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[Mephisto]

Welcome to Let's Read!

In this thread, I'll be taking a book, reading it cover-to-cover, and posting my thoughts. You can think of it as a long, rambly review. Anyone who wants to comment, ask questions, or generally kibbitz is welcome to do so. If you have the item yourself, then please follow along and share! I'll do roughly a chapter per post, and aim for a new post every couple of days.

If you like this format, and want to read more threads like it, please see (and subscribe to!) the megathread.

Carrying on my RPG Geek tradition, I'll be doing a Let's Read of another Kickstarter product I received, Shadows Over Sol.

Shadows Over Sol was the subject of a successful Kickstarter back in 2015. It, the core system backing it (Saga Machine), and the one other game using that system (Against the Dark Yogi, an interesting RPG set in Mythic India) are authored by Thorin Tabor. Tab Creations then went on to create Dime Adventures, their one RPG that I don't own but should probably look into at some point.

They originally sought $1200 but ended up with $7800, unlocking all 15 listed stretch goals. I've given most of the products I received at least a once-over and was pleased with them. Everything is in full color. The core book that I received is the standard hardcover but the pages feel nice to turn. I'm not sure what the premium printing would add. I ordered my at-cost copy four months after the estimated delivery date which, as far as Kickstarters generally go, is ahead of schedule.

The system's tagline is "Science Fiction Horror Roleplaying". That's wide open to interpretation, however - it includes three different "modes", survival, investigative, and action horror. Each, in turn, gives an increasing amount of Wealth and Purchases. We'll cover them once we progress through a significant portion of the book.

* I have not yet played this, so take my findings with a grain of salt.

I hope the above interests you in some manner. If so, stick around and I'll start my actual review over the coming days.

Feel free to jump straight to any section you may be interested in. I'll update this list as we go.

Table of Contents and partial Introduction
Introduction (conclusion)

[Mephisto]

The Book

I'll be working from both dead tree and electronic material. There may be minute differences.

Table of Contents
(3p.)

This is a very in-depth table of contents. It goes three headings deep ("Dark Future" -> "A Future History" -> "2170s to 2180s", for example) and then goes a step further and includes entries for blocks of explanatory text ("2170s to 2180s" contains a box with more info on The Ganymede Conference and one regarding The Jupiter Group Incident, both of which appear in the ToC).

My first complaint is revealed here.

  There is such a thing as too much minutiae in a ToC. This one's pretty good. Ask about my QuestCore Let's Read if you want to see one that does a bit too much. It's got a ToC at least as long as Shadows Over Sol for a book that's a fifth the length.
  I like having system info and character creation fairly early in the book. We won't be discussing any mechanics in this Let's Read until we get through 97 pages of introduction and history. We need to get through a full half of the book before we can make our character.

Introduction
(3p.)

This section starts off with some short fiction that really describes the world (solar system, I suppose) of Shadows Over Sol.

The space travel of 2214 (the present day) isn't much faster than that of 2017. It takes six months to get from Mars to Ceres. Stasis exists, though, so you can while away your time asleep instead of tearing at each other's throats. That comes later.

Then we learn that the crew is made up of three subcultures. There's no good real-world analog for this that I can think of at the moment. They're not political parties. They're not religions. Like both, however, there is sometimes conflict (occasionally violent) between them. When the ship set out, these subcultures were at peace. Some time during transit, however, two of them decided to fight it out over something.

We learn that stasis sickness is a thing that the players will have to deal with. It's why the crew was woken a day before arriving at a corp docking facility (which, coincidentally, chose one of the sides in this subculture war). Reading their backlog of communications, everyone learns of the fight. Using tech straight from Shadowrun (marking targets in augmented reality, retrieving your smuggled guns, or whipping out your implanted arm knife), some people (those that would probably be killed by the corp) try to start a mutiny. This leads us to a very evocative paragraph about the properties of blood in zero-G.

Mutiny failed. The ship docks and is met with silence. Good news, the people who didn't want to dock won't be killed by the corp. Bad news, they'll be killed by the bioengineered creature that took out everyone in the facility.

Themes

We're quickly introduced to five themes that are important to Shadows Over Sol - isolation, social change, new horizons, fear of the unknown, and conspiracy. Arguments could be made that four of these are described in the intro fiction.

• Isolation - the whole "ship being completely out of communication for six months" thing
• Social change - we were introduced to the idea of subcultures, though it didn't really describe them much yet
• New horizons - something something colonization. The fiction crew is going to Ceres; I'm saying it counts
• Fear of the unknown - "Is the corp going to kill us when we dock?", "Why the radio silence?"

