Diaspora: New school take on an old school game

My first game purchase of Gencon wasn't even at the show. I bought Diaspora from lulu.com the Tuesday before the con even started and I didn't get it until the week after. Over the last couple of weeks I've been reading it through and it's a wonderful game.

Diaspora is the result of a typical game group hacking one of their new favorite games to play one of their old favorites. After playing Spirit of the Century, they decided to use those rules to play Traveller. But as they made changes, they realized they were making a completely new game, one other gamers would want to play.

I've been following their work on their wiki and once I found out they were going to publish it, I was sure I would buy a copy. They've taken the fun things from Traveller (character, sector, starship generation) and updated them for the FATE system. They've even made those activities playable in less than a single game session. We are all older, we have families and other hobbies. We don't have the time we had in our youth. So I love games that have crunch, but have low preparation and quick play times.

Another thing I like about this game is the book itself. It's attractive. And it's just the right size for stashing in a backpack or even carrying in the hand. I'm really getting tired of the huge dictionary-sized game books that seem to be all the rage. I had to lug Starblazer Adventures around one day at Gencon and that thing is heavy!

As much as I like Starblazer Adventures, I like Diaspora better. Where SA tries to lay out every rule you'd need to play anything, Diaspora leaves alot to the group's imagination. SA also suffers from the only thing I really don't like about Spirit of the Century: the Stunt system. While the skills and aspects are very easy to use in play, the stunts have you flipping pages all the time to figure out how they work. Picking stunts is the slowest part of character creation, especially when you only have one book for the group. But in Diaspora, there are only several categories of stunts (which may be customized). This really speeds up play and saves a lot of space in the book.

But probably the best thing about Diaspora is a good balance of boardgame with story game. Like its ancestor, Spirit of the Century, it's a story game. But there are several minigames that feel more like old school boardgame features: social combat, platoon combat and space combat all play like those sections of old games like Star Frontiers: Knight Hawks or Spacemaster Star Strike but without the complexity. These minigames mesh nicely with your regular RPG campaign or can be played out of context by themselves.

The only knock I have on the game is that it's kind of expensive. It would be nice to have a softcover option. But honestly I think I'm happier with the hardback version.

So if you like hard sci-fi gaming. If you are a fan of Traveller but want something a little more modern, then check out Diaspora.