This past year I have backed multiple Kickstarter campaigns by Stephen Hart of The Grinning Frog to fill out my Starship Scavengers collection. Starship Scavengers is a set of solo play space exploration rules, or, as I like to call them, solo roleplaying game (RPG) adventures. The latest addition to the series, Starship Scavengers: Character Options, arrived this past week.
In the aftermath of the fall of the galaxy-spanning human empire, a few brave souls make their living as starship scavengers.
Publishers blurb – Starship Scavengers Core Game Bundle
You are one of them.
A day in the office for you is exploring a dark, derelict starship, looking for valuable data and salvage. Sounds great, right? Admittedly there are the issues of aggressive alien lifeforms, rogue mechs and deadly environmental hazards.
But hey, you work for yourself, so it’s all good, right? And maybe, just maybe, this time you’ll make the big haul…
In addition to the core rules for Starship Scavengers, The Grinning Frog also sells adventures. Each adventure is a bit different; some take place on ships, some on planet surfaces, some are treasure hunts, others are missions. All are fun and each can be bought (in deadtree versions) for less than $20 or, for the digitally inclined, each is closer to the $10 price range.
Starship Scavengers: Character Options comes in the same digest-sized booklet as the rest of the series. Within the 44-pages the player will find:
- Six (6) different alien races plus the “Humans.”
- Sixteen (16) backgrounds across four (4) categories which give characters unique ability dice.
- Twenty (20) individual skills to use in character generation.
Character Options certainly has plenty of ways to keep your adventures interesting. Yet, while the number of options may seem to grow exponentially, the rules keep the game running at a brisk pace. That is perhaps the real hidden gem of the entire Starship Scavengers line; the games are easy to learn, quick to play, and generate an interesting story through play that is never the same no matter how many times one replays a mission. Character Options adds to the story development with minimal rules overhead.
Highly recommended for science-fiction roleplaying game fans.
Feature image courtesy The Grinning Frog
The opinions and views expressed in this blog are those of the author alone and are presented in a personal capacity. They do not necessarily represent the views of U.S. Navy or any other U.S. government Department, Agency, Office, or employer.
RockyMountainNavy.com © 2007-2025 by Ian B is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0
Rocky Mountain Navy Gamer 