A #indiettrpgmonth gem worthy of some attention.

Singularity System is a TTRPG by End Transmission games. The link to the DriveThruRPG.com title is here.

Do you like Cyberpunk? Do you like space games such as Silent Death? How about Babylon 5? If you said “yes” to any of these things, then The Singularity System might be right for you.

Unfortunately, it looks like End Transmission Games went out of business in 2017 according to their Itch.io page here. But if you still want to enjoy a meaty cyberpunk space game that’s a lot of fun, Singularity is still available. I guess technically this game is defunct, but it’s worth a look if you want a space game.

The game is pretty combat heavy. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea and I get that. I like my games a little more blasty sometimes. The system itself is a d6 system that uses dice pools similar to Shadowrun for those who are familiar. I’ve been around so many d6 games, they honestly all start to run together.

There is no “magic” in this game, but there are psionics if you pick up the module for them. GMs are certainly encouraged to modify and/or kitbash things together for this game as they go, which is sort of what appealed to me about it. That, and this game did mention mecha, which it delivers on.

There are also no aliens, ancestries of any kind, or really any species in the Core book beyond regular humans. The Xel are a free “module” aka sourcebook. i could just as easily pull aliens in from any other number of games if we wanted to go there. For my Singularity campaign, I’d keep it mostly on Earth. I pictured kind of a Dark Matter sort of series.

I’m always talking about how art (and layout) sells games. Unfortunately, that’s part of where Singularity falls a little short. There are some nice art pieces and they have lovely covers, but the interior leaves a little to be desired. I totally understand what happened. I get that small companies struggle with art. Even my own ventures are hurting for good artwork.

The layout reminded me a lot of early 1990s indie TTRPGs that were cooked up on Word Star or a similar word processing program and then pasted into a larger document. (I used to lay out our college newspaper that way, so I get it. We’ve come a long way since then.) I don’t mind this style of layout and interior design, but it doesn’t stack up as well against other games in this category.

I’ve played around with the combat system and starship rules a little bit. It’s no Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020, but it’s still pretty good. If you have learned any other game with dice pool style mechanics, it’s pretty easy to pick up. The rules cover everything from a regular person with a club all the way up through tanks, jets, mechs, and starships.

In terms of combat rules, it’s a solid B+. I definitely recommend it for that reason. It’s also reasonably cheap if you need a good set of combat rules to accompany a cyberpunk style game. The only other thing I could have asked for was all of that “fluff” that the author intentionally left out. At least it picks up where a ton of other indie games leave off- the combat.

Thanks for stopping by today. Singularity System is still on my shelf along with a dozen other mecha and space games. We’ll talk more about some of them for Indie TTRPG Month. I appreciate you being here.