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Thirteen chapters cover a vast landscape of sci-fi/future stuff for your games. The intro explains that you need d20 Modern and also discusses progress levels (PLs). The lower progress levels start around stone age and the higher ones, like PL9, extend beyond psionics and thought as a means of changing the world around you. Since characters are vital to the RPG experience, it makes sense that the first chapter focuses on them.
Chapter 1 provides you some logical starting occupations that would fit into worlds where temporal gate travel, warp drive and alien creatures loom. Skills and feats that wouldn't have made sense in Modern, such as starship operation, cybernetic-centric skills and xenomedicine (so you don't botch the surgery like McCoy did when he tried to help those wounded Klingons---oh, the review.) are included. We also get a healthy helping of advanced classes.
Ambassadors are good at ambassing, of course. With this class you can play Senator Amidala or Sarek. Dogfighter is made for the Starbuck and Luke Skywalker wannabes. Dreadnoughts are people who enjoy wearing super armored suits and duking it out with bad guys. I'm sure there's probably an obvious movie or novel reference for them, but I can't think of one right now. Engineers are naturally enough people like Mr. Scott or Kaylee. Explorers remind me, including the art provided for the class entry, of Lara Croft, Indiana Jones or even Dr. Who. Field Officers are centered on leadership and are able to inspire others like Kirk or Malcolm Reynolds. Helix Warriors are like the replicants of Blade Runner, genetically designed to be more human than human.
Continuing on, the Space Monkey (no, they didn't wreck Serenity's engine room) is a hard-nosed all' rounder geared toward space exploration and operating in austere environments in space. If you liked Lando Calrissian or even Maverick then maybe you should play a Swindler. Or if you like reprogramming trash bins or hacking into a servo droid in Mega City One, maybe the Technosavant is more your speed. Bounty Hunters and repo men like Boba Fett and Emilio Estevez might want to check out the Tracer, skilled at tracking down prey in urban environments. The Xenophile rounds out the list as an expert on alien races and critters Kind of like Steve Irwin or Crocodile Dundee, er, with aliens.
Campaigns (or mini-settings in my mind) are covered in Chapter 2. Fans of Alternity's Star*Drive and TSR's old Star Frontiers are in for a pleasant surprise, as well. Not as pleasant as the actual return of these original game series, but probably about as close as you're going to officially get. Each of these 'campaigns' includes a brief--usually only a couple of pages--summary of the setting plus adventure hooks for low, mid and high level gaming in said setting.
Bughunters is the first. If you've seen Alien, Starship Troopers or fought the Zerg while playing StarCraft on your PC, you'll know what Bughunters is all about. It's a military centric setting, revolving around the Bughunter (catchy, eh?) advanced class. Strangely, no specific 'bugs' are provided as examples.
Are Sliders, Otherworld, StarGate or Dr. Who more to your liking? Dimension X focuses on an aggressive alternate dimension bent on erasing all other dimensions and your group's efforts to learn what's going on and to prevent that [the erasure/destruction] from happening to their world. Dimension Rangers are the advanced class here, ably bouncing in and out of hither, thither and yon like Skeeve and Aahz of the Myth-Adventure series.
Did the Event Horizon film or Doom or Half-Life interest you? Know that darkness is invading the stars and all flesh in the mini-setting From The Dark Heart of Space (seemed a little wordy to me but the premise sounds workable). Anyone could be a potential threat, a pawn or willing follower of Void--the unspeakable evil in this setting. Purifiers are the advanced class here, warriors dedicated to seeking out agents of the Void like Buffy is dedicated to staking vampires.
Genetech reminds me of the X-Men films---except mutant stuff is caused intentionally. In Genetech, characters are likely to be genetically or surgically modified beings that usually merge animal and human qualities (the cover of the book has this cool cougar-headed dude all decked out in assault gear). These creatures are met with prejudice and a lack of acceptance that has inspired many to of these modified folk to fight for equality for themselves and their kind.
Mecha Crusade is about big stompy robots. If you like BattleTech, CAV (Combat Assault Vehicle) or any type of entertainment involving giant robots, this might be for you. Basically, the solar system is having a civil war between earth loyalist types and colonists. Both sides use giant robots to try and settle their differences. Now before you get bummed that there's only about a page and half to this setting, mech fans will be happy to learn that the entire ninth chapter is devoted to mechy goodness.
The next setting is space opera as it was originally defined in the Alternity game: Star*Drive. Imagine a galaxy-spanning federation of worlds called the Concord trying to piece things back together after a war, all the while dealing with emerging alien threats on their borders. The alien PC races that came with Alternity are included at the end of the book. You also get a brief on one of the alien menaces: bug-like 'Klicks' and advanced class called the Concord Administrator (it sounds dull but it's really about being a bigger wheel like Babylon 5 ambassador types).
Star Frontiers fans should enjoy Star Law, a cursory revival of the long discontinued TSR game Star Frontiers. In Star Law the PCs are assigned as elite police/investigators/agents (all encompassed in the Star Law Officer advanced class) for an intergalactic enforcement agency. You get all the cool aliens you remember from the Star Frontiers' basic set except for the enemy alien worms called the Sathar (they don't appear in this book or any other d20 supplement I've checked, unfortunately). If you think playing a flying monkey with a blaster, an amoeba with a twisted sense of humor and a blaster or an anal retentive ant-guy with a blaster would be fun, Star Law looks to be a decent update for the d20 Modern game.
