Hi everyone, and welcome to a special edition of RPG Adaptation: Destiny Aurora!
The first thing you’ll notice is that it is not Egg who is writing this, but me instead. That is because Destiny Aurora is an upcoming Kickstarter (it’s probably gone live by the time you see this, in which case it’ll be linked in the comments below), that I had a small hand in creating.
First off, you’re likely asking yourself what is Destiny Aurora? Well, it is a Starship, but more importantly, it is a series of novels written by Frank Zanca, a lovely little universe where the novels and comics center around the exploits of the crew of the starship Destiny Aurora. (In the comics it is as described through the eyes and ears of Flibby Yaas, one of the crew-members (more on her later)).
Frank has expanded his universe into novels, board games, miniatures, and comic books – and now the turn has come to the RPG world, and the system of choice is Starfinder.
The Destiny Aurora universe is not HARD sci-fi; there are elements of the fantastic in it, making it a perfect fit for Starfinder, and this is where we come to this Kickstarter. The Kickstarter itself will include elements of the other stuff, especially the miniatures, but the KS is made to fund the creation of the RPG. The core book is already written, and mostly finished in layout too (I know there are several hardbacks floating around out there, but unfortunately as I’m not US-based, I’ve not been able to get my hands on one, but I did get my hands on a PDF version from Frank). And let me tell you, it is a GORGEOUS book – the layout is very similar to that used by Paizo – though it’s not an exact copy, and I think I prefer the artwork within to that of Paizo themselves (which is high praise I should add, as Starfinders art is gorgeous to begin with, but Frank’s artist really is excellent).
And here comes a disclaimer: I wrote some of the rules stuff that went into this book, some of the NPCs and aliens/monsters, the Reputation system and the scenarios on the back – but the world-building is all Frank’s, and the rest of the rules-content was written by another author, Jos Vogt.
But instead of me “talking,” let’s show you some of the book. 🙂
The book is 188 pages long (here is a screenshot of the Table of Contents page 1), and contains a whole host of new stuff. It opens with 33 pages of background on the main factions of the universe, including how to play as part of them.
It follows up by giving 2 new Crew Roles for starships. First, a Medic – who doesn’t have much to do in STARSHIP combat admittedly but can fulfill another slot during that time (They do have a role in normal combat)–and communications officer.
And then comes the meat – 10 new races (2 are known already in Humans and Androids (though this is a different type of android to the ones you normally see in Starfinder. The normal Starfinder ones are close to Rommy from Gene Rodenberry’s Andromeda, where the Destiny Aurora ones are closer to droids from Star Wars.) – and here is what I suspect will be everyone’s favorite: The Reynians! – Yes that’s right, we finally get cat people in space! (The one featured here is Flibby Yaas who I mentioned earlier.) – Of the other 7 races, I think my favorite must be the Caltorans – or “non-Dwarves.” They’re sort of a mix of classic Dwarves and the Ugnaughts from Star Wars. Good fun too. 🙂
After that we get the Reputation system – I won’t dive into that too much as it was written by me, but suffice to say that your behavior matters. If you’re a good person by your faction’s standards, you’ll get certain advantages. And if you’re not, then they might hunt you down. Each faction even carries its own benefits and penalties as well as unique modifiers for them. – My only annoyance with my own creation is the bookkeeping, but as it is ship-wide rather than character, it should be relatively easy to handle. It can even give you an advantage or disadvantage in starship combat (to give a Star Wars example, it’s much less daunting to be attacked by an Imperial Star Destroyer, than to be attacked by Vader’s personal flagship Star Destroyer the Devastator – so the famous ship gets an advantage).
Then we have a set of NPCs from the novels and comics. All of these are experienced veterans and not some that should be encountered at random. Each has some unique abilities to convey their skills and personalities. Again the statlines from these came from my “pen” though the backstory etc., is the creation of Frank. I suspect that everyone’s favorite will be Flibby, since she’s a cat girl, but my own favorite has to be Princess Xea’lana – and again, the art for her is just gorgeous:
Then we have a series of new monsters, and I have to say that I think my favorite is the Iron Dragon. It’s not really a dragon, but a robot version, but come on, who doesn’t want robot-dragons? It’s also quite a nasty bugger at CR 12.
That’s followed by a host of new vehicles, equipment, weapons, and starships. My personal favorite (apart from the Destiny Aurora itself as a starship) has to be the holographic emitter – it’s time to play Snake Plissken in Escape from L.A. or Arnold Schwarzenegger in Total Recall with some holographic mayhem!
And finally, there are 2 scenarios. Now I won’t go into detail with those, as I wrote them, but one is a prison break scenario for level 4 characters, where the PCs have to break out of an intergalactic prison moon (think like the old Fortress movies with Christopher Lambert), while the other is retrieval mission of an old A.I. core – that just happens to be the brain of a starship that’s gone crazy over the millennia.
In any case, I hope a little of this has caught your attention. If so, check out Frank’s creation on Kickstarter. 🙂
Kim Frandsen
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