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Now here's a surprise: A vehicle design system that's as easy to use as the character creation rules.

All too often, a simple and elegant set of character rules gets a nice big lead albatross hung round its neck when they get around to making rules for vehicles. Vehicle design systems often obsess with nitty-gritty little details like how many cubic inches the beer fridge is. Or getting in everything that a given vehicle would "obviously" have renders the vehicle prohibitively expensive to build/buy/operate.

Big Robots, Cool Starships neatly bypasses all these issues by rendering most of them moot.

No rules are given for figuring out how much these vehicles cost in cash. Such details are left up to the GM and player to discuss between them. Instead, like everything else in Big Eyes, Small Mouth, it costs Attribute points to get a vehicle.

Size and weight are given in general terms, which is how I like it. Most players don't really care exactly how much the vehicle weighs or how big it is, they care about its game stats.

Vehicles are bought using Sub-Attribute Points. For every level you have in the Own a Big Robot (or Fast Starship or Whatever) you get a certain number of points. Movement types, structural attributes, weapons, and other things are all bought from these points. Your vehicle can also have things wrong with it, like needing repairs a lot, weak spots, and being just plain big. Taking defects may be necessary, and is a way to get more points if you decide you need extra points to put in a Jacuzzi. Very little calculation is needed for vehicle design. You can probably do the entire vehicle design on the record sheet.

I sat and played with the system for a bit, and while there is room for abuse, it's going to be easier for an alert GM to catch it than with a more complicated system. It's also quick and easy to use. In under two hours I designed a suit of power armor, a stealthed smuggler's ship, and a battecruiser the size of a moon. Just for fun, while I was writing this review, I designed a suit of power armor for a campaign idea that occured to me. It took less than ten minutes.

The obligatory sample chapter includes everthing from a simple motorcycle to a main-line combat mech, to a sword-shaped planet-destroying space cruiser that shows what can happen when you go off the deep end.

The rules for running vehicles are very much in the fast and loose/make it up as you go style that has characterized the Big Eyes, Small Mouth game system so far. There are four weapons ranges: Melee, Short, Medium and Long. Rules for crashing, falling, combat inside a vehicle (come on, we all love boarding actions), and how to run big battles are included, plus a selection of campaign ideas in which to use the book just in case you're stuck.

The only real weakness of Big Robots, Cool Starships is that it doesn't handle the low end of the scale well. It works well for big space cruisers, but small vehicles like ordinary cars and motorcycles end up a little generic.

But it's really nice to be able to design a moon-sized battlecruiser in under an hour. (38 minutes to be precise.)

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 3 (Average)

Big Robots, Cool Starships
Author: David L. Pulver Category: game Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order Line: Big Eyes, Small Mouth Cost: 15.95 US Page count: 112 ISBN: 0-9682431-3-4 SKU: 02-002 Capsule Review by Hollis McCray on 08/03/99. Genre tags: Science_fiction Far_Future Space Anime	Now here's a surprise: A vehicle design system that's as easy to use as the character creation rules. All too often, a simple and elegant set of character rules gets a nice big lead albatross hung round its neck when they get around to making rules for vehicles. Vehicle design systems often obsess with nitty-gritty little details like how many cubic inches the beer fridge is. Or getting in everything that a given vehicle would "obviously" have renders the vehicle prohibitively expensive to build/buy/operate. Big Robots, Cool Starships neatly bypasses all these issues by rendering most of them moot. No rules are given for figuring out how much these vehicles cost in cash. Such details are left up to the GM and player to discuss between them. Instead, like everything else in Big Eyes, Small Mouth, it costs Attribute points to get a vehicle. Size and weight are given in general terms, which is how I like it. Most players don't really care exactly how much the vehicle weighs or how big it is, they care about its game stats. Vehicles are bought using Sub-Attribute Points. For every level you have in the Own a Big Robot (or Fast Starship or Whatever) you get a certain number of points. Movement types, structural attributes, weapons, and other things are all bought from these points. Your vehicle can also have things wrong with it, like needing repairs a lot, weak spots, and being just plain big. Taking defects may be necessary, and is a way to get more points if you decide you need extra points to put in a Jacuzzi. Very little calculation is needed for vehicle design. You can probably do the entire vehicle design on the record sheet. I sat and played with the system for a bit, and while there is room for abuse, it's going to be easier for an alert GM to catch it than with a more complicated system. It's also quick and easy to use. In under two hours I designed a suit of power armor, a stealthed smuggler's ship, and a battecruiser the size of a moon. Just for fun, while I was writing this review, I designed a suit of power armor for a campaign idea that occured to me. It took less than ten minutes. The obligatory sample chapter includes everthing from a simple motorcycle to a main-line combat mech, to a sword-shaped planet-destroying space cruiser that shows what can happen when you go off the deep end. The rules for running vehicles are very much in the fast and loose/make it up as you go style that has characterized the Big Eyes, Small Mouth game system so far. There are four weapons ranges: Melee, Short, Medium and Long. Rules for crashing, falling, combat inside a vehicle (come on, we all love boarding actions), and how to run big battles are included, plus a selection of campaign ideas in which to use the book just in case you're stuck. The only real weakness of Big Robots, Cool Starships is that it doesn't handle the low end of the scale well. It works well for big space cruisers, but small vehicles like ordinary cars and motorcycles end up a little generic. But it's really nice to be able to design a moon-sized battlecruiser in under an hour. (38 minutes to be precise.) Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 3 (Average)