Introduction
With its colorful, dynamic cover, the Spacer's guide appears a doorway to adventure. And that's exactly what it is, despite focusing wholly on the absolute mundane. I had long waivered between buying this book and leaving it alone. Let me begin with explaining why I wasn't sure I'd like the book: it appears boring. It's all about explaining the everyday mechanics of life in the space of the Jovian Chronicles RPG.
And by everyday, they mean everyday. You'll get schematics for working airlock manual controls, you'll get listings of available commands for spacesuit use, you'll get a discussion of the interstellar rules of the road. There's food, fashion, sports and the procedure of fitting a spacesuit and securing it.
Usually I can't stand this level of detail in supplements. Reading the history of an imaginary place is often more than I can hope to handle - I want the here and now, not yestrday's news. But because I can't effectively imagine life in the Chronicles' universe, any detail seems to ease this task. I haven't been able to pinpoint the difficulty I have with imagining this, but it appears that it's the little things; the everyday differences. So I know what an exo-armor is like, but how do these guys bathe?
Short and sweet
The Spacer's Guide delivers. In short, I'd rate this book "essential" to any Chronicles enthusiast. The planetbooks are nice and in their ways essential, too, and who would want to be without the mecha in the mechanical catalogues, but the Spacer's Guide is all you need.
Homes
The book opens with a discussion about the many off-Earth homes of man. It's a very different story to live in a colony cylinder or an asteroid. The little things get surprising coverage - for instance, the simulated day hours - with night usually a dim twilight, not actual darkness - and seasonal change - changes in humidity and colors. All in all, the six pages on the basic living conditions is very insightful and mandatory reading to help visualizing the homes: colony cylinders (both Vivarium and O'Neill types), other installations (stations), asteroids and the inhospitable planets.
Day to day
The next chapter covers the day-to-day, going over lodging, nutrition, clothing, communication and transportation. Thse are all accompanied with very accurate exmaples of prices, making it quite possible to play a game of book-keeping, if the players are thus inclined. The prices are something I could live without, but it's not like they'd take up much space.
Emergencies
Still in the same chapter, "Living in space", are the details of emergencies and evacuation. The procedures are somewhat varied in different environments. There are clear-cut facts about decompression, fire and exposition to vacuum. Some nasty mathematics are introduced to the reader: it is impossible to evacuate a colony cylinder, simply because there aren't enough escape pods. The rationale is that if the evacuation of the cylinder is warranted, a large part of the population is already dead.
Traveling
After living somewhere we get to check out space traveling. The section first covers ticket prices (including orbital lift fees) and the different classes of traveling. Then passenger accomodations, services and the practicalities of the journey are covered in fine detail, giving me a clearer image of space flight than what I had of flying in contemporary Earth passenger jets prior to making a flight myself. The passenger isn't then left out in the cold: customs, immigration and cargo procedures and regulations are presented next. All of the costs are given attention.
Space navigation
Contrary to my vague thoughts on the subject, space navigation can be handled in a roleplaying game in a meaningful way. The reader is first going to learn the terminology of space navigation. Much of this was new information for me, and wholesomely interesting at that. Some of the data is reprinted from the basic rulebook, but it's more convenient to have all of this stuff in one place. The book then proceeds to lay out how ships present their flight plans, how the space is split into traffic control zones and what kinds of rules dictate movement near other vessels. There is enough information to actually fill out a flight plan every time your characters set course to another dock.
This is where one of the book's very few rules sections comes up: there's a one-page guide to using the Space Navigation skill. It's extra rules, but just as they should be: not essential, but adding a lot of flavor.
Search and rescue
The book's first "action" theme comes up in the next section, which is about search and rescue operations in space. The text explains who the SAR teams are, when they are dispatched and how they operate.
Economics
Having covered the day-to-day and personal crisises, the book lunges forth to solar economics. Personal identification, national currencies and financial institutions are explained, as well as material and stock exchange. This goes as far as explaining some of the laws governing insterstellar commerce.
Commerce is followed by industry, or manufacturing in space. Robot factories - autofacs - are covered extensively enough to run a game around one. With goods being manufactured, retail stores are next in line, although I feel they would've fit with the everyday procedures better. Black market gets a short treatise, again including commentary on prices.
