Sweet Chariot
Review by C. Demetrius Morgan
Synopsis
This review examines the 167-page PDF “Sweet Chariot” from Flying Mice LLC, currently available as an $8.00 PDF from RPGnow. Sweet Chariot is an independent expansion to the Starcluster role-playing game written by the erudite team of Albert Bailey, Clash Bowley, and Klaxon Bowley. The setting and style of Sweet Chariot could easily be a mistaken as a distant second cousin of Traveller, which for those who are too young to remember was a fairly decent space opera RPG with a well fleshed out setting published back in the last millennium circa the mid- to late 1980s.
Is should be noted that Sweet Chariot, while an independent role-playing game in its own right, is also part of a line of products designed around Flying Mice LLC’s StarCluster system. This means Sweet Chariot should be compatible with other StarCluster products. Or, as Mr., Bowley put it, “Any StarCluster product will work with Sweet Chariot, but we will probably be releasing an updated game to make it fully compatible to StarCluster
2E.”
Summary top
Sweet Chariot may be the sort of game you will either love out of the box or loathe with a passion rivaled only by Iblis’s contempt for Adam or Loki‘s scornful disdain of the Aesir. To further misuse religious metaphor I should point out that Chariot, while no New Jerusalem descending out of the Empyrean Heights, is also no fetid pimple of puss on the Evil One’s arse waiting to burst its vile contents forth into the 9th circle either. Chariot is closer to a five course meal at a four star restaurant, each chapter has to be studied and devoured in turn before the whole of the game can be properly appreciated. While the game does not read like poorly edited campaign notes from a decade’s worth of gaming quickly written for use as setting filler one has to wonder which post-apocalypse FRPG influenced the inclusion of the region known as the Deathlands and the mutations table. Alas the authors’ polished writing has left few clues.
The Setting: Sweet Chariot falls within the arena of Space Opera, being set specifically during a post Diaspora era. However the game focuses primarily upon Chariot, a world located within the Gloria star system. Culturally and technologically the world is somewhere between the primitiveness of PERN, that legendary home world of the Dragonriders of Pern series of novels by Anne McCaffrey, and the pseudo-steampunk setting depicted in the Anime The Last Exile sans Claudia technology. More simply put it’s a world that backslid into primitivism with anachronistic retro-tech and more cultures offering potential clashes of ideologies than a rabid fan boy can shake a toy katana at! top
The Game: The primary goal of game play is stated to be survival. However, while the object of play is survival, it seems odd that a game with such a primordial mode of play, a game in which it is explicitly stated, “there are no character classes”, should then delve at depth upon social hierarchies. Or interesting, pending your point of view. top
System Mechanics: Sweet Chariot presents a system consciously designed NOT to be like the class systems made popular in the infancy of role-playing games, this despite the fact social class plays a central role on the world of Chariot. Thus those used to role-playing games with a “level up” system of advancement tied to “classes” may be initially confused by this distinction. On the bright side, task resolution, while involved, looks to be much simpler than some resolution systems that have appeared in similar games over the years. Task Resolution is %ile roll (+ modifiers) under TN. The core STATS of Sweet Chariot characters are: Strength, Coordination, Agility, Endurance, IQ, Psi, Rank, and Charisma. Coordination and Agility are essentially redundant Stats. However that is largely a matter of opinion. Compare with the stats used in Traveller: 2300: Size, Strength, Dexterity, Physical Endurance, Determination, Intelligence, Eloquence, Education. Is it coincidence both have 8 attributes? Probably. top
Character Creation: Most will find the character generation system to be either incredibly detailed or unnecessarily convoluted. The design philosophy takes the approach that the GM and player have, not need, but must interact to determine all manner of minutia every step of the way. To begin the player and GM work to determine a character’s “Mother’s Milk skills”, these being skills based upon a character’s nation, background, and social status- in other words you are required to flesh out your character’s background in what some may feel to be painfully boring detail. top
Initial Impressions top
If ever there was a reason to check your e-mail on a regular basis it would have to be to see what sort of fun free stuff you have waiting for you. Granted that usually means weeding through spam or newsletters full of adverts from software companies who have your e-mail address because you registered some game or another a hundred days ago. Then there are the real surprises, like freebies, people who send you stuff just because. I love those people. They bring a ray of sunshine to an otherwise dreary e-mail experience. So let me tell you when I first clicked the link to find out what Sweet Chariot is my proverbial jaw hit the floor, 90 MEGs, ZIPped! Then I readjusted my glasses and realized that, no, it’s only 9 MB. Have a laugh on me. That said what is really amazing is the quality of this product given its actual size. I particularly found the background material stirring a sense of nostalgia as I read it for, in certain aspects, it reminded me of the classic Traveller or Traveller: 2300 games. And yet it wasn’t.
The system powering Sweet Chariot has a built in reliance upon skills that define a characters “job”- jobs that are defined by social status and character background- if this is not the definition of a class structure then I don’t know what is. That said, this a glaring and obvious inconsistency in focus that it bears further comment, for if ever there was a doubt turning to page 86 and 87 is as good an example as any. For within these pages we are informed about Urchins, the Working Class, Gentleman/Gentlewoman, Aristocrats, and the rest boggles the mind. I can just hear the players now, “This is very much a system rooted in the hierarchy of social class, isn’t it? So why can’t I be---.” The argument will probably follow that as a job is a profession, and professions are archetypes, that ergo the style of the game is best suited to a class system. So where are the classes with neat nifty packages of skills and feats? Or it could just be my penchant for imagining the worst.
