Coriolis

I discovered Coriolis: the Third Horizon last year, while looking for a SciFi game more accessible than Eclipse Phase. At the time, its setting had rather inspired me, but I had some doubts about the game system - doubts fed among other things by the not always positive feedback on the use of Darkness Points, those "tokens" used to trigger dirty tricks on the PCs. In practice, Coriolis essentially disappointed me on two points: the publications and the setting. For the rest, it is all good. Even my fears about the system proved rather unfounded over our first sessions.

Unpredictable publications

Regarding the publications, I will spare you a diatribe on the misadventures of the French edition, which fell into the hands of A.K.A. Games. You can forge your own opinion by reading the comments on the project on Gameontabletop (very similar to those of the Fragged Empire project, also translated by A.K.A. Games). Fria Ligan, the Swedish publishing house behind the game, has its problems too: the company had given me the impression of being an ultra-serious outfit, with a rock-solid publication plan and clear ideas about the evolution of its lines and their settings. In fact, it is a bit less brilliant than that. While it does respect its pledgers by meeting its crowdfunding deadlines, Fria Ligan on the other hand tends to wait years before materializing its announcements. This new version of Coriolis had been in the works since 2011-2012, but it took four years before the company offered its crowdfunding in mid-2016 with a view to a publication in late 2016. The Mercy of the Icons campaign was announced in 2018, with a late publication the same year... for the first of the three volumes that make up the whole adventure. As of late 2019, we know the second part is being written, but without a publication schedule, it is hard to be satisfied with such information. Admittedly, courting pledgers only once the project is close to materialization remains very noble, but these long pauses between each crowdfunding bode nothing good for Coriolis, whose line seems to be suffocating under the pressure of Fria Ligan's too many projects. A member of the official forum hypothesized that such a profusion could be detrimental to the game. In response, he was told that the authors of Coriolis are not the same as for the other projects. Let us hope that is true! EDIT 20.01.2020: news on this topic, see the post-scriptum of this article.

A vague setting

A similar artistic vagueness weighs down the game's setting, a problem that appeared to me as I tried to make it my own: we are talking about imprecisions, even a sometimes incoherent or hard-to-grasp timeline, like certain factions that intervene at periods when they were not supposed to exist. Discussions and requests for clarification (for GMs only) sometimes poke their nose out on the official forums, but their answers sometimes look more like improvised patches than a genuine consolidation of a background that seems to evolve freewheeling. Part of Coriolis's reviewers had already noted this feeling of "big mess". For my part, I was waiting for the Mercy of the Icons campaign in the hope of discovering the authors' perspective on their creation. Often, it is through scenarios that they establish their vision of a universe.

Unfortunately, we thus only have the first of the campaign's three volumes. And while it offers a beautiful, discreet, down-to-earth and weakly heroic investigation, it also opens with revelations that could drastically change the mood of the next two. The throughline thus remains shrouded in mysteries. Are we dealing with Lovecraftian cosmic horror, a war between two Manichaean camps, or the pragmatic struggle of the PCs to survive in a Horizon where humanity is but a grain of sand? Does the campaign involve all the elements presented in the books ("campaign game", like Qin or Yggdrasil), or only certain elements (like Call of Cthulhu)? These aspects would have deserved clarification from the first book on, so as to let future GMs decide whether the campaign's style suits them.

Somewhere, the game claims this position: with its planet generation and on-the-fly mission creation systems, Coriolis is a sort of ancestor of Forbidden Lands, where improvisation is strongly encouraged, sometimes at the expense of control and consistency. A blessing in disguise? Maybe, but prepare yourself for a lot of upstream preparation to provide your table with a rich and coherent universe, for improvisation never suffices to that end. As far as I am concerned, our last session, where the PCs traveled from Aiwaz to Zib via the Quadrant, strained my improvisation abilities, turning the journey into a routine mixing die rolls and card draws with little at stake. I hope my table enjoyed it nonetheless...

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A pleasant system

Contrary to my initial impressions, the game system ultimately runs well. As planned, the rolls are done in no time: you merely need to spot a 6 among a handful of dice to succeed at an action. I feared success chances that were too low, but a competent character helped by tools will often have 8-9 dice, for about an 80% chance of success, with in addition a complete reroll should the roll fail. We are thus far from Warhammer and co., where a starting character will barely reach a 50% chance of success in their favorite domain. One big difference: the "Zero System" of Coriolis means offering only a single roll per action, at the risk of limiting the reroll's value. If your players know you will allow them another try "for free" after a few minutes of play, they will be less inclined to give you a Darkness Point in exchange for a reroll. A roll therefore represents all the character's attempts to reach their goal, unlike, say, the more simulationist system of Rêve de Dragon where each roll has less chance of succeeding, but where failure rarely precludes an immediate new attempt. Better still, we count between 2 and 4 critical successes per session on the players' side. The system makes criticals accessible to talented characters supported by many advantages. A helping hand from colleagues, the right tools, a bit of preparation and a high skill score guarantee more than ten dice on a roll, making a triple 6 an conceivable probability (especially with the reroll options). Conversely, the system harshly punishes inexperienced characters: a character with three dice will only have a 1-in-216 chance of getting a critical.

Each implementation of the "Zero System" keeps this very simple base, but then modulates the details of the sub-systems according to the game's context (more or less lethal combat, spaceship piloting for Coriolis, base building for Forbidden Lands, ...). In Coriolis, the consequence of a reroll is to give a Darkness Point to the GM, those famous tokens that can complicate the PCs' life. You may know this mechanic under its more common name of "Doom Pool": by sacrificing a few points, the GM can add reinforcements to the enemies, activate dangerous powers, or even overturn the narrative unfolding of a sequence. Like many, I am generally not a fan of such a system, which irremediably adds arbitrariness to the game sequences. What is the logic of making a troop of reinforcements appear because your PCs failed too many climbing rolls? Of activating a supernatural power because the group's negotiator had to address a prayer to the Icons to convince the spaceport's manager? Players often find themselves frozen at the idea of giving points to the GM, at the risk of catching an unpredictable medium-term backlash.

