SKETCH: Echoes

February 20, 2009 No comments

ECHOES is a free 20-page PDF sourcebook for SKETCH, designed and written by Jonathan Hicks, released through Farsight Games. It includes the SKETCH rules, so it’s a completely playable game with just this document. ECHOES (an acronym for Extraterrestrial Civilisations and Histories Office of Earth System) is a relatively hard scifi game about mankind’s exploration of space and its first encounters with extraterrestrial life. Except there isn’t any. There are dead cultures, ruins and and artifacts, but no aliens. We ARE alone. Using the Fold drive, which was salvaged from alien technology, ECHOES expands outward, looking for more artifacts.

There’s a single page on the timeline of space exploration in the setting, a list of the types of missions the ECHOES organization undertakes, a list of suggested player character types, and a list of settled systems and worlds. There’s an equipment list, and a list of NPCs. That’s it. All of the bare bones to run a game, right here, which is the point of the SKETCH system. It’s intended for one-shot adventure where the players and the gamemaster fill in the details, but it could easily be used for a shot campaign.

As an example of what can be done with SKETCH, it’s solid. I would have liked some more concrete plot hooks fir pick-up games, but it does what it says it does. With very little work, a gamemaster can come up with an adventure and players can put together characters and explore the mysteries of dead civilizations in space.

http://www.farsightgames.com/#/sketchsystem/4530546334