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Impulse Drive
Play a crew of misfits and scoundrels living a life of danger and adventure as they explore space and try to make their ship a home in a technicolor sea of stars. Fight dangerous organizations, investigate unnerving mysteries, and find trouble in a game that rewards you when your characters face their shortcomings. Grow your characters and ship with new gear and abilities as you discover and create the universe together, as a group.
Impulse Drive is a roleplaying game about making a living on the fringe of civilized space, inspired by fiction such as Farscape, Firefly, Mass Effect, Star Wars, and many others. Find some friends, grab a handful of six sided dice, and strap on your spacesuit.
This book includes all the rules you need to have your own space adventures about misfits and spaceships, including eight iconic character archetypes:
The Hound, a rogue lawkeeper or bounty hunter.
The Infiltrator, a skilled burglar or assassin.
The Intellect, an expert scientist, physician, or mechanic.
The Mystic, a wise religious figure or member of an ancient order of knights.
The Outsider, a truly strange or out-of-place alien.
The Scoundrel, a down on their luck con artist or street rat.
The Tempest, a volatile hothead with dangerous powers.
The Warhorse, a battle-scarred war veteran who has seen everything.
As well as four ship playbooks that help you set the stage for your adventures:
The Smuggler, a beat up old freighter with some hidden surprises and a big debt.
The Predator, a dangerous mercenary vessel with a dangerous nemesis after them.
The Vanguard, a state-of-the-art ship in the employ of a powerful galactic civilization or organisation.
The Marauder, a pirate vessel with a bad reputation.
Impulse Drive is a roleplaying game about making a living on the fringe of civilized space, inspired by fiction such as Farscape, Firefly, Mass Effect, Star Wars, and many others. Find some friends, grab a handful of six sided dice, and strap on your spacesuit.
This book includes all the rules you need to have your own space adventures about misfits and spaceships, including eight iconic character archetypes:
The Hound, a rogue lawkeeper or bounty hunter.
The Infiltrator, a skilled burglar or assassin.
The Intellect, an expert scientist, physician, or mechanic.
The Mystic, a wise religious figure or member of an ancient order of knights.
The Outsider, a truly strange or out-of-place alien.
The Scoundrel, a down on their luck con artist or street rat.
The Tempest, a volatile hothead with dangerous powers.
The Warhorse, a battle-scarred war veteran who has seen everything.
As well as four ship playbooks that help you set the stage for your adventures:
The Smuggler, a beat up old freighter with some hidden surprises and a big debt.
The Predator, a dangerous mercenary vessel with a dangerous nemesis after them.
The Vanguard, a state-of-the-art ship in the employ of a powerful galactic civilization or organisation.
The Marauder, a pirate vessel with a bad reputation.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2019
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 6, 2021
I was very disappointed overall with this book. I was going to convert the following bullet points to paragraph style, but honestly I’m too exhausted to edit.
* Great pitch— the 8 playbooks and 4 ship types presented on the very first page are both evocative and effective, immediately invoking the exact genre target with diverse options.
* overwritten— too many moves works against the streamlined simplicity of PbtA
* Unbalanced— infiltrator playbook marks experience more frequently than other playbooks, seems problematic.
* Intellect is too broad. For example, if you wanted to stat up firefly, Kaylee and Simon would both use the intellect playbook
* High level design is great!
* “Always say” section of the SM section is solid, especially “play with inte-grity and an open hand. The players are entitled to the full benefit of their Moves, their rolls, and their characters’ strengths and resources. Don’t cheat them, don’t weasel, don’t play gotcha. When your players know they can trust you and the system, they will be more comfortable taking risks.”
* Needlessly tweaked language: if you’ve played other PbtA games, you know the Game Master runs the game and makes GM Moves, and there’s a good chance you know about Clocks to track progress. Impulse Drive needlessly calls it the Space Master, who makes Calls, and tracks progress with Fuses. I’m all for unique terminology when it helps sell the genre or tone, but none of these do that. They feel like they’re different for difference sake.
* The GM section gives good advice, particularly in the “Getting Started” and “The First Session” sections.
* Contracts don’t need to be distinct from strains, though the non-table roll tables would streamline session planning.
* Space terminology might be helpful for people who are interested enough to play this game but not sufficiently bought into sci-fi to know the terminology. For most others, it feels unnecessary.
* NPC suggestions could be helpful. The Impulse table is actually kinda great.
* Replace Custom Move section with @bleongambetta’s Twitter discussions of PbtA move designs
* Big Changes to Primary Mechanics is one good page. Especially the recommendations for increasing the difficulty and running a one-shot.
* Great pitch— the 8 playbooks and 4 ship types presented on the very first page are both evocative and effective, immediately invoking the exact genre target with diverse options.
* overwritten— too many moves works against the streamlined simplicity of PbtA
* Unbalanced— infiltrator playbook marks experience more frequently than other playbooks, seems problematic.
* Intellect is too broad. For example, if you wanted to stat up firefly, Kaylee and Simon would both use the intellect playbook
* High level design is great!
* “Always say” section of the SM section is solid, especially “play with inte-grity and an open hand. The players are entitled to the full benefit of their Moves, their rolls, and their characters’ strengths and resources. Don’t cheat them, don’t weasel, don’t play gotcha. When your players know they can trust you and the system, they will be more comfortable taking risks.”
* Needlessly tweaked language: if you’ve played other PbtA games, you know the Game Master runs the game and makes GM Moves, and there’s a good chance you know about Clocks to track progress. Impulse Drive needlessly calls it the Space Master, who makes Calls, and tracks progress with Fuses. I’m all for unique terminology when it helps sell the genre or tone, but none of these do that. They feel like they’re different for difference sake.
* The GM section gives good advice, particularly in the “Getting Started” and “The First Session” sections.
* Contracts don’t need to be distinct from strains, though the non-table roll tables would streamline session planning.
* Space terminology might be helpful for people who are interested enough to play this game but not sufficiently bought into sci-fi to know the terminology. For most others, it feels unnecessary.
* NPC suggestions could be helpful. The Impulse table is actually kinda great.
* Replace Custom Move section with @bleongambetta’s Twitter discussions of PbtA move designs
* Big Changes to Primary Mechanics is one good page. Especially the recommendations for increasing the difficulty and running a one-shot.
January 29, 2023
Great science-fiction roleplaying game, inspired by the mechanics of Apocalypse World. We're now six sessions in and enjoying the system. Because it is similar in design to other Powered by the Apocalypse games, it has been easy for us to customize those aspects that don't work at our table. For instance, we've not used Hooks in six sessions, so we are going to swap in an end-of-session XP question from Homebrew World instead.
September 4, 2019
An interesting take on the scifi rpg using the Powered by the Apocalypse rules. Suffers a little from having too broad a focus - trying to be a ruleset for everything from Event Horizon to Bablyon 5 to Star Trek to Firefly - but a good solid system that's easily adapted to whichever sort of game you're interested in. Can't wait to run some.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews