Coriolis – The Third Horizon

The Dark Between the Stars

Overview

Coriolis: The Third Horizon (CTTH) is a science-fiction RPG from Free League Publishing. Published in 2016, it is one of the earliest implementations of the Year Zero Engine. Inspired by the cultures and aesthetics of Arabia and North Africa, it offers a refreshing alternative to the traditional space opera setting. The player characters are the crew of a starship: free traders, explorers, mercenaries, agents, or pilgrims. Bound together by debt, necessity, and ambition. Every job carries them deeper into the Third Horizon, a cluster of thirty-six star systems linked by mysterious Portals left behind by a vanished alien progenitor race.

Description

The game assumes the PCs are already together as the crew of a starship, though the nature of that crew is entirely up to the players. Characters begin with broad concepts such as Artist, Data Spider, Fugitive, Negotiator, Operative, Pilot, Preacher, Scientist, Ship Worker, Soldier, or Trailblazer. These are concepts and starting points rather than classes: a Soldier might be a legionnaire, a mercenary, a palace guard, or something entirely different.

Key features

The Year Zero Engine

The Year Zero Engine (YZE) is a dice pool system. Players collect six-sided dice based on their attributes, skills, and gear. The dice are rolled, and each 6 is a success. Normally, only one success is needed, with additional 6s indicating a greater degree of success or even triggering a critical effect. Some tasks require more than one success.

Skills & Talents

Characters possess both general and advanced skills, along with talents that distinguish them from one another. Talents may represent exceptional training, unique experience, or even mystical abilities such as reading another person's surface thoughts.

Pray to the Icons

Faith is central to the setting. Every character is born under one of the Nine Icons, each representing different ideals and granting a unique talent. When fortune turns against them, players may Pray to the Icons, rerolling failed dice in hopes of success. Every prayer, however, grants the Game Master a Darkness Point.

Darkness Points

Darkness Points are a resource for the GM, used to increase tension and complicate the story. They allow the GM to introduce narrative twists such as a PC's gun running out of ammunition, an NPC seizing the initiative, or an innocent bystander being placed in danger.

Combat & Criticals

Combat is fast and dangerous. While characters can absorb a fair amount of punishment, critical injuries are the greatest threat. Weapons have a Critical Rating that can trigger rolls on a d66 injury table, producing lasting wounds, or in the worst cases, sudden death.

Active games and players

CORIOLIS
Coriolis
Online
Campaign
LFG Online Coriolis
Players
1/6
GM
0/1
Coriolis
en English

LFG Online Coriolis

Newbie friendly
New players are welcome, and nobody expects you to know the rules beforehand.
Adult
The table is for players who are 18 or over.
Looking for a group to play Coriolis : The Third Horizon or Coriolis : The Great Dark with. I'm an experienced ttrpg player looking to get into sci fi with this beautifully written and imagined world of Arabian nights in space! Please get in touch if you're interested to get a group going and looking for players! Moraelin

