Gift Horse 26: The Thousand Suns Review
General Overview
Thousand Suns by James Maliszewski describes itself as "Imperial Science Fiction", of which the most famous element is Dune but I would say that it borrows comparatively little from(other than perhaps a Kirkland brand Mentat species with some TOS vulcanism sprinkled on top).
I would say its influence comes much more strongly from Asimov's Foundation , paired with aliens you would expect to find in one of Niven's Known Space stories. I haven't confirmed this, but I suspect Roddenberry's Andromeda is also a notable influence.
In terms of play style, it has similarities to classic Traveller, though only in so much as a "zero to hero" fantasy RPG has similarities to OD&D.
I will put in an extra note that this is the 2011 version of the game. Grognardia Games is working on an upcoming second edition as of the writing of this post, so this could all be out of date within a week. I have excellent timing with these things.
A Mechanic that works really well
The base mechanic is 2d12 to roll under a target number, lower is better. The nice elegant solution I will call out though is Extended Tests . When a player is doing something that takes a long and variable amount of time they make a series of checks in intervals. They count up the "degrees of success" (meaning how much you succeeded the roll by) and add them to a growing tally to an end number. It turns it into an attrition mechanic with time as the resource. Its great.
A detail that lifts above its weight
Each section (chapter) has a quote from a science fiction story from the golden era this game is meant to emulate. For the Action Section that is "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent" from Asimov's "Bridle and Saddle".
This line clearly sets the expectations that this is not a game about combat, but a game which features the risk of combat.
Constructive Feedback
One of the core mechanic of the game is the creation of character "hooks" related to your background. There is a random table of worlds separated by subtype. The core worlds have distinctions between class levels (from upper to low). Worlds in the Marches have differences in population density, Wildspace worlds by high and low tech.
The suggested hooks listed for each world type are simply my the top level world type, not subtype.
"Arranged Marriage" seems like an odd-choice for a low-class Core Worlder as an example. Splitting the suggested hooks to be by subtype rather than main type would be useful and fairly easy I think.