Hi there,
I'm looking forward to Tuesday's Kickstarter and finding out more about the game, but I already have some questions pertaining to the game's being based on Mutant: Year Zero up front:
1. Character roles
Mutant: Year Zero didn’t prevent power gaming in any way and left it to the GM to keep players at bay. The Slave’s special talent makes him basically invincible, the Chronist’s talent enables him to basically roll his expertise level number of die for any skill he wishes, the Boss basically dominates the group etc.
I’m thankfully not seeing a space for anything like that on the Coriolis character sheet – still, are there such unbalanced talents in Coriolis as well? If not, how are the different roles individualized?
2. Relationships
Taking a look at the character sheet fotos, I see that Mutant’s relationship system has made it into Coriolis as well. By my own discretion and by very pressing player demand, these rules have been eradicated from the Mutant ruleset in my group as it was felt to be fostering automated negativity towards certain NPCs. The respective experience points are awarded for roleplay.
Now, Coriolis basically sounds like an ongoing travel narrative, like e.g. Firefly, and when you’re visiting new planets, old NPCs are unlikely to reoccur. Does Coriolis, like Mutant, still award experience points for acting out preset antipathies?
3. Setting
One of the core problems with the “Mutant” setting was that every group basically begins from the very same starting condition. The whole setting is tied to a single scenario with a single decisive revelation for the players to uncover. A scenario that may even have a definite ending. For Mutant to actually work for my group, a lot of that had to go (including not just Eden, but the mere idea of Eden), leaving a whole lot of rules and fluff in the Zone’s dust.
I really hope the Coriolis setting isn’t as terribly restricted given the vast space that this game encompasses?
That's it for now. Will certainly ask more once the Kickstarter goes live!