In late 2023 I backed a Kickstarter campaign by a small, indie PRG publisher out of the UK with the interesting company name of The Grinning Frog. The Kickstarter was for an assignment (aka mission) for the solo RPG Starship Scavengers. I was very pleased this week when the Kickstarter fulfillment arrived.
The core game is Starship Scavengers, a solo science fiction roleplaying game (RPG) written by Stephen Hart. The Kickstarter campaign not only delivered to me a digest-size rule book for Starship Scavengers but also two adventures or “assignments”; HMS Brutus: Level One Assignment and Station Thirty-One: Level One-Two Assignment along with some stretch goals.
Not only does the digest-sized form factor of Starship Scavengers recall the days of the classic Traveller Little Black Books (LBB), but so does the grittier setting. Times are dark in the galaxy after empires have fallen. Your character is a starship scavenger and you eek out a living “recovering” data or salvage which can be richly rewarding to find…if you live to see that day.
The 48-page Starship Scavengers rule book contains all the rules necessary to play the game. The rules for character generation are rather lite taking up only six pages (the last one being mostly a sample character). Other important rules are Time Units (TU) and combat; in particular ranged combat.
What the core rule book for Starship Scavengers doesn’t have is an adventure assignment. This are where the assignment books come in. Given Starship Scavengers is a solo game, the assignments are in some ways a form of a choose-you-own adventure. The various options one can exercise when entering a new location coupled with some randomization mechanisms, however, makes it unlikely that any two adventures will go the same way.
While each assignment needs the core rules of Starship Scavengers to play, the assignments can and do introduce new game rules.
Amongst the Kickstarter stretch goals were several cards to go with the adventures. Think of these as small handouts to sit in the middle of the gaming table for players to reference. Are they needed for play? No. Will they be handy during a session. Sure!
As you probably already noticed, Stephen Hart and Grinning Frog Games uses AI art for these productions. Setting aside all the issues of how AI for this type of artwork acquires its underlying data, I think the published artwork builds immersion into the setting and does a very good job of communicating the atmosphere the designer wants to portray.
In more than a few ways, Starship Scavengers is another Adventure Wargame to enter my collection. This time, instead of starting with miniatures rules (ala Five Parsecs From Home) we find that Starship Scavengers and the assignments HMS Brutus and Station Thirty-One start from a solo RPG baseline of game mechanisms. One could play Starship Scavengers with miniatures, but in this case the non-combat game mechanisms (like finding treasure data and salvage) ensures that combat, while an important (and potentially fatal) ingredient of an assignment, is ultimately just another tool to be used as needed or required to accomplish a mission.
To win, you must get in, collect data and salvage and get out alive
Overview – Game end, Starship Scavengers, 8
I look forward to future Starship Scavenger assignments. This Kickstarter basically delivered on-time and was complete with very nicely produced, high-quality components. The cost point to me—basically less than $30 for dead tree and digital copies—is quite a bargain for the content delivered. While the Frog might be Grinning at their profitability, rest assured that I am “playfully” grinning right back.
Feature image courtesy RMN
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