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Gesine Stanienda
Ireland
Galway
Galway
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This is the first RPG I have played in almost 20 years. I came by it by accident when one person from my gaming group (a DM on a Monday, a boardgamer on Tuesdays) brought a new face to the table, who really, really, really wanted to get back into RPGs. The DM knows one of the writers from Ashen Stars and asked would we want to playtest? And that is what we did.
So, what is Ashen Stars? It is a space-opera-style RPG based on Gumshoe.
Gumshoe is a really simple rule-set. You essentially need a D6. That is all.
In AS, you have several different races to choose from, then a list of general and investigative skills. You assign points from a pool to them, taking into consideration that your group needs to be able to fly a spaceship with all that entails (steering, engineering, hailing, weapons etc.) In addition, you need a skills-combination across all players that make it possible to solve puzzles and cope in a beat-up, post-apocalyptic universe (anything from forensic accounting to cop-talk and flirting are on offer here...).
Then, you choose your equipment and arms.
Lsatly, you choose your ship and fit it out (based on the credits that you have). And that is it, then you get on board and hold on.
[Actually, I make it sound very quick and easy, but the first evening was spent just with character-generation and equipment and ship-building. There was a lot of cross-referencing, thinking and weighing-up of combinations and alternatives. But it was really worth-while and fun.]
The adventures are then centred around investigating what is, essentially, crime in space. Hunting for clues, using your skills, thinking hard, debating and "grilling" your suspects. And that works really, really well. It takes about 1 session to get a full understanding of the skills and what they can do and when to use them. But now we are well able to use them "naturally" and the group works nicely together.
There is battle too, but even that is very simple. You spend points, roll a die to see do you hit. Then another D6 to determine damage. Simple, quick, efficient (you can tell that fighting is not my main reason for playing RPGs. I will battle hard if I have to, but I'm happy out investigating. I actually started with no points for shooting and realised that I was completely hopeless and spent our first battle hiding. So, I trained up  ).
We are now on the Dead Rock Seven supplement, and it plays well.
Who is this for?
People who like investigative games with a SciFi setting.
People who want to ease into / back into RPGs and don't want to remember rules upon rules but want to concentrate on the content first (perhaps this would be a gateway game).
I give it a 7 because I'm enjoying it immensely but would understand people who say that this is a little on the light side for the really heavy RPG'er.
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Eric Dodd
New Zealand
Martinborough
Wairarapa
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Thanks for the review! What RPGs did you play 20 years ago?
I think one of the great thing about GUMSHOE is that you can have a viable character with no Fighting skills at all - think Kaylee from Firefly, perhaps. In Trail of Cthulhu, Fleeing is often a much better combat option than Scuffling.
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Paolo Robino
Italy
Dueville
Vicenza
"I'm a Nay Saying worm beast!"
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Red Wine Pie wrote: think Kaylee from Firefly
You shouldn't have said that. Now I'm sold!
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Joshua Brumley
United States
Sierra Vista
Arizona
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I've been a fan of GUMSHOE since I was introduced to it by a friend. Just picked up Ashen Stars using some Christmas money and I have to say that I like what I'm reading so far. Hope to run it in the near future.
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Gesine Stanienda
Ireland
Galway
Galway
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Red Wine Pie wrote: Thanks for the review! What RPGs did you play 20 years ago?
Oh, I played some AD and D (and some of it was really Hack 'n Slay, I usually played Magic Users and was quite happy to fireball everyone into oblivion.) I also played CoC (and am now getting back into it, I DM'ed a one shot last week and am now preparing for Play by Forum (keeping and playing).
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