Screams Amongst the Stars (Old Skull Publishing/Gallant Knight)
$24.87 in POD and PDF at DriveThrurpg.com
$20 in print+PDF at Exalted Funeral (when its in stock)
What it is: I've reviewed a lot of the big ones I was quite impressed with, so now its time to look at some of the more modest but also impressive zine RPGs out there. A trilogy of games from Old Skull Publishing and Gallant Knight games all have the distinction of taking the core game system from Into the Odd and adapting the lite rules to specific genres. Interestingly, the author of Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells as well as its predecessor Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells, Diogo Nogueira, chose to use the Into the Odd system for Screams Amongst the Stars and its two companion games (The Dead are Coming and Running out of Time). This is an interesting choice, as I guess the intent is to specifically aim for the simplicity of the Into the Odd mechanics, but I would have preferred to see the SS&SS/SB&CS game system used for this horror universe of gaming, it would have been the superior system for the universe of cosmic scares invoked in Screams Amongst the Stars. But....the advantage now is that you can blend and borrow as much as you want from Screams Amongst the Stars, Into the Odd, Liminal Horror and the other games using this system as you want with ease.
The System: Like all Into the Odd-based systems, you have three stats ranging from 3-18 (Strength, Dexterity and Willpower), a hit protection score (1D6), a background with equipment rolls, and some additional personality and descriptor charts. New to this edition is an Oxygen score (Oxygen is precious in the universe of SatS), and when you take critical damage you are at risk of scars and crisis events. Both charts are neat, but not nearly as evocative as (for contrast) the crazy stuff you can get when rolling on Liminal Horror's fallout charts.
Like Into the Odd, the combat system is short and brutal: you roll damage on an attack (no roll to hit needed), and apply to the target's hit protection, minus any armor roll. If you run out of hit protection (HP...) you subtract from Strength if its physical damage or Willpower if its mental damage. You make a check to see if you took critical damage against the affected stat. In other words: combat is guaranteed to have consequences and be brutal if you are not careful.
Advancement is interesting. You get a chance of improvement each time you survive a crisis event. So the game rather deliciously (and perversely) requires you to take willpower damage and fail a critical check, thus inducing a crisis event, in order to advance in power. Truly that which drives you mad makes you stronger, apparently!
The rest of the 60 page book is filled with equipment, situational rules and hazards, starship rules which are rudimentary but they work, and frankly I could see using this as the basis for a lot of other RPGs with starships where the ship mechanics need to stay out of the way and be nice and simple. The rules are pretty comprehensive, and even touch on some of the larger conflict elements Into the Odd delved into, with rules for example on deploying larger units of soldiers to a planet's surface for time when a squad of marines are what you really need.
The Setting: 27 of the 60 pages in this book are dedicated to setting and scenario content. There are several distinct alien species of various threat levels, each with a nice write up and a bunch of random charts to inspire the GM. Each of the alien write ups include a chart to roll on for rumors, jobs and events.
First are the engineers, a progenitor species which has left many artifacts and big cosmic objects lying around to be discovered. Part of the engineers' mystery is if there are even living remnants of this species, as corporations seek to find their artifacts and understand them. The Promethean engineers of the Alien universe seem to hold some inspiration for this species, along with other inspirational sources (Heechee come to mind).
Next up are the Dreamers, who are tied to a mysterious pyramid and seem to induce hallucinations of waking dreams and nightmares through some sort of psychic manifestation. In reading on this species I got Forbidden Planet and 2001: A Space Odyssey vibes.
The Watchers at first glance feel like stand ins for Grey aliens, but in reality these odd cylon-looking things remind me more of The Day the Earth Stood Still for some reason. Enigmatic suited aliens with one red eye on their faceplate, they can intervene but seem content to observe more than anything....and are overwhelmingly superior in technology.
The Devourers are the bug race. A lot of Starship Troopers mixed with a bit of Alien and other resources make these the insect-like dire threat, and their first encounter with humanity was on the moons of Saturn, where they apparently are all over the place. The definitive "bug hunt" alien.
The Doppelgangers are the final main species provided as a threat in the book. Inspired by The Thing and Invasion of the body Snatchers these are the ones that duplicate and replace you, and the suggested plots and jobs revolve around fear, paranoia and uncertainty as to their motives and how far into human civilization they have infiltrated.
After the section on aliens we have an overview (brief) of the human governments and forces in space, as well as the corporations that are always present in this genre of SF. Charts for colonies, weird events, strange planetary events, alien ruins, job ideas and random events flesh out the GM section. You have enough weird charts here that I think any GM who is good with some improv can roll up a random scenario and have something workable within 15 minutes or so.
Supplements: There are no supplements specifically for SatS that I am aware of, though you can borrow content from other games powered by Into the Odd. One could conceivably use other books in this line to populate specific worlds for the space explorers of SatS to discover and explore: Into the Odd's strange world affected by esoteric forces could be a good landing spot. A remote colony overrun by a zombie virus could be simulated with The Dead are Coming. A Cyberpunk world could be emulated with little effort in Running out of Time. So in a sense, all the games powered by the Into the Odd engine are sufficiently simple as to be cross-compatible and supportive of each other if you so desire.
Who Should Get This: If you're into other horror RPGs out there in this same genre, you will find this to be a welcome addition to your library. Even if you don't run SatS as-is, its many random charts and alien ideas port over easily (almost without effort, really) to both Mothership and Death in Space. You could even use it for ideas in the bigger-volume tome from Free League, the Alien RPG, if you don't mind veering off into decidedly non-canon areas of the universe. That said, it's still a fully functioning RPG on its own merits, and the brutal nature of combat in its base system (where every blow hits and it's all about mitigating damage) can make for a very suitable horror system where every conflict carries consequences.
I do think if you happened to have this book and Liminal Horror, I would look at borrowing the fallout effects from LH to use in SatS. The Crisis Events in SatS are perfectly fine, but just a bit too mundane and uninteresting after I have read the way LH handles its fallout.
My last comment on Screams Amongst the Stars is that it, like many games in this category, have the distinct advantage of being something you can stick in a back pocket (or in PDF on a tablet), and so long as you have a set of dice, paper and pencil you can get a game going pretty quick. It does not feel like a truncated or simplified game; this feels robust, like something you could run a good long campaign with. I like that feature a lot.
EDIT - A word about the art: I just realized I didn't comment once on the aesthetic look and design of the book. In short, this has a lot of stylish and consistent art, all very good, with a vaguely CGI-rendered quality. It's been out long enough that I don't think (but am not 100% sure, so take that for what it is) that any of it is AI generated. It feels too good for that. The layout is comprehensive and readable, playing with structure of words on the page a bit but never in a manner anyone will find confusing.
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