In September of 2001, Fantasy Flight Games published a setting for use with
Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition:
Dragonstar. The first book is to
Dragonstar what the
Player’s Handbook is to D&D: the
Starfarer’s Handbook. This is the hardcover book that’s supposed to tell you all that you need to know in order to play in a Dragonstar campaign. This means that the book introduces the setting and the rules specific to it to the player, and it achieves these goals in a most splendid fashion. The problem comes not from the presentation, but from the content;
Dragonstar is a deeply flawed setting with some wonky rules, but mostly it's an inelegant effort. That said, it works and it does what it sets out to do; most fail to accomplish that simple task.
The setting of Dragonstar is the Dragon Empire, composed of the antecedent states of Quesemet and Asamet. Each was an empire ruled, respectively, by the good metallic dragons and the evil chromatic dragons. Each arose from an industrial revolution where the dragons remained on top and everyone else remained below them. They expanded until conflict became inevitable. So they fought a total war, but after a planet blew up during a battle they decided to stop and instead settle upon a compromise that merged their empires into one whole and then take turns ruling it. Part of the compromise was the support of the Unification Church—a galactic religion that reduces all gods to 12 archetypes; the primary heresy reduces them further to two—and the other was a form of time-limited power sharing between the ten major dragon clans. Each clan would rule for a millennium, starting with the gold dragons. For 5000 years, the dragons of the five metallic clans ruled the empire; now the Great Red Wyrm Mezzenbone of the clan of red dragons rules the empire and things are going bad fast. Sure, this makes sense, and I’m the Queen of Valinor.
First, the idea that the dragons would allow industrialization to occur is preposterous. The reason for it is early in the book, and that reason is clear: the use of magic is, by its nature, restricted to an elite few; technology, by its nature, is useable by everyone and thus is inherently favors the common man. While it is true that the fusion of the two is the answer to the limitations that each possesses, no dragon would ever allow it to occur because the inevitable result of industrialization would be the extinction of the dragons at the hands of the billions of mundane humanoids such as orcs or humans whom they’ve used and abused. Therefore, the dragons of the galaxy would’ve suppressed development of technology at every turn; dragons can handle small bands of elites, but not the massed might of an industrial nation-state, and the dragons know it. The only way that magic and technology would’ve merged into technomancy is through the ingenuity of the lesser races, and even that isn’t a given.
Second, the idea that the chromatic and metallic dragon clans would’ve come to the compromise that is the Dragon Empire is equally preposterous. Both sides are totally committed to their ideologies, so the compromise solution of merging their kingdoms into a greater empire isn’t acceptable. A total war between these two powers would go on until either one side fell to extinction, and damned be the consequences.
Third, the Dragon Empire’s religion institution—the Unification Church—would not come about. As much as the academics would like to believe that people readily accept the idea that all of the Abrahamic faiths worship the same God, the reality is that most of the believers don’t see it that way. This facet of human nature compounds itself when you expand beyond the Abrahamic tradition into more polytheistic religions. As a result, the Empire’s church should be more like medieval Catholicism or Islam and less like New Age universalism; it should impose its ecumenical will by force of arms and cultural imperialism, not through reasoned argument. The failure of such an approach can be seen in the real world, where Islam and Christianity (to name the obvious ones) dominate the world and universal faiths like Ba’hai B’rith fall far in the distance. Furthermore, in a setting where gods are real and present forces warfare between religions will bring about direct conflict between the gods. Why? Because a god can say, “No, it works like this.” whenever a schism threatens to splinter a religion; this means that two branches of the same faith won’t go to war to determine supremacy, so all such wars are truly those between two gods. This has happened in the Empire, but the Church says that these were fights between worshippers of the same god; this is not possible.
