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Starcluster
2
Evolve
or Die
Review
by C. Demetrius Morgan
Synopsis
Star
Cluster 2 is a 287-page space opera role-playing game available in
both print and PDF format. Written by Albert Bailey and Clash
Bowley, with an introduction by Marco Chacon, Starcluster is an
independent RPG published by Flying
Mice LLC that is currently available from RPGnow
for $10.00 (sale price). An free rules lite version of this RPG is
also available from here.
This is a review of the full PDF version.
Target
Audience: Gamers looking for a “survival oriented RPG -
where the object of the game, the behavior that (is) rewarded,
(is) staying alive and learning new things” in a
game whose setting is within a firmly established space opera
backdrop that is “underpinned with some serious science -
science the players don't need to bother knowing to enjoy the game.”
Rating:
8 and a half out of 10 golden apples. (Graded on a curve taking the
existence of a full supporting product line into account.)
Initial
Impressions
Summary
The
Setting
Game
Universe
System
Mechanics
Character
Creation
Combat
Chapter-by-Chapter
Overview
Interview
with the Author
Appraisal
PDF
Issues
Negatives
Positives
Rumors
Initial
Impressions
Preface:
Since I wrote the initial impressions outlined below I have received
an “update” of the Starcluster 2 core PDF. This means
that this review has been a long time in the coming. Apologies to
the publisher for that. Alas, after allowing time for those first
initial impressions to fade so I could tackle the new PDF afresh, I
am sad to say that many of the comments that follow stand much as
they were originally written. Now, onto those initial comments . . .
The
illustrations are unique, to say the least, though there are one or
two that my initial reaction was: “Gah! Lay off the smudging
tool already!” But otherwise the style works in so far as
it is uniform. It’s not as obvious a photoshopping job as,
say, merely the use of basic filters to alter an image would be. But
then again the selective use of additional filters could have added
much needed character to some of the otherwise blah illustrations.
Then there are the maps. Oy, the maps!
With
the exception of the star maps, are all very well done and easy to
read. Alas there aren’t a lot of maps besides those star maps
and, truth be told, those are the maps that will probably make or
break the game. At least from a ready reference standpoint. They
are supposed to be on a graph but, for the most part, the graph lines
do not show up. (This is probably an artifacting problem common to
low source image resolution or using JPEG or GIF sources.) Also, not
to sound tetchy, but I would rather have seen more spaceship
schematics and fewer of the color illustrations. Especially since
this is a space opera game and, the one thing I know players want to
look at, regardless of what the campaign is going to be, are the
starships. So why aren’t more presented? Inquiring minds want
to know. top
Summary
Starcluster
2 is a space opera role-playing game in the finest tradition of
Starfrontiers and Traveller. The rule book presents not only the
expected basic rules of game play but also material that presents a
sizeable resource of richly detailed background material covering a
goodly portion of the Starcluster universe. Those not familiar with
the classic RPGs mentioned above, but who have real their fair share
of space opera novels or even played video games like Elite or
Wing Commander, should feel right at home in this
pen-and-pencil cosmos of ever expanding action adventure. top
The
Setting: You’ve probably heard it before: The post
Diaspora era of a far-flung space opera future. Do I really have
to paraphrase the story for you? I didn’t think so. What?
Ok, ok, you twisted my arm! Ya great big meanies. *sniffle*
So
were are in a unspecified future in the year 2250 where
peace-on-Earth has finally been achieved, more or less, when it is
suddenly discovered that the entire planet will be vaporized in about
300 years as the uncaring sun makes like a drunk driver and goes
roaring out of control down the celestial highway at speeds that end
in a not at all majestic boom. So what’s this newly unified
planet to do? Prepare for a mass exodus. And exo- what’s it?
IOW: Prepare to Get the F--- Out of DODGE!! That’s
what.
