Quick review: Orbital by Zoser games. A traveller setting & sourcebook

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Orbital

A traveller setting & sourcebook

Paul Elliott & Ben Lecrone

From Zozer Games

From the blurb: Orbital is a science fiction setting for Traveller with a fairly realistic (TL 9) feel that is set within our own solar system.

Yeah, well I say, Orbital is great !  It is exactly what  Open source Traveler should be (and is) creating.  New campaigns in new settings, with all the bells and whistles; chargen, ship building, planetary info, etc. It’s a TL 9 setting  confined to the solar system – no FTL, no gravitics and actual rockets instead of grav thrusters – so, although they are super efficient &  advanced fusion rockets, fuel use and burns are important.

It includes rules for chargen appropriate to the setting, necessary modifications to ship design (spin-grav modules and fusion drives in particular), planetary lift off , re-entry and orbital travel rules; a bunch of stuff that does a very good job of adding granularity to the low tech levels in any traveler game, even one set in the Third Imperium.  It probably worth getting for that alone if you are a 3I purist.

The setting is cool, although I have to admit I freaked when I saw it described as Cold war (” Dammit ! pipped again ! ) – but, it turns out to be a late 80’s type cold war tech +100 years – and the main cold war is between earth nations and Luna.  So, cool; my retro cold war  setting is still viable (see this blog for details) (assuming it ever wakes back up)

 A very 1980’s SF setting, no cyberpunk, no transhumanism, just corporate greed and nationalism in space. 

Chargen is well modified for the setting, and presented with a minimum of “look it up in the core rules”, and a good selection of hardware and “stuff” is included.

Orbital tells you the events and timeline, discusses politics and society, and does it in an engaging and detailed manner;  It’s harder to do well than it seems –I’ve read quite a few attempts that seem more like an unusually dry  sixth grade social studies report copied from the encyclopedia than I care to think about. 

I heartily recommend Orbital.

Get it here at DTRPG

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/109160/Orbital

In Case You Were Confused....(AKA Dog headed opinion time)

To all want-to-be RPG designers, I feel it is my public duty to point out an issue that seems to be being overlooked in many new RPGs, and that seems to confuse many recent authors: RPG rules are not a venue for publishing your short (or interminable) gaming fanfic.

Not only is it blatantly inflating the page count (and price), but publishing your own fiction  in your own game is self indulgent vanity wankery of the first water.

I understand that a setting has to tell a story (really, I do) and yes, adventures need setting up – but neither of these are effectively accomplished by including interminable short stories about the tragic hero with a long duster, a shiny gunswordpowerthingie, and a tragic backstory attempting to make up for incomprehensible motivations stereotyped personality traits and pathologically confused  social relationships.    Okay ?  

Repeat after me: "A good RPG author is not automatically a good fiction author, and vice versa."  

Rules need playtest; stories need editorial criticism.   One doesn't substitute for the other. 

Cut it the hell out.   When I want crappy adventure fiction, I’ll read Gor; for crappy SF, there’s always Blake 7.


As an afterthought, the lack of actual fiction sections alone can be considered a major strength of the OSR and pocket/lite RPG design schools.  Even if I hated everything else about them, (and I don't) that alone would endear them to me.

Post game thoughts

So, actually, it went pretty well.   Yeah, they got thru exactly one random overland encounter, and two rooms in the dungeon in a 6 hour run, but what the heck. No timeouts, no tears, no threats.  And to be fair, at least three to four other rooms in the dungeon came to them - they were not really the most stealthy group, no they were not.

Highlights include:

The orc berserker ignoring the golinoids that charged in from the next rooms over in favor of looting corpses from the previous fight (for several turns), until one party member promised him 100GP to join the fight right now -he did, and kept the party from being rolled up but got torn up, badly; when he demanded payment, the answer was "I lied, and by the way, how does it feel to have only four hitpoints left, hmmmm? Tell you what, I'll sell you this heal spell for 100GP"

The huge Legolas vs Chuck Norris fight when the bosses main minion hobgoblin monk mook (MMHMM) smashed thru a door and got all "boot to the head" with the Elven ranger.  Turns out that a +1 bastard sword and good armor beats long training and mystic martial arts -although it was close.

(It was initially suggested that it was Bruce Lee vs Legolas, but everyone pretty quickly agreed that no way could Bruce Lee lose a fight, period.  One of them even referencec the dragon movie where Bruce kicked Chuck's ass, which, true or not, impressed the hell out of me for geekery above and beyond....)

The final fight ended with two epic crits on the same round * just as the two really tough mooks were about to win ; one delivered by a 1HP fighter at -3 from a concussion (the other to the Chuck Norris hobdude).  There was massive high fiveing, fist bumping and general jpyful end zone dances.

Now thats a way to end a game !  Yeah. 

And this, is apparently, post 200.  Wow. 

* both legit nat 20s rolled in the open, same round; double damaged followed by a max damage roll.  I described everyone in the room as looking like they had exploded a can of dinty-moore beef stew.

I go now, to the fate of all men.....who game and have kids......

It is perhaps the greatest gift that the human mind is unable to correlate the whole of its contents, and thus remain in blissful ignorance of what unspeakable chaos will will surely ensue when one volunteers to run a OD&D for one's newly 13 year old child and his tween friends.  I go now, the the place that all gaming parents must surely go, to face their own karma and spiritual payback for all the ruined campaigns, enraged DM's and total party screwups that said parents have inflicted in their formative years as dungeon delvers.....I go to munchkinland.

Dear god.  The one who shows up an hour early for everything that he doent forget is, I think, arguing to roll up a paladin or a monk with my son.  Emergency !

So, T5.........

The gods of distribution finally smiled at me, and my order came up -and I got it about a week back. I promised myself I wouldn't say anything until I had it, especially in the argumentative sense - and now, from what I see, I'm going to not be participating in the discussion by virtue of reading it -which I am truly enjoying. Much more rewarding that taking on an argument that has gone back and forth for 10+ years, on either side.




Still, I want to thank those (such as S4) who added a lot of actual review and potential fixes to their critical opinion of the work; and to those who said "I like it" and not much else, thanks for keeping the morale up in the face of a very few who ....well, lets just call it are comitted to a battle for implementing a pre-determined reactionary narrative.



Now. On to design a gemini medium interceptor to fight that pesky Soyuz orbital bomber......