Review: Starbreaker

Or, to give it its full title, Starbreaker: Saints and Synners Core. Someday, I will stop buying Savage Worlds SF settings, because I rarely use them except as reading material; but not today.

In a Nutshell: Space opera setting for SWADE; 220 page PDF from Star Anvil Studios, available here for $20 at time of writing. PCs are hardened criminals, who may or may not be reformed.

Contents

• Introduction (16 pages): This gives a brief overview of the setting; the obligatory fiction pitching a job offer to a prison inmate, recent history and current affairs, key worlds, what life is like in the major power blocs and regions.
• Characters and Crew (35 pages): Although character generation is very close to standard SWADE, there are a few extra steps, mostly focused on the group as a whole.  Having chosen whether they are criminals doing crimes, or ex-criminals infiltrating the Syndicate to take it down from the inside, the players next choose a crew type; heist team, infiltrators, strike units, enforcers, magnates, troubleshooters. Each type of crew has a free Crew Edge, which any member of the team can use, and the type also determines the kind of missions they will take on. Next, the crew chooses one of the 12 factions within the Syndicate as an ally, and one as their primary opposition; the crew's standing within its allied faction is measured by a Favour die, of which more later. The crew also has constructive possession of a light transport starship. Individual PCs also choose one of 13 species (detailed in this chapter) and one of 10 professions (detailed in the next one).
• Professions (27 pages): The professions are Assassin, Bounty Hunter, Engineer, Grifter, Hypertech (i.e. hackers), Pirate, Psy Commando, Psy Operative, Smuggler, Thief. These function much like the class edges in Pathfinder for Savage Worlds; each has requirements, perks, and a few unique Edges. The chapter includes five new Hindrances, one new skill, and 19 new Edges (including six Crew Edges), as well as notes on specific favours the various professions can call on from their Connections.
• Technology (22 pages): A few new items of basic gear, armour, and weapons. Drones, with both stock designs and rules for building custom ones. Modifications to the starship rules in the SWADE SF Companion, principally two new FTL technologies; jump gates, and jump drives of different sizes and ranges. Half a dozen stock starships. Four stock vehicles for travel onworld. Finally, the Neural Interface Controller, implanted in all SAINTS, which causes pain if they betray their patron organisation; this is chiefly a plot device to explain why the team works together and is trusted to go off on their own, and has little in the way of mechanical effects.
• Rules (8 pages): This lists the SWADE setting rules activated for the setting, and adds new ones for black market goods, the Neural Interface Controller, schemes, starship chases and dogfights, and syndicate favour.
• Cyber and Psy (10 pages): Interestingly, hacking, cyborgs and psionics are all handled as Arcane Backgrounds. Psionics is more or less normal; hackers' powers only have effects in cyberspace, so for example disguise affects what shows on a monitor screen, but someone who gets Mk I eyeballs on you sees the real thing; and cyborgs sacrifice body parts to gain Powers, with the loss of the body parts being represented by extra Hindrances. The pages for this last option are a little out of order, so that I had to read it several times to understand.
• GM Background (40 pages): Details for the GM only, including the galaxy's secrets. Galactic history, including who the traditional long-vanished alien races were and what happened to them; more information on the main regions of space - the corporate worlds and the major corporations, the pirate-infested Oridium Nebula, interstellar governments, the Sector Agent INtragalactic Taskforce which employs the SAINTS, the Syndicate and its 12 factions (most of which are future extrapolations of current and historical criminal organisations), the assassins' guild, the bounty hunters' league, pirates and outlaw gravcycle gangs. Finally, there are almost five pages devoted to the planet Echo, which seems to be intended as the hub for the PCs' adventures.
• Adventure (8 pages): Like many Savage Worlds settings, this one includes an adventure generator, where you can create new adventures by drawing cards. The first card determines which faction is the adventure's antagonist, which is different for SAINTs than for Synners. Next, divide the deck into numbers and face cards; draw one face card per PC to determine NPCs the PCs will interact with. Thirdly, draw one or more number cards for the mission profile and objectives, cross-referencing the result with the crew type to get an objective, with the card suit giving extra details; draw once for a simple mission, or one card per PC for a complex one.
• Bestiary (36 pages): This is more about people than beasts or monsters, although beasts there are; it has NPC versions of the PC professions as well as other generic NPCs. There's a party of NPC adventurers to act as allies, rivals or both; the bulk of the chapter is taken up by movers and shakers the PCs might encounter, all fully detailed and each with an adventure seed involving them.

...and we close with a list of backers from the Kickstarter that funded the setting. (I managed to resist that one, but as you see I wound up buying it in the end.)

What I Liked

• Crew Edges. These are not only useful but a good way to tie the PCs together.
• Schemes. These are a mix of Interludes and Quick Encounters used to plan and execute criminal capers with much of the detail abstracted, reminding me a little of The Scheme Pyramid.
• Syndicate Favour. This works much like Wealth in the core rules, but is used to get the crew's allied faction to handle its logistical needs. The group of PCs shares a single Favour Die.
• Arcane Backgrounds used to represent cybernetic augments and the powers of hackers in the digital world.
• Adventure generator. More complex than usual, and all the better for it. I have to try this out.

What I Didn't Like

• Jump drives with different ranges, or more accurately, the fact that it seems pointless to have them, since nowhere in the book is there a map, table, or anything else telling you how far apart worlds are.
• The encouragement to use VR as a way to import other genres and settings. This idea pops up periodically in various games, but it doesn't appeal to me. If you're doing a one-shot Deadlands adventure using pregens, I don't see what you gain by having it happen on the starship's holodeck.

What I Think

I like this one, to the point that I now regret not joining the Kickstarter. I probably wouldn't run it straight, but there are a lot of bits I could see myself using in my campaigns. I might even get some of the adventures and use those.