This is a review of the Cold Space RPG by Clash Bowley and Albert Bailey, by Flying Mice productions.  My review is of the print edition.

I figured that since today's Roman campaign got cancelled on account of Alejo and Jong's birthdays (happy b-day, guys), and my own attendance of a Lodge Lunch/celebration, I figured I should use the extra time to get through one of the many, many products I have up for review.  In this case, the Cold Space RPG.

Like all of the products I've gotten from Mr. Bowley, I've gotten the print edition, which not only puts his review products at the front of the queue for review (as much by practicality as promotion, I'm more likely to read a print book quickly), but also is always pretty cool down here, where there are no gaming stores.
The book itself is softcover, 163 pages, and looks to be very well bound. The covers are in colour, and consist of a fairly tasteful collage of modified images, photographs, made to look like pictures from this alternate history.

Yes, fundamentally this is an alternate history campaign, except not so much one where history diverges as one where it overlaps our own history. No major events technically change, they are only supplanted by the little detail that in 1950 some scientists developed a Faster Than Light (FTL) anti-gravity device.

Due to this, the US-Soviet space-race wasn't just to the moon and back, instead by 1951 they were on the moon, and by 1952 they were on planets outside our solar system. As the cold war progressed, so did the settling of our solar system and the other various stars near our own, and the cold war conflicts spilled over onto them.

The layout of the book itself is relatively sound. Although, as with "In Harm's Way", some layout help could have been useful, and a more coherent organization of the rules.  Just to give one example, the very first rule in the book is the rule for Constitution (the game's Hit Points). This attribute is derived by taking the character's strength, co-ordination, agility, and endurance together, and multiplied by ten.  That's great, except we haven't been told what any of those other attributes are yet! It would make more sense to cover those first, and not Constitution. Oh, and Initiative...and skill checks, and quality of success, combat, healing, cover, poison, automatic weapons... and yes, even attribute checks. All covered before covering attributes themselves.

Note to Clash: Dude, its really simple.  Open up a fucking D&D Player's handbook.  In any modern RPG, it goes like this: attributes, race, class, derived attributes, skills, other special abilities, combat.  You can switch a couple of those around, but generally, thats the best order in which to explain things.  And you definitely, definitely, don't want to be talking about stuff that is derived or dependent on other stuff, without having explained what that other stuff is first!

Stylistically, the book is very nice, with lots of photographs and photo-style pictures (all black and white other than the cover) depicting images that help create this alternate reality.  Another amusing touch are the (fake) song lyrics presented throughout the book from a variety of real musicians (Bob Dylan, the Who, Prince, etc), songs that they would have written in this world. They're not quite right, but they're entertaining (much better than game-fiction). There's also news reports about different key events in this alternate history, which are also helpful in aiding to present the imagery of this other reality.

The system itself is virtually identical to the system for In Harm's Way. Its got a serious old-school feel to it, complete with attributes that don't all work the same way.  The physical attributes (strength, coordination, etc) plus charisma are all rolled up with 2d6; whereas IQ and luck are percentile based. Options are given for rolling up, or point-buy.

Now, what is really clever about this game (like In Harm's Way), is the method by which characters advance, in a traveller-esque system of determining the character's life path from the age of 10 onwards to the moment he begins play.   At each step of school and later in your career, you age x number of years in exchange for y number of skills, which round out your character.  The longer you go in the process the more skilled you become, but you also get old.  There's a huge variety of schooling and career options: you can play military characters (army, navy, or "Rocket corps"), spies, scientists, scouts, technicians, policemen, priests, reporters, lawyers, teachers, merchants, even bums ("unemployed"). Also, if you take up the game in the later periods (the game is set up to play pretty much from 1949 till 1989, the length of the cold war), you can even play "civilian spacers", people who spend their lives up in space or in the colonies. Despite the completeness of this list, there are also rules available for creating new careers.

There are also some incredibly good rules for quick NPC creation, basically the same as the ones that appear in In Harm's Way, complete with some random methods to create motivations and tie-ins. There's also a good pre-made list of mooks, gunmen, and template NPCs for game use.

The skill list is very lengthy, complete, and specialized.  The skill system is the same (wacky) system that In Harm's Way uses... yeah, the one which seems to take unnecessary steps for no discernible reason. Skills are rated as "+1", "+2", etc etc. But those pluses don't actually symbolize anything.  Instead, you roll all skills at 40%, plus 5% for each +1 that your skill is rated at (plus a bonus if your relevant attribute is high enough). So again, I have no clue why the system couldn't just have been set up in increments of +5%, rather than calling them +1, +2, etc, and then having to translate that to percentages.   Hell, at the very least, I don't know why the "+" is necessary. If you want to call it "rank 1", "rank 2", even that makes more sense than calling something +1 when you will never use it as a plus one bonus to anything!

The spaceship and space combat rules are, again, remarkably similar to In Harm's Way. Which is to say, excellent.  I'm not a big fan of naval wargames, and space combat is always really a kind of naval wargame, but these rules are character-focused, and group focused at that, they allow each member of the crew to play a part.

