien species. As they made contact, the explorers were culturally contaminating the new worlds, the cultural contamination went both ways, forcing Earth to set protection methods that worked both ways. Even then, it did not prevent cultural and technological contamination of the Empire of Venu that would lead to a vicious war with Venu.

In the Second Age of Space, the New Commonality of Humankind presides over an expanding sphere of influence and control, seeking to maintain and protect its culture as it maintains and protects those of other worlds through the offices and agents of the Security and Cultural Integrity (SCI) Instrumentality. New worlds and old colonies are being discovered daily as explorers push ever further at the frontier whilst wily traders trail in their wake looking to make a killing in new markets and diplomats and cultural agents rush into ensure cultural and diplomatic integrity.  Billions upon billions of people, from one system to another have access to the Mindscape, part skills system, part virtual reality, part library, and part recorder of memories, all accessed via an implant and each user’s Halo that also enables amazing technopsi abilities as much as it leaves users vulnerable to mindburn attacks. Depending upon your authority and/or the right implant, the Mindscape is also a new arena for cultural and technological warfare, acts of terrorism, and worse. Though faster than light communication is impossible, gigantic Mindjammer vessels travel from system to system, transmitting messages and data and updating the Mindscape of each system as they go. Each Mindjammer is an sentient ship with a real personality, often of a person or hero long dead, and they are not the only sentient vessels to pilot the spaceways. As well as accepting a Mindscape implant, members of the New Commonality of Humankind and beyond have access to an array of technological and genurigic modifications, for whatever world you want to live on, environment you want to adapt to, and job you want to do, the most common of which besides the Mindscape implant is longevity and a five hundred year lifespan.

This is the set-up for Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space, a roleplaying set fifteen thousand years into the future. Published by Mindjammer Press, it was originally published as a supplement for Starblazer Adventures: The Rock & Roll Space Opera Adventure Game, but has since been expanded into a roleplaying game of its very own and been adapted for use with Traveller. Like Starblazer Adventures though, Mindjammer is ‘Powered by Fate’. Not FATE Core, the most recent version of the roleplaying game, but the mechanics between the two versions are compatible. It presents a universe in which there are worlds to be discovered, cultures to be protected and invaded, trades to be made, a border with the Empire of Venu to be patrolled, virtual worlds to be explored, and more. All this is presented as a positive Science Fiction future with the New Commonality of Humankind as a technocratic dictatorship with the best interests of mankind at heart, though some cultures may disagree and many individuals chafe at its collective outlook so driving them to the frontier, and the only definite evil being the theocratic Empire of Venu. This is a setting where Humanity is evolving beyond its physical and mental limits through scientific and technological means, but still feels bound to protect culturally what it means to be human.

In terms of what a player can take as his character, Mindjammer offers a lot of options, including soldiers of the Armed Forces Instrumentality, SCI agents, Space Force crews, intrepid 2-space pilots, canny traders and wily rogues, explorers, mercenaries, scientists, diplomats, spies, scouts, and then sentient starships, uplifted xenomorphs that include like Canids, Cetaceans, Felines, Pithecines, and Ursoids,  Synthetics like Mechanicals, Organics, and Installations, and Hominids, like the Chembu, master genurgists whose homeworld is a planetary intelligence. It all depends upon the campaign that the Game Master wants to run. Not only are the players expected to buy into this, they are expected to create their characters together as a collaborative process in order to tie them together. Further, the players and the Game Master are expected to discuss the nature of the campaign and agree on what issues it will involve. Such issues will become Aspects that can be Invoked and Compelled to bring them into play and have them affect both campaign and the player characters.

Character creation is a fairly involved process, a player deciding upon a High Concept—essentially the thumbnail definition of the character—and then selecting a Culture, Genotype, Occupation, and Trouble—what messes up the character’s life, at each stage creating an Aspect which can be brought into play. Then in the Phase Trio, the player will co-operate with the other players to create his character’s latest adventure and how he crossed paths with their characters just he will do the same with their characters. Again, the character is given an Aspect for each of the three steps of the Phase Trio. Then the player assigns some Skill ratings and selects some Stunts which enable the character to do some amazing things. These start at three, but more can be taken, though the more a character has, the lower his Refresh value is. This limits the number of Fate Points the character has, so in order to get more, the player will have to accept more Compels on his character’s Aspects, which of course, means both trouble and more opportunities for roleplaying.