Life aboard
Oddly, manufacture and retail is followed by a section on living and working aboard a spaceship, which comes complete with a two-page section on civilian crew positions and duties. I feel this should be with the space navigation information, but it's not blatantly out of place, either.
Docking facilities are explained: refueling ports (unmanned, code-locked asteroids), skyhooks, nomad settlements, colony cylinder docks, cargo docks and shipyards. This is all solid material which fills in gaps left elsewhere.
EVA, or extra-vehicular activity is bound to be a large part of any Jovian Chronicles campaign, and it gets a suitably thorough treatment. The discussion on EVA includes the use of spacesuits, airlocks and maintenance pods (M-pods). Again, this is detailed stuff, including diagrams for manually operating airlocks, the safety routines of airlocks, the button commands available in spacesuits, the procedure of fitting and securing a spacesuit and the command language and navigation protocols of M-pods. Not surprisingly, you could roleplay the actual commands given to an M-pod, using these guidelines - "Move. Translate. X. Plus Two."
Somewhat oddly, space construction, concerning the building of colony cylinders, ships and stations, is covered next. I really feel this ought to have been with the "manufacture in space" section. But this isn't as much of a problem as it could be, because Dream Pod 9 favors clear-cut one or two -page chunks of information which are very easily navigated back and forth.
Salvage
Salvage operations in space are given a lot of weight. They get a three-page treatise, including the concrete phases of a salvage operation, the rules governing the operations and the possible and probable hazards of the job. Adding the book's concluding two-page "Solar convention of salvage", there's a good deal of solid campaign source material on salvage in here.
Leisure
"Playing in space" is the chapter on sports and leisure. It includes thoughts on how traditional sports have adapted to space, and what kinds of new possibilities the low gravities and expensive living space offer. Exo-ball, the Mars Biathlon, space racing with exo-suits, exo-armors, fighters and full-size ships, and Solar sailing all appear exotic and memorable. Sports isn't everyone's cup of tea, although the importance of sports (and especially martial arts) is emphasized - staying fit is paramount to a space-dweller - so the book offers insight into other kinds of pastimes, too: music, video, trideo, virtual reality (expensive), literature and so-called fine arts (sculpture, visual arts, acting). Most ships with a large crew have a theater group which puts up a show to locals whenever the ship is at port.
An interesting visualization arises from the fact that since functional, monotonous surroundings have proven detrimental to the human psyche, space-dwellers often paint their wall-panels and spaceships, and re-do the paintjobs every now and then.
Miscellaneous
Moving on to so-called gamemaster's resources, the book offers a five-page section on the Spacer's Runic, a symbol language used to convey important messages across the usual language barriers. It's used when electronic communications are down, or something needs to be put up for future viewing by anyone who happens across. The language is actually spelt out (in a compact, shortened form) in the book, making it possible to write messages in Spacer's Runic in real life, too.
Seven archetypes, all with good plot hooks and suggested uses for action and intrigue campaigns, round out the book. They are the customs officer, the Martian Biathlete, the cargo master, the traffic controller, the passenger steward, the ghost and the SAR technician. A three-page basic space glossary is likely to find regular use, too. There is no index, although this isn't much of a problem, thanks to the book's excellent table of contents and logical chunks of information.
Presentation
The layout and typeface are excellent. There are relatively few illustrations, of which many are recycled from previous publications. Most of the art is very good, but I'd appreciate original pieces much more. There are very few typos.
Conclusion
On closing, I have to say that this is the best supplement I've bought in ages. If science fiction gaming's your thing, get this. You wouldn't believe it's a "giant robot game" from the basis of this wonderfully thorough manual, which does not leave you wanting for more - instead, it gives you all you need to know. With the Spacer's Guide in hand, you're ready to decide which planets or facets of the Jovian Chronicles universe interest you enough to warrant buying more supplements. It's a shame this book came out as late as this, but it's diamond worth waiting for.
For content, a five out of five. For presentation, a four out of five - it's good stuff, but I really want more illustrations.
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