Starcluster
concerns itself with the universe of colonies spread out across the
stars in the far distant post-Diaspora era. A little over 1200+
years have elapsed since the first ships launched themselves out of
their earthly cribs and reached destinations end. Of course not all
those who arrived were quite the same as their ancestors were when
they departed, that’s one of the many in-game wrinkles. The
game setting is centered on a sector of space referred to as “the
Cluster”, dozens of worlds are outlined, and there appears to
be a number of supplements to flesh out the various odds and ends of
the rules and setting. Lots to read through and plenty of potential
for role-play here. top
Game
Universe: The genre is standard Space Opera with an
overall Hard Science Fiction approach to what is essentially a
setting located in the far distant frontiers of space. But what is
the setting really like? Now that’s a tough question. I’ve
been trying to think of something to compare this too but nothing
readily pops to mind. In some ways the system is similar in concept
to Traveller, only it’s not really very much like any of that
products settings. Too, the rules are also something else
altogether, which doesn’t say much. So what about settings
other than RPGs ones? Again, nothing comes to mind, so here‘s
a quick run down of what Starcluster is unlike: it’s not Star
Trek or Andromeda, it’s not Battlestar Galactica
or Space 1999, it’s not even Star Wars! If
pressed into a corner I’d say that Starcluster is. . . It’s.
. . That is to say. . .
Starcluster
is a dystopian post-apocalyptic adventure set within the wasteland of
space, rather than the wasteland of an ill defined desert, where
survival is the goal of play. At least I think that’s what
Starcluster is all about. This is really a core rules document,
granted a core rules document with a lot of flavor text, but it
presents way too many possibilities of what play could be like. I
prefer a game to be a bit more focused. Don’t get me wrong
Spelljammer was the exact same way and that‘s one of my
all time favorite settings. Spelljammer’s one flaw was
that it gave the DM tons of options, alas too many DMs ended up
feeling like they just didn’t know what the point was supposed
to be. I fear that may happen with Starcluster. Especially if the
GM in question is more of a casual type gamer. Someone who likes to
play but really isn’t “into” the genre, so to
speak. However, for those who are hardcore fans of the Space Opera
genre, Starcluster offers just about all a fan boy could ever wish
for. More than that it provides all you need to start playing, out
of the box, and then some. top
System
Mechanics: Starcluster apparently uses a %ile system. I say
“apparently” because, when taken at a glance, you really
don’t have much of a clue what is going with the rules as they
are buried beneath a library wing of flavor text. That and I am used
to chapters clearly labeled with numbers. What can I say, I‘m
an old fogy. (Also there wre no bookmarks. Which is a bit annoying
in a document this size.) What that means is, as presented, the
rules may not be very newbie friendly. This is bad. Especially
since the “optional rules” section is written with a
straightforward clarity often lacking elsewhere. It may just be me,
or the fact I am reading this onscreen, it‘s hard to tell.
That
said the actual game mechanics are given a good overview around page
267, which is where the “design notes” are found. Which
isn’t to say the information isn’t present elsewhere, it
just could have been organized, and indexed, to be easier for the
newbie to locate. Also it would have helped to know, upfront and
before anything else, that players will need to have six-siders handy
and %ile dice (2d10). Otherwise the system appears functional as it
presents Task Resolution as %ile roll (+ modifiers) under TN. The
core STATS are: Strength, Coordination, Agility, Endurance, IQ, Psi,
Rank, and Charisma. While it is my opinion Sweet Chariot was
a bit better organized, if you’ve read, and understood, one
then you know how both games work. Major plus.
Character
creation is a bit different from most games. You essentially have
two methodologies in place, a random roll, which is essentially
suggest for use by those new to the system, and a point buy system.
Both appear to be serviceable, though the point buy method provides
static numbers to distribute between the various attributes. I
assume this is evidence that the designer sought to balance out the
beginning level characters, however it would have been nice if a
variable system was in place to allow GMs to adjust how many points
are allotted based on initial difficulty and experience level of the
players. Also, for those who hate classes and see classes in all
things, that players get to choose “Schools” for their
characters may not go over well. Essentially “Schools”
are the archetypal profession that a character is expected to follow.
