Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn Review - 40 Year Update

Title: Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn
Author: TSR Staff
Year: 1982
Pages: Basic book, 20 pages. Expanded book, 64 pages. SF0, 32 pages.
Number of players: 4-8
Rating: ★★★

Star Frontiers could be called "TSR's game not based on D&D." Chances are this was one game you played when not playing D&D. If were a glutton for punishment, it could also be the game you played when not playing Traveller. 

The main problem with Star Frontiers is, it isn't D&D or Traveller. The secondary problem is, it isn't a tactical game or a board game either. Shockingly, it has elements of all 4 genres. 

Mind blow? 

Yeah. Me, too. 

This tiny box packs in all of the complexity of a multi-book game engine like Traveller or any edition of D&D squished into 116 pages. However, it isn't like either of those. Its system is 1d100 based. It has levels but only 1-6 and no classes. Plus aliens. Real aliens. 

Where Star Frontiers deviates from D&D the most and hugs Traveller the most is your characters are complex and fully formed from the get-go. You are never a knock-kneed dude in robes hoping someone won't blast you into next year because you don't know anything. Like Traveller, you're marketable from day one. That's important later. 

With this first set, you have 4 playable races, Dralasites, Humans, Vrusk, and Yazirians, and one NPC race called the Sathar. Each character has pairs of attributes: Strength and Stamina, Dexterity and Reaction Speed, Intuition and Logic, Personality, and Leadership. These skills are "rockable" meaning you can steal a bit of Strength for Stamina, Dexterity for Reaction Speed and so on. You cannot swap Leadership for Strength. 

This game has no classes per se. It has 3 PSA skill groups Military, Biosocial, and Technological. Each character selects one skill from one group and a secondary skill from a second group. Due to this combining of two wildly different skill sets, no two characters are really the same. Another twist on the rules is they assume every character will use a weapon, even if unskilled in weapon use. Firepower is a great equalizer. 

"Level" is equally odd, there are 6 levels of skill for every skill, and your character doesn't really have a level at all. "Level" is answering "What is the highest level skill you have?" A new character and an old one can basically stand shoulder to shoulder. 

This game is in a boxed set with 3 booklets, a two-part map, counters, and a cover/map for the module SF0. 

The first booklet is the 20-page basic game. It's a module in its own right and teaches players how to play on the map with the counters. While it may seem like an underwhelming first-game session, it is specifically designed to march the players through every rule in the Expanded book. At least in short form. You can expect at least one person from the party to be able to shoot, throw a grenade, hack devices, drive an array of vehicles, do medicine, heal, etc. 

The expanded book does just that, expands on gameplay. The rules #1 oddity is the game is meant to be the theater of the mind, which makes the map and counters rather secondary unless you want to make your own maps. Within the expanded rules is a monsters section, where a couple of typical alien creatures are given and rules to modify or create whole new monsters/aliens are nicely integrated with the character skills. This system is very cool and powerful. 

Rules for vehicles and robots are equally nicely spelled out and are designed to go hand and hand with your character's abilities as are tactics and movement. Even though you are limited to a handful of skills, the system is really robust because there is usually more than one way to progress. 

For completeness, the module SF0 Crash on Volturnus continues the complexity and expands (then contracts) the world around the players. Once your players have gone through this module, they will clearly understand the concept of "Talk First/Shoot Second", a detail only hinted at in the Basic and Expanded rules. 

For 116 pages, the rules are tight and feel well planned. The presentation is wonderful, on par with anything at the time, and perhaps taking a jump forward with the nice maps and counters. Oddly, space combat and ship construction were left out, probably due to space constraints.  

The game system is very inventive, but without continuing support from TSR there the game feels lacking in many regards. The specialty of this set of rules is the home brew campaign which is very doable, which is a good thing because that's all we got after the second boxed set. Back in the day, the two modules based on the films 2001 and 2010 felt odd and out of place in a space opera setting, but that should have been a clue as to how robust the system was when playing out homebrew stuff. 

Many systems when viewed in hindsight have a dated feel where it is a product of its own age. This set suffers this in spades. It's not like D&D or Traveller, where it was reimagined over and over again to keep up with the times. We are forever holding out for Han, Duke, and 3rd Imperium that never came. There are no psionics, no Force, no magic, no sentient killer robots, no cybernetics or the internet. Computers tend to zig-zag from the mighty talking machines capable of full thought, but can't be removed from the 15 rooms they reside in which makes them ignoreable.   

Many times, I have totally ditched the background and acted out scenarios from the Stainless Steel Rat series, Star Wars, and Aliens in this system. It actually gives a good accounting of itself. While I rated it three stars, remember this is three modern stars. As flawed as the support was, the rule still shines. 

