Author: Peter Scholtz
Publisher: Candlenaut
System: Ironsworn-based d10 System
Marketplace: DriveThruRPG
Entity caught my attention when it appeared in my recommendations on DTRPG. I looked at it, and wrote it down as a possibility for a future review. Then it started to haunt me: I heard it mentioned again and again in discussions with solo gamers, on TTRPG podcasts I follow, and even unexpectedly in ChatGPT windows. The other night, I was surfing DTRPG and found it front and centre on my recommendations once again and on sale, and decided to heed the gods.
I'm glad I gave it a try! My playtest was a little slow to start, but once I got into the rhythm of the game, I thoroughly enjoyed my journey across the bizarre, desolate and dangerous world of the game. It played fast, put interesting challenges in front of me, and things often came together with compelling serendipity.
In Entity, you play an IAP, an android built for deep space exploration by NASA in the late 21st century, and that has served human expansion for 10,000 years. After a Rogue primordial black hole destroyed the Solar System, IAP crews became the scouts who serve the dispossessed remnant of humanity by seeking out new places to settle and resources to help them survive. The campaign begins when a mysterious alien pyramid capable of bending gravity destroys your vessel, and brings your escape pod down on an alien world full of strange vistas, unexpected perils, and ancient ruins.
You conduct missions to gather resources and perform research that will allow you to construct a colony that might make the world survivable for you and potentially safe for human habitation. As you progress in building your colony, you also begin to discover secrets about the purpose of the alien ruins, the pyramid, and the planet itself.
Entity is built entirely as a solo game, and intended to run through 10 procedurally generated missions of varying complexity. Individual IAPs can be destroyed, but the campaign can continue with the same facilities and discoveries carried over between PCs.
The System
Entity draws much of its structure from Ironsworn, mixed with elements of Notorious and Wandering Souls, all distilled down to their essence and highly simplified.
Characters
Your PC has three primary abilities: Technology, Analytics, and Adaptability, to which you assign the values 3, 4, and 5. Each ability has Edges, specialized fields of the ability. You assign 1, 2, and 3 to the edges of each Ability.
Before play commences, you choose a Mission. The Mission is a long-term goal that might take multiple adventures to complete. To complete a mission, you must collect 2-4 Aspects: rare and specific resources that need to be sourced on the planet.
When you complete a Mission, your colony gains a new facility that grants a permanent upgrade to your PC and any additional PCs that replace them thereafter. You also make 1 Discovery that takes you one step closer to the campaign's endgame.
Character has three types of expendable resources: Energy (battery reserves), Resources (raw materials), and Data (useful observations). They start with a maximum of 10. They also have 20 slots on their spacesuit for upgrades, strains, and impairments.
Upgrades are modifications to their space suit that allow the PC to improve their chances of success in encounters by sacrificing Energy.
Strains are temporary damage to your space suit or android body. They go away when your character returns to base and rests. Impairments, are permanent damage that occupy one of your 20 slots permanently. If you have no free slots, you must remove an upgrade to make room for Strains or Impairments. If all 20 slots have Strains or Impairments, your PC is destroyed and you must create a fresh character to carry on the mission.
Expeditions
Each time a PC begins a new adventure, called an Expedition, they start with 10 Energy, 0 Resources, and 0 Data. They also remove any Strains they have in their inventory.
Expeditions are broken into discrete Explorations. You roll randomly to determine the next mysterious location you will visit. You then roll a d10 to determine if you have an encounter while travelling. You may expend Data to add to this roll. The table gives more favourable results on high rolls.
Once you reach the location, you roll again on the location encounter table to determine whether you have one kind of encounter or multiple encounters. Once again, Data may be spent to increase the roll. Higher rolls tend to yield less dangerous encounters and a higher chance of acquiring Resources, or Data, or recovering Energy.
When your character is exploring, you can run into four kinds of encounters: Challenges, Opportunities, Findings, and Aspects.
A Challenge can require 1-3 ability rolls from a list of appropriate edges. The specific danger and which edges can be used is based on a d100 table. You add the edge to its parent attribute to get a target number. You then roll 2d10. If both dice are at or under the target, you succeed; if one is, you succeed, but gain a strain; if neither are you fail and gain an impairment. Challenges are all risk, no reward, and must be cleared before you can deal with Opportunities or Findings.
Opportunities require one roll. If it is successful, you gain a benefit; if it is partially successful, you gain the benefit and a strain; if it fails you gain an inability and no benefit. Opportunities may be skipped. They are a risk to gain a reward. Like challenges, the opportunity is determined by a d100 roll. Most successful Opportunity rolls grant a large amount of Energy, Resources, and/or Data.
Findings are small rewards that carry no risk or roll.
