Free League Publishing has announced their Kickstarter for Coriolis: The Great Dark. Now you might think this would be just an expansion like I did. How wrong was I, it pushes the game in a new direction and is a Coriolis 2.0. I got my hands on the PDF so let’s dive in.
Arabian Nights no more
Coriolis: The Great Dark is more than just a sequel to The Third Horizon. It expands the universe and drags the story away from the Middle East-influenced Science Fiction of the last books. The setting I thing is much cooler (pun intended). Coriolis: The Great Dark is set far beyond the last iteration of the game. Colony ships have fled the growing war and have followed a faint signal that many think could be the Nadir, sister ship to the Zenith.
As the signal dies the colonists are stranded in a dead system they call Jumuah. To make things worse the portal that should lead them out is dead. The colonists established a single city on an asteroid called, and I shit you not “‘The Ship City of Coriolis the Eternal and Jumuah the First and Last”. I know right but thankfully it gets shortened to City Ship. In true Coriolis style, they decide to send expeditions into the depts. Where they fight Alien ruins and a disease called the Blight.
A new System for a new system
To push home that Coriolis: The Great Dark is an updated version they have modified the previous rule system that flies more closely to the Year Zero Engine (YZE). This is a welcomed change as if you have played any Free League games you will be very familiar with how easy it is to use. Most changes are small like six attributes rather than the usual four, talents instead of skills.
The two big ones for me are no more Darkness Point mechanics. This is replaced with Hope because there is nothing worse than the loss of all Hope. The other is the new Delve mechanic. The group will make Delves into the ruins to retrieve artifacts. With each Delve the group will have to bring significant supplies, oxygen canisters, food, water, batteries, etc… or else they won’t be coming back. Each one has a difficulty rating (0-3) and markers that show what each character needs supply-wise to make it back. Plans will go out the window as unexpected monsters, blight, and sneaky NPC will ruin your day.
Beauty in the darkness
As usual, the book itself looks amazing. The artwork though different than The Third Horizon is still beautiful. It’s dark and lonely and for some reason has a feel of Event Horizon to me in contrast to the warmth of the last books.
In the pack you get Coriolis: The Great Dark, a quickstart book but you also get four pre-generated character sheets. These are for The Algebraist Apprentice with Bird, The Wreck Diver, The Guild Soldier, and The Vacuum Welder.
If you play Coriolis then you will get The Great Dark and if you don’t and want to start from the start then you better hurry up as Free League is discontinuing the printing of The Third Horizon. I would recommend this game especially if space exploration is your bag.
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