Stargrave: Bold Endeavour Review

The fifth supplement for Joseph A. McCullough’s Stargrave, Bold Endeavour, sends your crew to a largely unexplored corner of space known as the Crokoan Nebula. There they must face new dangers, such as black holes, asteroid fields... and perhaps even the legendary space kraken!

Ship-shape

This time around, there is a strong focus on the spaceship your crew will be travelling in. The rules for using spaceships in a Stargrave campaign have been expanded and you can assign members of your crew to six roles on the ship: Pilot, Ship Gunnery, Navigation, Engineer, Science, and Doctor. You can give your spaceship a fitting name and keep track of its structural integrity if you take damage from battles, debris, or solar radiation. All of these things help make the ship feel like an important part of your crew, like the famous spaceships from movie series and TV shows such as Star Wars and Firefly.

Space encounters add more depth to the narrative of a campaign, by inserting new moments that occur between the main scenarios. I found these made the game more immersive, as it felt I was really along on the journey with my crew, instead of just fighting one skirmish after the next. There is a table to determine which encounter you’ll get depending on the roll of a dice and they are all varied and reminiscent of the plot of a sci-fi TV episode. You could discover an abandoned space station, an asteroid field, a distress signal, a space-time anomaly, a wounded space whale, or the horrifying space kraken.

Other Additions

Two new backgrounds are available for players to select. The Time-Walker can ‘blink’ a few seconds forwards or backwards in time, enabling them to dodge an attack or attempt something a second time if it fails. Paladins travel across the galaxy righting wrongs, defending the innocent, and fighting evil. They can only be captains, not first mates, and they’re unable to carry a firearm if it takes up more than one gear slot. Also, they gain a bonus against shooting attacks due to their shield and their Lawful Good nature means they donate 10% of credits they earn to those in need.

Six powers have been added that can be used by these new backgrounds as well as existing ones, and several new soldier types are available to recruit to your crew; the Apprentice, Comtech, Exosuit, Expert, and Quartermasters.

Shiny New Scenarios

Stargrave: Bold Endeavour features five new independent scenarios that can be slotted into any ongoing campaign. These take you to all sorts of weird and wonderful locations, from the crystal caves of Caveth, to the ruins on a planetoid haunted by psychic screams, and even an elemental sphere – an ambitious attempt to simulate zero-gravity 3D combat.

This supplement also includes its own advanced technology table, alien artefacts, ship upgrades, and quirky additions to the bestiary, such as Living Lightning, Plasmonic Lifeforms, and String-Life.

Scores

Overall Score: 75%

You might like:

- Running your own spaceship

- Space encounters between scenarios

You might not like:

- No sprawling campaign

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Published 12th Feb 2025.