Coriolis: The Great Dark combined with The Great Dark: Flowers of Algorab provides a GM with an entire ruleset, setting details, maps, and adventure support to run a months long sci-fi campaign of exploration, mystery solving, and intrigue. The level of support for a GM who wants to create his or her own sci-fi setting is truly outstanding. And everything is set in a deeply rich sci-fi setting with plenty of options to help a GM in worlds building.
My thanks to Free League Publishing for providing me review copies. I had already backed the Kickstarter, so the extra copies will be used at the table to aid the players and eventually either gifted to a player or donated to charity.
Coriolis: The Great Dark
Rules, background, and GM adventure building support can all be found in Coriolis: The Great Dark. On the edge of known space, survivors of a dying civilization live in a hollowed out asteroid called Ship City. The daring and the desperate journey into the Great Dark seeking treasure and knowledge. The ghosts of alien civilizations have left behind The Blight, which attacks both mind and body and warps them in terrible ways. The player characters are ruin delvers, artifact scavengers, and mystery hunters working for the Explorers Guild to uncover the secret of the Lost Horizon’s ruin and solve its mysteries. Ship City is dying, but if the PCs achieve enough successes, perhaps they can secure a future for the city and its people.
A cobbled-together space station, complete with factions and infighting, offers PCs plenty of intrigue and danger. The GM is also provided with plenty of tables to create delves, the plunging into alien ruins that the PCs are trained and paid to do. The PCs will travel on Greatships as explorers and use both a shuttle and a rover to comb planets for ancient ruins and alien artifacts.
Combining the core book with Flowers of Algorab is where the game really takes off.
The Great Dark: Flowers of Algorab
A name like Flowers of Algorab may not conjure up images of the dark of space, unexplored worlds, alien ruins and artifacts, and a variety of strange and possibly deadly lifeforms. But this boxed adventure offers so much support for a game of The Great Dark, even if a GM doesn’t run the adventures exactly as written. There is an epic adventure path here, two more traditional adventures at the beginning and the end bracketed by a sandbox series of planets and delves for the PCs to experience in any order.
As great as the included adventures are, it is the additional support for the GM wanting to run his or her own sci-fi setting where the box really shines. The broad strokes and helpful tables in Coriolis: The Great Dark become more focused and provide a well supported starting area for a campaign along with ships with maps and a map of Ship City. While most of these maps are pulled from the core rulebook, having each one available as a separate handout is really useful.
PCs can have a handout of both their rover and their shuttle with a one page handout of a Rhino and a Grasshopper, respectively. The PCs can use the poster sized map of Ship City to navigate intrigue and adventure on the space station.
When the PCs move into the Charted Sphere, the GM has a detailed map. Along with the map of planets and the distance in leagues in between, there are also maps of a both a Greatship and a Cruiser to help both the GM and PCs envision these mammoth spacecrafts. The GM also has an entire booklet dedicated to expanding the Hammurabi Arm including several solar system maps and details on both the Greatship and the Cruiser including crew. Finally, there are initiative cards, weapon cards, dice, maps of ruins, and tokens.
Armed and Dangerous
Thusly armed, the GM is well equipped to set up a sci-fi setting of ships setting off into the dangerous void, and courageous PCs landing on alien planets and delving into unexplored ruins. The secrets of the setting are explained for the GM, who can then unveil mysteries during play. These sci-fi mysteries are deep but not too complex, and offer an intriguing and exciting area of unexplored space for the PCs to journey through and map. Some of these mysteries are quite dangerous, while others open up intriguing new possibilities and can move a campaign in entirely new directions. The setting is not static; what the PCs accomplish or fail to accomplish makes a real difference in the future of Ship City and the Lost Horizon.
The PCs are encouraged to explore the themes of exploration, investigating mysteries, taking part in intrigue, and teamwork directly through the rules. Experience points are awarded for PCs who explored these themes as well as for roleplaying and general adventuring.
The overall presentation of setting followed by rules that tie directly into and enhance the setting is an overall meta-theme of The Great Dark. While Free League has mastered this art, this RPG in particular is a masterwork example of combining setting, rules, layout, and exciting themes together in a cohesive whole with everything meant to be used at the table. No unneeded fluff or half-baked ideas or rules. Even the art works together to support the setting and campaign; no unconnected themes or poor rendering is present to detract from the overall work.
Next Steps
Coriolis: The Great Dark and The Great Dark: Flowers of Algorab provide a GM with everything needed to run a sci-fi campaign along with many extras that enhance play and that will draw in both the GM and the PCs. The premise of being part of an Explorers Guild is simple and keep options manageable, while the setting is vast and ancient. It offers real rewards and actual change for PCs who risk life and sanity to wrest its secrets and the history of aliens from the various planets and ruins.
The GM can enjoy continuing support, with a supplement already in the work. The Great Dark: The Fractured Library & Other Tales From the Lost Horizon includes five adventures as well as a new Slipstream Cruiser complete with background, crew details, and blueprint plans.
Coriolis: The Great Dark is the type of tabletop RPG that keeps me excited to find and try new games and settings. It gets my highest recommendation.
Picture credit: By Thomas Budach from Pixabay
