It’s been a long time since Destiny was a rain-or-shine part of my week, and a new tabletop RPG has just reminded me of what I left the game behind – it recaptures everything that I fell for to begin with..
I used to boot up Bungie’s sci-fi shooter most evenings, pored over lore like a scholar, and spent countless hours mastering its many Raids. Frankly, these are some of my favorite gaming memories; there’s a sense of magic to them, not unlike childhood Christmasses or beloved vacations. But things slowly soured over the years, and what I loved about Destiny seemed to… I don’t know, fall away? Honestly, I wasn’t even sure what I was mourning until a new tabletop RPG fell onto my desk. Coriolis: The Great Dark is Free League’s latest release, and it’s so reminiscent of what Destiny used to be in the best way. There’s exploration wrapped in mystery, teamwork, endless horizons, and an unknowable universe with more depth than you can hope to fathom.
In Coriolis: The Great Dark, you are star-faring refugees that left the war and chaos of your futuristic civilization behind in search of something better. Unfortunately, your home is falling apart and you must explore the frontier in order to find ancient relics and technology that might keep it together for a little longer. It’s very Jules Verne, with a smattering of Alien; your space suits are ragged and look like Victorian diving gear, ships are akin to submarines pushing through the murky depths, and you’re guided by a mysterious alien Bird that feels distinctly supernatural. Throw in your patchwork home (built into an asteroid run by guilds called ‘Ship City’) and you have an open invitation to go nuts.
Sound familiar? There’s the last hope of mankind, perched on the edge of unknown (and terrifying) space. Lost ruins pose an enigma for you to unravel. Small teams strike out to do some good for their dying home and the guilds that run it. Yeah – it’s got more than a passing resemblance to Destiny. More specifically, it channels that early Destiny 1 energy.
It also exudes something I think the later Destiny expansions lost – that sense of twinned exploration and mystery. It’s been a while since I’ve cracked open an RPG with such a strong sense of place, and this is what I used to live for with Bungie’s shooter. Then it started to feel increasingly ‘small.’ The Darkness, that horrifying eldritch force we couldn’t define? It’s basically just a guy with lots of ships. (OK, I know that’s a gross oversimplification and the Witness is meant to be the amalgamation of an entire species, but you catch my drift.) Meanwhile, Coriolis: The Great Dark leans into that indescribable vastness of a universe we can’t possibly learn everything about. We’re infinitesimal insects in a world much, much bigger than us, not cosmic heroes.
I’m already psyched to find out more and I’ve barely started digging through the Core Rules. I’d been aware of the Coriolis series for quite a while, but came upon it when the system was already ankle-deep in enough supplements and expansions to fill a starship. This gave me pause, because even though it looked fascinating (it pitched itself as Arabian Nights in space, which sounds dope), I had a lot on my plate already without navigating something so labyrinthine. The Great Dark, though? It acts as a clean slate into one of the best tabletop RPGs, taking the game to a new corner of the galaxy and basically starting over. (Don’t worry if you’re a fan of the old version though, because your society here is from the previous edition’s Third Horizon and space station Coriolis.)
The rules aren’t as complex as I worried they might be, either. Coriolis: The Great Dark uses a d6 system where rolling a six means success. Certain skills or tools give you access to more dice so you can stack the odds in your favor too, and you can always ‘push’ these results to get a better chance at the outcome you need (just be aware that it may come at a heavy cost). Everything hinges on this simple system, so it’s a lot easier to get your head around than even D&D.
Maybe I’ll come back to Destiny one day; I want to fall in love with it again. But until then, I think Coriolis will scratch that itch. Frankly, I can’t wait to get this on the table – and with any luck, my crew will fare better than my poor, neglected Destiny Guardian.
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