mithriltabby | Starblazer Adventures: The Rock and Roll Space Opera Adventure Game ★★★★ (Reply)

Starblazer Adventures is the first space opera game for the Fate system; the reference is to a long-running UK comics anthology, but you could certainly adapt the system to tell a Space Battleship Yamato story if you wanted to.

The book is a tome: over 600 pages, with enough full-page and half-page illustrations from the comic that I wonder if they could’ve done a little cropping and made the book considerably lighter, or split it into two volumes with one being targeted at game masters. Like Spirit of the Century, the emphasis is on storytelling, with only a bit of attention paid to character development during a campaign; there are some new ideas like career-related stunts (which manage to get filed in a different chapter from the skill-related stunts). The developers did a good job of fleshing out Fate to support space opera trappings like weapons, armor, high-tech gear, robots, alien races, starships, and fleet battles.

The systems for starships and organizations are good examples of the “Fate Fractal”: the principle in Fate games that any entity is another kind of character, still with aspects and skills and stunts and stress tracks and consequences, all following the same underlying mechanics as all other characters.

Overall, an excellent effort that could use some more tightening up if there’s a second edition, and a worthwhile investment for Fate gamemasters.