I Read Games reviews are me reading games when I have nothing better to do, like read a module or write or play a game. I don’t seriously believe that I can judge a game without playing it, usually a lot, so I don’t take these very seriously. But I can talk about its choices and whether or not it gets me excited about bringing it to the table.

Our eldest is at gymnastics and usually I go for a walk but instead our youngest is is tagging along counting trains and I’m flicking through my copy of Last Fleet. Last Fleet is a 248 page Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) game, by Joshua Fox which has been on my shelf for 4 years largely because I bounced off it when I first read it. I remember why I bounced, but I’m curious regarding whether I’ll bounce so hard again. It explicitly tells stories inspired by Battlestar Galactica (2004), which, 20 years later, is a choice, but I remember loving that show when it aired, and imagine on streaming services it may have be being experienced by a new generation of viewers.

I have the print and digital version of this book, and it’s unusual to say I prefer the digital version of a book, but despite the lovely quality of the hardcover and paper itself, this layout is abysmal for reading in print; the typeface is set in a light weight that makes it hard to read, it’s entirely in sans serif — harder on the eye for long reading sessions in print, which this demands, the headings typeface renders them inconsistently legible, and the borders render everything strangely contained and crowded. It’s single column in A5 or so format, and that doesn’t work in its favour here, despite technically being at a manageable line length for that format. There are ostensibly margin tags to help me find my way around, but often either the font or contrast renders these illegible. The art gives big uncanny valley vibes to me: odd, awkward semi-realistic painterly stuff. This works, to be honest, with the theme, and is probably my favourite thing about the graphic design. Just overall, not a success for me.

The first 20 pages are the overview section. I have mixed feelings on this, because while this overview contains a very smart, concise set of summaries helping to orient you to what’s coming, and particularly the basic rules summary elegantly covers most mechanics in PbtA games generally and the changes made in Last Fleet specifically, it’s still a 20 page overview. In my mind, an overview is 2 pages, rather than 20. In a nutshell, this 20 page overview kind of communicates clearly my primary issue with PbtA games: They’re complex as all get out, it’s just that the complexity is rarely targeted at typical targets for complexity as you see in say Pathfinder 2.

The overabundance of explanation continues, clearly aimed at that massive audience who stumbled upon this kickstarter having never encountered a PtbA game, but were intimately familiar with the 20 year old series on which it was based. That’s 2 pages on framing scenes; 3 pages on when to use a move (“make sure you hold each other to this!”), etc. New concepts aren’t differentiated in this, and I think they could be. These new concepts are more deserving of more space, but I truly call into question the design of a rule — let’s take Attrition for example — that requires 3 pages to explain. Actually, that’s unfair: I simply think it’s overexplained, and that for me that isn’t an asset. It says things like “Once you have a Shortage of something, it becomes an urgent problem to address.” eliciting an eye roll in me, not just because a shortage implies that, but especially given this has been explained before at least twice, in various summaries.

Interestingly, the GM guidance section comes up next, a unique choice among the largely uninventive information design of PbtA games, and, I think, a smart one, as it makes an assumption that nobody except the GM will ever read the book. One issue with many PbtA games in my opinion is information hierarchy: GM rules are mainly in the form of non-directives; things like principles, agendas and moves. There are a a lot of these, and for the most part I don’t see concern with how many there are, except that I won’t remember them all until I know the game well. So what Last Fleet does here, by separating GM moves into core and thematic, is very smart and intuitive. The principles here, as well, are brief, but lack the beauty you see in really compelling principles — those in Mountain Home come to mind. At least one of them also feels an impossible principle: “Make them care”. While I get what they’re going for, principles should be things the GM has control over, rather than things they hope the players should feel in response. From there it goes into “techniques”, and then into an extended breakdown of every possible moves; 18 pages of them. Now, I’m not saying that these don’t contain any good advice or clarification — they have plenty — but keeping with theme this is too much to be core instruction. For me, the placement here at center stage reduces the effectiveness of the book. It’s like the main character pauses in the middle of a play and provides a long exposition of the plot both future and past. I’ll accept the final section, “Threat Moves”, which are equivalent to Apocalypse World’s fronts and I quite like how they’re folded in, and by their nature require a little more explication. But also, could these have had their own play sheets, given this game effectively its own setting, which would (in my opinion) reduce the need for their presence here at all. That said, when you do get to playbooks, you realise they get the same kind of explication rather than using the playbooks themselves, which (I’ll get back to this) to me breaks the most innovative onboarding tech that Apocalypse World brought with it.

