An amazing game! Great for a beer&pretzels one-shot, but even better for a 20-odd session campaign, which is what it's designed for and where all the best bits get to shine.

PCs start as lowly disposable members of an amoral, corrupt, and penny-pinching military, which has been sent out to wage war for the sake of the Terrans back home. Touchstones are Colonial Marines from Aliens, and Starship Troopers. It can also do 40k space marines but probably only for a one-shot (unless you hack it a bit) because the military structure behind the PCs is so dfferent to 40k.

The combat is simple but clever. Roll under a stat for a success, but you also want to roll higher than your enemy. Intitiative is successes first, highest to lowest, then failures. Going before someone else (e.g. the enemy) allows you to do extra things in relation to them.

The juice in this game though comes from the orders each rank has. As PCs gain new ranks they get new orders they have to follow, and these frequently conflict with the orders of other ranks, and create savoury situations to play out. It's also worth noting that the highest rank can't be atained without you at least once gaining rank by taking a rank from a superior officer who accidently or "accidently" dies on the battlefield. As rank increases the focus on combat decreases, and the players gain the authority to pick their own targets and define their own missions.

Throughout play aspects of PCs are revealed/created, but the final aspect of each PC is already pre-ordained: "Hatred for home". (Home is Terra where the medically-immortal people who sent you out to fight, live). So the ultimate finish to the game would be a PC who has reached the highest rank and now commands the world-dominating firepower of the entire 16th brigade, has orders from Terra to ensure that the brigade never returns home, but also passionaly hates Terra....delicious!

All this good stuff (ranks and orders) isn't likely to come into play as much in a one-shot though, so be aware of that.

Name-dropping: John Harper is a huge fan of this game, and it's the game that inspired Vincent Baker to start writing Apocalypse World.

For context on my tastes and preferences: in recent years I've played and enjoyed a whole bunch of PbtA and FitD (among other things).

Buy it!

If you're the kind of player who likes measuring out 5' moves and min/maxing every level up with a specific set of talents/bonuses and whatnot to torment your GM (and your fellow players), then this game might not be for you. Or, conversely, the buckets of kill dice might be for you... but, most likely, for the game rule maximalists, your gaming $ might be better spent on the latest 500-page blockbuster RPG monstrosity ruleset or a self-help book for your sado-masochistic tendencies.

For me, this opened up a new world of fun. It brought back fun to roleplaying after being beaten down by the D&D2Kx du jour. Of course, today, you have more colorful options for scaled-back roleplay that is similar to the roots of the hobby... games like Mork Borg, for instance. However, in the time before Mork Borg, this was my Mork Borg. This stripped roleplay back to the essentials and brought it back, forward and urgent in a way that the latest overstuffed edition of big, glossy gaming titles could not do for me.

Complex doesn't have to eclipse fun roleplay, and this is one of those games that reminds me of that.

Carnage Among The Stars is a brilliant game for Conventions or one-shot gaming. I have run this every year for last last 5 years at a local convention, using the incredibly simple mechanics to gets groups of 13 or so players to have a rip roaring good time. People who have never played ANY role playing game walk away saying how amazing it was and people come back year after year to play a new game in the crazy drak world of CATS. (Although to avoid religious connotations I call it Terran Revenge Fleet rather than 3:16. Right or wrong, religion in the US has an offputting affect on some players)

You can have a new player in less than a minute. You can have people join a game or leave a game in the middle and lose nothing. It has a lot of the feel of the Starship troopers movie, with seemingly endless swarms of enemies and limitless ammo.

After years of playing, we have some house rules like "You don't choose a name for yourself. One will be assigned to you by the other players as the game progresses" and some special rules to make the lives of the NCOs a bit more fun to play.

For $10 this is easily worth it and if you are ever in Minnesota for CONvergence, come play at the table! You'll walk away loving this game as much as I do.

I really liked this game when it first came out, and it was fun for a couple of one-shots. However, other groups didn't like the lack of meaningful mechanics in terms of in-game combat. Combat gets immensely repetitive very quickly. For a game focusing on over-the-top combat, that's not good.

