Years before Free League dropped the ALIEN RPG, they produced another outer space roleplaying game, Coriolis – The Third Horizon Core Book. Since they announced their acquisition of the full rights to the game, it’s a good time to visit one of their early offerings. Free League provided me with a review copy of Coriolis, so let’s see why this won a Judges’ Spotlight ENnie Award.
CORIOLIS – THE THIRD HORIZON NOW
I reviewed Free League’s ALIEN RPG on d20 Radio (here). For New Year’s Eve, I rang in the New Year by playing The Last Days of Hadley’s Hope, ALIEN’S pilot adventure, at Meeple Madness. That left me in the mood to talk about ALIEN, but, since I’ve covered the game twice, I decided to look at a similar yet different property.
The basis for this setting is something unique. Instead of transplanting Western Europe, America, and the USSR to space, this RPG rests on a different cultural pillar, the Middle East. This is not quite the 2020 Middle East, but a colorful amalgamation of historic and fantastic cultures that have moved into space. Those elements are as prominent or background as you decide them to be.
The catalyst for the universe involves the Zenithians and their multi-century journey from Earth aboard a massive generational ship to The Third Horizon, a collection of 36 star systems. They awake to find out that they arrived hundreds of years after the first colonists, the Firstcome. How are they in second place with a head start of centuries? After they left Earth, an ancient technology, the portals, were discovered allowing the colonization of the same planets that the Zenithians were traveling to. When the Zenithians arrive, it’s in the aftermath of a major war and divisions mean that The Third Horizon is isolated from the rest of space and encountering new problems such as an alien race and humans manifesting powers. Among the planets and factions, you have to survive.
MECHANICS?
Before I share the ins and outs of what’s under the hood of the Coriolis RPG, there’s a need to point out how awarded this gaming engine, the Mutant: Year Zero system, is and how much that factors into your gaming experience.
- Tales from the Loop (5 Gold ENnie Awards)
- Forbidden Lands (Origins Awards Nominee)
- Their core game/system, Mutant: Year Zero (1 Silver ENnie Award, Best Roleplaying Game UK Games Expo, Game of the Year – Fenix Magazine, and Best Swedish Game – Spelkult)
Add to that Coriolis’ award and, I predict, the ALIEN RPG sweeping awards in 2020 and you should have a solid idea of how customizable and fun this system can be. Like all games that use one of the variants of the Mutant: Year Zero engine, this one involves handfuls of d6s. You’ll form a dice pool by combining a Skill plus an Attribute plus any Gear or other bonuses (situational or Talent based). All you need is one 6 to succeed. If you roll three or more 6s, you gain a critical success which leads to bonuses. As with all M:YZ games, every dice roll should be memorable. Dice rolls only occur when the task is arduous, or it’s combat. You should not roll for mundane tasks.
Each character has four Attributes: Strength, Agility, Wits, and Empathy. There are two kinds of Skills, General and Advanced. The difference is important. A General Skill is something everyone has some knowledge of, so, even if your Skill rating is 0, you can still test for that using just your Attribute pool. However, if a test calls for the use of an Advanced Skill, you have to possess a rating of 1 or more in that Skill to roll for the test. If you roll no successes that gives the GM a reaction where they can introduce a consequence. In combat, consequences are not always required, but in non-combat situations it’s an option to ramp up the tension.
Like all Mutant: Year Zero games, the stand out mechanic is the re-roll (for Skills only, not in combat). You pray to the Icons (gods) in the game and re-roll. No matter the result of the re-roll, the GM gains Darkness Points. These are points they can spend to thwart your actions allowing GM re-rolls, causing the PCs to run out of ammo, and more. They’re a resource for the GM that only comes when the players push for larger options (re-rolls, portal jumps, using mystical powers, and more).
For Coriolis, you’ll create your character from one of eleven classes such as Artist, Negotiator, Soldier, and more. Classes offer you a Talent, starting Gear, and other options. Talents offer you bonuses in your group, bonuses in situations, and other extras to your rolls. It’s a sci-fi RPG so cybernetic implants are a given, but what isn’t a given are the mystical powers. These mental powers add an element of the future in which humanity’s mental gifts manifest. Some of the options are the usual suspects like telekinesis or mind reader while others offer greater range like minder reader or stop (subtly get an NPC to cease an action).