Star Frontiers: Alpha Dawn
At DriveThruRPG

I recently picked up the print copy from DriveThruRPG. The printing is excellent and the binding looks sharp and clean.  

The Basic Rules, Expanded Rules, SF-0, plus the maps and counters are all printed within the same book. These are unmodified copies of the originals. The whole thing runs about 200 pages.

The contents/index is in that classic OSR blue while the maps nicely have a border that can allow you to scan. Theoretically, you could cut them out, but I wouldn't want to damage the book like that. Of course, DriveThruRPG saves you the trouble by offering a PDF/Print combo. 

I'm working on a review of the Knight Hawks set from DriveThruRPG and then hope to return to classic ORS D&D themed posts for a while. Sometimes, I get stuck in a rut with Sci-Fi and can't stop myself. 

I can't believe that 2022 marks 40 years of Star Frontiers. 

Revisiting Star Smuggler - Session 008 Repeating the Motion - Mission Summary One

The crews of the Zephyr and Sirocco are fully fueled and ready to go. They have 76,253 to spend. 

In this post, I'll be trying the Regari to Palatek run again to see if more resources can make this work. 

This event is offered via e192. The stated rules are you can buy hand carved items for a base price of 5 CU on Regari and sell them on Palatek for 10. On Palatek, you can buy electronics for 60 and sell on Regari for 100, base prices. Base prices are modified by a die roll. On Regari, it's impossible to buy or sell for greater than 1 1/2 times base price. Palatek could have prices up to triple the normal cost. 

There are some unstated restrictions here. First, each drop off/pick up takes "the rest of the day". Second, boosting into orbit to get to the jump point takes 4 hours. Jumping burns 1 hypercharge. Landing requires 2 entry rolls which could be either dangerous or cost time. You are also limited by funds available and if those are fine, how much space you have on board for cargo. The items are 1 CU and have no special restrictions on storage, so you could pack every available space with them. 

The Sorocco and the Zephyr have a total of 150 CU of storage in their combined cargo bays. Being two ships, each jump will burn 2 hypercharges. 

The crew loads up the 150 CU worth of carvings at a price of 750 secs. This takes all day. They get to Palatek and roll for entry. They get result e103, which describes finding a 4 CU status pod. There is plenty of room, so they bring it onboard. They manage to avoid detection landing and off load the goods. They make 3000 from the carvings. They take on 150 CU of electronics for 9000 secs. They have burned a second day. 

On the return trip to Regari, they get through both checks without being detected. On landing, they sell the electronics for 15,000. This ends a third day. 

They move over to the spaceport and refuel at a cost of 2000 secs (500 times 2 times charges, times two ships).

At this point, I will sanity check the numbers. They had 76,253. In the plus column they have 15,000 and 3,000 and in the loss column they have 2,000, 9,000 and 750. Additionally, that have used 4 days and have a 4 CU stasis pod with unknown contents. They made 6250. 

On the surface, they 2.5 times the normal cargo space and far more money than a typical player would have. Under normal play conditions, the player would have to make 10 runs to make this much money. It is possible to get lucky and have nothing slow you down, but it would take a minimum of 11 days because they would have to take on hypercharges at least once. 

Entry rolls are a key factor. At Regari, there are 4 rolls that do not effect you while there are two that lead down paths that can kill you outright and one more that ends the game in a single die roll or choice. At Palatek, there are three entry events that have no effect, two that could end in either all day events or combat which would probably end the game and a 6th event that has 3 bad endings, two neutral and a sixth that could end the game in a win condition after a lot of time and investment of energy. 

The rolls when entering areas are far less dangerous, you could by pass them by making a good roll.  On these two planets, there are 5 events which are more flavoring than anything else, while a sixth path leads to two slightly dangerous or annoying events and one event that is usually positive. There is event an event that allows you bribe your way into an area, trading money for time and safety. 

Spitballing things, if you run this mission 11 times you'll average about 568 secs per run. However due to the low prices of the carvings, the player would have to complete a full cycle to see this level of reward. Early in the game, the player will be more conservative that this and may fail to pick up on all the nuances of the mission. 

Since my team doesn't have a clock ticking, I can investigate many of the mini-missions in the game to see what pays off most. 

Revisiting Star Smuggler - Session 007a All Over But for the Accounting

We left on at the end of Day 5. On Day 6, the ship is repaired and ready to go. As mentioned before, they want to get back to doing something easier. That cargo run from Palatek to Regari sounds nice. Anything that doesn't involve shooting sounds nice. 