These three flaws stem from a lack of proper world building grounded in a consistent cosmology as well as informed by the social sciences. On the surface, the Dragon Empire works just fine. Much like many fantasy and science fiction settings past and present, if you don’t think too much about it (and if you avoid situations where the flaws come to the fore) it will work just enough to get the job done. The Dragon Empire is far better if thought of as a storytelling device and not as an example of good setting design, and it ought to be used that way. (Those familiar with running Star Wars campaigns know this well.) For those who run a more old-school style of campaign, one in the style advocated in Ray Winninger’s “Dungeoncraft” articles, you’re better off dismantling the setting and rebuilding it to suit yourself. I find it disappointing that more wasn’t done to ensure that the setting stood up to scrutiny; craftsmanship bears out over the long term, and RPGs are long-term products.
And now, the rules content.
To Fantasy Flight’s credit, the approach here was a simple one: maintain maximum D&D compatibility. To this end, Fantasy Flight Games decided to add no more than was absolutely necessary to make Dragonstar playable as a high-tech space fantasy setting for use with D&D. This was a very wise decision at the time, and it is still a wise approach now that the D20 System reaches its second anniversary. It is here with the rules content, and not in its setting, that Dragonstar’s true strength shines through and proves itself to be a worthy addition to a gamer’s library.
The changes to the races are few. All of the races in the D&D Player’s Handbook receive attention in the Starfarer’s Handbook, but there are four more choices added to the line-up: orcs, drow, half-dragons and soulmechs. The first three aren’t much more than their descriptions in the Monster Manual rewritten for use as PCs, while the last is the only wholly new PC race in the book. (Soulmechs are works of technomancy; a dead man’s soul is magically bound to an android body equipped with a neural net, for that is the only way to create sentient machines.) Drow and half-dragons imposed level adjustments—Effective Character Levels by another name—upon the character, as both races possess power far greater than normal game balance allows. All races possess new flavor text specific to life in the Dragon Empire and a few mechanical tweaks—racial skill bonuses, etc.—to show how these races adapted to life in the Dragon Empire. This conforms to the concept of maintaining D&D compatibility by adding only what must be to maintain playability in the new context.
The classes are similar. Again, all of the classes in the PHB & DMG are present. All of them get one or more new class skills, skills that address activities in a high-tech setting. The big innovation is actually something of a kludge, but its simplicity is what makes me stand up and take notice: the Technical Proficiency. This feat says to the reader “I know how to handle all this high-tech stuff.” If your PC doesn’t have it, then he’s got problems in the high-tech society of the Dragon Empire. He can’t make use of high-tech gear well (if at all) until he acquires the feat, and that’s a major problem in a Dragonstar campaign. This is one of the best examples of what feats are supposed to be: a marker that answers the question of “Do you have this faculty, yes or no?” It’s also a kludge because it neatly avoids having to deal with new rules that address technical familiarity, but it works well and it gets the job done; I have no problem with this approach, as it makes playing the game easy while maintaining verisimilitude.
There are some new classes—NPC, basic and prestige—that you’d expect out of a high-tech setting. The first of these is the Pilot class. The entire focus is in the use of transport vehicles of one sort or another. As published, I don’t like it; this is far more appropriate as a prestige class than a basic class because it is far too focused upon vehicular combat and maneuver, whereas a basic class represents a broad figure of some sort that has many variations. It’s the difference between a Fighter and a Cavalier; Star Wars got it right w/ the Starship Ace prestige class, coupled with feats to cover more prosaic training. The second is the Mechanist, which is a good basic class because the tinker/fixer is a broad figure of technological civilization that has many variations. Those who’ve seen the Tech Specialist class from D20 Star Wars will find this very familiar, if not as elegant an approach. The new prestige classes begin with the Gundancer, which is a nice attempt to make the John Woo/Sam Peckinpah God of Gunplay icon into a character class; again, while a bit crude it does do the job. The Negotiator is a hardcore social monster that’s damned good at his job title; he’s made a good magistrate, spy, interrogator or statesman. The Technomancer is the guy that successfully blends magic and science into a greater whole and makes constructs with his powers; his downside is that he has his own spell list, instead of gaining progression in a previous spell-casting class and access to class-specific spells or abilities. Once again, the design works but could’ve been done much better; in this respect, it rewards a PC who grabs a level of wizard or sorcerer and then goes with mechanist until all of the requirements are met. Finally, the Thug NPC class (originally seen in Traps & Treachery) appears; it’s to Rogues what Warriors are to Fighters and it is the lamest part of the rules content. Why? The argument given to justify its existence is false. The NPC classes are structural tools to give the GM a way to put stats to the scores of mooks, walk-on parts and minor characters that populate all campaigns. The Commoner is self-evident; the Aristocrat is for the rulers (legit or not), the Expert for professionals and the Warrior for combatants. Thugs are combatants, and they aren’t the type to hone skills such as Sneak Attack or Backstab; they are mooks in all senses of the word, and the game already provides for them according to their needs. Only with the Thug class does the class content fall down.