I really can't see most groups getting their sci-fi or space action fix from this product. That's not a dig on the Three Sixteen as much as it is personal preference, but I think more traditional gaming groups might have issues with this product. Mine certainly did.

The art and layout are ok on this product, but ultimately, I think the $10 price tag is simply too much for what you're getting. $10 can buy a couple of pdfs of more substantial games, rules-light or no.

Don't expect to run an entire campaign off this--this is a one-shot kind of game, and considering that, I'm not sure the price tag is justified. It isn't a bad product, but it will probably stale quickly.

A very inspired and inspiring game. I'm not a huge fan of space opera or the 40K flavor, but I got this after a recommendation by Robin Laws. And it did not disappoint. I think it would definitely take a certain type of player to get into the proper spirit of Three Sixteen, but those who prize story over rules crunch will love it.

The Style: The cover art looks professional. The inside art is stylized but crude. It however captures the feel of the game. The quantity of the illustrations makes up for the quality, which is how I prefer than the other way around. They layout is clean and easy to read. The rules are explained clearly with plenty of examples. There are a lot of short flavor texts here and there. The preview of this pdf drew me in immediately.

The Content: This game does what it promises to do: a beer-and-pretzel game when you have nothing else to do. It could entertain your buddies for couple of hours, but that's about it. The rules looked really good on paper; after I finished reading it I couldn't wait to run it.

The Actual Game Play: I GMed 3:16 last weekend for the first time with 5 players. It took about 2.5 hours. The game was easy enough to get into. One player really enjoyed it, one hated it. Generally however, most of us didn't really care to play this game again, despite its character advancement system. Though the combat has some nifty mechanics, it seriously lacks variety. It got repetitive after the first encounter. By the time we reach the last encounter, most of us couldn't wait for it to be over.

This game has potential of being fun. It's got cool weapons, advancements, and different alien abilities/types, but I wished the game was more fun to play.

In conclusion, as far as the beer-and-pretzel game goes, it's just okay. I can think of better ones out there. There are a lot of fun games in print out there which cost less than this pdf. $10 for a beer-and-pretzel pdf game is too expensive.

3:16 is a well-designed RPG with a quick-to-learn set of rules. There is ample space for narration and character development, if players wish to do so, but there's still enough structure to help guiding play. The premise of an expeditionary force set out to destroy all "threats" to mankind fosters a lot of thought about ethics and making part of "the system" in different scales. The great thing about it is that it doesn't have to start deep. In fact, a group can play one-shots of planet-wide destruction without any regard for the "big picture." However, it is really designed for campaign play (not necessarily a very long campaign) and that's when character development and conflict will happen. The experience of getting promoted to higher ranks, and thus having to cope with orders that further reveal the nature of the game universe, seems great.

Regarding presentation and writing, the book is clear with an informal style that makes reading through it easy. The illustrations in a slightly abstract style work really well. There is something primitive, or rather primal, about them that make them powerful.

Overall, I found this a nice game. It frames one specific genre and (in my opinion) it has a specific ideological agenda and in these aspects, it is very competently designed. The game system gives considerable narrative power to all players and for that reason it also relies on good use of that power, to work well. Otherwise, it still can work as a rules-light filler but its most interesting elements (narration, character development) might be lost.

Character generation is a breeze, play is fun and fast, and the rules not only don't get in the way, they actually help with telling the story. 3:16 Carnage Among The Stars is great for a pickup game, because it's so fast to get ready to run. If new people join the table (as happened at our game) you just take 5 minutes to roll up some new characters, and you're on your way. No need to worry about them not being up to power level because the real difference is the weapons available and the rank they have. Both of which change at the end of each mission (we played 3 missions to a session on a 3 hour session).

At the end of each mission three things can happen: You can get a promotion (and increase in power), you can get demoted (and decrease in power), or you can stay at your current rank. Promotion depends on what happened during the mission, and demotion happens if another player puts you on the chopping block.