Perhaps the most complex step is spending the character’s Extras budget. This consists of further Aspects, Stunts, and Skills which can be used to buy genurgic enhancements such as a Mindscape implant, personal equipment like Dispersion Field, or even a starship, complete with its own Skills. The end process is not just a character with some special abilities and skills, but one with backstory and connections that tie him to the other player characters. Done together and three, four, or five players have essentially collaborated to create a team, whether that is a starship crew, a unit of SCI agents or soldiers, Mindscape white hacker band, or just a group of adventurers making their way in a brand-new universe.

Our sample character is a Xenomorph, a Pithecine or Chimpanzee, descended from a colony set-up team sent to a now lost world to build and prepare the planet for human colonisation. The follow-on colony vessel never arrived and the construction team was forced to adapt and settle the world themselves. Over the centuries, their society devolved into one that worshiped the humans whose arrival was foretold and the technology the brought with them originally which over time stopped functioning. This left the world vulnerable to the pirates and slavers that rediscovered the planet. Me-Jane’s curiosity got the better of her and she was captured and spent two years as a gladiator and bruiser for the pirates. Fortunately she got rescued and now happily travels aboard which does not engage in such activities and which just about tolerates her curiosity and her attitude toward technology.

Name: Me-Jane

High Concept: Barbarian Chimp

Culture: Lost World

Genotype: Pithecine 

Occupation: Barbarian

Trouble: Forward Chimp from a Backward World

Aspects: To us, Humanity were gods (Culture); Can I Try That? (Genotype); Curiosity Got the Chimp (Phase One); Rage and Rage Again! (Phase Two); One Chimp is better than… (Phase Three)

Skills: Melee Combat (Great +4); Physique, Rapport (Good +3); Athletics, Notice, Stealth (Fair +2); Drive, Knowledge, Technical, Unarmed Combat (Average +1)

Stunts: Archaic Melee Weapons, Danger Sense, Percussive Maintenance

Extras: Mindscape Implant (Aspect); Expert Climber, Jumper (Stunts); Chimp Chain (Armour 2), Chimp Club (Melee Combat 2), Library Chip (Knowledge +2)

Physical Stress: 1 2 3 4

Mental Stress: 1 2

Credit Stress: 1 2

Tech Index: Poor (-1)

Mechanically, as has already been mentioned, Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game uses Fate. To undertake an action for his character, a player rolls four dice—or ‘4dF’—and counts the pluses and minuses rolled on the die. To this value is added the character’s Skill. Stunts enable a character to get better or specific results if the roll if successful, whilst Aspects can be Invoked to gain a bonus to the roll or get a reroll. Invoking an Aspect requires the expenditure of a Fate Point which can be regained either up to the character’s Refresh value each session or accepting a Compel for an Aspect to bring some complication into the current scene. Typically, the dice are rolled to successfully Overcome a goal, Create a situational, but temporary Aspect that other characters can Invoke, Attack, or Defend. A player only has to roll equal to the target number or the total rolled by the opposition to succeed, but roll above the target and a player can achieve Shifts, extra effects like increased damage.

Being ‘Powered by FATE’ means that Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game has certain cinematic feel to it a la Space Opera, but being ‘Powered by FATE’ means that it does one other thing really well—and that is, scale up. This is because it combines the descriptive elements of the Aspects with a ladder of adjectives that goes from Terrible and -2 all the way up to Legendary and +8, a combination which not only works well with characters, it works well with constructs like starships and their personal avatars, installations, vehicles, organisations—including agencies, corporations, and polities which can be up to interstellar in size, cultures, planets, and more. Numerous examples of all of these appear throughout the book for the New Commonality of Humankind setting along with the means for the Game Master to create star sectors, worlds, cultures, aliens, and more. The scale though, also means that they interact with each other highly effectively, so that not only could a battle between two fleets or a culture clash between two worlds or a trade war between two merchant houses be handled with same ease as player character/NPC interaction, so player character interaction between these can also handled with the same ease, whether that is implanting a virus in the command ship’s computer to disrupt its command systems, blocking a meme attack in the cultural war, or besmirching the reputation of a rival merchant prince.

Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game includes chapters not just on character creation, cultures, genotypes, and occupations as well as the ‘Powered by FATE’ rules, but also technology, the Mindscape, constructs, starships and space travel, vehicles, organisations, cultures and their interactions, worlds and civilisations, stellar bodies and star systems, and aliens. Quite a bit of this could divorced from the New Commonality of Humanity setting and used to run a Science Fiction setting of the Game Master’s own design, for example, the worlds, civilisations, stellar bodies, and star systems mechanics work well in any Science Fiction interstellar setting. Of course, many of the examples that support these rules are specific to the New Commonality of Humanity setting and there is great deal in the book that is still integral to the setting. Primarily this includes the history of the New Commonality Era and the Second Age of Space, but it also includes a sample octant of space, the ‘Darradine Rim’, a section of the Darradine Restoration subsector. Descriptions of just twenty of the key worlds in the octant are given, but there are hundreds more not yet located on the map and so ready for the Game Master to create. Just a pair of final scenario hooks are given, but sadly no starting scenario. This though is understandable in part, because every campaign would have different set-up and therefore require different sample scenarios.

Physically, Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game is a sturdy slab of a book. Black and white throughout, barring the world writeups in the ‘Darradine Rim’ chapter, the book does feel as if it should be in colour. The writing is engaging throughout, clearly showcasing the author’s enthusiasm for the setting, the lengthy index decent, and the editing reasonable. The book though could be better organised, especially when it comes to character generation, which involves a lot of flipping back and forth of pages in what is probably one of the most complex means of character creation seen in any FATE roleplaying game.

What amazes about Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game is the scope of game, whether that is in terms of the huge array of character types possible or the range of campaign types that setting and the mechanics both allow. Yet Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game does not just amaze both reader and Game Master, it daunts them too. There is almost too much to take in in the pages of this roleplaying game such that despite the ease of play with the FATE mechanics, Mindjammer is not a casual roleplaying game. As a one-shot then yes, but a campaign requires the players to sit down with the Game Master and together work out what they are going to play as a group, though the small group of free agents with their own ship a la Firefly or Traveller is essentially the default. Indeed, character generation works best as a group endeavour. Then there are the individual parts of the rules and the setting which almost need to be learned separately, the chapter on the Mindscape for example, requires a different approach to that needed for the rest of the book and the setting. 

Nevertheless, if Game Master and players alike are prepared to step up, then what they will discover in Mindjammer – The Roleplaying Game: Transhuman Adventure in the Second Age of Space is a Science Fiction setting which offers a surfeit of choice when it comes to character types and campaign set-ups combined with tried and tested mechanics that support great roleplaying. All of which will play out against a Space Opera setting with a harder, more contemporary Science Fiction edge. 

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Mindjammer Press will be at UK Games Expo which will take place between May 31st and June 2nd, 2019 at Birmingham NEC. This is the world’s fourth largest gaming convention and the biggest in the United Kingdom.

Reviews from R'lyeh Christmas Dozen 2014

Since 2001, I have contributed to a series of Christmas lists at Ogrecave.com, suggesting not necessarily the best board and roleplaying games of the preceding year, but the titles from the last twelve months that you might like to receive and give. Continuing the break with tradition—in that the following is just the one list and in that for reasons beyond its control, OgreCave.com is not running its own lists—Reviews from R’lyeh would once again like present its own list. Further, as is also traditional, Reviews from R’lyeh has not devolved into the need to cast about “Baleful Blandishments” to all concerned or otherwise based upon the arbitrary organisation of days. So as Reviews from R’lyeh presents its Baker’s Dozenth’s Christmas List Dozen, we can only hope that the Baker’s Dozen below includes one of your favourites, or even better still, includes a game that you do not have and someone is happy to hide in gaudy paper and place under that dead tree for you.

-oOo-

Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set 
(Wizards of the Coast), $19.99/£16.99
If you are going to list some of the best games of 2014, then you have to deal with the ‘elephant’—or rather the ‘dragon’ in the room, for 2014 saw the return of the number one roleplaying game. 

