The Indie/Zine RPG Review Part VIII: Screams Amongst the Stars

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. 

The Indie/Zine RPG Guide Part IV: Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells

Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells (Old Skull Publishing) 

$9.99 for POD+PDF on Drivethrurpg.com

I've had Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells and it's one sourcebook (the SS&SS Addendum) in my collection for several years now. Although I like the concept, it's never been played so my review is from a reader's analysis, not as a player. At the time I picked it up I was primarily interested in it from a collector's perspective. Only recently as I have grown fonder of the new era of minimalist systems have I reconsidered what it might be like to try running it.

What it is: Originally released in 2015, Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells bills itself as a "rules lite" game in the spirit of the OSR. It shares a system with two other games: Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells, and Dark Streets & Darker Secrets, both of which tie in to sci fi/fantasy and modern day/fantasy mashups. SS&SS is however a straight-up fantasy game in the by now traditional mold of a D&D-like, which is my term for any game which follows the pattern of a fantasy game as established by D&D through all of its iterations (party meets, goes on adventures, often in dungeons, and kills a lot of stuff, often because it needs to do so to progress). Unlike D&D, SS&SS lets you level up after a certain number of adventures are completed, so you don't need to tabulate XP from kills and such.

The System: SS&SS has some of its roots in The Black Hack, and definitely aspires to have an old school feel even if its core conceits are only nominally based in D&D conventions with classes and levels. The core system has you rolling 3D6 to determine your four stats of physique, agility, intellect and willpower. You get three archetypes (classes) in the form of the warrior, specialist and magic user....in a sense, a list closer in origin to Tunnels & Trolls or reflective of current systems such as True20/Fantasy Age. Your archetype grants you hit dice for hit points, and a small number of special traits (closer to an AD&D style list than modern "get a new thing every level" styles of games). Everyone also gets a complication, which provides some story and background flavor to your character. There is no conventional skill system. 

Mechanically tasks are a roll against their attribute, with modifiers, to get under their stat on a D20 mechanic, nothing unusual here but it is highly traditional (roll high as a core conceit only appeared in D&D 3rd). Combat provides about as much detail as any older edition of D&D would, but in a clean and comprehensive set of rules in just under 5 pages. These rules work for exactly what is intended: a D&D-feeling OSR experience that gives some weight to combat but without too much detail bogging things down. 

Spells in SS&SS follow a typical pattern for contemporary reimagining, with a roll to succeed in casting and a risk of penalty for failure. Unlike other systems that do this (DCC, Mork Borg) the spell failure is more pragmatic than descriptive, but it does what it says. I am not sure where the spell failure concept comes from, it was not a thing in traditional OSR.....I think it has more to do with a desire for magic to be less predictable, and therefore more interesting, in order to evoke the feel of OSR back then when nobody had everything memorized to a fault. 

Either way, the spells are about five pages in length of very short descriptive lists. It accomplishes what is intended, with minimum rules and plenty of situational adjudication necessary. Likewise, a half page is spent on magic items with some loose guidelines for what a GM should assign to make magic items interesting.

Monsters and opponents get a few pages, mostly lists of monsters in short form, with little exposition or description. It reminds me greatly of the way Tunnels & Trolls did it. Here each monster has a hit die stat and a sentence or two of things it can do, and the rest is up to the GM to flesh out as desired (or not). The monsters are not really described, but their names and abilities are all very swords & sorcery in theme, comfortable in a Robert E. Howard, Lin Carter or Karl Edward Wagner inspired setting. 

The last section of the book (Appendix A) is an adventure generator, and is actually a cool section with plenty of details on rolling up storylines and antagonists. This is about all the book offers to the GM in terms of advice in running the game, but its actually a pretty cool section, and reflects the aesthetics of zine RPG style quite well. I don't know if SS&SS was officially part of the zine scene (not sure if it goes back that far) but this epitomizes what makes a good minimalist RPG with a density of useful information and a dearth of needless exposition or elaboration. To the point, and provides just enough tools to make the game rapidly accessible.

The Setting: There's no explicit setting here, but the implied setting is a traditional pulp era sword & sorcery aesthetic, evoked in the black and white art quite well. The cover is actually a bit anachronistic, actually, with what appears to be a trio of slightly cartoonish teen heroes with magic fighting a weird dragon....it kind of fits, but the rest of the interior art holds a much more traditional swords, sandals, axes and sorcery vibe. As a side note, there are no nonhuman characters in SS&SS, it's entirely humanocentric and doesn't even address this...it just is. 

Support: There's one book out for the game, called the Addendum, which is actually larger by page count than the core rules. The Addendum addresses some issues not covered in the core (for example, languages and nonhuman player races), as well as providing a bunch of optional additional rules for consideration, ranging from random monster generation and sanity rules to lost tomes and optional quick equipment options. Overall its a mixed bag of stuff, where any given group may find some of it useful and others will find it a burden to add to the core rules, which are elegant and simple without any need for modification. The Addendum feels very much like the sort of book that manifests when other players get involved in a product, but find the minimalism a bit too minimalist for their tastes and start modding....and before you know it, the rules have doubled or even tripled in size. So while I can see the Addendum as a useful resource for some, it's probably going to be less useful in total for any given table.

Aside from the Addendum, there are approximately four PDF resources I could spot for SS&SS on Drivethrurpg that provide setting material from third party publishers. The dearth of resources fo the game suggest to me it didn't really take off or get the attention it deserved. At the time it came out (2015) D&D 5E had been out only a year or two, so interest in the New Big Thing would have been great enough to make it hard to release a rules lite system in 5E's wake, so maybe Old Skull might consider the possibility of a revamp in today's climate, where 5E-alternatives are starting to get more attention in a 5E-bloated market.

Who Should Get This? Sharp Swords & Sinister Spells suffers from being an obscure OSR-inspired rules lite in a bloated market dominated by the big 5E, but it could easily appeal to someone who likes the idea of a ruleset that can fit in your coat pocket and can be learned after about an hour of reading. 

The game works, but it does lack support in odd ways in the core rules; even a single page of sample magic items, for example, or an appendix with some simple alternative species for players rules for those who want such would be helpful (the Addendum's section on adding nonhumans is a bit floaty and holistic, suggesting you use other alternative rules on vocations). More recent games have dived deep in to evocative alternative and weird interpretations of fantasy and other genres, but SS&SS is steeped in an era of sword & sorcery that has no shortage of  representative games out there on the market. Honestly though, this game does lend itself to a bit of kitbashing and modding easily enough, so if you are someone who likes a good core starting point from which to make it your own, this system is probably a good fit. 

A tighter second edition of this game with just a few tweaks could be very appealing. As it stands, though, this is a fine little system that could be fun for a campaign or two before it starts to wear out its welcome. Its biggest failing is really that it has no special unique flavor or style in today's market, which is dominated by the super giant 5E on one side, and a plethora of artsy and unique zine RPGs on the other....SS&SS is just perhaps a bit too retro for its own good. Contrast it with its closest cohort, Solar Blades & Cosmic Spells, to see just how the exact same system can be transformed into a 400 page book of endless weird space adventure straight out of the 1970's era of SF.