With the skills and feats, there are many tweaks and some new content. As with the races and classes, the focus was upon maintaining compatibility with D&D; again, all new stuff is confined to that needed to make Dragonstar campaigns work. Many of the tweaks are there to account for the new conditions that a high-tech, star-faring society would have upon traditional adventuring and professional abilities such as noting the changes that zero gravity would have upon Jump and Tumble checks. The new skills include Freefall, Cryptography, Use Device, Pilot, Navigate and a few more; again, not much new content is here. For the feats, I am disappointed with ruling that the Two-Weapon Fighting tree doesn’t apply to firearms. If other games haven’t a problem with it, why should this one? It doesn’t follow; this is blindly following something from the D&D PHB that shouldn’t be followed in a context where firearms are commonplace. Even WOTC reversed itself with their other D20 games. (This also means that there is no need for the Two-Gun Shooting tree.) The rest of the feats range from the expected (feats that deal with competence at vehicle combat) to the novel (the one that make Sorcerer a favored class above and beyond whatever a PC has already) and some that are banal but needed. I’ve got to state that, again, I appreciate that this is well done for what it’s intended to do.
But what makes the gameplay experience different, ultimately, is the wide variety of new high-tech gear available to Dragonstar characters. The increased firepower that firearms provide makes the game a different experience at all levels, but moreso at low levels than at higher ones. It isn’t so much that the damage output is greater per se, but that firearms allow all of the advantages of bows without half of the requirements (proficiency and space to use it) or the downside of crossbows (rate of fire). This means that dealing with dumb beasts (and those in like straits), unless you’re already in a constricted space, is as easy as it is in real life; they rush your PC, and your PC guns them down in droves. It’s also true that firefights become commonplace amongst foes with high-tech gear, with all of the changes in how the game place that you’d expect; even with high-tech armor, and it’s a very good thing, getting hit by blasters is a bad thing. Magic changes things, as it always does, but not until you get to some higher levels does magic regain its usual place over mundane gear; high-tech gear goes a long way towards equalizing things.
The alternate combat rules are nice, but I recommend ditching some of them. Use the autofire rules from D20 Call of Cthulhu and Star Wars instead of those provided; only when the attacker shoots at a very open target (relative to the attacker’s skill) will there be many practical uses of autofire, as hitting by more than 5 points isn’t going to happen between well-matched foes that often. Annoying as it is, the WOTC method works better for it takes into account the proper mixture of chance that autofire and proper training create in the use of autofire weapons. (If you do this, import the feats that work on this scheme as well.) Shooting through cover is necessary, but I suspect that it is open to abuse; GMs must be cautious. The two-gun rules need to go; just allow Two-Weapon Fighting to apply to guns if the PC has the Technical Proficiency feat. The rest of them are clunky, but they’re useable; gamer beware.
The magic rules are keen, and I dig the concept of spellware as a magical cyberware. Neither the notes regarding the spells of the PHB nor the new spells that focus upon the high-tech elements of the setting stood out either way for me; this isn’t a bad thing, as a tool set shouldn’t do anything but work as intended. What made me smile was that there was some thought to the ramifications of widespread information technology, and how it would impact upon the practice of magic in society. I also liked the clarifications on how space travel impacted upon spell use—such as what qualifies as “day” and “night”—as well as pointing out how easy it is (if you’re willing to pay for it) to get components; the Dragon Empire is a place of industrialized magic use, and it shows in the infrastructure of Imperial wizardry.
