Stargrave – Dead or Alive

We gave you an overview on the initial release of Stargrave. Covering the rules themself along with the first three plastic kits of the Crew, Troopers and Mercenaries. But where has Stargrave moved to in the mean time?

The first small supplement was released along side the Nickstarter in March 2021. With the first lockdown a lot of games, and especially Osprey Games, received single player add-ons and so did Stargave with Dead or Alive initially a free mini-campaign for solo-gaming of 21 pages - which was in 2024 re-released as a full 96 page paperback supplement with further content for Stargrave. So due to this fact - this was the first and the most recent supplement for Stargrave, with quite a few releases in between.

Joseph A McCullough (and his personal blog The Renaissance Troll) wrote this supplement, who is the author of the core rules and many of its additions. Dead or Alive is available as a paperback for 20 GBP or as a digital edition for 16 GBP (both PDF and ePub/Mobi).

What is it about?

As mentioned above, Dead or Alive was released during the lockdown and due to the restrictions on social gatherings, they added a solo gaming mechanics to the game of Stargrave. Initially these mechanics were intended for the third supplement Hope Eternal, but they decided to provide these earlier to tackle on the situation back then.

Dead or Alive explains how the rules are modified to work for a single player moving the miniatures and game pieces. For example there is a step-by-step reaction list for the creatures that your gang comes across. Beyond that, the rules introduce a scenario generator, providing you with a setting, a gang, complications, and the mark / bounty. You might think, well, I already got the PDF back in 2021, what do I need the new book for? They added a bit of lore and more illustrations? No far from it. They released further supplements since the original release, but noticed there was still a demand for solo gaming. Not because the players needed it, but they wanted it, as the bottleneck is still "social restrictions" in some ways, as you might simply have a hard time coordinating the free time slots of multiple grown ups, living far from other gamers and such. Therefore Joseph McCullough circled back to Dead or Alive and gave it a proper update. As the initial PDF release "only" (I'm not arguing, it was a very solid free content) offered five bounties or marks, the paperback covers 20. The same about the complications and settings, these were increased from five to 20 as well. This means from the 125 variations of the old release, we went to 8.000 unique possibilities.

The solo-gaming is co-op compatible as well.

First Impression

On the 96 pages of Dead or Alive you'll find six chapters of content;

• Chapter One - Going Solo
• Chapter Two - Settings
• Chapter Three - Complications
• Chapter Four - Marks
• Chapter Five - Gangs
• Chapter Six - Bestiary

and a Galaxy's Most Wanted sheet on the last page. As mentioned above, the increase of content is a significant difference to the free pdf. The first chapter explains, how to alter the game to have the single / solo player experience, including a few sentences on how to use these rules for co-operative game play. As creatures behave differently, the receive their own action priority list (a decision tree for their actions).

The Settings cover 20 different terrain features, from caverns, over derelict ships, swamp towns to really exotic places like the stomach of a space whale or crystal forests. Each of them has at least half a page to a full page of description and options and certain conditions like fighting without artificial gravity, random encounters, or the problem of breathing under water.

In chapter three Complications are added, as plans rarely live beyond their first enemy encounter and various issues add further difficulty to their mission. This is another 20 items to add to the generated scenario, from Innocent Bystanders, over Body Doubles and Worms to aggressive plants. Self explanatory, these add a spin to the mission itself, may it be Zombies that raise from the dead, a clone of the mark (so you don't know if you're fighting the real one) or having the mark's gang taken a hostage, who has to be rescued as well. These have significant effect on the missions and vary in difficulty.

The focus of Dead or Alive scenario is the mark, a unique individual the crew is looking for - either Dead or Alive. If you add a back story or reason why your gang is hunting this mark, it provides a narrative drive to your games and can make for an interesting. For that reason in the back of this book, you'll find a Most Wanted list, to help you keep track of the marks you're looking for and those you have hunted down. There are 20 different marks, with different sets of skills and bounties from 150 to 400 credits. And they have different motivations, so they behave in different ways on the table, which is an interesting addition to their stat lines, powers and equipment.

In chapter five you'll generate the entourage of your mark. This is a compact list of 20 variations of different gang lists, including how their are placed on the table. So the game pre-determines how they are grouped. These are regular and specialist gangers, as you would build them from the core rulebook.

The last chapter, the Bestiary adds information and stats for the creatures that are mentioned within the prior chapters but aren't covered in the rule book. These range from Giant Worms, over Trophy Hunter Alien (*cough* Predator) and radio active roaches to Zombies (Which you'll find in Quarantine 37 in an even more dangerious variant). Within this chapter you'll get a few new traits as well, that go with the marks or creatures.

And all those pages are further supported not just with pictures from games in a very scenic / diorama way, but very vivid illustrations by Biago D'Alessandro as well.

How does Dead or Alive play?

This supplement creates a scenario for you to play, including a post game sequence for gathering experience. You roll your die several times, to determine the conditions from chapter two to five,

• Setting - specfic terrain and location of loot tokens on the map
• Complication - further challenges for the scenario, to make it more unique
• Mark - determines who the players are after and what special conditions apply to them
• Gang - the retinue of the mark and where to place them on the map

The major difference is the different turn sequence compared to regular game play, by moving the Gang Phase between the Captain and First Mate phase. And that the mark, which is the XYZ, is meant to be activated last. Beyond that, the scenarios generated from the Dead or Alive rules only end, when the player has no crew figures on the table - there are no easy escapes in this game mode - you have to extract your team from the table, even if the mark has escaped.

Even if you don't intend to solo-game, this is an very interesting addition to the game as opens up cooperative game mode along with something, that in my opinion works very well for demos or hosted games. Beyond that, the marks and such make for great NPCs in campaigns, that add another depth to the game as you do not just have the interests of the crews against each other but like a common enemy.

What’s next?

Well, there are multiple further supplements around for Stargrave, and as of today five have been released, with a sixth Death Vector, to be released in May 2025.

• Quarantine 37 (Fighting on an abandoned space station, hunting for lost technology, unique research, and forgotten experiments)
• The Last Prospector (the crews must travel from asteroid-to-asteroid, and even down to the system's single, barely inhabitable planet, searching for a man who claims to have discovered a 'big score')
• Hope Eternal (a solo and cooperative expansion for Stargrave. Along with full rules for playing the game in this new style, the book contains an intricate campaign of connected scenarios)
• Side Hustle (a card deck instead of a regular supplement covering 40 side hustle cards with missions, plots, and tasks)
• Bold Endeavour (focuses on the ships that serve as the crews' transports, strategic headquarters, and homes)

We intend to cover these on the blog as well.

Conclusion

In terms of value - I want to strongly underline that this is not a cash grab. They didn't simply put a paywall in front of the content - especially as you still can download the simpler free part from the Osprey page. Joseph put a lot thought into this and the overhauled supplement provides so much more content and variation, that is worth it.

As you don't need that much to be able to play solo, basically if you have just one of the plastic kits, you already have enough miniatures for two crews, this has an incredibly low barrier for entry and as such the costs are more less fixed with the supplement itself - and that's value.

Stargrave is a brand of Osprey Games and North Star Miniatures.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.