Project Galileo – A Trophy Dark Incursion by Natalie Ash and Madeleine Ember is a role playing game supplement published by Ember + Ash, sometimes called Ash Game Design. This is in Incursion, or adventure, for Trophy Dark.
The supplement is available from DriveThruRPG as a 20-page PDF for $8 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. Two pages are the front and rear covers, one page is the Contents and front matter, one a full-page illustration, one a character sheet and one page is ads.
Project Galileo explains that you are part of a scientific team on Mars and a mining drone on a routine sampling mission broke through into a cavern that is artificial in nature. Your group has decided to explore this cavern.
Creating Your Scientist has new occupations, new backgrounds, missing training, drives and rituals. Rituals would be spells in a fantasy game; these rituals are not magic but aren’t really technology, such as fixing a device by hitting it.
How to Play duplicates the game instructions from Trophy Dark. These can be skipped if that is owned but it does mean that Project Galileo is a complete game in and of itself.
How to Run Project Galileo explains that the importance is to have fun, but that most characters are probably going to die horrible deaths. The five-ring structure of the adventure is explained and that the adventure doesn’t have much backstory. The players are asked questions about what they experience. The use of moments and conditions are then covered.
Moments are brief bits of environmental detail. Conditions are what happened when a risk is tried and failed; they have no mechanical effect but change the narrative. The five Rings are described next. Each has Terrors and Temptations. At the end, the characters try to flee backwards through the Rings. This will likely end in death.
Project Galileo – A Trophy Dark Incursion
The PDF lacks bookmarks, which would have been useful. The Contents covers the major sections but not the minor ones, but is hyperlinked. Navigation could be substantially better. The text maintains a single column format and appeared to be free of errors. As well as the full-page illustration, there is another piece of black and white stock art. Presentation is decent.
Trophy Dark is a system in which the characters are almost certainly doomed to fail, and likely die in the process, and this Incursion continues in that theme. It is highly unlikely characters will survive, but these games are intended to be run as one-shots anyway. Having all the rules included is, as mentioned, useful, as it means it’s a complete game, though it does increase the supplement’s size. Project Galileo – A Trophy Dark Incursion is a good example of an Incursion and one with a different theme to fantasy and it can be found by clicking here.
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