Not quite a class, but close enough that some may complain. Even
though this is really just part of a character’s background. I
know, what can you do, some players are just impossible. *wink* top
Character
Creation: Being a space opera game the first step, naturally, is
to determine a character‘s homeworld. Typically the homeworld
of characters is assigned by the GM at the outset of play. Character
attributes are generated via either a random method, where each
attribute is assigned its own set number of die that have to be
rolled, or what is called the “directed method”. The
latter being a fancy way of saying point distribution. In this
second method players have 35 points to distribute between the
various core attributes and 150 points to distribute between IQ, PSI,
and RANK.
Character
generation actually goes into a bit of detail. There is a chart
that, though optional, is keyed to allow you to literally roll your
character’s entire physical appearance. There’s even a
chart to roll for random character traits, which are just likes or
dislikes. Overall the average gamer will probably either love the
system or hate it, depending on what their tolerance threshold is for
charts. There’s a smeg load of charts here. top
Combat:
I have discovered something. Whether it is due to age or the number
of games I’ve reviewed recently I can’t say. That
discovery is this: I loathe combat systems that use large numbers and
don‘t get to the point in the first two sentences. Not math,
mind you, or even the talking about math. It’s information
overload. They make my poor brain hurt. Let’s review what led
me to this epiphany: “The combat system ... works on the
assumption of a one-minute round ... divided into 120 half-second
segments called "initiatives".” What? “Normal
initiative is ... decided using a %d roll. During their initiative,
the character may use a weapon and attack, use psionics, or perform a
major action.” You mean we can’t just roll dice to
compare against a chart to see if we hit things? “Each
player rolls %d separately, and the enemy rolls collectively. Lowest
roll goes first, and proceeds to highest. Characters and enemies can
talk out of turn, but remember there are 120 initiatives in a round
and each initiative is half a second long, so talking must be short.”
No! No! I just want to roll the dice and be told whether or not
things were successful.
Why
you make players think about big words and stuff?
Ok,
that’s a bit melodramatic. But this section is a bit of a
thick read. Take this for example: “Characters may trade
percentile points between initiative, the to-hit roll, and damage.
That is, a player may choose to delay his initiative in order to
achieve a better percentage to hit, or take a penalty on damage to
speed his initiative, or take a penalty to hit to speed up initiative
and increase damage. Any initiative lower than 1 goes first, any
initiative higher than 120 goes last, and in case more than one
character does so, the player with the lower total goes before the
others.”
Surely
there must be some way to simplify all that?
In
the real world I would have given up and just relied on some
experienced gamer to paraphrase the rules to me as needed. But I
also have Starcluster Lite. Surely that will shed some light on what
is going on?
Nope.
It’s pretty much the exact same text, sans a lot of the flavor
text. And here is where I say, with head hung low that based on a
reading of the combat section alone I have no clue what is going on.
None. It relies too much on- I assume- material from elsewhere in
the rules. Not that that is bad, but it’s been my experience
that most gamers don’t really want to read every single
chapter. They want to sit down and play, and that means having
sections written succinctly, straightforward, and independent of
other chapters so they don‘t have to do a lot of page flipping.
It could just be me but I feel this entire section is overwritten.
As a player I want to be told, in no uncertain terms, up front and in
as few sentences as possible, what combat is and how it works. What
I don’t want to do is have to read through dozens of paragraphs
and have to separate the wheat from the chaff. Or worse yet make
guesses about what I “think” the author meant!
Hint:
Any time you find yourself starting a sentence with “that is”,
that may be a hint it‘s time to go back and edit for clarity.
Just spell it out upfront and keep it simple! top
Chapter-by-Chapter
Overview top
Actually I
am not real sure what the actual chapters are supposed to be. The
contents page has a number of titles of sections in bold, but as
there is a total lack of numeration what is presented below is a
guess of what the major chapter breaks are supposed to be.
Introduction
- 2-pages broken up into two main sections: the Preface,
providing a thumbnail overview of the history and background of the
game universe, and the Diaspora, which is essentially a thumbnail
overview of the campaign milieu.
