If FrontierSpace gives you the same vibes as Star Frontiers, that’s because the designer was a big fan of the Star Frontiers game. However this is not a retro-clone. Far from it actually. It has it’s own universe and a very interesting D100 based system that has intrigued me. Your character has a set of abilities and skills and the referee determines what combination of the two you need to combine to come up with your target score to roll under to succeed. This was the first time I had seen this style (I saw this game just before Star Trek Adventures was released) and it made sense. Not only did I have to buy the PDFs from DriveThruRPG from DwD Studios, but I’ve been buying the community created content that DwD allows in the game license. I could very easily see myself creating material for this game.
As mentioned above, the abilities that a character possesses is Strength (STR), Agility (AGL), Coordination (CRD), Perception (PER), Intelligence (INT) and Willpower (WIL). You rolled two d10s and added the two together and consulted a table to come up with the score. Instead of taking the rolls in order, you found out the scores and then elected which ability to put them into. The race you select for your character may add or subtract from these scores. I decided that Gax, a member of the Novim race, would have the following ability scores (these have been adjusted for the racial modifiers). STR: 65, AGL: 65, CRD: 60, PER: 55, INT: 50, WIL: 45.
Next the skills may seem a little weird. A score of zero means that you are trained in that skill and your character has overcome any of the negative modifiers from not being proficient in that skill. A -5 or -10 score means that you know something about that particular skill. If you get into the positive modifiers, you are an expert in that skill. Any untrained skills are basically -20. The RAW instructed me to select one skill that is of primary importance to what I wanted my character to be. That would have a score of zero. Two other skills can be selected to have a -10 modifier. Everything else would be unskilled. The skills are Academic, Artist, Commander, Diplomat, Explorer, Marksman, Medic, Pilot, Scientist, Technician, Thief and Warrior. I decided that Gax would be a good at flying ships, I put his Pilot score at 0. Being a member of a mercenary group he should also be good at Marksman and Warrior which I marked down at -10 each. Thus if the Referee stated that I needed to make a check for flying through an asteroid field, I he could tell me to make a roll for my AGL+Pilot (65+0) for my target number of 65. If I rolled less than this on percentile dice, I would succeed in my task.
I continued to write down my stats based off the Novim race. One of these is determining which Ark I came from. The Novims were genetically engineered as a slave race that escaped from their masters in Arks. Members of each Ark generated certain tendencies that would be beneficial to the character. Gax came from the Anthem Ark which gave him the ability to heal 3 BP (body points) per day instead of 1 with no scarring.
The character creation process has you select a personality such as a moral code and descriptors. If you role-played within your character’s personality, you could earn additional developmental points (DP) for the session. For the moral code I selected Honorable (Very) and for the two descriptors I selected “I do the job I was paid for” and for the second one I rolled for a random one from the list provided and got “Delusional belief in the supernatural”. I wonder how a member of a cloned race got that one.
For equipment, luckily there is a standard equipment pack and this counts towards two of my six items granted to me durring the character creation process. I also selected a Security Ballistic suit, an enviro suit, a monoknife and an auto-pistol. I filled in the items and tallied up my character’s body points, melee damage bonus, ranged damage bonus, movement and initiative. I only earned one destiny point that I could use durring the game to change a result. Here is the final character sheet which I believe I filled out correctly.
Afterthoughts:
This system looks pretty simple and quick to pick up. It’s been a while since I’ve read the entire book, but just going through the character creation process was pretty straight forward. It also looks like the system is set up to be used in a sandbox for homebrewers. I just wish the company could come out with additional supplements to flesh out some other ideas. I could see myself playing this RPG.
Additional Notes:
I found a couple more blogs with people participating in the Character Creation Challenge. I’ve added the links to the page. I would also like to give a big thank you to the visitor who clicked on one of my DriveThruRPG links and purchased a lot of games. I get a little kick back from this that will be used to purchase additional games for future reviews.
Coming Up Next:
Gangbusters B/X by OSR.