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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions $0.00
Average Rating:4.0 / 5
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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
Publisher: Spidermind Games
by JD S. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 09/05/2018 07:31:08

Yet another 'SpecOps in Spaaaaaccccee'. Nothing special to recommend it.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
Publisher: Spidermind Games
by Megan R. [Featured Reviewer]
Date Added: 03/31/2018 13:02:50

The Introduction sets the scene: as a citizen in a vast galactic civilisation of the 34th century, you start with the basics and claw your way up to - if you can get there - 'Elite' status. The galaxy is filled with perils: pirates, ruthless bounty hunters, heartless corporations and terrible creatures, lost cities and undiscovered planets. Cheap faster-than-light travel has opened up space to exploration and trade, humanity exploding across the stars, building new colonies, cities, nations and empires and discovering untold riches to exploit. But not all is well, there is terrible inequality and corruption and many who think the best way to make their living is to steal from somebody else.

In this PDF there is a brief adventure, intended to be played out in a single session, four pre-generated characters and enough of an explanation of the rules to let you play. Character generation, equipment (apart from specific stuff that turns up in the adventure) and the full rules will be found in the Core Rulebook. The intention is that you and your group can give the game a spin and see if it's to your taste before parting with your money.

The next section is How To Play which crams in a brief description of what role-playing in as well as explaining enough of the rules to let you play the adventure. The mechanics are based around the D10: task resolution involves rolling a D10 and adding the Skill Bonus of the appropriate skill, attempting to roll over a pre-determined difficulty number. In this game there are THREE combat systems: one for personal combat, one for vehicles and one for spacecraft. Rather than trying to explain them here, the relevant rules are provided in the body of the adventure as the need arises for them. Of course, this means that whoever is the GM is going to have to explain them, they cannot hand around copies of the rules section of the PDF for everyone to understand in advance! There's also something called Karma, used to power specific capabilities in a jam... each character starts with 12 points which normally are replenished, but for the purposes of this quickstart adventure, once they are gone they are gone.

Next we are introduced to the characters, who are law enforcement officers in the Asellus Primus system. Each has a Viper spaceship, a police interdiction and enforcement vessel, which carries a Surface Reconnaissance Vehicle (SRV) which is pretty much like a moon buggy and is used for scampering around planetside. Each comes with a character sheet and some background, as well as details of their Viper and SRV. (Personally I find it a bit odd that, if they are a team, they each have their own spaceship, but given that the Introduction tells us that spacecraft ownership is a bit like car ownership today it makes a little more sense.)

The scenario itself opens with some background on a narcotics gane with a novel history, then play begins with the party being called in to see their captain in the precinct house, er, orbital platform. From there they are sent to investigate an apparent derelict space freighter... and the fun begins. Neatly, there's plenty of room for interaction and investigation as well as ample opportunity to get into a brawl or two. There's also an interesting sidebar: in this game there is no artificial gravity (well, not unless it's spin-generated).

Descriptions are good, conveying a good sense of surroundings and situation, and a good attempt has been made to anticipate likely player questions and actions. There's a space battle against pirates to be fought, and it's here that the relevant game mechanics are gone through. More fun and games ensue when they reach the derelict - getting aboard for a start, and then hand-to-hand combat is likely too. Again the necessary mechanics are detailed here. Clues aboard lead the party to a nearby planet and, although it is probably contrived to give an opportunity to demonstrate the vehicle combat rules everything comes together to produce an exciting police prodedural in space.

The adventure is intriguing enough in its own right, and provides a good introduction to a lot of the rules of the game (including all three combat systems), so by the time you have finished it you ought to have a good idea of whether or not this game is for you. Personally I think the details of the combat systems would be better in the rules section than embedded in the adventure, if only because the rules section would then serve as a good ready-reference for players of both this adventure and the full game. Otherwise, a good adventure and an interesting setting make me look forwards to the full game.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
Publisher: Spidermind Games
by Dave L. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 02/10/2017 20:35:54

The Worst Intentions for the Elite Dangerous Roleplaying Game, is a very good sampler and certainly does allow the players to partially play the ruleset and experience the universe of this exciting new RPG (from Spidermind Games) and get a feeling for how it works.

The sampler does not contain the full rule sets, but the standalone booklet contains a single adventure, to play. Included are four pre-generated characters including their ship and equipment. Partial rules for personal combat, spaceship combat and ground combat are also included.

As with the d10 format, it is easy to play and follow, and the game universe is wide enough for modular or free form play.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
Publisher: Spidermind Games
by Paul M. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/29/2017 10:13:56

Very interesting ship combat mechanics, and a fantastic setting to tell some great stories. Going to be watching this one closely.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
Publisher: Spidermind Games
by Nick W. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/27/2017 12:06:08

The potential here is huge!

This is exactly what it says it is, it is a taste of the full rules set and is presented in a very easy to follow and play adventure.

The rules are very well constructed allowing fast, imaginative game play with great cinematic action.

Where other SF systems get bogged down with complex rules, Elite Dangerous gets to the point and creates a sense of peril, cavalier daring and edge of your seat action.

In keeping with the Elite Dangerous universe, each player has their own ship so everyone gets emersed in the gameplay.

Vehicle and personal combat also follow suit.

I've played many, many systems over the years, some good, some not so good......this system is great! And it's just the playtest!

Looking on the Kickstarter page you can see that Spidermind Games have the scope for a massive amount of background and expansions here, but as with all projects of this type, it needs our backing.

Just try it....if you have the spirit of adventure inside you then get behind this project, I truly believe that this is what SF RPG fans has been waiting for.......