Forty years after the original version was released, Wizards of the Coast published Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. This new version of the classic RPG is immensely accessible and very playable, and there is no better place to start but with the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set. It includes everything necessary to play: the basic rules, a set of five pre-generated characters, a good adventure, and of course, dice. This is a great way to bring old players to the game and a great way for old players to bring new players to the game, and the provided scenario, ‘Lost Mine of Phandelver’, is an excellent starting point, offering plenty of play before the DM (and the players) needs to invest in the Player’s Handbook.

Machi Koro

(IDW Games), $19.99/£16.99

Japanese games came of age in the English language hobby in 2014 when the highly regarded Love Letter and Trains both won Origins awards. This year they were joined by the easy-to-play and ever so cute, Machi Koro, published by IDW Games. It is a simple card and dice game in which all the players have to do is roll the die (or dice), check the buildings on their cards and get some income, and then buy another building or even improve their suburbs with landmarks. 

Each player is the mayor of suburb whose inhabitants wants better landmarks; build four landmarks and he wins the game. This is ever so easy-to-learn, quick-to-play, and can be enjoyed by the casual player and the seasoned gamer alike. Plus there are expansions to come which will provide more cards and thus more buildings. Which means more options. In the meantime, the core box for Machi Koro is simply fun.

You Are The Hero:
A History of Fighting Fantasy™ Gamebooks 

(Snow Books) $45/£40

2014 was a great year for gaming and the history of gaming. You Are the Hero looked at one aspect of gaming history and then one aspect of that aspect… By that we mean that it explored the history of the British Fighting Fantasy™ series of solo adventure books rather than the history of the solo adventure books. This delves back to the origins of the publishing phenomenon that put The Warlock of Firetop Mountain and nearly sixty subsequent titles on the shelves of bookshops around the round and accumulated millions of sales, before going on to examine each and every entry in the series, and then the board games, computer games, magazines, and more. All commented upon by both the creators and the fans. This is also a history in part of the British gaming scene, but mostly it is a loving look at the Fighting Fantasy™ series that enabled us to go on fantastic adventures in the comforts of our own homes before the digital age.

Ivor the Engine

(Surprised Stare Games) $42.50/£25.00

Some games have ‘meeples’ or ‘my people’. Only one game has ‘sheeple’ or ‘sheep meeple’. That is, little wooden sheep; and that game is the most charming game of the year—Ivor the Engine.

Based on the BBC children’s television classic, this game sees the players come to the aid of a small green locomotive who lives in the “top left-hand corner of Wales” and works for The Merioneth and Llantisilly Railway Traction Company Limited with the help of his driver, Jones the Steam. Their prime task is tidying up all of the escaped sheep, but they can also complete jobs and so visit places such as Grumbly Gasworks and Gwynaudolion Halt, Mrs Porty’s House and Pugh’s Farm, and Tan-Y-Gwlch and Dinwiddy’s Gold Mine. Fans of the television series will enjoy the references, whilst those new to them will find them equally as charming. Although this looks a lot like a children’s game, it is competitive enough that experienced gamers can pick and play it with gusto. Plus it comes with little wooden sheep. Really cute little wooden sheep.

Firefly Role-Playing Game

(Margaret Weis Productions) $49.99/£31.99

Although we got a good taster of the game last year with Gaming In The ‘Verse, this year we finally got to see how shiny the Firefly Role-Playing Game really is. It lived up to that tag, because the game not only takes you step-by-step through every Firefly episode, but through the rules at the same time, so the original television series truly serves as a big set of fat examples of play. It is a great way to learn the Cortex Plus mechanics—the best yet—and once learned you can play out the further adventures of Mal Reynolds and the crew of the Serenity, or even better create your own crew and your own ship and chance all of the possibilities and dangers of being out in the Black. With the Cortex Plus rules, everyone’s character comes alive, not just what they do, but also what they hold dear and what just might make life difficult for them and their crew. Life don’t go easy in the ‘Verse and the Firefly Role-Playing Game is designed to bring that to your adventures and make them as dramatic as Joss Whedon’s Firefly.