Aspects are rare finds (only gained on a 10+ on a location encounter roll) that bring your character one step closer to their mission goal
Once you resolve all encounters at a Location, you can conduct one side activity, which will allow you to gain Data, Energy, Resources, or spend Resources to remove Strains or add Upgrades to your character. These require rolls, bur are designed to be easier to make, using a base attribute +4 rather than base attribute + edge, and force a Challenge encounter on a failure rather than causing strain or Impairments.
Explorations represent a few days spent exploring a geographical location.
Because the base chance of finding Aspects is only 10% per exploration, taking time to do multiple explorations to gather data so that you can increase the odds is necessary to finish your missions. As you conduct more expeditions, however, you will need to take time to gather energy or resources, and strain will slowly build up. Even with good luck, it took me 9 explorations to finish my first mission, and by then I'd piled up a lot of strain, and was struggling for Energy.
Heading home and starting a fresh Expedition before you finish a mission may be necessary, especially if you are battered and worn down; but it requires you to sacrifice any energy or data you have built up.
Upgrades and Facilities
There are two forms of character development in Entity. When you finish a Mission you add a facility to your colony. This gives a permanent upgrade to one edge, increases the maximum capacity of one resource, or grants one specific kind of re-roll once per Expedition. If your PC is destroyed, other PCs from the same colony get to keep the benefits of that facility.
The other way is through Upgrades. Upgrades take up an inventory slot, and so can be lost if you take too many Strains and Impairments. Each one gives you the ability to affect dice rolls or manage resources in various ways by spending energy.
PCs start with three upgrades. The Integrated Multi-Tool let's them re-roll one die of a dice roll for 2 energy.; the Adaptive Energy Shield lets you turn a partial success into a full success for 3 energy; the Adaptive Resource Conversion Unit let's you sacrifice 2 Resources for 1 data or 1 energy at no additional cost. The rest grant temporary boosts (2 energy) to a specific edge, Advantage on rolls related to one edge for 3 energy, or improved resource or data collection for 2 energy.
Upgrades require a PC to spend 10 resources as their one secondary activity at the end of an Exploration.
For Example...
For my test playthrough, I chose the mission Unheard Frequencies; I needed four aspects to build a communications relay for my colony.
I began my first Expedition with my IAP, Zachariah with 10 energy, no damage, and no data.
Zachariah ultimately did 9 Explorations over the course of his Expedition. Expedition 4 was one of my most fruitful. It went like this:
Zachariah had been very lucky the previous day while exploring a pyroclastic valley, and had set his sights on a strange glittering location on the horizon. He had managed to gather his resources up to a total of 10 at the beginning of the day, had 3 data, and 6 Energy.
In the morning he traveled to the new location. I rolled a 4 on the Travel Encounter table: no encounter. In a few hours he reached the location, a roll on the random location table told me it was an forest of shimmering crystal growths and translucent Amethyst leaves.
Once at the location, I rolled on the location encounter table and got a 7. I spent all my remaining data to bump it to a 10: One Challenge, one Opportunity, one Finding, and an Aspect.
I rolled on the d100 Challenge table first and rolled a 5. An explosion of chaotic data bursts assaulted Zachariah's communications systems and cybernetics. I could choose either my Technology ability + Information Technology edge roll or my Adaptability ability + Communication edge. Adaptability 5 + Communication 2 gives me a target of 7 or lower. I rolled 2d10 and got a 6 and an 8... a partial success. I decided I didn't want a strain on my systems just now, so spent 2 Energy and used my integrated multi-tool to reroll the 8 and got a 9. I took a strain. His third since he set out.
Zachariah, wincing and gritting his teeth as data from some unknown source began to overload the system, activated his multi-tool to create a radio jamming system, drowning the signal with noise until he could understand it... a repeating automated distress signal blaring through a severely damaged radio... an ancient protocol his assisting AI systems somehow knew. He sent an acknowledgement, and the distress signal quieted into a pulsing homing beacon. But not before he started to smell ozone in his helmet from a fried transistor and a migraine surged as he tried to sort out fragmented data.
Next comes the Opportunity. I rolled a 97 on the Opportunity Encounters table and discovered an ancient NASA lunar module laying half buried in crystalline vegetation. A machine missing for 10,000 years. I could choose between rolling Technology + Engineeting [4+2 for a target number of 6] or Analytics + Physics [3+2 for a target number of 5]. If I chose to risk it, I could get 3 data. I decided to roll against Technology + Engineering and got a 3 and 2, both at or below 6, and so got 3 data.