The vehicle rules are serviceable. As with much of the rules content in this book, it’s not as elegant as I prefer yet it does what it’s supposed to do well enough for most gamers. I recommend trying it as it is, but if you don’t like it then try the versions seen in D20 Star Wars, Spycraft or (when it’s on the shelves) D20 Modern. Some of the niggly bits that get to me are, as I said above, aesthetic in nature; I dislike extending the default size scale upwards when it could reach truly absurd lengths without straining the setting’s ability to suspend disbelief. (The Death Star, Unicron and other things of Excessive Scale—as Mekton Zeta puts it—are common enough to warrant consideration here.) The sample vehicles remind me greatly of my days playing Classic Traveller, and the array in the book are sufficient for most campaigns until it becomes necessary to generate more specific designs. (I’d expect such rules to be in future supplements.)
(For the record, there is errata available at the Fantasy Flight Games website; it’s brief, but it does cover the most glaring gaffs in the text.)
Overall, I liked this book and—despite all of my criticisms—I do like Dragonstar. Just don’t ask me to run or play in a campaign that doesn’t seriously rebuild the setting so it better maintains my suspension of disbelief. This is truly D&D In Space, and as such it does what it intends to do; don’t think too hard about the Dragon Empire setting and you’ll go far indeed. Be ready to adjust to a more space opera mode of adventuring, as the high technology does make a big impact upon the game; gear remains just as big a deal in Dragonstar as it does in your usual low-tech D&D campaign.
Playtest Notes: Once again, I grabbed the D&D Iconics. I stuck with the usual default quartet of Lidda (halfling rogue), Jozan (human cleric), Mialee (elf wizard) and Tordek (dwarf fighter) and busted out my copy of The Sunless Citadel. All of the PCs had the Technical Proficiency feat, as they were considered to be a rookie unit of mercenary troubleshooters. Their hook was to follow a lead about a hatchling dragon found in the vicinity. They were to confirm or deny the rumor, and then (if confirmed) recover it and deliver it to their patron off world. Everything else was theirs to deal with as they saw fit.
The goblins and kobolds inside the citadel had high-tech gear of their own; this was why the locals called for help, with the result being that the Hucrele family hired the PCs to solve the goblin problem. The first penetration went very well: they cleaned out the dire rats and the undead easy enough, but the troll priest took a bit of work. The PCs retreated and tried again; this time they managed well enough to find and force a parley with the kobolds—Lidda snuck up close enough to the kobold queen with the aid of a Spider Climb spell to get a Sneak Attack ready from directly above; Jozan used this to greatly aid the party’s negotiating position—and together slaughtered the goblins. The kobolds saw that this was their chance to take the rest of the citadel, so they surged forward; the PCs hung back because they saw the dragon, which was their primary objective. It took some doing, but they snagged it through the use of a screamer. Meanwhile, the goblins and kobolds beat the crap out of each other. After the PCs secured the dragon aboard their ship, they returned to fulfill their end of the bargain with the kobolds; the PCs helped the kobolds kill all of the goblins and their master. Judicious use of some fire spells and incendiary grenades took care of him and his minions; the PCs took out the Gulthius tree and helped the kobolds negotiate a truce with the Hucrele family. The PCs got paid, the kobolds joined the human community and everyone that survived went home satisfied.
Why did it go so well? Because the PCs made good use of their gear, didn’t screw the more reliable NPCs over and played smartly. Firefights are notoriously deadly at low levels; the PCs knew this and made good use of cover and suppressive fire. Grenades were everyone’s best friend, and simple squad tactics made it easy to overcome foes that would squash them otherwise. (The troll priest, for example.) I'd be willing to try this again sometime, and that's says enough now- don't it?
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