Next we move to the setting itself.  Depending on which part of the timeline you play in there are a number of colonies; American, Soviet, and UN-sponsored, on the Moon, Mars, Alpha Centauri, Barnard's Star, Epsilon Eridani, Cassiopeia, Sigma Draconis, 82 Eridani, Tau Ceti, Delta Pavonis, Epsilon Indi, and Omicron Eridani.
Now, the REALLY UNBELIEVABLY FUCKING COOL PART is that each of these systems are fully mapped out with system charts, maps of the colony worlds in each system (plus maps of the moon and mars' colonies),  some good info done in the form of a Journalist's travel-log, and a detailed (and, shockingly, well-laid out) chart with the foundation dates, names, sponsor, and capitals of each world!  This is the sort of stuff that as a gamer makes me salivate.

A few details for the game:
-FTL is such that travel from one system to another takes several days, or sometimes weeks.
-The worlds are divided between worlds colonized by the Americans, worlds colonized by the Soviets, worlds colonized by the British Commonwealth, and worlds colonized by smaller nations under U.N. sponsorship. So there's not just New Missouri, or Novya Minsk, you also have the Burgas Colony (bulgaria), Gujrat colony (Pakistan), Bolivia's Sierra Blanca colony, and others.  Shit, even Jamaica has a colony ("Cockpit", on Tau Ceti III).
-There are no massive alien empires to be found.  There is precisely ONE planet in the setting where they have found primitive hominid intelligence (aliens who are at about the level of development that Homo Erectus was at). So the action is all human-based.

Are there any downsides to the setting? Well, there's one thing that kind of gets old quick, and that's the fact that the author obviously wanted to mimic some of the same conflicts we see on Earth, in Space.  But to do so, he had to fairly incredibly lump together political enemies in the same areas of space.  How does he do this? Well, apparently the boneheaded U.N. keeps making the same goof-up over and over again; putting the Egyptians and the Israelis in neighbouring colonies on the same planet, or putting the North and South Vietnamese next to each other; there are several of these cases, where the conflict is clearly a confabulation.  But that's a minor point, and it wouldn't even have been complainable if it hadn't happened more than once (I can believe ONE massively stupid UN cockup for just about any issue, but I have trouble believing that they'd make the exact same mistake over again).

What can you do with all of this?? The options are way open, and ideas abound.  In many ways, it depends what time period you set the game in: if its early, then you have a kind of "Space: 1949" scenario with the American (or Soviet, if you prefer) "Rocketeer" crews flying to the moon, mars, or Alpha Centauri for the first time.  The all-american rocket-jock, the pipe-smoking professor, everything right out of a b-grade sci-fi film from the period. Or, you can make it a really different version of "True Grit".
By the late 50s/1960s you still have the age of exploration, but you also have military conflicts happening in space, as well as espionage, and the first civilians in space. In particular, you have merchants doing supply routes in space; or the first colonists on distant worlds.
Remember too that all the events of the 60s still happened in this world so you could easily have a more political story about civil or human rights in that turbulent period.
By the late sixties/early seventies you have major mining programs in the asteroid belt, the discovery of the hominid aliens in Tau Ceti, and by the late 70s you have a Polish uprising against the Soviets on Mars, the collapse of the Shah's regime in Iran; and finally in the 80s you have Glasnost, Perestroika, and the Afghan war.

You can play "From earth to Mars" with this game, you can play "James Bond" with this game, you can play "Che Guevara" with this game, you can play "space jocks" with this game, you can play freaking Red October in space!

Its really a thing of beauty.

So to sum up: Do I recommend it? Hell yes. I especially recommend it if any of those ideas I mentioned above tickle your creativity.  If you are a Traveller fan, you will probably love this game too.

The Good: The setting. The setting is awesome; and there's such an attention to detail. Its so cool it gives me wood.

The Bad: Well, the layout is somewhat amateur, and the system a bit more complicated than it needed to be, but this is nothing overwhelming.  Also, people wanting history to really diverge due to space travel on this scale (which it certainly would have) will be disappointed; but that's not really the point of the game. This is Space: 1889, set in the 20th century.

The Ugly: Pretty well nothing.

If it sounds even remotely interesting to you, go out and get this game. You won't regret it.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Stanwell Pipe of the Year 1997 + Esoterica's Penzance

THanks, Pundit, another solid review! I promise in the next game, I'll use your list of precedence, and the attributes will come before the rest!

As always , it's very thorough, and I'm really glad you like the setting.

-clash

Dude, loved the setting.  :drool:

RPGPundit

...vote for this as Tuesday Night Game, right?

I had strongly considered this one, and In Harm's Way; but in the end I decided against either one; Cold Space because it was too soon after my Traveller campaign ended, and In Harm's Way because I'm already running two freaking historical campaigns, and I wanted something where I wouldn't feel obliged to think as hard (I always go all-out on any historical campaign, I can't help it).

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditI had strongly considered this one, and In Harm's Way; but in the end I decided against either one; Cold Space because it was too soon after my Traveller campaign ended, and In Harm's Way because I'm already running two freaking historical campaigns, and I wanted something where I wouldn't feel obliged to think as hard (I always go all-out on any historical campaign, I can't help it).

RPGPundit

It's cool even to be considered seriously. Thanks. Pundit!

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceIt's cool even to be considered seriously. Thanks. Pundit!

-clash

Why are you still here ? Aren't you supposed to be designing the Cold Warriors supplement, The Great Game supplement. Damn it, the last time I checked up on you, you were still chained to your desk....:mad: ( )

Regards,
David R

Quote from: David RWhy are you still here ? Aren't you supposed to be designing the Cold Warriors supplement, The Great Game supplement. Damn it, the last time I checked up on you, you were still chained to your desk....:mad: ( )

Regards,
David R

Not to mention F... TA! I must be insane! :O

-clash