But they have one thing little thing that they can do on Mynkuria, pay off the ship. For a while there, I was tracking the ship's account and 9 different character's funds. That ain't fun, so it ends here. The ship's account is at 292,183 while the characters have an additional 8,820. After paying the ship off, they have 111,003 left. I am just keeping one pool of funds. 

The gang decides to run back to Palatek, via Nipna, Talitar and Imperia. They have no intention of landing anyplace except Palatek Prime, so the trip could take as little as a day. Depending on the dice gods, that is. Infi! 

At Nipna, they roll a 2 for their entry roll. They land in the middle of space battle and jump again before anything bad happens. At Talitar, they get a 3 which means they go undetected. At Imperia, they roll a 1 and drift by a broken down ship. Oddly, they have no chance to interact with it. For Palatek, they score a 3 which gives them a chance to attack a merchant ship with 12 hits. No deal. 

They land on the planet with two hours of daylight. They land at the city uneventfully. It's time to do the gear mamba to make space in the cargo hold. 

They have two hoppers which can hold 20 CU including passengers (it's odd, but the hopper boat guns are bigger than the ship guns). On each hopper, they leave five seats open for crew. They divide the fuel units 8 per hopper. One fuel unit is in the vacuum skimmer. They place 7 life support units in each hopper and one in the skimmer. 

In the cargo bay, they have 9 repair units and a skimmer (10 CU) leaving 41 CU of space for stuff. The remaining u-suits (4 in all), side arms and heavy side arms are scattered in the crew quarters. Since the crew space is 32 CU in all and I only have 9 crew plus their gear, I'll place the repair units there, too. Odd, but efficient. There is now 50 CU in the cargo bay. 

They buy 50 CU of electronics and get ready to go. That costs 3000 secs. They now have 108,003. That ends Day 6. 

On Day 7, they boost for orbit which takes 4 hours to reach the jump point. On arrival, they are ignored and land on the surface at the colony to off load the electronics for a base price of 100. They make 5,000 secs. and buy 50 CU of carvings for 250. 

Day 8 starts by moving the ship to the spaceport. They are out of hypercharges and need to "reload". They make the deal in one hour, but the loading process takes all day. They are down 3000 secs. 

Day 9, they boost for orbit and jump to Palatek. On landing, they offload their goods and take on the next load of electronics. They take in 1500, but end up spending 6000. 

Back to Regari. They get 5000 for the transaction. 

Emily points out that after 3 runs, they only have 110,253. They only made 2,250 but they are also down 1000 secs in fuel costs. This isn't working for them. 1250 of profits would make a starting player, they could pay their 300 interest payment, hire some crew and upgrade equipment fairly quickly, but it would be labor intensive. 

Time for a new plan for a new week. They buy a full load of Gm-bots at the space station plus two hypercharges. It sets them back 6000+1000. And they are off to Imperia. 

On arrival, they get slugged with a meteor in the engineer compartment. Mel and Sarah do their thing and get the ship repaired. Tired and bored and terrified, they call it a day. 

Day two is better. They land at the spaceport with no problem. Their entry roll indicates a roll on the regular spaceport table which is great. They get e037 - Sell GM-Bots and roll a 6 for their multiplier. They just made 100,000 secs. in one run. They have 203,253. 

Emily says, "Gee, we need to go back to Regari." 

The crew cries, "Why on Earth would we do that?"

"We need to buy a ship..." 

Their new ship cost 120,000 secs. Its TL-1, it doesn't have a hopper or guns. They only have one hypercharge, so they outfit both ships with a full load of six. That costs an additional 4000 secs. They have 79,253 left over. 

They spend the rest the week appointing their new ship. They outfit it with a set of Tl-5 guns from the Zephyr and one of the hoppers. They replace the guns on the Zephyr with TL-6 guns. This means the Zypher has 90 CU of storage while the other ship has 60. That sets them back another 3,000. 

They name it the Sirocco. They are joyriding around an empty spaceport lot trying to figure out who's gonna driver her. 

I'll probably rework this design to have guns. I can live with 2 30 CU bays instead of one large 60 CU bay. I like the look of this ship. 

Episode 005 and 006 - Star Smuggler, Creativity on the Go, Off the Rails, and more.

This is it, another podcast or two. I managed to record two podcast this weekend and I decided to release them both at once. These are much shorter than my normal episode, but not by much. 

In episode 005, I talk about taking creativity on the go, driving and going off the rails. I apologize for the poor quality, this one was an experiment to record while out and about in my car. 

I've also got to work on all those ahs! and ums! but it was worth a try. These 4 segments cover new ideas for on the go, podcasts in general and having your game go off the rails. 

Episode 6 covers Star Smuggler gameplay and design, plus Miledown! a new title I am working on for release on DriveThruRPG.