Colt Express

(Ludonaute) $54.99/£27.99

There is a train coming down the track—and you are going to rob it! The year is 1899 and the Union Pacific Express is heading out of New Mexico with the Nice Valley Coal Company's weekly pay aboard. So you and fellow bandits have boarded the train and must race down the carriages, stealing bags of money and jewels from the passengers, punching and shooting at each other, climbing up to the roof (and running along the rooftops), all trying to get to the front of the train where Marshal is guarding the $1000 payroll. 

In this fun game, the players take turns to program what their bandits will do over the course of each round. Some of these actions will be seen by everyone, but whenever the train goes through a tunnel, none of the bandits can see what each other is going do. Once everyone has programmed their actions, they are revealed in order, and guess what? No plan ever survives contact with the enemy, or in the case of Colt Express, contact with rival bandits, the passengers, and the Marshal. So plans go awry, punches are landed where you never expected, gunshots miss, and some rotten stinking, varmit steals the loot before you do! All of which takes place aboard a fantastic cardboard train that comes as part of the game. So get ready for some schemin’ and stealin’ and see if you can leave the Colt Express with the most loot!

Designers & Dragons
(Evil Hat Productions) $80

2014 was an important year for the roleplaying hobby. Not only was it the fortieth anniversary of the original version of Dungeons & Dragons—and thus of the very hobby itself—but it also saw the return to our shelves of the very first roleplaying game with Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition. So there has never been a better year in which to look back at our hobby and that is exactly what Shannon Appelcline has done with Designers & Dragons, a four volume examination of the roleplaying hobby, decade by decade, publisher by publisher, trend by trend, from 1974 right up to the present day. In the process updating the original series that ran at RPG.net and was previous published by Mongoose Publishing. A useful reference for the ‘grognard’ looking to refresh his memory or delve into some nostalgia as it is for the newcomer wanting to know where it all started, Designers & Dragons is the definitive history of the hobby.

Player’s Handbook
(Wizards of the Coast) $49.95/£29.99
When you have exhausted all of the possibilities of the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set or want to more choices when playing ‘Lost Mine of Phandelver’, its included scenario, then what you need is the Player’s Handbook, also published for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition.

This new volume gives everything that player needs to play (minus dice) and gives him choices aplenty in terms of what he can play. All the classics are present—Elves and Orcs, Fighters and Wizards, plus Dragonborn and Tiefling, and Sorcerer and Warlock; and then all new in this edition, character options that support actual roleplaying rules. The Player’s Handbook not only supports playing adventures of the DM’s own devising, but also those published for Dungeons & Dragons, Fifth Edition, and then for almost every scenario published in the last forty years (with just a very little work, of course)! This is an easy-to-read, easy-to-grasp introduction to the world’s number one roleplaying game—and it is truly great to see it back on the shelves at our games stores.

Star Realms

(White Wizard Games) $14.99/£12.99

Star Realms is a deck building card game of starship combat. Specifically designed for two players, it sees them start small with just some Scout ships to generate money and Viper ships to inflict damage on the enemy. With the money a player can buy better ships, bases, outputs, and more from four factions. These include the Blobs with their strong combat vessels, the Machines which destroy their own ships and enemy bases, the Star Empire which can quickly bring its own ships into play or force the enemy ships to retreat, and the Trade Federation which generates wealth and Authority (the game’s equivalent of health points).

Each player is free to purchase ships, bases, and outposts of whichever faction he can afford, and with both players buying from the same deck, the competition is on—not only to see who can generate money enough to purchase ships and build a good deck, but also use the deck to the best of its ability to destroy his opponent! All of this—just 128 superbly illustrated cards—fits neatly into a tiny box and is just as easy on the pocket!

Pandemic: The Cure

(Z-Man Games) $49.99/£37.99

Ogrecave.com has been a fan of Matt Leacock’s Pandemic since it was released in 2008. The infamous co-operative game pitches four players against the game itself as they race to find the cures for four diseases that are ravaging the world whilst trying to prevent them from spreading and further outbreaks from occurring. That though was a board and card game, but now the designer has turned the Pandemic concept into a fast playing dice game: Pandemic: The Cure. Now the players not only have to rush from continent to continent treating diseases, they also need to take and collect samples enough to roll for a cure! In the original version of Pandemic, the diseases were represented by cubes and their appearance controlled by city cards, but in Pandemic: The Cure the diseases are represented by dice—dice that are rolled to see where they appear and then if the players have collected enough, rolled again to see if a cure can be found for the disease—and until a cure is rolled, the samples have to be stored somewhere and that somewhere is the players’ dice. Which means that the players give up possible actions in order to focus on a cure. Pandemic: The Cure is quick playing dice game that presents as much challenge as the original Pandemic, but in a slightly different fashion. Just remember to wear gloves—after all, the diseases are the dice!