Character
Generation - Here we find 20+ pages beginning with the usual
space opera character generation modus operandi: assign a home world
to the player character then determine “character’s birth
Tech Level”. Characters have five key attributes- Strength,
Coordination, Agility, Endurance, and Charisma- attributes that may
be determined either randomly or by point distribution. However this
section is mostly taken up by page after page of tables that may balk
the average gamer.
Humans
and Humanoids - Here we have seven pages of in-game races. All
together there are six races detailed. The Sastras, who are
essentially monkey people; the SaHus, whose two sentence description
is so vague I don’t know what they are supposed to be; Vantors,
who are basically fish people; VaHus, whose write-up is even vaguer
than that for the SaHus; Tigras, some furry being that sounds like
cross between a otter and a mutant body builder; and finally the
HuTas, whose description is just as vague as the SaHus and the VaHus.
(Based on the naming conventions and the constant reference to
traits derived from parents these are obviously intended to by
human-alien hybrids?) There is also some artwork, however what is
provide does not remotely reflect the creatures as described.
Equipment:
Personal - Your typical section on equipment. This section takes
up twice as many pages as it needs to since everything is
double-spaced so expect to have to wade through several pages to find
stuff.
Equipment:
Weapons - Weapons lists. This section is much better organized
than the one for personal equipment as all the lists herein have been
formatted into neat and easy to consult tables.
Playing
the Game - Some basic info on playing the game, creating
characters, combat and the usual overview slash how-to guide for
those who might need to know what to do now that they’ve
purchased this thing called an RPG. Covers a lot of ground.
Non-Player
Characters and Character Options - This section is more or less
an extension of Playing the Game for the GM containing ready
to use character archetypes like the Mook, Thug, Gunman, Bodyguard,
and etcetera. There are also a few sample templates provided such as
the Ex-Marine, Ex-Smuggler, Ex-Courier, and well that’s pretty
much the theme here. Just append the prefix “Ex-” to the
beginning of a titular noun and that’s pretty much what’s
here.
Star
Travel and Space Combat - There are a number of types of space
travel mentioned, if all too briefly, followed by the all important
chart of comparative Technology Levels- ranked from 1 to 10- which
then jumps into a glossary of genre nomenclature before moving on to
an equally brief page or so on spaceports. The section discussing
Space Combat is also rather brief, and devoid of examples. The
overall tone seems to be one of providing the rules basics while
encouraging a more dramatic- and thus less rules reliant- style of
play.
Guide
to Cluster Politics and Societies - This section goes on for
dozens of pages and is basically one large guide to the universe
at large kind of thing. Numerous systems are detailed, well in
lists anyhow, but then that’s what constitutes the bulk of
Starcluster 2; lists. top
Interview
With the Author top
Kester:
How long has Flying Mice LLC been involved with the roleplaying
industry?
flyingmice:
We started publishing in 2001, with StarCluster v1.0. It was a mess,
but it had some nice features once you waded through the garbage. We
learned a lot and kept improving the game based on reader feedback
and continual game testing.
Kester:
What led to the development of the Starcluster 2 revised edition?
flyingmice:
We have been revising the game every few months as we went along. The
previous version of the game was 1.7. Along the way, we decided that
there wasn't enough setting in the core rules, and that some things
just needed a full overhaul. This version is twice as large as
version 1.7 - 287 pages to 144. BTW, StarCluster 2 was sent out as a
free upgrade to all of our previous customers.
Kester:
Speaking of upgrades. What sort of updates and support products can
we expect to see from Flying Monkey LLC in the future for the
Starcluster product line?
flyingmice:
Flying MONKEY? LOL! We've had to push back a couple of products til
next year. Shoot and Glorianna are coming then. Both are very high
tech worlds in the Cluster. We also intend to do a Pre-Diaspora game
set in Earth's solar system and a few interstellar colonies before
the Diaspora happened.
Kester:
What are some of your favorite RPGs, past and present?
flyingmice:
JAGS, TMNT/After the Bomb, Ringworld, and Call of Cthulhu are my
favorites.
