Last Saturday we played Diaspora. There were two players present. If diaspora is first created the setting together and then the player characters for the setting. Diaspora is a "hard SF game", so a game that tries to Science to simulate Fiction based on currently known physics. The only concession is traveling faster than light to get from one planetary system to another. Hard SF is that there is no artificial gravity, no drives without reaction mass, and rarely aliens or psi powers.
diaspora based on FATE 3.0, as well as Star Blazers Adventures and Spirit of the Century (SOTC). Star Blazer Adventures is a game about rock and roll science fiction and so I will draw some comparisons below between the two games.
diaspora always plays made within a cluster of star systems that are connected together by the slipstream. Other clusters are rare and can only be achieved by chance (and then the return could be harder than you think). A cluster consists of 6-10 systems and each player and the GM would take over part of the systems. There were three, so each of us designed two systems. The systems I will post it in a later report, as a fellow player descriptions of their world has not yet finished. In the system for each system creation are three attributes (technology, environment and resources) fixed. Then it describes in the best manner of Fate, two aspects of the system. Then we determine how the systems together. Thereafter, each system gets a third aspect, which describes the space of the system in the cluster. It then entstandt a discussion between players can look like the relations of the systems.
Our cluster is partly dominated by Bask, a world that is dominated by cat people, and also by Cuchulain, a Celtic-tinged world that has no resources and operates more aggressive policy of expansion. Sooner or later there will probably be between Basques and Cuchulainn war.
The system was creating lively and interesting than the similar step in Star Blazers Adventures. Perhaps this was partly because I am in my role as a lead player just over the withdrawal, and the fact that is created in the Diaspora not only a sector of space, but virtually the entire "space" in which the game takes place.
Then it came to character creation. Went in two players and came out three interesting player characters (I want to play my absolutely times). As with all the characters in Play FATE phases are created. Each stage provides two aspects that describe the character and can be used in the game than advantages. Unlike Star Blazers and SOTC are the characters not the hero of her own novel / comics and the other characters act as guest stars, but each character is experiencing a crisis and the character of the player to the left side was involved in the crisis in any way. Conversely, describes the next phase as the has experienced the crisis character of the player to his left. The process takes a long time, but not longer than for other FATE games. After the 5 phases, each player out 15 skills and distributes them in a pyramid, a skill at +5, two to +4, contains three to +3, four and five to +2 to +1. The skills are different is somewhat different from the FATE games and are divided into four categories: classified tracks, battle, space and other expenses. Skills of the category Tracks modify Health, Wealth, and Composure. Battle-space and skills are just that. Everything that does not fit the other three categories. It is recommended that every character at least dominates a fight and a space craft. After the skills it comes to the stunts. Each character has three stunts and different from Star Blazers SOTC and there are no long lists, which make the selection of an elongated process, but for players to their stunts, in consultation with the other players and the game master himself entwerfen. Nach jeweils 5 Minuten hatte jeder seine Stunts beisammen. Dann wurde die Ausrüstung noch nach einer Liste verteilt, was man besitzt, wenn man bestimmte Fertigkeiten beherrscht (ähnlich wie in Reign). Zum Schluss haben wir uns noch Rüstungen und Waffen herausgesucht und das Spiel konnte beginnen.
Die Charaktere sind:
- Zhang Yu: Der Ingenieur unseres Schiffs und von Detroit geflohen, nachdem Triaden seinen Großvater umgebracht hatten
- Meorrw: Die Eignerin/Käptress der "Not Yet". Eine Katzenfrau vom Planeten Bask.
- Doctor Cornelius Vanderbilt: Navigator of the "Not Yet" that is fused in his youth Endymion with a strange apparatus.
Our mission began to Bask. Meorrw was inspired by Senator Rarrgh! wide bar (actually more scratch) to take on a reconnaissance mission to the Cuchulainn system because of feared the Senate Bask that there a secret invasion fleet is built. I had not read the chapter on the social struggle, so we have made such as Star Blazers. Meorrws player agreed with a concession to lose the fight (the aforementioned crawl). They struck a good Price out and took additional charge aboard because of Cuchulainn, after all, there are still "tense trade relations." Then she asked her navigator from the zenith of the Bask-system in the nadir of Cuchulainn system to jump. managed thanks to its psionic abilities of that too. Vanderbilt doctor navigates namely Psionic abilities and are not by Navigator. At the nadir point, we were attacked by a Patroullienschiff, but because our boat has superior technology that are found nowhere else in the cluster, we were able to escape the enemy quickly and follow a vector in the system interior. More
happened not in the session.
After the meeting we discussed more about the system. It turned out, namely that the issue "hard SF" is still getting used to. Namely, when eg scanning a system with the best attack and suddenly takes a spiral pattern over 100 days. When the game leader the 100 days it will not play, but time passes at a time with great strides.
What I like about Diaspora:
- The creation of the star cluster
- The creation of the characters
- Stunts are freely defined
- Hard SF is not represented by meticulous rules, but is in the narrative background
- ships are much easier to understand and concise illustrated than in Star Blazers Adventures
- diaspora is large and extensive A5 , t 270 pages, so I can do it in the truest sense of the word easier to take than the Cons 600 pages A4 Star Blazers Tome
What I do not like to Diaspora:
- In-game leader chapter will be made to about 50 pages from SOTC. The SOTC text is Open Game Content to my knowledge would have can therefore be printed for readers who have not SOTC.
- The Platoon Combat subsystem. The place could have been better used.
- The book was written as FATE alternative to travel. It shows. If you have never played Hard SF or read, some concepts are rather unclear
- advanced societies do ALWAYS! a major technological collapse. This game looks dystopian.
What I lack in Diaspora:
- Just those 50 pages from SOTC
- A chapter on modern astronomy
- a chapter or paragraph on Fleets and battles between them
- The promised Journal for spacecraft
- The utopian approach of travelers. It's cool to go to the stars!
So that is my first impression and also a game.
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