Let’s talk about the best aspect of sci-fi: Ships! Want a ship? They have plenty ranging from drones to fighters to battlecruisers, so embrace whatever level of craft you want. Want to design a ship? Got that covered as well. Need a space station? That’s what the Coriolis is, the remains of the Zenithian’s generational ship turned into a Babylon 5. Vessels work well in this system since they are mechanically the same as a person, including combat.
HOW ALIEN IS CORIOLIS?
“Alien, by Ridley Scott. Dark, deep-space horror and retrofuturistic spaceships fits perfect with world of Coriolis.”
~ Coriolis – The Third Horizon: Three Tips for Inspiration
Coriolis’s design team consists of:
- Tomas Härenstam (Rules Design) who is the Game Director on the ALIEN RPG
- Nils Karlén (Editor) who also wrote on the ALIEN RPG
- Kosta Kostulas (Lore Manager), another writer for the ALIEN RPG
- Christian Granath, Graphic Design on both RPGs
There’s a lot of crossover in the creators between these projects. With that in mind, I’m going to be unfair and compare the two franchises. When playing Coriolis, it’s not ALIEN, that’s clear. But the sci-fi elements, rules that let you seamlessly transition from person-to-person combat to vehicle combat, the dangers of space, and the same core mechanics make them feel like relatives. Coriolis’ advantage is its wide open to discovery with it’s myriad factions and unexplored elements. In the end, it’s a bigger sandbox for adventures than ALIEN which needs xenomorphs to feel like ALIEN, yet can’t be awash in them because they are so deadly. That said, of the two, mechanically ALIEN is more refined and realized. ALIEN’S use of Stress Dice offers gameplay that feeds the feel of the franchise. By comparison, Coriolis’ Dark Points create tension between the players and the GM as they wait for that pile to get spent during the climax of the session. Both are solid in their own way.
ART – THE THIRD HORIZON
As with all Free League products, the art in this 388-page book elevates the project from an RPG to an artbook. This project was produced before the current “formula” of getting an amazing artist’s work to base your project on such as Simon Stålenhag’s work on Tales from the Loop or François Baranger’s soon-to-launch Call of Cthulhu RPG (working title, The Great Old Ones), or picking the right artist to illuminate their latest gems like Martin Grip’s art combined with Christian Granath’s graphic design in the ALIEN RPG. Coriolis – The Third Horizon is a work of beauty, something you can study and enjoy as you flip through the pages.
SHOULD YOU HEAD TO THE THIRD HORIZON?
Do you want a sci-fi RPG with a rich set of options and a logical system that lets you do everything from spacetrucker to planet exploration to capital ship battles with telekinesis thrown in for good measure? If that appeals, this is for you.
In this article, I’ve compared this to ALIEN, so let me offer one more ALIEN-related thought. I’ve played the Last Days of Hadley’s Hope twice (once at Gen Con, once at a local game store) and in both games there was at least one player that had never seen any of the ALIEN films. So much of the love of the ALIEN RPG is based on the love of that franchise that we can forget that if you’ve never seen the movies, then that game is just a lethal sci-fi RPG. Looked at from that perspective, Coriolis offers a larger sci-fi universe and more potential gameplay for your buck.
But don’t take my word for it. Linda Whitson reviewed the free Coriolis The Third Horizon – Quickstart here in 2017, and her conclusion mirrored my feelings about the game: “[O]verall it seems to be a well-developed modern SF RPG with a solid Quick Start to whet gamers’ appetites. I certainly hope I have a chance to play it (maybe at GNC V?) now that I’ve heard it’s a pretty good game.”
Coriolis – The Third Horizon products are available at DriveThruRPG (for PDFs) and at Free League’s online store (for print and PDFs). If this spoke to you, try out the free Coriolis The Third Horizon – Quickstart to see if this sci-fi setting and system are right for your gaming table.
NOTE: This article includes affiliate links to DriveThruRPG. As a DriveThruRPG Affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Latest posts by Egg Embry (see all)
- New Gamemaster Month 2023 - January 20, 2023
Let me add some more awards for Forbidden Lands:
– Origins Awards Nominee
– 2 Gold ENnie Awards
– 2 Silver ENnie Awards
– 2 UKGE Awards