Cold and Dark Quickstart Reviewed.

Continuing through my collection of quickstarts, here's one I downloaded from Modiphius - Cold and Dark.

Content

At 76 pages, this is really stretching the definition of 'quickstart'.

We start with an explanation that this is in fact a slimmed down version of the original game.  We immediately learn that some character options have been condensed down, which I'm not sure I like, but at least this is explained.

Past the credits page is a glossary.  Literally a page and a half of this document is given over to explaining acronyms.

Next up we have six pages of timeline, telling us everything significant that's happened in this game setting.  One feature I like is that the dates aren't absolute - they're all given relative to the present day.  The first event happens at +12 years.  What I like less is six pages of something I personally find pretty dry when we haven't even been told what kind of game this is yet.

On page 12 we finally get to the introduction.  This is good stuff.  It gives a brief introduction to the setting, nailing down the genre we're dealing with here - dark and gritty sci-fi.  There's just enough information to let you know if this setting is your jam.  It's definitely mine.  Onwards!

The character creation system is introduced here.  While the explanation at the start says that character creation is not included, it nevertheless gives a list of attributes and skills.  For some reason it decides to call these aptitudes and abilities rather than attributes and skills, but I understand what they mean so I'll give them a pass on this one.  Less forgivable is their decision to rename the GM and player characters to AI and Avatars.  This is my hill and I will die on it.  I'm looking at you, Chaosium.

Next we have an explanation of actions and rolls, which looks like a pretty standard dice pool system, beyond the fact that it uses d8s rather than the more usual d10s or d6s.  Nevertheless it takes three pages to fully explain the dice pools and various edge cases, which seems like overkill for something that's supposed to be a condensed version of the game.  And even then we're not done, as it continues with some specific rules for using strength and for security systems.  Inexplicably, despite the dice rolls being introduced on page 14, it's not until page 18 that we're actually told what dice result actually counts as a success.

We then get a few pages on the rules you really want to know - combat, damage and healing.

Despite the claim that character creation rules have not been included, we get six character archetypes described.  Apparently there are nineteen in the full game, although they're not listed.  The six we see are a pretty decent selection though, hitting most of the character types I'd expect in a dark scifi setting.

Page 30 kicks off a bunch of setting information.  Now I can see why we need that glossary.  The amount of acronyms here make it kind of hard to read, which is a shame, because when I do manage to find a low-acronym passage it's pretty well done, covering government, law, society and technology.  Really though, there's far too much stuff here.  Fifteen pages!

We're past the halfway point.  Page 45 introduces yet another acronym, but it turns out we're now into the gear section and about to learn about the power armour/space suits that everyone in this setting has.  There are some nice annotated images to go with them.

A few random images later, we have a page about The Dark, basically this game's version of a sanity mechanic.  A staple for any dark and gritty sci-fi setting.  Odd that there's only half a page on it.

Page 55 brings an introductory adventure.  This immediately links to a separate story on another PDF - odd choice, but with this document already being the size it is, I'm not going to fault them for keeping it separate.  Expecting me to read a separate story on top of this giant document before I can bring the game to the table is a bit much though.

We have a set of five pre-gen characters - the crew of a heavy freighter, the Valhalla.  Based on their names there's some racial diversity represented here, and two out of five are women.  They all come with a decent paragraph about their history and personality.  I'd be happy to play any of them.

There's one slight oddity in this adventure as the captain is not a playable character.  There are reasons why she's an NPC (or NPA, as the game insists on saying) but having recently dealt with the fun of hidden agendas in the Alien RPG, I'd be more inclined to make her playable and assign her to someone I trust to play her with an extensive briefing.

There's a full deck plan for the Valhalla included here.  This is really excellent, and could be used in a wide variety of situations.

The adventure itself is a solid example of a sci-fi horror adventure and I'm actually really keen to get this to the table.  It's got evocative scenes, and plenty of examples of appropriate rolls to make in different situations.  Most of it involves exploring a derelict ship, for which a schematic and location descriptions are provided.  I would have liked a deck plan for this part, as significantly more of the adventure will take place on this ship than on the Valhalla, but at the schematic gives some idea of the layout.

We finish with the character sheets for the five pre-gens.  These take only half a page each.  Finally something concise!

Presentation

This is a good looking PDF.  I wouldn't be surprised if it looks a lot like the original game, with attractive page borders full of hints of artwork.  There are three different credited artists, and it shows in that there's some variation in the art style.  Some I really like.  Some has gone a bit too cheesecake for my liking, but at least there's reasonably portrayed women as well.

There's no sign of bookmarking, which for a PDF of this size is pretty terrible.  The layout is two-column, which is fine for the print edition but not good for scrolling on a screen.  It's black text on white, so apart from the dark page borders it should be reasonably printer friendly.  The sample adventure is low on art beside the deck plan and schematic, so no hindrance to printing that section.

I don't like the ordering at all.  Stuff like the glossary and timeline have no business being at the start of the document.  This could be vastly improved by having a properly hyperlinked contents page at the start, then leading with the introduction, and shunting the glossary and timeline to appendices.

What can I do with it?

You can learn the entire history of this game's setting and a lot about its current situation.  If you really want to.

You can run a game.  While I haven't tried this one out yet, I'm confident the sample adventure has everything you need to get it to the table, and I fully intend to run it at upcoming events.

You can learn enough about the game to get a feel for whether you want to buy it.  At this point I'm honestly tending towards no.  While dark sci-fi is absolutely my jam, I'm not sure this is bringing anything to the table that I can't get from Coriolis or Alien, or even Mothership, and none of those require me to own multiple d8s to play.  But supplementary materials like more pre-written adventures?  That's definitely something that could interest me.  Even if I end up running them in Alien instead.

Conclusion

This isn't really a quickstart.  There's just too much stuff in it, and it's a slog to get through.  It's not sold the game to me at all, despite being totally on brand for my own taste in RPGs.  I would love to see a signficantly stripped down version of this document, well laid out and bookmarked, because despite the somewhat negative tone of this review, I think there's a game behind here that many people would enjoy, and a better quickstart would really help to get it out there.