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Seeing Imperial Survey 1: Hawkwood Fiefs, I could think only one thing, "I guess that Holistic Design liked the Trinity Field Reports from White Wolf." Sometimes the similarities between the two companies are staggering, even setting aside the fact that the nucleus of Holistic Design came from White Wolf oh-so-long ago.

Imperial Survey 1: Hawkwood Fiefs is a slim 32 page pamphlet on the four Hawkwood worlds. Overall, well-written and well-done, but the format is a complete failure. From the small amount of art to the tiny format, the Imperial Survey series is not as good as I would have hoped. The tiny pamphlet format worked wonderfully in Trinity because they were all on largely peripheral information or as "holding efforts" integrated into the metaplot and release schedule. I think that Holistic Design would have done much better to release a Book of Worlds of some sort instead of a series of pamphlets. I would be willing to wait several months for a nice binding and more art.

On to the content, which, like all Fading Suns products, is superb. The details worlds are Delphi, Ravenna, Leminkainen, and Gwynneth, in that order. At the end of the book is a single page mentioning holdings on Velisamil (Obun), Holy Terra, Tethys, Bannockburn, and Severus. In this format, each world gets approximately 8 pages or so, but even that is not enough.

In the typical anecdote-laden Fading Suns writing style, the narrator, one Baron Geoffrey Antonin Hawkwood of Gwynneth, talks about the history and culture of each of the Hawkwood worlds. Interesting plots (like the opening of the Deepcore cities on Ravenna or the guerilla forest people of Gwynneth) and great NPCs (like the flaboyantly bisexual and trans-species lover Count Rogan Tiberius Hawkwood of Delphi) are tossed out left and write with wanton abandon and creative glee. I would imagine that the Count is a nod to good old Captain James Tiberius Kirk myself, and the forest people remind me of the forest folk in Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, a superb anime and manga and a great source for Fading Suns inspiration. The system information was also somewhat interesting, but the physics of it are often questionable. That is only an issue when you try to play a more "hard-science" genre of the game, but it is a bit annoying.

The textual content was superb, but the maps and art were not as good. Some of the pictures (of all four of them) are good, some are not, as is all Fading Suns are, sadly. The maps were, for the most part, very uninspiring. I have a personal love for maps, and these just did not stir my blood at all. They reminded me of the maps in various Star Trek merchandise (not the RPG, I have not seen that): serviceable and so minimalist as to be almost distasteful. The system diagrams were okay, but I am uneasy about the variations from the plane of eccliptic, but that is again simply a nitpicking physics issue, being a physics student, I am entitled to that, I think.

Overall, I liked it. I was not happy with the format at all, but I still loved the content. I hope that Holistic Design is smart enough to collect these all together in the end.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Imperial Survey 1: Hawkwood Fiefs
Author: Christopher Howard Category: game Company/Publisher: Holistic Design Line: Fading Suns Cost: $6.95 Page count: 32 ISBN: 1-888906-15-4 Capsule Review by Derek Guder on 06/14/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Far_Future Space	Seeing Imperial Survey 1: Hawkwood Fiefs, I could think only one thing, "I guess that Holistic Design liked the Trinity Field Reports from White Wolf." Sometimes the similarities between the two companies are staggering, even setting aside the fact that the nucleus of Holistic Design came from White Wolf oh-so-long ago. Imperial Survey 1: Hawkwood Fiefs is a slim 32 page pamphlet on the four Hawkwood worlds. Overall, well-written and well-done, but the format is a complete failure. From the small amount of art to the tiny format, the Imperial Survey series is not as good as I would have hoped. The tiny pamphlet format worked wonderfully in Trinity because they were all on largely peripheral information or as "holding efforts" integrated into the metaplot and release schedule. I think that Holistic Design would have done much better to release a Book of Worlds of some sort instead of a series of pamphlets. I would be willing to wait several months for a nice binding and more art. On to the content, which, like all Fading Suns products, is superb. The details worlds are Delphi, Ravenna, Leminkainen, and Gwynneth, in that order. At the end of the book is a single page mentioning holdings on Velisamil (Obun), Holy Terra, Tethys, Bannockburn, and Severus. In this format, each world gets approximately 8 pages or so, but even that is not enough. In the typical anecdote-laden Fading Suns writing style, the narrator, one Baron Geoffrey Antonin Hawkwood of Gwynneth, talks about the history and culture of each of the Hawkwood worlds. Interesting plots (like the opening of the Deepcore cities on Ravenna or the guerilla forest people of Gwynneth) and great NPCs (like the flaboyantly bisexual and trans-species lover Count Rogan Tiberius Hawkwood of Delphi) are tossed out left and write with wanton abandon and creative glee. I would imagine that the Count is a nod to good old Captain James Tiberius Kirk myself, and the forest people remind me of the forest folk in Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind, a superb anime and manga and a great source for Fading Suns inspiration. The system information was also somewhat interesting, but the physics of it are often questionable. That is only an issue when you try to play a more "hard-science" genre of the game, but it is a bit annoying. The textual content was superb, but the maps and art were not as good. Some of the pictures (of all four of them) are good, some are not, as is all Fading Suns are, sadly. The maps were, for the most part, very uninspiring. I have a personal love for maps, and these just did not stir my blood at all. They reminded me of the maps in various Star Trek merchandise (not the RPG, I have not seen that): serviceable and so minimalist as to be almost distasteful. The system diagrams were okay, but I am uneasy about the variations from the plane of eccliptic, but that is again simply a nitpicking physics issue, being a physics student, I am entitled to that, I think. Overall, I liked it. I was not happy with the format at all, but I still loved the content. I hope that Holistic Design is smart enough to collect these all together in the end. Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 4 (Meaty)