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Dave Terhune
United States
Colorado Springs
Colorado
This is a blatant example of frivolous spending.
I spent 100 geek gold and all I got was this lousy overtext.
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In my experience, Diaspora is unique among hard SF games. Most other SF games have tons of crunch, revolving around the technology. The GM and players are presented with detailed rules for generating planetary systems, starships, vehicles, weapons, and whatever else the designer decided to cram in there.
Diaspora, however, is different. Everything in Diaspora is designed to serve the needs of the story. That story merely happens to be set in a hard SF universe.
Diaspora is a FATE game, based on the 3.0 version first seen in Spirit of the Century. If you're familiar with FATE, you'll know all about Aspects and Fate Points, and you can probably just skip to the end where I mention that this game is awesome and you should buy it. If not, however, read on and I'll try to give a bit of an explanation.
Everything, and I mean everything, has Aspects. Aspects are descriptive words or phrases that tell us something about their owner. Aspects provide the goods that the GM and players spend Fate Points on. The best Aspects have "story potential" written all over them.
You can invoke or tag Aspects for bonuses, or you can compel them to force action or inaction. Need an example? No problem. Amanda Borman owns the Hermes, an ex-military vessel she acquired at the end of the war. She has the Aspect "I love this ship and it loves me".
If she and the Hermes are in space combat, trying to outmaneuver an enemy ship to avoid getting shot, she can invoke her Aspect to get a bonus to her Piloting roll. And since she has the best Pilot skill you can get, she'll probably put the Hermes in position for her gunner to put a torpedo right up their opponent's reaction drive exhaust port.
If she's scheduled to meet with a contact for some information, and hears that there was an explosion at the highport where the Hermes is docked, that very same Aspect can be compelled by the GM or one of the other players to force her to abandon her scheduled meeting to go check on her ship.
To use an Aspect in either of these ways requires the person doing it to spend a Fate Point. Everybody starts with 5 Fate Points (except the GM, who has an unlimited supply), which is enough to encourage usage rather than hording.
Several FATE products are available as free downloads, so if you're interested in it but don't want to spend any money until you're sure you'll like it, you have a way to do so.
I have only one minor problem with Diaspora, and that's its cost. I say it's a minor problem, because when I first got it, I was shocked to discover that I'd payed more than $30 for a little 6x9 book. I was half expecting a full size hardback on glossy paper. But you know what? After reading it cover to cover twice, and actually playing a game, I've come to discover that the little 6x9 hardcover book has just as much value, if not more, than those overproduced full-color monstrosities put out by other companies.
Here's the bottom line. If you're one of those gearhead types who loves nothing more than to design starships using detailed systems based on real physics, where you have to figure out how many megawatts your power plant has to produce to power your 3 megajoule laser cannon, computer, and life support system simultaneously, then Diaspora is not the game for you.
If, on the other hand, you're interested in telling stories where the characters are primary and the equipment secondary at best, you owe it to yourself to check out this gem of a game.
 
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Brad Murray
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
http://www.vsca.ca/Hollowpoint
Hollowpoint is out! Be a bad man.
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Thank you for a delightful and flattering review, Dave!
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Tim Dyke
United States
Point Roberts
Washington
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Thanks for the really nice words
Tim
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Paolo Robino
Italy
Dueville
Vicenza
"I'm a Nay Saying worm beast!"
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Good review. I'll add just two things:
- I was worried by the cost also, but then Brad came out with those discount vouchers on lulu, and that sealed the deal. After I received the book, I realized that it was well worth the full price anyway.
- The game has mini-games. Mini-games, man! Not only you have roleplaying game rules, but you have a man-to-man combat wargame, a space combat wargame, and a platoon-sized combat wargame – with air support and artillery rules, too! 
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Dave Terhune
United States
Colorado Springs
Colorado
This is a blatant example of frivolous spending.
I spent 100 geek gold and all I got was this lousy overtext.
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Paolo Robino wrote: - The game has mini-games. Mini-games, man! Not only you have roleplaying game rules, but you have a man-to-man combat wargame, a space combat wargame, and a platoon-sized combat wargame – with air support and artillery rules, too!
Dangit! I knew I forgot to mention something.
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Roger Calver
United Kingdom
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HI,
Can I ask if the game has any rules to build vehicles & star/spaceships ?
What Im reading so far is good and interests me just this part would be a bonus but not a deal breaker for me.
Rog.
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Brad Murray
Canada
Toronto
Ontario
http://www.vsca.ca/Hollowpoint
Hollowpoint is out! Be a bad man.
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Roger Calver wrote: Can I ask if the game has any rules to build vehicles & star/spaceships ?
What Im reading so far is good and interests me just this part would be a bonus but not a deal breaker for me.
Starships yes, vehicles not really, though one of the four mini-games operates at a platoon-scale and at that scale appropriate units include tanks and aircraft which you can design to operate at that scale.
Note however, that the design systems are most emphatically NOT construction simulators like you would see in GURPS or Traveller: you are not playing naval architect and fitting equipment into tonnages. Rather they are game design tools that allow you to create technology-appropriate stat blocks on which to paint your own descriptions. This is not as much fun to play with alone, but it is fast -- you can slap together a functional weapon, spacecraft, or suit of armour on the fly during play without much trouble and be sure that it's functional.
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Just the thought of GURPS vehicles makes me shudder.
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McKee wrote: Just the thought of GURPS vehicles makes me shudder.
It made us shudder too, which is why we veered as far away from that system as fast as we possibly could.
Also thank you Dave for the glowing, shiny review.
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That said I have great respect for the work done by the folks at SJgames. I'll never be a GURPS master, I'm just not up for the minutia.
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