I have been meaning to get to this game for two years now.

Designed by Rich Lescouflair, with help from Will Doyle, Christoper Negelin and other fine people, Esper Genesis is a game that fascinated me, but gave me a real problem in reviewing it: I couldn’t determine what the story of the setting was. And that was an issue. I rely heavily on the story aspect of a new game when approaching it, and I was not learning it from the core rulebook. The book describes the Crucibles – strange artefacts that gave psionics to the races of the universe – and some of the alien races, but for the most part you are on your own as to what sort of story and adventure you can create.

So, I turned to the first of the Esper Genesis adventures, Fall of the Eos Keldor, to see what it did. And, at last, I found a group to play it with. In that story, the characters needed to escape from the flagship of the Lorendi Imperium, where they have been imprisoned for a crime they did not commit. Or, as I said to my players last night, for a crime they did commit. Because they were player characters in an RPG.

The adventure is full of action – the characters are in the detention block of the Eos Keldor when the ship is attacked by an enemy warship. As a result, they get a chance to escape! The bulk of the adventure deals with them searching the ship for a code key to reach the hangar bay. Navigating a ship in the middle of a battle is not the easiest of tasks! The scenario has opportunities for combat, exploration, and role-playing, as you would hope.

Unfortunately, between the adventure and the core rulebook, I have only a limited understanding of what the Lorendi are. The core rulebook – released in August 2018 – hardly mentions them. This adventure talks about them being a feared “legion”. Obviously, the author has a different idea of what a legion is than me. I see it as a singular – and relatively small – troop, not something that you would then attach “Imperium” to. The core rulebook points you to the Threats Database for more information, but that book was released a year later, and I do not possess it. How many worlds do the Lorendi Imperium control? I do not know. One? More? And this is one of the reasons that I found the game so hard to get into. The classes and aliens are very distinct. It is not a generic science-fiction game. Those differences need to be explained to ground it properly. I don’t really understand the context from the core book; I would have appreciated more detail.

One other aspect of our game that irritated me greatly were the pregenerated characters. They are very lacking in detail, requiring a copy of the core rulebook for each player to look up the powers. With a new game, do not do this. Explain what each ability can do. Assume that the players have no idea what each alien race looks like and provide those details. If you are familiar with the pregenerated characters for D&D I prepare for each PAX Australia, you understand the level of detail I want.

Now, for all this grumbling, you might expect I hated the game. This is not true. This is a game built on a 5E chassis. It does a few things differently – as appropriate for the setting – but it plays like D&D. Which means it is fun.

While the beginning and end of the Fall of the Eos Keldor adventure are strong, it struggles somewhat in the middle. This is partly due to the map, which for two levels is merely a single corridor with rooms attached on either side. It is not the most interactive of maps, and, if the characters know where they are going – as mine did – many encounters can be bypassed. If they do not know their destination, the scenario may run longer than expected. I cut and adjusted the adventure to run in the time we had. The problems derive from structure and perhaps too much stuff, but not from feeling like there is nothing to do. I prefer the option we have.

The scenario ends with a space combat. Of the various vehicle and ship rules I have seen over the years, Esper Genesis is one of the better ones for allowing players to do things. Roles of Engineer, Pilot and Gunner allow multiple characters to participate at once, and with different ability scores contributing to each role the group’s members can likely all find places to go. I ran it using Theatre of the Mind, but I feel that the system would likely work better with a battlemat, due to the amount of manoeuvring possible. While the system is mostly good at allowing the characters to roll a dice on their turn to see if their action succeeds – something I encourage to keep interest up – a few actions don’t use that, which may cause a player to become disengaged.

Reading over what I have written, my thoughts are still scattered about Esper Genesis. There is no doubt that it is enjoyable – for fun was had by all. However, many of the classes hew very closely to D&D equivalents. This class is the paladin. This class is the warlock. While they have differences – and likely more that become apparent at higher levels – I am conflicted about this. Is it the fate of any 5E game to hew to how classes are built in the parent system, or can you make abilities more varied? On the other hand, it made picking up the game a lot easier.

One interesting point: all the weapons in the book are physical. There is not a single laser weapon to be seen amongst them. Laser blasts exist, but as an esper power. How unusual for a science fiction game! I note that I loved the way the game handled burst fire.

Esper Genesis is an enjoyable game, and one that has much to recommend it. But it presents a large number of niggles, which detract from my appreciation on what has been accomplished. For, make no mistake, a lot of love and effort went into the game!