Cracken's Rebel Field Guide
Star Wars
Sourcebook
West End
Games
[sterling]9.95 - ???pp
As the name suggests, this is a handbook of tricks and treats. The body of the
book describes new equipment and upgrades, but there are also rule additions -
systems for jury-rigging and prosthetics, and info on computers. There's also
enough data on General Craken to turn him into a useful NPC.
The book is very bitty - for instance, there are three new computer devices,
five new vehicles and so on. Much of the space is given over to diagrams (some
more useful than others) and to making the pages look like data-files.
However, this doesn't mean the individual items aren't fun - I particularly
liked the look of the Imperial Bio-Hound and some of the security (and security
beating) devices. Some of the jury-rigging ideas are pretty neat, too - they
range from giving a blaster a hair trigger to rigging a cloud car for extra
speed to creating traps of varying degrees of lethality (done wrong, at least
one of them could take out your entire party...). To be honest, a lot of these
are things any reasonably competent referee could busk, though they are good on
that all important jargon.
I wasn't so keen on the prosthetics and cyborging sections, largely because I
don't think Star Wars is the right place for them (and yes, I know all about
Luke Skywalker's hand - but this stuff is getting seriously
Gibsonesque).
The lack of focus might not matter, except that it's hard to see who the book
is aimed at. If it's for players, things like the bio-hound are out of place,
since you'd really want to stick it onto unsuspecting players. If it's for
referees, I don't quite see how you'd introduce some of the stuff into play. I
mean, you're hardly going to suggest your players stop and jury-rig their
speeder in the middle of your carefully orchestrated chase sequence, are you?
So it follows that the players will need to have read the book and remembered
to make the appropriate adjustments - and there goes your chance to land them
with some of the nastier secrets it contains (but it does give them the option
to develop a genuine Falcon style freighter, which could be good
value).
This leaves us with the new rules. The prosthetics ones look pretty well
balanced, and the cost alone should keep them rare in most sensible campaigns.
The explanation of computer languages is pure techno-babble, but hey, who
cares.
The jury-rigging ones are more likely to get a work out, though I'd have
preferred jury-rig as an advancement of a particular skill, rather than as a
roll on Technology, as here. However, this way it's available even to
beginning characters - and you have to love a failure table that includes
stops working but need only be slammed hard against something to work
again... I mean, how realistic do you want?
Review by Liz Holliday
Product supplied by Hobbygames
