Cosmic Peril Fantasy: Game Master's Guide

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This page gives a simple and light guide to game masters wanting to run this system.

Starter Kit Modules:

For several ready-to-play adventure modules that play well with this system, click here:

• LINKS TO BE ADDED!
• The Wreck on Dark Planet - One-shot or campaign.
• Colonial Marines Search & Rescue - One-shot or multi-session dungeon.
• Nightmare at Europa Ice Mine - One-shot or mini-campaign.
• Aldar's Last Hope - 5 to 10-session campaign.

For those who love to make your own, read on!

What campaigns fit this game, and which fit it less well?

• Low Plot Armor: CPF fits campaigns where all pcs and npcs are on a relatively even footing and do not have any narrative or plot armor or metacurrency to save themselves from careless decisions.
  • The intent is NOT to rapidly kill players, but rather to keep the tension high in dangerous situations, forcing players to work through disasters, and thereby aid dramatic excitement and immersion.
  • To undo this would change the game too much. Instead, you should use a more heroic system such as Masks, Star Wars/Genesys, or FATE.
• Rare, Lethal Combat: CPF fits campaigns with infrequent, quick and lethal combat, where the choice to use and specialize in violence is dramatically significant.
  • Its intent is that if anyone points a gun at a player, that player is scared. It also prevents combat from dragging on until boredom or taking up the whole session.
  • It's easy to make the system fit more heavy combat campaigns or campaigns with less lethal combat. Any of these ways will do so:
    • Increase the hitpoints provided by armors (note this gives more importance to the 'crafting' skill for field repairs)
    • Provide many more healing potions/stim-packs, or give the party a doctor sidekick that heals them often
    • Provide everyone more skill points or talents to help them max out their hp and combat abilities in addition to other skills.
• Medium Magic: Magic-users in the CPF game cast at their own risk and have a high chance of failure for carelessly cast spells, and only the low-level spells are more reliable.
• Lower Magic: You can easily make the game lower-magic by banning all arcane skillls except for the more subtle ones such telepathy or telekinetics. You can also limit the maximum levels in arcane skills to a lower number such as 3. You could also remove Sorceror and make all spells cost HP instead of spell points. You could also ban the 'caster 2' talent to make each caster specialize.
• No Magic: You can easily remove all player magic from the game by simply banning the caster talents.
Higher Magic: It's not really possible to make this game fully high-magic or superheroic. For example, if you removed the casting roll, then magic users would become too powerful relative to non-magical players, and nearly every problem woudl be best solved by magic, especially with advanced characters. Instead, use another game system such as D&D, Pathfinder, Star Wars FFG or Exalted.

MORE TO BE ADDED!