Kester:
Any word on up-and-coming releases that are intended for, or could be
used with, the Starcluster 2 RPG?
flyingmice:
We just released our first StarCluster 2 adventure, La Famiglia
Amalfi - don't worry, it's in English! The next release is the
completely rewritten Book of Jalan setting - a world in the cluster
where humans have evolved very powerful psionic powers. Jalan is in
the Renaissance-Age of Enlightenment technology level. We will also
be releasing a combined Starship Design/Engineer's Handbook sometime
soon.
Kester:
Do you accept unsolicited submissions? If so, do you have any words
of advice to would be authors who might like to submit material to
Flying Mice LLC?
flyingmice:
Yes we do! Right now we have two systems, StarCluster and F20. We
don't need any other systems at the moment, but settings and
supplements we can use. We have a lot of releases in both lines
coming up!
Kester:
Will there be, or is there presently, a print edition of Starcluster
available?
flyingmice:
StarCluster 2 is in print and available from our Website or from
Amazon.com or Borders.com.
Kester:
If you had to reduce your game down to a one-sentence description
what would that sentence be?
flyingmice:
Eeek! How about "A deeply character oriented game in an epic
setting. top
Appraisal
While the
resolution of the art is superb certain of the illustrations that
really count, namely the star maps, have been woefully neglected to
the point of being a bit of an eyestrain. Whether this is a matter
of poor resolution of the source, or a problem with display on my
end, is unclear. Either way this needs remedying. In a space opera
campaign the last thing you want are fuzzy and unclear maps of the
various sectors and surrounding quadrants that GM and players alike
are going to need to know how to navigate around and through.
Neither, sadly, did the update mentioned above include any new or
expanded starship data that I could discern. Thus, while the setting
material appears to be thoroughly detailed, there are a few
underlying deficiencies that may or may not detract from actual play.
top
PDF
Issues: None immediately discernable. The PDF is well put
together. While there are no bookmarks, there is a hot linked table
of contents. Search is fully functional, as is copying to clipboard.
Internal illustrations, save for a few maps, look clear and crisp.
The PDF is not locked, though at 287 pages you aren’t likely
going to want to save this to a TXT file. An index is also present
that, as with the table of contents, is hot linked to take you to the
corresponding section. However there are no bookmarks. top
Negatives:
I wanted more. It’s hard to define exactly what, but I came
away feeling overwhelmed with details yet not knowing a whole heck of
a lot, if you know what I mean? Otherwise the font is caught
somewhere between fuzzy and blurry, thus making it not very suitable
for onscreen viewing. While there is an index it appears that it was
squeezed into three-column for no other reason than to save space,
which is odd considering the font size seems to be the same. (Next
time try reducing the font size?) The “Map of the Cluster”
spanning pages 248 to 252 need to be redone, preferably with a
minimum DPI of 300, as they lack clarity. The character races
presented are very generic, bordering on run of the mill, and thus
many gamers familiar with the genre may not find them all that
interesting. top
Positives:
This is part of larger product line including Sweet
Chariot, which I have reviewed, and thus any perceived
failings of this material are mitigated. As does the sheer quantity
of content. Those used to having GM and player material organized in
separate tomes may be disconcerted by the fact Starcluster includes a
smorgasbord of GM and player info all in one core text. Then again
there is something to be said for having everything organized in one
core book as it means players will actually have to read the rules,
not just the rules about how to create a character. More simply put
Starcluster 2 provides just about everything the average gamer should
need to start playing a space opera campaign “out of the box”.
For more detail about the system see my review, and corresponding
comments, for Sweet Chariot. top
Rumors:
According to the CEO of Flying Mice LLC we can expect to see “more
adventures, technical and social supplements, world-specific
settings, and whatever we can think to make the games more fun! That
applies to StarCluster, Blood Games, and our forthcoming F20 games.
… We also intend to do a Pre-Diaspora game set in Earth's
solar system and a few interstellar colonies before the Diaspora
happened.” top
"Action
will remove the doubt that theory cannot solve."
Copyright © 2004
C. Demetrius Morgan
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