In a comment to a previous post, James Mishler asked me to post the review of Ken St. Andre's science fiction RPG, Starfaring, that appeared in issue #35 of SPI's Moves. Here it is in its entirety:
In a comment to a previous post, James Mishler asked me to post the review of Ken St. Andre's science fiction RPG, Starfaring, that appeared in issue #35 of SPI's Moves. Here it is in its entirety:
Wow, that's harsh. Mostly fair, but harsh. I can see why he waxed so very ebullient about Traveller in the the very next review...
ReplyDeleteJames, I assume you've gotten a copy in the eleven years since that previous post, right? If not, it's available on DTRPG as of last month.
ReplyDeleteStarfaring is one of the few very early RPGs I never had back in the day but I'm no fan of Ken's work so the DTRPG listing didn't tempt me into fixing that. Reading your review reminds me in many ways of TSR's Star Probe and Star Empires games, the former of which was out a year before Starfaring and has a very similar theme. Lighter on pseudo-roleplay elements to be sure, but so many other commonalities I suspect it was a source of inspiration.
It's amusing that Ken's own blurb for the game (written last month, no less) stresses that no, honest, it's a roleplaying game, as well as the usual disclaimer that he'd never heard of Metamorphosis Alpha (heard that one before) when he was writing it, a bit of brag about how it still has ideas "light years ahead of any other SF RPG out there" and a moan about always being second place. Positively stereotypical of the guy IME.
I do own a copy now, yes.
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