Review of Space Aces: VOY, a wonderfully fun sci-fi TTRPG
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Space Aces can work for any age, recommended for about 5+
Space Aces: VOY (Voyages in Infinite Space) I think could really work for any age as long as kids can follow along with the story and make choices.
The character sheet is really straightforward, players only need to track a d6 and a d20 for their rolls, and there’s plenty of sillier kid-friendly adventures available to choose from. Characters don’t die (you track their gumption, or willpower) and there’s a lot of freedom to use the sectors as they are for adventure hooks or to adjust it to your needs by selecting the hooks and challenges that you want.
Space Aces is set in a galaxy full of sci-fi pop culture references
Space Aces: VOY spans across dozens of sectors that each have their own features, unique elements, mini games, twists, and nods to recognizable stories.
There’s singing sea folk, space corgis, star bases, and food planets (yes… they have Pizza Planet). There’s references to everything from Star Trek to Galaxy Quest and Lord of the Rings to Indiana Jones. There’s the Douglas Sector, which contains the Improbable Bisto, the Rukbat sector with a medieval fantasy style planet inhabited by dragons, Arrak, a dessert full of sandworms and spice-themed politicks (House Old Bay is up to no good), and the Jurassi Sector with planet Ketchumal, complete with 24 creatures to collect!
The volume of adventures and the detail put into each one is incredible! And, even with so many, they are incredibly easy to read through and understand. Each area takes about 1 page and is clearly explained with charts and art, where necessary. You get the lay of the land in a few minutes, and the adventure, from your initial scans to delving into the details, is set up for your to use.
Your character in Space Aces
Characters in Space Aces have four main traits to track: career, knack, space towel, and quest. These traits help fill in your character’s personality for role-play… and the only stat they need to track for their individual character is their gumption (their will to continue with the mission). This means that you don’t need to worry about special rolls for different types of moves; everyone is on the same playing field with their mechanics, making it really easy for new players to follow along.
Your traits can be determined from your ideas or from the roll tables in the book… and I highly recommend checking out the roll tables for this. They are very complete and quite hilarious to read since they too are full of tons of references. We rolled for our character and got a nova rock star with a danger sensing space towel who has a great sense of direction and is looking to fund their start up business! We decided that this character should be a fox person, and that they play the ship like a keyboard to fly it. And, this gave us a TON of personality to work with during RP!!
Now, I was careful to state that the only state for your individual character was gumption, however, there is one other character that you need to track as a group, and that is your ship. Your ship has it’s own temperament and story, and it will have three stats to track: shields, hull, and drive range. These are all numbers below 10, so easy to watch and track as a group, and they’re around for travel and working through space scuffles. However, you also need to fill in your ship’s character sheet too. You’ll give them their own personality and purpose, just like with your characters, since your ship is also part of your group. Our ship was a “bigger on the inside” private vessel that we decided was going to be a walk in cello case to fit out music theme.
Having the ship as a communal character is particularly great because it not only is on point with a lot of sci-fi tropes, but it really promotes teamwork and group investment in this common point. You may all have different goals, but you’re also all part of the same crew and will make decisions together about what upgrades to get, where to go, and how to protect your home.
Space Aces mechanics: quick to pick up and intuitive to use
I liked the mechanics in Space Aces because they got a lot done without getting too complicated.
You’ll be rolling a d20 for what are essentially skill checks and a d6 for everything else. That d6 though, does A LOT.
When you roll for a d20 action, you also roll a d6 to see if you get a snag (raises the heat level/has an additional negative consequence) or a benefit (has an additional benefit). This means that you might hit a snag even though you succeed in your action or you might get a silver lining to a failure, which provides a lot more outcome variety than many other systems.
You’ll also roll the a d6 during scuffles (at advantage or disadvantage when applicable) if you’re facing off against an opponent, and you’ll use your d6 when navigating delves (structured side quests) in a push-your-luck pool where you roll as much as you want… but you don’t want your total to be too high or low.
You also use the same d6 mechanics from your individual character for you ship. If your ship is in a conflict or is hypesurfing, you use the same scuffle and push-your-luck mechanics as above.
I thought this was wonderful. We had three types of variety in the types of rolls we were doing, but they were all easy to understand, and the numbers stayed low so kiddo could follow along without difficultly. With the mechanics being the same for characters and the ship, it also solidified that the ship was part of the team, and it meant that we didn’t have to learn a whole new system for the ship. It got the job done, and it did it well.
Overall thoughts on Space Aces
I absolutely loved this.
I grew up on Star Trek and I honestly am into sci-fi a lot more than medieval fantasy, so having a really solid space themed TTRPG that was colorful and silly enough to loop my kid into? YES
I also was entirely blown away by the art in this!
Every page is illustrated so smoothly – the style is consistent but it still gives each sector and planet a unique vibe despite how widely the locations vary. I mean… they even designed and illustrated all 24 Tweebeasts for planet Ketchumal:
Then it jumps to something like Starhaven with a whole bunch of Stellar Knights:
It’s all colorful and fun and amazing. I was very pleasantly surprised with how well this was put together, and I am really excited that I have a very solid space TTRPG that I can play with my kid.
Find a copy of Space Aces
You can find Space Aces VOY here through DriveThruRPG!
You can also find the creator’s website here (which looks like it’s straight out of Star Trek), locate hardcopies of his games on Etsy, and discover more of his games on his DTRPG publisher page!
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