So, Wizards of the Coast put out a couple of products for their new Star Wars line. Not that you'd know it from talking to anyone--the game itself was received with a lot of fanfare, but Secrets of Naboo and the Living Force Campaign Guide don't seem to have been noticed as much. Since I picked up the latter book today, I thought I'd give it a review.
As to where I'm coming from: I like Star Wars. I grew up on the movies, and I think the RPG is very good--my thoughts on WotC's other RPG notwithstanding. I also like settings. Since this is a setting product for WotC's Star Wars game, that is all relevant in this review.
By now, I'm sure you've noticed that the cover price of Wizards of the Coast RPG products has risen quite a bit. $15 for a 64 page book is asking quite a lot. So, you'll have to expect to get a lot out of each of those 64 pages to make it worth your while. Toward this end, I'll attempt to tell you what you get page by page, more or less, before an overall evaluation.
The cover of the Living Force Campaign Guide is attractive, in the bold and striking design of the Star Wars line. It tells you what you'll get in this book, and that it is for Rise of the Empire era games. Credits and table of contents take up page 1.
No pages are wasted for chapter breaks, by the way--I like this in a 64-page book. It flows anyway, and I like having every bit of information that the designers would care to give me. You'll see why as I go on.
Pages 2-6, and half of 7, deal with the history of the Cularin System, where the Living Force campaign will be set. It's a concise and informative history, told in the odd present tense but not told badly. Pages 7-43 deal with the overview of the worlds of the Cularin System--Acilarus, Cularin, Genarius, the Asteroid Belt, Almas, Morjarkar, and their various moons. You generally get an overview, followed by the NPC descriptions. This goes most in depth for the most inhabited places--Cularin, Genarius, and Almas.
We go on to the major groups in pages 43-51--the major cartel, organized crime, the military, and pirates, and here we get some info on more NPCs. There are lots of them in the book. Sites of interest are covered on pages 51-57, the Jedi Academy on Almas on pages 57-61, and finally RPGA Living Force campaign info on p. 61-64. The typeface is not too large, and pictures are present but not to excess. All in all, the Living Force Campaign Guide puts its space to good use.
The Cularin System has a kind of frontier feeling to it, with civilization having come in within the last 200 years. It has tropical Cularin, where Republic commercial interests live in a decent balance with the reptilian natives (who are now skilled at interacting (and fighting) with those from outside); the gas giant Genarius, with a variety of cloud cities; and Almas (which, by all rights, ought to be uninhabitable), where there is a Jedi Academy on the same planet as an old Sith site in a sort of test for the use of academies off of Coruscant. Combined with places like the asteroid belt and the various moons, this is a pretty lively setting for adventure, and the mix of corporations, crime, and Jedi can lead to some interesting stories, and it does have that Star Wars feel to it--you know, with the jungle planet and the gas giant and the bizarrely terraformed planet.
The book has a lot of NPCs who have something interesting to them--a quirk, perhaps, or being in a place where they would make excellent contacts for the PCs. In either case, a read through the NPC listings can give you a few new plot seeds whenever you need them. The book is packed with these little adventure starters, which is one of my favorite things about setting books. If you choose to use it and find yourself without a story to tell, it's your fault, not the book's. The Mysterious Places section also has lots of ideas for odd adventure settings, and you could mine a mountain out of any of them.
It's short. There's no denying that, and there's no getting around the fact that it's $14.95. The question is, is the book worth it? And the answer is, a conditional yes. The condition is quite simple: if you are in the market for a setting full of adventure seeds and NPCs for your Star Wars game, then it's worth every penny--measure it in what it can contribute, not page count, and you'll have something pretty big. If that's not what you're in the market for, save your money.
It puts a hurt on your wallet, perhaps, but in the end the Living Force Campaign Guide is a worthwhile addition to the game if you want a good setting outside of the restrictive bounds of the movies.
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