This is a great game for exploring the consequences of total war and genocide on the psyche's of soldiers far from home, if you choose to play it that way, and for just tossing the players in the middle of a firefight and letting loose, if you don't.

A simple yet great game. Well worth getting, I bought it to play for one night at a the wife's wine and cheese party, (we played on the sly). We ended up playing at our next 4 games session completing two campaigns. We full intend to play again.

3:16 CATS is a pleasant surprise for a small, independent, British-created RPG. It is exactly what the description says it is: no more, no less. The Layout is well done: simple, to the point, interesting to read. The art could have been better, but the gritty cartoons seem to convey the correct tone of the game. The game mechanics are easy to understand with the first reading; I will be anxious to play this game soon. • 3:16 kind of brings Halo or Starship Troopers to mind when you imagine blasting big buggies in the middle of a deserted space station.

While I don't like the use of the F-word in most RPGs (I found over 4 uses in this book), never-the-less I understand what this game is supposed to be, so I am letting it slide as I rate this game what it deserves for the value paid.*

• = For 10 dollars, it's a little over-priced, but the game was a refreshing break from the normal RPG. I feel OK with the purchase.

Pick it up if you have 10 dollars to spare: if you like straight, to-the-point cinematic combat and fast dungeon crawling, all mixed up with fragging a plethora of space aliens with a blatant disregard to "sacred" life and ammunition limits (yuh, right), then this game is for you!

This has become one of my favorite games. Character creation is crazy quick and the mechanics are simple to explain and understand. The mechanics don't support story at all, so whatever story there is, is what you inject into the game. So, the game can be a mindless kill-a-thon where the characters massacre worlds, or as complex as your group wishes. This works as a great introductory roleplaying game or as a pick up game. I will always have this game with me, whenever I go and game somewhere.

3:16 Carnage Amongst the star is a simple game of killing things. What things, any alien life you encounter. The game only has to stats FA - Fighting ability and NFA - Non Fighting ability. It is a Roll under system where you roll and if you get your score or below you succeed. Damage from weapons equates to how many aliens you kill. The Gm is given a structured point system to determine how to develop his encounters and use aliens special abilities. He is also given random tables to determine planets and aliens.

Play was very fun with only 2 players and a gamemaster, the rest of the crew was filled out with nameless marines that soaked up damage. An entire game played out in just about 1 1/2 hours and that was with us trying to figure out rules as we went. I wouldn't recommend this game for long campaign play, but I would insist that it is perfect for one shots when not all of the players show up.

Pick this game up and give it a try. If you like Aliens, or Starship troopers this is the game you've been looking for.

3:16 - Carnage among the stars. Just say it out. From the get-go it slaps you around, and tells you to straighten up, cause you're in the infantry now! Originally written for a 24-hour contest, author Gregor Hutton has refined it and rewritten the rules to actually work.

A quick read of 96 pages, it is beautifully decorated, and has a cartoony feel to it. Perfectly blending flavor text and actual rules most seasoned players will have read - and understood - the entire thing within a couple of days.

The key to any good RPG is clear rules for characters and a good system for conflict resolution. 3:16 has both. I have yet to find a player who has not grasped the basic consepts of the game within ten minutes of explanation and demo-playing. Simply limited to two kinds of dice, d6 and d10, the game features just about any kind of weapon you might want, from hand-to-hand weapons and grenades through sidearms to weapons that yield 1d100 kills.

Another great thing with this game is the fact that there are a lot of examples of use of the rules, which help understanding greatly.

The second time I played 3:16 was as a game master. My group loved it, and we had an excellent time, with one of my players scoring 83 kills in a single mission.

3:16 is simple to grasp, and quick to play, a single mission taking up to two and a half hours to play through. Featuring the best of both the roleplaying and boardgame worlds, this RPG still has ample opportunity for actual character development both in between missions and through. using the game's wrench in the machinery; flashbacks.