Zachariah wondered at the strange polyhedral object laying in vibrant purple growth. It couldn't be... he tore away at Amethyst moss and took in a sharp breath... the NASA logo had been one of the first thing he'd seen when he'd awoken all those centuries ago. The lost Lunar Lander. In a way, his own ancestor, now rusted, pitted -- skeletal with impossible age. He kneeled next to it travelling back centuries of memory. There, old principles, old designs, still remembered in compressed, deep-storage files. He reached gently in and disconnected a jumper. The beacon cut off. Then, climbing carefully, religiously in, he extracted an ancient sealed box. Tape reels with centuries of data dubbed and overdubbed within. He connected it to his wrist computer and grabbed the last fragmented readings of the planet within.
Third, I rolled for a finding, a resource boost that has no risk attached. I got 66 on the d100 Findings table: an abandoned data drive with insights about the native life. Another +2 data.
Casting about the site of the ancient lander, Zachariah, spotted something smooth and white tangled in the roots of a shimmering tree. He cut away at the soft wood with its oozing, astringent white sap until it was free. He whistled as he drew his prize out: a helmet of a 20th EVA suit. Picking it apart gently he found an ancient micro-tape. The playback came from an impossible voice. "This is commander Virgil Grissom. Day 67 since the crash. By my own reckoning, that would make in June 19th, 1968..." What followed was an account of alien animals and plants in an impossible voice from a man a thousand years dead from a mission he'd not lived to fly.
What was this place?!
This exploration also gave me an Aspect. This is a item that presents a necessary part to complete my Mission of creating a communications relay. For game record purposes, I just marked the second of four check boxes for the Mission. The flavor was up to my own journaling.
Zachariah muttered prayers and thanks as he slowly dismantled the surviving electronics of the Lander. Antenna, transistors, potentiometers, step-up circuits. The tech was ancient, but his aching head was a reminder it still worked, and could still serve in the relay, at least until they could fabricate replacements.
With the encounters over, I was permitted one secondary activity for this Exploration. With 10 resources, I decided to spend them all on an upgrade. Biology was Zachariah's weak point, so I decided on a Microscopic Scanner, which would let me add +1 to my Biology edge for 2 energy.
As he watched the setting star's red light turn the strange forest dazzling hues of violet and magenta, Zachariah considered the strange assortment of items he'd piled up in his bag: crystalline lenses, reflective crystals, transistors, alien organic computing parts, and began adapting components in his head. Yes... a design was coming to him. Given the strange micro-organisms that had nearly eaten through his suit the other day, he needed better tools to deal with the planet's life-forms. When the last of the glorious light faded, he turned on his suit's floodlights and got to work...
What I Loved
Simplicity
My biggest gripe with story games is that they err on the side of complexity to narrow genre drift, constrain, the GM, and increase Player Agency outside narrative bounds. It leads to games that use an excess of terms, trackers, and specialized moves lists that I find frustrating and overwhelming. My favourite PbtA-descended games are always the ones that throw out more of the engine than they keep (such as Down and Out in Dredgeburg).
Entity takes the core mechanic of Ironsworn and then strips away every needless complexity. Assets are simplified down to Upgrades, Missions with their assets replace the far more complex Iron Vow system, and
Structured Campaign
Entity's second-to-last page is a series of Discoveries; revelations about the planet that bring your survivors closer to discovering some incredible truth about the planet. Players are discouraged from reading these ahead of time and thereby spoiling the experience. The presence of Earth relics, ruins of multiple civilizations and mind-bending quantum phenomena on the encounter tables promises that this will be something exciting.
I haven't read it; I've enjoyed my first mission enough that I will keep playing.
The presence of the Discoveries create an unambiguous endpoint to the campaign and add an element of the unexpected that add some fun. If you don't spoil them ahead of time. Having an end goal in a solo campaign can keep you interested and motivated in ways that a pure dice into solo cannot. It is rather like how having a writing prompt and a set word count is more motivating than simply staring at a blank page. It makes Entity easier to dive in and enjoy,
Well-Designed Tables
Entity's encounter tables are full of really interesting, well thought-out encounters that build up mystery as you work your way through them. There is a fantastic mix of hazardous environments, alien strangeness, mysterious discoveries, and hostile xenofauna that the planet becomes a character all it's own. They are well designed enough that even repeat encounters, when mixed with imagination become fresh or strange rather than routine.
Confluence of Elements
As an expansion on why the tables work so well, it is worth noting that with a little imagination, multiple encounters in the same place often come together to form a unique but cohesive story that is deeply satisfying.
Mt 4th Exploration designed above threw disparate vague elements at me: an ancient NASA lunar module, a lost data drive with records of local biologicals, and an Aspect that will help me build a communications relay; imagining how those fit together: gave me the idea of a lost 20th century astronau'ts found recordings.
Entity is just really good at coming together that way. In another case, the separate elements of a challenge with transmissions from an Alien AI, an opportunity with a herd of alien creatures, and an alien device that both offered me huge amounts of data. They came together to suggest discovering alien herd animals sensitive to EM radiation who would avoid places where radio Frequencies that I could track to find my next Aspect for the communication relay.
