I recently backed Impulse Drive on Kickstarter. I couldn’t wait and already had a 1st session. Fun stuff…I am looking forward to more sessions. However, I did realize that I know very little about Uncharted Worlds which is another PbtA space rpg.
Is anyone who has experience with both games willing to share their experiences? I am looking for a “compare and contrast” discussion not necessarily which one is “better”.
Thanks.
Paging Dirk Cjelli he played in my UW game and he MCed an earlier version of Impulse Drive.
I’ve experienced UW as a player and ID as a GM (though not with the final version of the game). The glib answer is, UW is more Star Trek and ID more Star Wars. Though obviously that’s not really correct and there could be a lot of overlap in the stories you could create with either.
UW seems to support a more structured, humanocentric universe (PC’s are expected to be humans and aliens rare or never encountered). If you wanted something closer to “hard” sci-fi (however you might define that). UW would be the better choice. If you are familiar with Traveller, UW is very much inspired by that game.
ID supports a more open, space opera style universe. Fiction like Star Wars, Farscape, or Firefly would work well with ID. And it has a more overall action-adventure vibe.
That’s not getting into details about mechanical differences, but I hope that helps.
UW is more Traveller, I would say. I’ve run a PBP Uncharted Worlds game for more than a year — you can look at it here: tavern-keeper.com – TavernKeeper
UW has a unique character creation system, that involves choosing and combining two professions and an origin, instead of having a set paybook.