Mindjammer: The Roleplaying Game

(Mindjammer Press) $54.99/£34.99

In this FATE Core powered Science Fiction RPG, the New Commonality of Humankind is spreading out from Earth using relatively recently discovered faster-than-light technology and rediscovering colonies founded centuries before using generation ships. Yet as these lost colonies are found and reintegrated into interstellar culture, the New Commonality of Humankind finds itself facing cultural adulteration from these previously isolated worlds. This sets up the central conflict at the heart of Mindjammer, played out on a frontier of old new worlds as a space opera with Transhuman elements, that plays out across the physical universe as much as it does the virtual world known as the Mindscape, a shared reality that connects all of the Commonality. This is a setting in which it is possible to play a sentient starship, the memories of a dead man downloaded into a robot, a genetically engineered soldier, and more. Mindjammer: The Roleplaying Game is a game with not just the scope to play out a campaign in its highly detailed setting, but also the capacity to be taken apart and used as parts of kit for the GM to create and design aliens, technologies, worlds, and more to create a campaign of his own devising.

Castles of Mad King Ludwig

(Bezier Games) $59.99/£47.99

Have you ever wanted to build Neuschwanstein, the ‘Swan Castle’ of King Ludwig II of Bavaria? As pleased as he is with that castle, the good king has asked you to build the biggest, the best, the most extravagant castle ever—all subject to his mercurial nature and whims. Which means that each of the architects/builders must build their castle at one room at time, even as they are actually selling rooms to their rival builders!

Beginning with a simple foyer, a player tries to build the most fantastic castle possible, whether that is outside, upstairs, or downstairs in the storerooms (and dungeons). Every turn is challenging because the player take turns being the Master Builder who sets the prices for the randomly drawn buildings and gets paid when his rival builders purchase them. As the game progresses, a player will add new rooms and as he completes each room by ensuring that all entrances of the room are connected to other rooms, he will score points and gain special benefits, such as another turn, more points, or more money. At game’s end a player can score bonus points based on the random goals set at the start of the game. The random nature of King Ludwig’s whims and thus of the game means that Castles of Mad King Ludwig is worth playing again and again—after all, everyone loves castles and getting to build castles is the best way to show this love.

-oOo-

So that was the Ogrecave.com Christmas Dozen for 2014. Yet, 2014 also marks the Ogrecave.com Christmas Dozen’s ‘Baker’s Dozen’, the thirteenth year of the Ogrecave.com Christmas Dozen. So only seems fitting that for this thirteenth list, it should be a Baker’s Dozen—meaning thirteen entries, not twelve! Thus we round out this year’s list with the other elephant in room that just snuck under the wire to qualify for 2014 and not 2015, where the elephant is both the setting and the price!

Star Wars: Imperial Assault 
(Fantasy Flight Games) $100/£79.99

There is no bigger game in 2014 than Star Wars: Imperial Assault and no board game with a bigger canvas! This is a miniatures game in which the heroes of the Rebellion are pitched against the Stormtroopers and the villains of the Galactic Empire in two modes. The campaign game sees a group of elite Rebel operatives on desperate missions to undermine the Empire which ruthlessly protects its interests and holdings, whilst the skirmish game is a two-player head-to-head fight between Imperial and Rebel strike teams for the same objectives. 

The game comes packed with detailed miniatures and full colour interlocking map sections, as well as the Luke Skywalker Ally Pack and the Darth Vader Villain Pack, giving another miniature each and yet more missions. This is a big game on which to play out a big story, whether exploring the events of the Star Wars tale and bringing back your Rebel operatives back again and again, each time getting better and better with successful missions, or designing armies to pitch against each in skirmish mode. Star Wars: Imperial Assault offers play aplenty and being set in the Star Wars universe means that there are expansions and thus more play to come!