Read more

Save to favorites
New
Posted 9 hours ago
en English de German
Shadowdark
Shadowdark
...
Mainz
Online
Frank Black
Hi folks. My name is Frank from germany and I am born in 1978. I started playing TTRPGs in the late 80s/early 90s (don't remember exactly) and had a hiatus between 2008 and 2016. In the early and mid 2000s I participated in the organization for a local convention of the german TTRPG Midgard. Most of my life I was the GM and to be honest I really liked it (probably more than beeing a player). At the moment I play in 2 local monthly goups (no GMing). I am not sure if I have to quit one of the groups I am currently playing in because I really dislike the system we are playing (Warhammer Fantasy 4E) and the group is not willing to change that in the near future. Besides of that I am more than curious to try out online gaming although I never did before. So please be patient with me. Old man incoming ;-) Today I enjoy OSR-games the most (Fantasy, SciFi and all other genres). The simplicity of it is just something I really embrace. I dislike extensive backstories for my PCs. I am convinced that it is more natural to build their personality as I play. I don't need characters that have already achieved everything in their backstories. Besides of that I am a gamer not a novelist ;-) I like my characters to go down in a big blow. They should not die of old age. The most memorable PCs I had are all dead :-) The worst thing that could happen to me as a player is if I recognize that the GM cheats just to safe me from certain death. DON'T DO THAT ;-) As a GM I roll openly and take the results as they roll. I don't balance encounters but I consider myself "fair" in regards of worldbuilding and player choices. I like when players don't optimize and just play without searching the solution on their character sheet. I will kill your character if they make bad choices or if fate demands it. I am not into voice acting or such things and I hate it to waste precious game time on playing out every-day-life of characters. The tavern evening with just talking, the 2 hour shopping tour with the local merchants, the chillout session in the public bath I've seen it all and I hated every single minute of it. Bring on the action, the adventure, thats the reason I play. As you may have noticed english is not my mothertounge. Especially my spoken english is probably not the best. But I think I could manage to be in an english speaking group. At least I would try it. I would love to find a group where I could try out online gaming as a player. I think I would not start online gaming as a GM right away but would love to evolve into that. I really don't care how to play online: VTT, Discord, Teams whatever. I really don't care at this point in time.
Save to favorites
en English pl Polish … Spanish, Persian
CBPRED
Cyberpunk RED
...
Online
Kirdan
Forever GM since 1994.
Save to favorites
en English
CoC
Call of Cthulhu
MOTHERSHIP
Mothership
...
Online
fictionalbeing
Long time gamer, played a variety of systems. Interested in the new and indie or the seasoned and traditional.
Save to favorites
en English
DH
Daggerheart
PATH1E
Pathfinder 1
...
Online
JamesCORP
Hi, I'm James from the UK. I've been playing and GMing tabletop RPGs for a long time, and I enjoy trying different systems rather than sticking with one game. As you can probably tell from my system list, my tastes are pretty broad! I've played or run everything from Savage Worlds and Dragonbane to Alien, The One Ring, Star Wars, PbtA games, Blades in the Dark and plenty of others. I'm especially interested in Outgunned right now. I enjoy games where the players actually roleplay with each other rather than everything going through the GM. I like character interaction, collaborative storytelling and giving everyone their chance in the spotlight. Combat is great too, especially when it's exciting and has some narrative weight behind it. As a GM, I'm not interested in trying to beat the players. I want to give them situations to interact with, see what they come up with and make their characters look cool while still giving them meaningful challenges. As a player, I bring the same attitude: work with the group, support other people's moments, and help move things forward. I'm UK-based and mainly play online using Foundry VTT and Discord. My availability varies depending on the game, but I'm generally looking for UK/European evening times. I'm also happy playing with people who are completely new to a system. I don't expect everyone to know every rule before we start, especially considering half the fun for me is discovering games I haven't played before.
Save to favorites
en English el Greek
DND5E
Dungeons & Dragons 5E
CORIOLIS
Coriolis
...
Online
Nikos
Hi, I'm Nikos, live in the UK, I'm an experienced DND player and GM who has been itching for a new setting! I've been interested in the sci-fi and Arabian nights world of Coriolis and have always wanted to try it! Happy to play online in European times, let me know if you're organising something like that! Thanks!
Save to favorites

Videos

Reviews

Sorted by:

No reviews yet.

Login to leave a review.

Other entries

Unhinged Heroes
Actual Play & Podcasts

Unhinged Heroes

English
Dungeons & Dragons
Actual Play
300 years after the apocalypse, a wayward cowboy, a fey tourist, and a roguish guide begin their journey in the town of Tumble. Together, they attend a town hall meeting, enrage local government officials, and begin to unravel the realms of Ruin.

