RPG Review: Alternity Core Rulebook

As a younger gamer, I had kept my eye out for Alternity. I really wanted to try out the Starcraft RPG that used the system rules, and it would get pretty regularly referenced in Dragon Magazine in the early 2000’s, but I never got into it or even knew much about it beyond the fact that it was a sci-fi RPG, and with the advent of D20 Modern and Future, I used that as my go-to WotC sci-fi system. Two of the Alternity settings, Star*Drive and Dark Matter were incorporated into D20 Modern.

The newest edition of Alternity is a release from Sasquatch Game Studio, and written by Richard Baker (one of the designers on the original game), David Noonan, and Stephen Schubert.

Kickstarted back in 2017, Alternity is a sci-fi RPG meant for a wide variety of settings. Its basic mechanic is pretty straightforward: Roll a D20 and try to match or beat your own skill. From the book: “For example, if you have Strength 5 and 4 skill points in Athletics, your Athletics skill score is (20 –9) 11. Whenever you make an Athletics check, you’re trying to roll an 11 or better to get an Average success.” The modifier set by the difficulty of the test adds an additional die to the mix: An extremely easy test would have a +d12 modifier, while a hard test would have a -d6 modifier. So if you’re making a skill test that’s going to be extremely easy, you’ll roll a d20, then roll a d12 and add it to the total, making it very likely you’ll succeed.

What I’m really interested in talking about is the Action Round initiative system. Players who succeed on their Initiative check start at Impulse 1, while players who failed, start at Impulse 2. Every action a character makes requires a number of impulses. Using a skill requires 3, attacking requires between 3 and 5, depending on the complexity of the attack. Aiming makes attacks easier, but requires an extra impulse. Your character can act a number of times in the turn equal to the eight impulses. So if you wanted to attack then move 40 meters, that would require 7 impulses. They could then interact with an object (opening a door, for example) for 1 impulse. But as each action takes place, other character’s actions can inturrupt. You may have intended to move to a certain location, but your enemy moves before you get to, blocking the way, so you’ll have to change up your actions. It reminds me of playing Inquisitor back in the day a bit, which I love.

The game includes great mechanics for designing your own setting, talking about the various tech levels, lots of adversaries and weapons. There’s a slight implied setting here, but it’s broad enough that you could use this book to run anything from Starcraft to Mass Effect to Alien if you wanted to.

The selection of six different species is nice and varied, and can easily be adapted to most settings. They cover all the standard archetypes of alien. There are six archetypes, which are essentially like classes, but they have a seventh, which is for characters that don’t fit any of those, making for a more freeform character creation, which I really like. It allows you to be as flexible as you’d like.

The hardback book itself is very nice. It has a glossy cover, is digest-sized for easy handling, and isn’t too thick, so it is very transportable. The pages are a nice, solid paper that is just the right thickness for me. I carried it with me into work a few days to look over the rules, which isn’t something I can do with a full-sized RPG book. More and more I’m enjoying digest-sized books for how easy they are to handle, and this works well here.

Overall, I love this system. If I ever get around to running a game set in my homebrew setting of the Solar/Kradethi War, I’ll definitely be using these rules for the campaign.

You can pick up Alternity in PDF form at DriveThruRPG, the physical hardback book directly from their site, or the free demo pack here to take the rules for a test drive.

Gamerati sent a copy of the hardback rulebook to Dice Monkey for review.