Our good friends (and sponsors) over at Metal Weave Games have a Kickstarter campaign running for their new, fast-paced RPG about the people who make a living off the detritus of space travel in the future. They are 2/3rds of the way through the campaign, and have already met their primary funding goal. From now until the end, they’re trying to hit a few stretch goals, produce some supplementary content, and just deliver an even better game. If you haven’t checked Scavengers out yet, now is the perfect time.
Scavengers is a fast-paced, good-humored roleplaying game about space salvagers trying to get rich during the turmoil of galactic war.
- Scavengers is a game of dangerous but rewarding space-looting.
- It constantly challenges the players to balance risk and reward by keeping the focus of the game on looting.
- Through randomly generating new shipwrecks, the GM can continually expose the salvaging crew to strange and dangerous locales.
- The game’s unique setting not only places the player characters as salvagers, but also allows them to belong to a nascent faction of greedy entrepreneurs.
- The game mechanics are simple and easy to learn, letting the players and Game Master fluidly tell the story of the characters’ salvaging missions.
Character development goes beyond simple mechanics, allowing improvement through narrative, talents, and gear over the course of the game. Not only does improvement help the characters survive, but they can make more money as well — the things scavenger dreams are made of!- The system supports a light, humorous tone. Characters and situations lean toward caricature and exaggeration. Travis Hanson’s excellent cartoon-inspired art style makes Scavengers fun to both read and play.
The game system is simple. Using only D6s, the players have great liberty in running their characters. There are no standard actions and the players are free to pick their own approach when handling dangers. You want to fight the enemy, talk to them or hack their computers? The system handles it all effortlessly
Instead of using health points or similar mechanics, in Scavengers you must be careful not to get too many Danger Points. The longer the scavengers work and the more problems they overcome, the bigger the chance for a fatal accident. How much danger you are willing to risk is an important part of conducting a salvaging run. More loot may be just a wreck away, but so may be the final Danger Point that kills you.
A character’s skills and talents, modified by detrimental conditions, determine how many dice you roll when faced with obstacles during salvaging. There are many situations in which a Game Master may call for dice rolls, but none more significant as when the characters are confronting threats. When resolving threats, the salvagers must work together and roll more successes than the threat difficulty to successfully overcome it. Failure may do nothing at first, but as more Danger Points accumulate, death may be just a misstep away.
For the Game Master, the game is easy to pick up and play, and allows a lot of improvisation. When the PCs enter a new ship, you generate it randomly from a handful of random tables. The number of rolls a GM makes will depend on the size of the ship, but is easily done in a couple of minutes. The information from these rolls yield enough to get the GM started with creating the environment the PCs will be looting. They can either create much of the interior of the ship right away, or use it fluidly, adapting as the characters progress. You are guaranteed to get a cool new environment every time. At that point, your imagination and the players’ decisions guide how much loot the salvagers manage to get away with.
Sound like fun? Check out their campaign now, and add your support!
[Metal Weave Designs is a GeekDad sponsor. For more information on how you can get your product featured on GeekDad, click here.]