Read more

Traveller Lifepath
Tools & Platforms

Traveller Lifepath

English
Free
Character sheets
A free, accessible, browser-based character creator and editable sheet for Mongoose Traveller 2022 — every roll cited, every choice logged, every character saved locally. Description Traveller Lifepath is a free, browser-based character creator and editable sheet for Mongoose Traveller 2022. It walks players through the full Mongoose 2022 lifepath — basics and species, characteristics, background skills, pre-career education (University, Army Academy, Marine Academy, Navy Academy), career terms with their full survival / event / commission / advancement loop, mustering-out, the post-creation skill package, and a final reviewable character sheet — without ever leaving a single browser tab.                                                              The tool offers three ways to set characteristics. Players who want the classic experience can have the site roll 2D × 6 into a pool and assign each value to whichever stat they like. Players who prefer their own physical dice can enter results manually; the site still tracks every DM, target, success/failure, and aging effect. Players who'd rather skip randomness entirely can use the included point-buy method (42-point budget, 2..12 per stat). PSI is rolled separately when psionics are enabled, and the Psion career unlocks accordingly.  /images/general-media/1778159165_rhvJ8xSn.png The character-creation rules are implemented as a typed effects engine — TypeScript discriminated unions with exhaustive switching — so every rule lives in one place and can be tested in isolation. The project ships with around 360 automated tests covering qualification, commission, advancement, aging crises, mishaps, life events, connections, the skill cap of 3 × (INT + EDU), pre-career education, and the Mongoose 2022 errata clarifications for Vargr and the Vacc Suit skill. A full audit trail of every rolled die, every applied DM, and every player choice is captured to a roll log that updates in real time. The post-creation sheet is a fully editable Mongoose-style character record. Skills, careers, equipment, weapons, armour, augments, connections, benefits, and free-form notes can all be edited inline; values save automatically to localStorage with cross-tab synchronisation, and the sheet is print-friendly (one panel per printed page, ink-friendly styling). Every character in the local library can be exported and re-imported as JSON for backup or for handing off between players.                                                      Two visual themes are included: a light "Little Black Books" look in the spirit of Classic Traveller, and a dark "Imperial" theme — plus a System mode that follows the operating system's light/dark preference and reacts live when it changes. Theme choice is remembered between sessions.                                                                    Accessibility is treated as a first-class concern. The interface meets WCAG 2.1 AA contrast requirements in both themes (verified by an axe-core audit suite that runs as part of the project's tooling), every interactive element has a visible keyboard focus indicator, icon-only buttons carry ARIA labels, and the layout includes a skip-to-content link for screen-reader users.            /images/general-media/1778159170_sbkOfhno.png Other features include undo across the wizard (rewinds to the relevant picker after popping a character snapshot), URL-based debug logging (?debug=1), the Connections rule for shared PC backgrounds, an aging-crisis path with medical-debt accumulation, and an honest "unofficial fan tool" disclaimer in every place it matters.                            The project is open-source under the MIT License, runs entirely client-side with no backend and no account requirement, and uses privacy-friendly analytics (no cookies). Bug reports, rules questions, and pull requests are welcome on GitHub. Links bytesbynelson.github.io - Live tool github.com - Source code github.com - Issue tracker / feedback

Read more

Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland
Tabletop Roleplaying Games

Neon Lords of the Toxic Wasteland

English
Apocalyptic
Indie
MUTANTS AND MULLETS! In a world where magic and technology collide, mutants and monsters roam the toxic wastelands and ruins of the forgotten world. In this new kill-or-be-killed world, only the strong survive, and attitude is everything! Become a Scum Dog adventurer and brave the dangers of the wastelands in search of cash and prizes. Collect fantastical gear and wield the galaxy’s most powerful weapons to become the baddest dude in Neo-Terraxx. Do you have what it takes to become the Neon Lord?

Read more

Looking for a group?

Find a tabletop group to join or players to invite. Groupfinder is a free looking-for-group platform. By players, for players.