Next up we have a chapter on setting up your game. Given this game provides a setting, they really second guess this and front load the expectation you won’t use it, and I’m strongly of the opinion they should’ve done the opposite, and relegate world building to an appendix. This is mainly because I’m a fan of specificity in games. A game is almost always better with specifics. So, including this (and some other sections) as an appendix which focuses on creating your own world, would make onboarding way easier because as is, we’re 88 pages in and we’re about to get to the “basic moves” which is not at all a promising sign for ease of getting this game into play. Again, the advice in this chapter is fine: I’m just butting up against this recurring reluctance in authors of TTRPGs to provide tutorialising or graduated onboarding, but rather opening with a manual on how to be the best you can be. I recognise that you, the designer, do indeed know how to play this game best! Expecting me, your audience, to pull that off, or absorb all your experience is simply unreasonable. I don’t know how feasible it actually is, but I feel like your game should be communicable in a chapter, with all of this additional depth and breadth coming later once I’ve been sold on whether your game is worth playing. This game needs a strong cold open, that teaches you the basics, not a short course in something I may never actually use.

Next, we have 30 pages of explication of the player moves. I will just repeat myself here: It’s too much. The more explanation I have, the less prepared I feel to play. This is still aimed at the GM, and the overwhelming impression I’m getting is that — and nowhere does it disclaim this and say “all of this is for reference, just play and figure it out” — I need to be in top of all of this before I suggest to anyone we play together.

Finally, now, we get the playbooks. Except we don’t, we get three page explanations of the playbooks. I alluded to this earlier, but playbooks are such powerful tech, and it undermines that tech to just explain it all in prose in my opinion. The playbook naming convention are what I bounced off back when I read this initially, and it’s no different now: They’re each named after a zodiac sign, which is an interesting thematic continuity with the show, but as someone who loves the show but who doesn’t have an intimate understanding of the zodiac, the word “Virgo” in no way describes the squadron leader its assigned to. I’m certain it makes sense to people who do have an intuitive understanding — the “you’re such a virgo” crowd — but it 100% alienated me and most of my friends who actually enjoyed the show, especially in the context of almost everyone in the show having a catchy call sign which could have served as a better titling for these playbooks. Interestingly, these playbooks are all brief, and clearly designed to burn out over the length of play. Very cool design choice in my opinion, in contrast to the broad and deep development in games that hew closer to Apocalypse World.

Page 170, and we’re still not ready to run the game, because we have yet to create the fleet. This is separate to the setting! This chapter sticks out like a sore thumb, because it includes an essay on military rank and operations, and honestly it feels like a stretch goal or something. It just feels extremely appendix-y. It has suggested moves, but not actual moves and doesn’t present the military hierarchy as its own threat, which feels to me to betray the fact that it wasn’t actually intended to be incorporated into the game itself. And, as I said, I still don’t feel prepared to run the game. Perhaps this is unintentional, and this was a stretch goal, but again, not flagging this as optional means I feel I have more and more stuff to wrap my head around. And this is confirmed by the next chapter: Running space battles (oh of course! I still am not ready to run the game!). And then the next! A description of the setting, as if it was a D&D guidebook!

Interestingly, the best and most useful things in this book are literally relegated as an afterthought: The two quickstart scenarios designed to get you to hit the table as soon as possible, with pregenerated characters and a high pressure opening scenario tying into the core setting. This is genius! Perfect! It’s blatantly obvious though that they’re afterthoughts, given they accompany clear stretch goals such as the alternative setting. They should have been at the front of the book. Get your players playing as soon as possible!

I’m not saying that a game shouldn’t be aimed at new eyes, but I do feel like you should be recognising that your audience (explicitly the referee here) is likely those who’re already familiar with PbtA games, and this one is not a groundbreaking change in the way they’re played. This is a new person explaining the same rules again. My new PbtA is not going to be anyone’s first, in a game where Masks and Avatar and Monsterhearts exists. Early games like the Warren understood that they exist in a spectrum of conversation, just as other art forms do; When you first played the Warren, you may not have played another PbtA game, but you were aware and had read others. You weren’t coming in blind. What all these detailed rules explanations in effect do, is give you a long run up to a short jump, increasing the chance that the referee is exhausted by the time they need to launch into the air. “This is basically like Apocalypse World, whose rules are available for free, these are the changes and a summary of those rules” is to me a far more approachable onboarding process. I don’t think you need to cater to new audiences in every book you release, even if you’re making your living off this.