Conspiracy is fairly self-explanatory. With all of the improvements and changes going on, there will always be people trying to suppress/exploit it.

This is getting pretty long at this point. Up next, we finish off the introduction by discussing inspirations, needed materials, and a short glossary.

[Mephisto]

Let's finish up the introduction, shall we?

Introduction, Part 2

We kick this update off with a watch/read list.

Recommended Media

There are a few types of media present.

This is "Science Fiction Roleplaying", after all, so we've got the requisite Alien and The Thing references. Rounding out our movie list is Europa Report.

I wouldn't think to include Europa Report on a list like this but, taking a look at our themes, it really does fit. The protagonists begin the movie dealing with isolation and drama, exploring new horizons. Once the creature starts to make its appearance known, it begins to delve into fear of the unknown with a logical conclusion of conspiracy (will the government try to cover this up, or will someone try to exploit these findings?).

There is one book series mentioned (which I have sadly not read; maybe I should) - The Expanse. Not much is said about it, other than it being stellar and sharing many themes.

Finally, other role playing games. It surprised me to see a game say "go check out some games I didn't write" but here we are. In this list are Eclipse Phase, Transhuman Space, and The Void. I'm a bit of an RPG collector so all of those are going on the list of games to eventually buy (though you should note that Rob Boyle, one of the guys behind Eclipse Phase, has all of the first edition PDFs for free on his blog and the PDF version of The Void is PWYW on DriveThruRPG; I prefer physical books but these will tide me over until then).

Preparation for Play

  I don't like having "What is Roleplaying" sections in every single core book I buy. Shadows Over Sol limits this to the following:

If you do not know what a tabletop roleplaying game is, a wealth of information is available online -- more than could ever be reproduced here.

To play, you'll need:

• This book
• Friends (;_;)
• Pencils
• Paper
• A standard deck of playing cards for each player
• Ideally some tokens

Note the lack of dice. I like novel mechanics and Saga Machine has one of the more interesting resolution mechanics I've seen. If this is a problem for you, (spoiler) there are d10 rules in the back. We'll cover these eventually.

There's some explanatory text here about Saga Machine. It's used in all three of Tab Creations' RPGs, though only their first two releases (Against the Dark Yogi and Shadows Over Sol) are mentioned. Their third release, Dime Adventures, was kickstarted after Shadows Over Sol was released.

Looking at the Saga Machines page on the Tab Creations web site, we see three upcoming releases - Shattered Dominion (Generic fantasy world is about to go through an industrial revolution a la Eberron), Masked Metropolis (After a Super showdown, the big names are MIA a la The Incredibles), and Nexus Endtime (A world eater ate your world and now you're fighting back a la Green Lantern; note, it was unclear if this is a supers game or not).

[Marketing voice] Saga Machine is a solid core. The various games based on it tailor the rules a bit for that game's genre and themes. This makes it easy to go from one Saga Machine game to another. [/Marketing voice]

Saga Machine is OGL so, if it appeals to you, go make your own game using it.

Glossary

Rounding out the introduction is a glossary. I'm not going to talk about any of the entries right now - it seems redundant to define subcultures and genelines now when we're going to talk about them in-depth later.

And with that, the introduction is complete. Up next, Dark Future. Lots (and lots and lots and...) of history. The subsections therein vary wildly in length, from 2-22 pages. I expect this will take a while.

Now that all of that's over with, it's time for a pop quiz!

Given the small amount of setting and mechanics I've talked about, would you be interested in a game of this?

Horror visited upon humans by gengineered beasties isn't for everyone. Given the whole subculture system and the fact that Eclipse Phase is one of the inspirations, I bet Shadows Over Sol would be a good system for exploring the horrors that humans can visit upon those of slightly different outlooks.

Would that be more palatable than straight horror?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I don't get it. This game doesn't sound like it's about anything.

[Mephisto]

It's about sci-fi horror of all types. The only things we've seen to support that thus far are the list of media recommendations and the introductory fiction. There will probably be a bit more in the coming chapter.

[Loud Whispers]

ptw

[Paxiecrunchle]

seems fun, If I see anyone playing I would try and join.

[AzyWng]

I'm not quite sure what's going on, but I'll post to watch all the same.

[Mephisto]

I've ceased all RPG-related activities for the time being. One can only subsist on game reviews and a lack of gaming for so long. I'll get bit by the bug again at some point, at which time I'll finish this. Apologies for being a loser.