Too, the designers assume readers will know what they mean when referencing class. Most will. Yet this is more than a matter of mere semantics, I worry that newbie role-players may be confused by the distinction. Certainly a newbie will not fully understand thus I have to read the text as any GM might, in full worry mode about the comprehension abilities of players who don‘t generally like to read rules in the first place and rely on what other gamers tell them. However there is a bright silver lining in all this: no mention of Dungeons & Dragons is made. That the writers don’t rant against other systems is a major plus in the face of any perceived problems that may be encountered with problem players.
Also I think that Character Creation could have been handled more easily by providing a chart keyed to a random %ile roll. Chaosium’s old Stormbringer RPG comes to mind as a perfect example of how to create such a system. Still it could have been worse, the authors could have wasted paragraph after paragraph outlining what is where and talking about where is what instead of actually telling you what to do. (Don’t ask.) Still, as Game Master, I’d like to see character creation reduced down to something simpler that could be included as an appendix or quick start sheet that could be used to jumpstart a game without a lot of hassle, especially when dealing with newbie gamers.
Appraisal top
I like the game and would like to see it developed. Not into my vision of the perfect game because, well, I don’t think there is such an animal. However I did note a few comments that some may feel are bad assumptions about styles of play. For instance the following comment regarding classic rule structures: “The random method of character generation is best used if you have no solid idea of what kind of character you want to play.” In other words it almost sounds like designers approach to random character generation comes off the ropes with nothing but disdain for the process right out of the box. I have no idea why that sentence elicited that concern, but it did. Perhaps if the sentence was change to read: “..best use should you be uncertain what kind of player you might want..”? Certainly it would be an unfair assessment that random character generation is only appropriate when a player is clueless. Random character generation, when time and due consideration are properly applied with an established design Goal and clear Focus should be nothing if not complimentary to the core system.
Yeah, sounds silly to me too. So much for initial impressions. But I made note of it and, looking it over, I feel it worth mentioning. Otherwise the material is solid. It’s a bit of a thick read and would require a major investment of time and energy on the part of the GM and players to learn, but then Traveller was the same way. Fun to read though.
PDF Issues: Unlike many PDFs I’ve seen Sweet Chariot does not default to having the bookmarks open. You have to actually hit the tab, click on main directory entry, and then you will see all the bookmarks. That may annoy some. Otherwise I could discern not real problems with the file. (Not that this is a problem.) All bookmarks appear to go where they need to and there are plenty of them. Pages printed at random are crisp and clean. Printing is fully functional. Exporting the document to a text file is fully functional. top
Negatives: The font and font size used in the main body of the text are extreme eyestrain. Granted you can go to about 125% and read the text, however as the text is presented in columns this does nothing to alleviate reading induced headaches. Character creation could have been handled better. The last thing a GM and players want is to have to spend more time than necessary creating a character. Rules should be designed to facilitate play, not simulate the evolutionary process. However this is a minor nitpick, even so I would rather have seen an effort made to redefine the focus governing the presentation of class system, rather than assume there is only one way to do the mechanic. Perhaps designing an class system around the setting and rules of play, instead of tip-toeing around the blatantly obvious fact this world is ripe for a new and fresh, if slightly rigid, hierarchical class system! Sweet Chariot could have been the herald of a new age of game design. The writing and presentation is that polished. Alas I come away merely with a sense the designers feel class systems are passé. It’s time we get over our neurosis about xD&D and redesigning the wheel folks, because there are wheels and then there are wheels. Some are made of wood and some are made of rubber, and then there are the ones that are steel belted. Chariot is somewhere in between. top
Positives: In spite of my comments above it is nice to see a game that takes background into account. The illustrations are well done and provide a welcome atmospheric element lacking in many PDF products of similar page counts. Too, the maps of the various nations of Chariot are very well done. The mechanics, for the most part, are an air freshener in an old musty game room. Granted there have always been problems with role-playing games. Indeed, after all these years, I can still recall players griping about Stormbringer. But there is something to be said for a game that pays attention to details. Something that Sweet Chariot has in abundance. But what this game does best is set out to establish the world experience by way of environmental simulation, and thus drawing players into the process to learn a little something about the world they are playing in. Nicely done, squinty made-my-eyes hurt font size withstanding. top
Rumors: And what might the future portent for Sweet Chariot? When asked via e-mail what Flying Mice LLC has on the drawing board for the year ahead front man Clash Bowley had the following tantalizing behind-the-scenes details to offer: “We have a very ambitious release schedule this year: ‘Blood Games’ is finished ... It's a gritty occult horror game set in the real world. It uses the StarCluster system, but is not part of the setting.” Mr. Bowley further stated that “‘StarCluster 2’ is being finished up now, and will be ... a free upgrade for anyone who bought StarCluster, and contains a lot more setting and GM help.” But that’s not all! For there is also “Glorianna”, which according to Mr. Bowley is going to be an “Stand-Alone StarCluster game like Chariot, set on Glorianna, a Neo-Elizabethan culture in the same system as Chariot, with a lot of political intrigue, dueling, uplifted animals, and extremely high tech.” If you thought that was good enough to whet your appetite then get ready, because those were just appetizers. There is also another title, “Shoot”, slated for a release in late 2004. And what will Shoot be about? According to Mr. Bowley, “Shoot is being designed by RPGnet's Rhombus and features a paranoid, xenophobic, militaristic culture heavily into biological modification and enhancement.” Whew! Nice to see a company taking such an active lead in providing loyal customers material sooner rather than later. But what if Sweet Chariot and StarCluster don’t interest you? Then there’s “Aquavita”, a game currently being developed and designed for use with then “F-20 system” and written by RPGnet’s own Shanya Almafeta. And a “Book of Jalan” fantasy game based on a setting originally released with StarCluster. I’m not sure what all of that means, but it sounds like good news for fans of Flying Mice LLC role-playing games. top
Happy gaming!
Copyright © 2004 C. Demetrius Morgan
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