Ultimately, Coriolis turns this bad idea into something roughly interesting. Admittedly, the arbitrariness remains problematic, but the presentation of the official scenarios frames the use of Darkness Points rather well. Each scene is described first by a location, then by the NPCs that inhabit it, and finally by the events that can take place there. The events that create obstacles for the PCs cost Darkness Points. As the GM, you compose a "menu of obstacles" at the beginning of each scene, by selecting the events that seem consistent with the PCs' actions. By default, a scene is therefore relatively neutral, but it can sour depending on the obstacles you choose: a camp's guards can be on the lookout because your PCs lacked discretion as they approached the location, a merchant can be less inclined to negotiate if the PCs' behavior on the station proved dreadful, etc. Darkness Points thus become a means of "paying" for difficulties, rather than freely choosing an arbitrary number of them depending on your inspiration and your mood.

Let us quickly gloss over the game's sub-systems: we only had a single fight to manage, but despite my lack of preparation, I found the confrontation reasonably fast, tactical and descriptive. Hit points fall and rise easily; the characters are encouraged to use the scenery to protect themselves; losses of consciousness come quickly, unlike deaths, which only occur on a nasty critical; the whole is therefore very dynamic. All good, and a true pleasure after the "gets the job done" system of Call of Cthulhu V7 and the glaring imbalances of our tests on Capharnaüm. The piloting system convinces me a little less, notably in that inter-system travel mostly requires efforts from the pilot and the sensor operator, leaving the others twiddling their thumbs. The random events also demand real presence of mind from the GM not to limit themselves to mere die rolls. Ultimately, the extremely simple management of the characters' progression appears to me as a defensible middle ground between lightness and the pleasure of seeing one's PC progress (mostly through talents).

Beautiful and effective game aids

Beyond the substance, Coriolis belongs to that category of role-playing games whose form constitutes a selling argument in its own right. I had already mentioned the game's striking aesthetics, which allow the Third Horizon to stand out from the competition. Let us also add to the balance this abundance of very high-quality game aids, which greatly facilitates the planning of sessions. From the "does-it-all" card deck to the random mission generation mentioned earlier, via the ultra-detailed maps, Coriolis does not skimp on the means to accompany your sessions with relevant and pleasant-to-use "extra" content.

Ultimately, I have a single regret with Coriolis's material. A number of game aids were offered during the crowdfundings, but seem to have completely disappeared from the virtual shelves. For instance, the official soundtrack can only be listened to on YouTube, and the who's who of Emissary Lost's important NPCs turns out to be nowhere to be found, just like the PDF map of the Third Horizon. Offering these game aids as downloads would probably cost nothing, and the operation could even be profitable if Fria Ligan sold them at a low price. And besides, every Coriolis GM would probably be delighted to be able to lean on even more classy material to animate their sessions!

As I wrap up my review of Coriolis, I would tend to recommend the adventure, notwithstanding my reservations about the line's future - in the French edition as well as in English or in the original - and about the setting's maturity. Let us meet again in a good year for a Post-Mortem of our campaign, an occasion on which I may revise my judgment on this interesting entry in the SciFi role-playing game category.

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Post-scriptum 20.01.2020

On January 9, 2020, Fria Ligan announced it had bought back the rights to Coriolis from Paradox. In this excellent podcast from Effekt, Mattias Johnsson Haake, Coriolis's new Game Director, gives interesting explanations about the license. First, the history in quick version: Coriolis was first published by Järnringen. When the company decided to stop publishing games, the founders transferred the Coriolis license to Paradox Entertainment, since some masterminds straddled both companies. At that time, Paradox was indeed looking for a SciFi intellectual property, but for reasons unknown to Mr. Haake, Coriolis was never put to use (perhaps because of its Arabic-flavored themes). Paradox Entertainment then offered the exploitation rights of the license to Fria Ligan, a new role-playing game company made up of Coriolis fans (the name is incidentally a reference to the game's "Free League" faction), which re-edited the game in its current form. In parallel, Järnringen resumed publishing role-playing games with the formidable Symbaroum, before merging in 2018 with Fria Ligan. Then, from negotiation to negotiation, Paradox finally resold the Coriolis license to the new Fria Ligan, allowing the original authors to get their beloved creation back. Perfect.

Mr. Haake thinks this reappropriation of the license will allow the teams to work more intensively on Coriolis, so we can expect less spaced-out publications! Concretely, he committed to releasing the second part of Mercy of the Icons by the end of the year, but even hopes to do it before: the full Swedish text will be on his desk by Fria Ligan's next early-year meeting. The third part will be engaged right after, paving the way for a 2021 release. Hooray! Another juicy piece of information: no crowdfunding is planned for these two parts, as the team feels the Coriolis license is strong enough to walk without this crutch, all the more so as a campaign lends itself poorly to stretch goals, so enticing for spending money long in advance. He is however considering pre-orders, building on the tools Fria Ligan developed for Alien. Fair enough.

And finally, Mr. Haake confirms that Coriolis is indeed envisioned as a toolbox from which GMs must draw to compose their own Third Horizon. He moreover amuses himself with the "depth", but also the "breadth" of the themes and intrigues developed for the game, specifying that Coriolis is probably aimed at courageous or experienced GMs. I would tend to say we are talking more about courage than experience: more than well-oiled habits, it takes time and motivation to coherently fill the voids of a universe this vast.

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