I know have!



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
Publisher: Spidermind Games
by Markus H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/27/2017 08:19:57

This is a short adventure in the elite universe! its no ruleset, there are no real quick rules but everything you need to play. its railroading yes but then you can see every part of the game. Fight/roleplay/explore... and you get nice hints what the nsc will do if you interact with him relating to your method (charming/intimidate...)

the Rules will be published when the Kickstarter ends so no worry about full rules. its only to get the feeling of the setting!

i like this quick adventure and i look forward to more rules/setting infos...

so 5 stars from 5 for a quickstarter showing a setting and give a basic feeling of the rules!

nice NSC, nice char sheets, nice spaceships..



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
Publisher: Spidermind Games
by Jordan R. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/26/2017 23:38:00

Giving a bad grade to a free product seems pointless : worst case is that someone downloads it and loses a bit of time before realizing it's not to their liking. I decided to do it anyway, since this free quickstart is used to draw people to the Kickstarter.

First, two disclaimers. First, I did not play nor GM the adventure, only read it, so my review is based on that. The mechanics are perfectly fine in theory (d10+skills VS DC; only the d10 is used, so all damages are multiple of d10s), but the numbers and other specifics may or may not be sensible in play. Second, I never played the computer game (but want to) and don't know anything about the universe it's set in.

So, why 2 stars? On the good side, the space combat rules looks promising : while still a bit rough at the edges (why would anyone snipe, seriously?) it's sufficiently abstracted to be interesting to run while still giving players meaningful and interesting tactical choices. Dogfighting actually looks pretty exciting, yet not overly complicated! The document also looks pretty good : while not gorgeous, it's full-color and have many images of good quality (albeit quite small ones). On the bad side, the adventure is sub-par, and the organisation of the document is absolutely terrible, making it uselessly hard to run the game.

[Spoilers] The story itself is pretty boring, and the PCs don't have much room to be inventive : the information they get is not enough to help them make meaningful choices (there are four blips on your radar, some bigger than other : which one do you investigate?), the enemies are basically zombies that can't give informations, the maps are uninspiring, the combat encounters are bland, there are some inconsistencies, plot holes and deus ex machina... It's mostly a railroad, with some "bonus places" to investigate if the PCs randomly chooses to go to a blip where the storyline does not unfolds. There is even a complete fail point midway : if the PCs land their spaceships directly at the points of interest on the planet (instead of landing 300 miles away and using a land rover, for reasons that just don't make sense), the adventure end early and in failure. The authors advise the GM to tell that to the players... So they know there is a problem, but instead of fixing it, just instruct the GM to either railroad the players or let them fail the entire mission. [End of spoilers]

But the real problem of the product is its organisation. Instead of putting all the rules at the same place, some are given at the beginning, while others are given the first time they're needed; in play, that's sure to be a nightmare. Because of that, the first personnal combat encounter is split in two by the combat rules, so you have the mooks initiative at page 17 and their tactics at page 20. The same problem happens for the first spaceship combat; even worse, the first land vehicle combat tells you to reference the space combat, but add some modifications, so you need to flip through two different set of pages just to know how to run it, three if you take into account the stats block at the end of the booklet. Add to that the fact that there is no rules summary for the players, and that the damage and special rules of their weapons are not on their character sheet, and you see how complicated running a simple combat can become.

Oh, yeah : simply printing the pages from the book to give them to players would also give them information about the adventure... and the advice to fudge die rolls given to GMs. The authors actually know that, advising players curious about the rules to not read the informations around it...

The same organisation problem plague the descriptions : a map is shown many pages after the room descriptions starts, and this description is given without telling the GM it refers to a numbered room on the map, or even that there is indeed a map; a super simple combat encounter takes more than a full page to describe; the background informations you would need as a GM to get the big picture is given only when the PCs might get to learn it, so at different places in the adventure. Another thing : the informations the NPCs knows are given as call-out text answers to potential questions. Lots of wasted space, and good luck keeping the conversations natural...

Oh, yeah : there is no table of content. I think bookmarks are supposed to be integrated in the PDF, but I don't see them (that still would not replace a table of content).

The whole thing give the impression to be written like a novel, not a game meant to be used and referenced by a GM. Here is a sentence taken from the description of a place the PCs might visit : "The players might also want to shoot the transmission aerial - this is both a good and a bad thing to do, as will be seen later." "As will be seen later"? Yes; four paragraphs of backstory later, to be exact, not that you could know that without reading all of them. It's not even the only time the text does that! As a GM, you need either to learn everything by heart or prepare some serious notes if you want to run this effectively.

If you are interested in the Kickstarter (or in the complete product, if you are reading this when it's out), I would advise you to seriously read this quickstart before, not just skim it.



Rating:
[2 of 5 Stars!]
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Elite Dangerous RPG - The Worst Intentions
Publisher: Spidermind Games
by Mr P S H. [Verified Purchaser]
Date Added: 01/24/2017 14:37:02

Not played though this, will change rating depending on how well/badly it plays out. Really hoping it plays out well, as I'm very interested in the full EDRPG when it comes out.

However couple of things to note.

  • No stats for Orson Savage
  • No tokens for the personal combat
  • No tokens for the vehicle combat
  • Personal combat could do with larger maps for better detailing, maybe with a grid sizing for range checks?, although I do kinda like non-grid based gameplay.
  • Not really clear on the "See the Spolier section below" page 33. I've read it a few times and cannot see what it's supposed be.

There is also some repartition of paragraphs I've noted, althought not repeating here due to spoilers.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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