Growing up as a nerd, one of the arguments you always heard fellow nerds gripe about was "Star Wars vs. Star Trek". I never really picked a side in those fights - I liked each other properties, but neither good enough to favor one over the other. That's because my heart belonged to another "Star" property - Stargate. I first ran across the show in syndication on other channels, but fell in love with Stargate SG-1. By that point, I think they were on Season 6 of the show, but Sci-Fi Fridays became a regular family watch night at our house. We even got all of the DVD boxed sets for Christmas that year and binged them back to back to get caught up on all the story. I stayed caught up with the show throughout the remainder of it airing on tv, along with Stargate Atlantis...and to a lesser extent Stargate Universe.

So when Wyvern Gaming announced that they were making a new Stargate SG-1 RPG, I was already buying the game. No review copies, no second guessing, just jumping in head first. However, with the pandemic sapping a lot of my desire to play RPGs, I didn't get a chance to read the book and/or try out the RPG until Gen Con 2022. We will circle back to this later.

Chevron 5(th Edition) Encoded

The Stargate RPG runs on a modified version of 5th edition D&D. I say modified, because of course with Stargate you are talking P90s and lasers Staff weapons and none of that "Magic" stuff (its Technology, not magic!). There are a few other changes if you look under the hood as well. One of the big ones is that it incorporates "Determination Points". If you've played other non-D&D games, you'll recognize this as the "token that players can use to twist the story" item (Light side points for Star Wars, XP in the Cypher System, etc.).

Another difference in the game is that character level stops at level 5, per se. After this, characters then get to advance by "specializing": picking new feats and expanding your character in that way. I actually like this change, as it resolves 2 problems with D&D type RPGs. The first is the runaway character power, where characters become unstoppable powerhouses and practically gods at higher levels of the game. Now, you can "balance" the game more because you don't have to keep upping the threat level of the game. Considering the fate of the galaxy is pretty much always at stake, it's kind of hard to go upwards from there. Secondly, this allows characters to branch out and make their characters more unique within their classes. You can have a party of all scientists (probably not a good idea) and each player's character could still be mechanically unique because they picked a different way to branch out.

Chevron 6(th season) Encoded

The setting of the game takes place during Season 6 of Stargate SG-1. Ironic for me, as that's also when I started following the show. I think the book does a pretty good job of trying to replicate that TV show feeling. In the GM section, they talk about setting up your campaign in 13 episode "seasons", and then even sketch out how to layout that season. Also, there are portions of the book that talk about making sure there is not just combat encounters. One of the big things about Stargate is that it *wasn't* just about the military shooting up a bunch of aliens. There were a lot of moral decisions involved and that's something that needs to be considered in the RPG to give the game that same feeling.

Along with the core rulebook, Wyvern Gaming has done a great job sketching out their own campaign. It's a living campaign, so you can go onto their website and create a character using their living campaign rules. Then, you can carry that same character to different missions in the game, continuing to level them up. This type of gameplay works great for convention play - when you don't always have the same group/GM available to get together to play. Each GM records the XP earned from the mission they ran and it's all tracked on their website.

Speaking of convention play, the session that I played at Gen Con was a "side mission". Not a part of the main storyline, this was a small 2 hour session that basically consided of one encounter. I wanted to try one of the full missions, but 4+ hours with a game I hadn't played and a random group of players can be a bit risky. These side missions were a great chance to dip my toes in. Ours had a cosmic horror aspect to it that gave you that creepy mystery feeling but remained in that Stargate environment. The GM was talking to us a lot before/after the game about the living campaign, as Gen Con 2022 was where they were playing through the "season finale" of Season 1. I am pretty tempted to try and find a way to play through some of the other missions to see the story unfold.

The Iris in the Way

While I love the game and the setting, I do have some nitpicks. First off, the character classes have both an "engineer" and a "scientist". While I understand the way that the game breaks down the difference (scientist is working on understanding new technology, engineer is using existing knowledge to do something new), in the Stargate setting we see a lot of people working somewhere in between these two. When creating a character, I wanted to have a "techy" type character but found it hard deciding which of these routes I wanted to go down.

Secondly, the art just doesn't completely "feel" Stargate to me. It's probably hard to have that feel, considering we are talking about a live action show, but the style of the artwork seems more like a comic book adaptation. To take a phrase from my step-daughter, it ain't vibing with me. Not saying that the artwork is terrible, I just don't think it is the right style for this setting.

Conclusion

1. While the game is great, I still kind of wish it used a different setting other than 5th edition to put more emphasis on the story elements of the setting.

2. I consider Season 7 to be my favorite season, and I love when the Daedulus class ship rolls around, so I NEED them to expand this game into the later seasons and/or into Stargate Atlantis in the future.

3. No, I don't want to remove the control crystal when I say I want to disconnect the DHD from the Stargate. They clearly show in Season 1, Episode 18....