That all said, the problem here is that despite all of these futile gestures at catering to new audiences, it in fact fails to information design that goal completely. I’m not even a new audience, not really, and this was incredibly intimidating. But it’s not hard to make this approachable: Assume they’re going to play in your setting, and bake that in rather than as an afterthought. Develop out your two starter sets as consecutive sessions 1 and 2, to lead into the full campaign. Incorporate into them gradual revelation of the GM moves and techniques, plus chances to try out some special rules like the space battle stuff. And relegate most of this book to an appendix, so “when you’re stuck, check out how to clarify the No One Left Behind rule in Appendix A. You’ll still need, of course a rules explanation, but most of that’s already there in the first 20 pages. That might need a little expansion given the de-emphasising of the rest of the text, and the complete missing of some rules in the introduction, but expand that to 30 pages and it’s everything I need, I can deal with that. The point is, to make this accessible to new audiences you don’t need a better “What’s an RPG” section, you need a complete tutorialising restructure.

Ok, I’ve been going a lot of complaining, so I’m going to talk about three of the most interesting aspects of the design, the things that make this game actually feel like Battlestar Galactica: Shortages, Momentum and Relationships, particularly Pulling Strings, which work together to make the fleet feel like it’s the last bit of humanity, clinging on by a thread, instead of a thriving city. Shortages basically drive the fiction: It’s only implied, but really something should be in shortage all the time, and when it is, a doom clock ticks by, slowly causing more fictional and descriptive issues, until it affects the health of the fleet as a whole, or it is resolved through the actions of the player characters. I wish this were more concretely tied to attrition, the fleet’s health indicator, but it nevertheless is a clever way to bring the primarily internal forces that challenge the fleet to bear. Pulling strings on an NPC you have a relationship with brings the broader cast into relief, and will become the major way you’re being things done given the severe limitations placed on your playbooks. Momentum is whether or not the fleet is winning, and it ties into the Momentum Move, which drives the fleets relationship with their alien pursuers. These are some cool, flavoursome mechanics.

In theory, at least. I’m imagining how they might look in the hands of a good GM — proliferating named characters, exciting changes in pace, desperate changes in resource clashing with attacks of opportunity from your foes. For me, though, they’re half baked, though, largely because they increase the huge load already falling in the GM, without giving her the tools to juggle them (aside from “use clocks”, which immediately precedes these sections, intentionally I suspect). This comes back to my previous complaint: Most of ever you need here is relegated to the back of the book, not where relevant: in the setting summary, there are intrafleet factions, lists of characters, and movements within the enemy representing different aggressions. But I really have to be intimately familiar with the book to know that. And there is no easy way to juggle these factions needs and aggressions with the shortages: No cohesive tracking sheet that puts it all in one place. The GM is left to juggle these million balls with no real assistance.

And you know what? I’ve been that miracle GM before in my life. I’ve run a Blades in the Dark with a dozen active factions. I’ve memorised Lancer lore. I don’t have time for that in my life now, and I’m realising that this doesn’t make me want this kind of game less, it just me less tolerant of the poor design that feels like it is performed without thought because it works for the designers table, and everyone else is used to running games being a chore. It’s the 5e-ification of indie refereeing. I’m not here for it. We deserve better. We deserve games that want us to play them, not lectures from a designer who doesn’t know what is relevant from what is good.

Because, and that’s the terrible thing, I think Last Fleet might be good. Hidden under this mess of a document, is an excellent game full of intrigue and politics and grand action and desperation. If you’re an excellent, experienced PbtA GM, it’ll probably be a breeze to dredge the gold from the sludge. If you love the subject matter enough, you could carve the experience you want out of this, and I think it’d be an excellent campaign. It’s all here. But for poor old me it’s not worth the effort to draw this game up from the depths.

If you’re looking for Battlestar Galactica: The RPG, and you’ve either got a lot of time and energy or you’ve got more PbtA under your belt than you’d care to admit, Last Fleet is probably the game for you. There won’t be better coming I imagine. But if you’re like me, the are time and energy poor, this book is difficult to get through, and you’ll reach the end less sure you could run it than when you started. In that case, find another game. More than anything, though, my takeaway on PbtA design remains:

Design easier games to play. Design your complexity, but that completed beast should only be the first step. That’s not the game. You then have to figure out how to make it playable for your new GMs who haven’t designed three of theee before, or your mothers of 3 who desperately want to get back into TTRPGs, or your teens with cancer running it sick and exhausted, or your, ADHD pals who can’t executive function with out aids and can’t remember your principles to save their lives. If you’re seeking to expand your audience I don’t think it’ll be played by new players to role playing, it’s people who want to play your game already but who can’t find the time or energy to do it. Cater to us. Please.

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