Elegant Resource Management
In Entity, you juggle three different resources on an expedition: Energy, Resources, and Data. They interact with each other in a way that controls the pacing beautifully. You have to find Data to have a decent chance at discovering the Aspects you need for the Mission, but to get it, you risk damage and deplete Energy. Energy can be collected independently, but only when you have a lull. Resources can give you Energy, Data, and repair damage - even advance your PC - but gathering them slows you down. Juggling the three resources takes a lot of careful thought.
Additional Content
Entity has three expansions, Advanced Storytelling, which adds additional Oracles, tools, and suggestions to turn your Entity game into a dense, detailed narrative, as well as Continuum and Hyperion, which are expansions. Continuum adds additional locations to the original Entity setting, and creates location-appropriate encounters rather than requiring the player to find ways to make the rolled encounter fit with the rolled setting. Hyperion adds an extension to the pre-existing campaign, allowing the IAPs to explore another mysterious region of the planet.
These expansions all are designed with a lot of the early criticism of the game in mind; it creates a greater sense of coherence, and minimizes the need to flip back and forth between the pages as you roll through an exploration.
Growth Points
Needless Gloom
The backstory to the scenario discusses the extinction of humankind by way of the random, action of a rogue black hole. It feels senseless and adds little in the way of depth or urgency to the scenario. You are not seeking a second home for a humanity as they sit on the edge of destruction; you are just picking up the pieces. The destruction of your vessel and crew at the beginning of the story is designed to feel like the nail in the coffin of humanity. I found it detracted from the sense of awe and wonder that the campaign could have evoked.
Organization and Clarity
Once you get Entity's system it is incredibly easy to use. But you have to understand it first, and the book's organization does not make that particularly easy. Terms are not clearly explained in just once place, ad the game does not have any one spot where the game's procedure is spelled out sequentially. You have to piece it together somewhat as you read. Almost every other criticism I have about the system is an outgrowth of the overall poor organization of the book.
I do understand why Entity has these organizational issues; the goal of its design was to be minimal; it is compact, with a manual that is only around a dozen pages in length and rich in data. A lot of the niceties of a bigger manual are skipped. I personally appreciate that approach, but minimalism, taken to its extremes, can be a vice.
Page Flipping
One of the biggest organizational challenges in the game is moving back and forth between tables. The Travel Encounter table, Location Encounter table, and the rest of the tables are separated across the book fairly widely. The Location table to give you the setting for the Exploration is after the three Challenge, Opportunity, and Finding Encounter tables are in another space, too. The Location table sits after the specific encounter tables, and is not even mentioned in the discussion of location, making it possible to run several explorations before even realizing it is there.
On the bright side, Entity's creator recognized this weakness in the game and all supplements were redesigned to compensate for it.
Confusing Terminology
Entity uses a lot of terms that are very similar: Exploration vs. Expedition for example, and never provides a simple glossary for finding them. The manual is short but a glossary or an index could have made it much easier to use.
The term Aspect in particular took my quite some time to figure out exactly how it is used because the explanation is spread over three distinct points in the book. Never once does it clearly state: "each time you have an aspect encounter, check off one aspect for your mission, and when you have enough, your mission is complete," which would have made the whole task of learning the game much faster. "Aspect" itself is an abstruse term that could have easily been replaced by "milestone", "sub-goal", or "objective" and had a lot more clarity.
An Example of Play Would Make a Huge Difference
Even leaving out a table of contents, a glossary, and an index, just a one-page example of play covering character generation, mission selection, starting an expedition, and two or three expeditions in simple, minimal terms would have made learning this game much, much easier.
Conclusion
Entity is an interesting solo rpg that distills the essence of Ironsworn down to its simplest components, and tells a dynamic, evolving story with a clear beginning, middle, and end built directly into it. It has an evocative set of encounters and locations that invite creating rich narratives. It strikes a pretty good balance between being sophisticated and being rules light that I appreciate. If you are going to get it, I recommend listening to a few minutes of a play-through just to get the rhythm of how the game works.
With the way the campaign is designed, I would expect that a player would end up running through 10-14 expeditions ranging from 4-10 explorations each, which would take about 7 hours or so to work through if you are taking thorough notes. After that, I am not sure it would have as much replay value without getting one of the expansions, as you would have made your discoveries, and uncovered the secrets of the planet. Between Hyperion and fan-made expansions, however, if you want more out of Entity, it shouldn't be too hard to create new goals or a new planet to explore.
It would not be a bad choice for someone who is trying to get into solo gaming for the first time because it is so well structured. And a single expedition clocks in at about a half an hour, making it a great choice for a little adventuring on the Lunch hour.
I certainly enjoyed it enough that I held off on reading the discoveries ahead of time and intend to take Zachariah on further expeditions.
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