Ashen Stars vs Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game
Compare Ashen Stars and Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.
| Ashen Stars | Elite: Dangerous Role Playing Game | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Sci-Fi | Sci-Fi |
| Tags | Investigation, Mystery, Mission-Based, Ship-Based, Space Opera, Resource Management, Character-Driven, Strong GM Support, Skill-Based, Crunchy | Space Opera, Licensed IP, Ship-Based, Sandbox, Skill-Based, Tactical, Strong GM Support, Exploration |
| Core Mechanic | Ordinary tests roll a d6 plus ability-pool points spent before rolling, succeeding by meeting or beating the difficulty. Investigative abilities work differently: a core clue is simply given when the right ability is used, no roll needed, with point spends buying extra benefits. | Roll a d10 and add your Skill bonus (one-tenth of your skill score, rounded down): equal or exceed the GM's difficulty number to succeed. A natural 1 always fails and a natural 10 always succeeds, within reason. The same roll plus a weapon's Accuracy bonus drives combat at all three scales (personal, vehicle, and spaceship) against a target's Defence score. |
| Dice | d6 | d10 |
| Complexity | High | Medium |
| Availability | Free quickstart | Free quickstart |
| Runnability | 5 of 5 book tools | 3 of 5 book tools |
| License | All Rights Reserved | Proprietary (Frontier Developments licensed IP) |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — GUMSHOE Community on DriveThruRPG | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Publisher | Pelgrane Press | Spidermind Games / Modiphius Entertainment |
| Year | 2011 | 2017 |
| Languages | English | English |
| Best For | Groups who want episodic space mysteries with a shared ship and recurring personal subplots. Cases put the crew's pursuit of justice in tension with its need to earn a living. | Groups who want to play freelance starship commanders trading, exploring, and dogfighting their way across the 34th-century Milky Way. Particularly suited to fans of the Elite: Dangerous video game who want to expand the experience with crewed ground missions and off-ship intrigue. |
| Highlights | Automatic core clues keep missed information rolls from blocking a case. Reputation changes the wait between contracts, connecting ethical choices to the crew's upkeep bill. Ship combat assigns different attack modes to crew stations, spreading decisive actions across specialists. | Three integrated combat scales (personal, vehicle, and spaceship) share the same d10 resolution but each has scale-specific actions and damage rules. Spaceship combat uses a two-zone abstract flight system with zone-restricted actions (joust, dogfight, broadsides, ram, and others), so manoeuvre matters without a grid. Sixteen ships from the video game (Sidewinder through Anaconda) are statted with full component, weapon mount, and modification rules. The Random Generation System provides d10 tables for generating star systems, missions, encounters, and military objectives between or during sessions. |
| Considerations | Investigative pools normally refresh only when a case ends, making extra benefits a case-long budget. The rules assume a working Laser crew; fugitive campaigns require changes to that framework. Ship battles use abstract goal-point races rather than positional movement on a tactical map. | Spaceship combat has more moving parts than personal-scale checks: shield recharge, equipment actions, floating bonuses, component criticals, and ammo all need tracking each round. The conversational prose style is approachable to read but slow to navigate when looking up a specific rule mid-session. Single-pilot ships are the default; running larger crewed vessels with multiple PCs at the same console takes GM adjustment. The setting is locked to the video game's 34th-century three-superpower politics, which constrains departures from established lore. |