The last of the mini-settings presented, The Wasteland, is about the kind of stuff you've read about or watched in The PostMan, Mad Max, Fallout, WaterWorld or even Planet of the Apes (without the apes). A basic mechanic for bartering is included in the setting, since greenbacks might not work once the bombs stop falling; it's a really useful inclusion in my opinion. The Nuclear Nomad is the advanced class here, adapted to living in extreme conditions with abilities that allow him or her to sense danger, radiation or even to mutate if the situations are right (or wrong, for that matter).
Chapter Three covers equipment and gear. For twenty pages, you get guns, armor and tech toys enough to cover everything from modern day to fusion age and beyond. The gadget system is one clever idea in my opinion. Basically, you can add special features to any piece of tech. This makes the tech more unique and usually more effective in game terms. For instance, maybe your light sword has a device to stun someone if the wrong DNA is detected when a user attempts to turn it on? Star Frontiers fans will see a return of devices from the original game as well. Things like a universal translator (polyvox) or grenades that capture the victim in sticky tendrils (tangler grenades) help develop the Star Law and other settings. The chapter has a number of PL-specific tables that allow you to get a good summary of the available weapons and equipment typical for that stage of civilization.
Chapters Four and Five are brief. From radiation to gravity to atmosphere, the environment in which your campaign is set obviously has a fundamental bearing on the action that takes place. If you want your game set on the moon, for instance, this chapter can help you figure out some of the factors that the PCs are going to encounter and how you can play those factors toward improving the game. Chapter Five covers stuff that I consider to be 'biotech'. It speaks on cloning, genetic manipulation, designer viruses and nano-tech. For Star Trek fans, there's even a nice discussion on matter replication. That way your PCs can order their martinis shaken, not stirred, from the friendly replicator aboard the ship ;) Chapter Six is all about getting there. How long will it take you to get to Jupiter at light speed? What if the aliens are using a higher progress level engine? Will your PC's girlfriend be old and dead from time dilation? All of these topics along with standard plot devices for reaching other places are covered. From jump gates and warp-type drives to teleporters , dimension gates and time machines, d20 Future has got a way to get the heroes to where the action is taking place. There are a couple of nice tables for figuring out travel times at various fictional/possible speeds. Those can be really useful for making a sort of consistency when traveling between Planet X and Planet Z.
Expanding on the general concepts in Chapter Six, Chapter Seven is devoted entirely to starships. You get a lot of material, in my opinion, in these next 37 pages. You get a system for playing out spaceship combat (which could easily be used as a tabletop game by itself). Starships are broken down by size category, from the uber-tiny space fighter size (ultralight) to the uber-gigantic Star Destroyer-type ships (superheavy). The chapter is full of ship examples including stats like crew, difficulty of purchase, speed and other info needed to play the game either for RPGing or for a tactical starship combat game on the tabletop. Additionally, you get a ton of different weapons and equipment upgrade options depending on what PL you are playing. Using these bits, you can build anything from Serenity to the Enterprise to the Galactica.
Chapter Eight is just a few pages, all devoted to futuristic vehicles. From hovercars to hover cycles to cars, trucks and military vehicles, you get examples of some stock stuff to populate futuristic highways and skyways. In addition to base stats for a couple dozen vehicles, you also get nifty equipment upgrades. From autopilot drivers for your car of the future (important for when Mr. Incredible is changing into his tights) to vehicle armor and weaponry ala the Batmobile, you get a nice chunk of stuff to throw into your campaigns in just a couple of pages.
Chapter Nine confuses and frightens me. It's all about Mecha. Like starships, mecha are classed by size (smallest to largest: large, huge, gargantuan, colossal --- reverse alphabetical on purpose?). You get a system for 'building' mecha with a ton of options. Want to make a giant robot composed of half a dozen smaller mecha vehicle robots? You can do that. You get rules for mecha in space, mecha in combat, mecha lecka hiney ho, you get mecha. You even get an advanced class to operate these bad boys of beryllium, the Mecha Jockey. Personally, mecha ain't my gig, but it looks like fans of the genre get a lot of toys to play with in designing and playing with giant, stompin' robots.
Speaking of robots, Chapter 10 has you covered. Right off the bat, you get the option of robots as PCs with options for robot feats and other aspects necessary to playing a 'bot. You also get a wide variety of robot types, again outlined against the various PL in which you set your games. From Dr. Who's K-9 to the liquid robot in Terminator 2, you have options for building robots from the ground up. Using the rules provided, it looks like a GM could use this system to make V.I.N.C.E.N.T. from Black Hole, ED-209 (Robocop) or even R2-D2, if they wanted. Bringing up ED-209, of course, brings up Robocop. Can you do cyborgs with this book? Yep. Chapter 11 is all about cybernetics. Starting at Six Million Dollar Man level and going to a nano-bot self-repairing cyborg, you have another set of options for your game. Again, the toolkit approach is used to give you maximum flexibility.
So you say you like X-Men? What about Gamma World? Chapter 12 brings you the mutations you have come to know and love. Can you do every possible comic book hero or every old school Gamma World critter using these limited rules? No. Can you make a lot of really neat mutants with what's presented? Yes. The basic idea is that mutations are 'bought' using mutation points. MPs are typically gained by taking drawback or negative type mutations. While I miss some of the cool GW type mutations, I still think you get a nice selection of good/bad mutations with which to build PCs, monsters or whatever else you feel like making.
The final chapter of the book is about aliens. First, the book discusses ways of adapting (or using straight out) available creatures from the Monster Manual and the d20 Menace Manual. You also get two templates: extraterrestrial and space creatures to use to make regular creatures all funky and new. My favorite part of this chapter and maybe the whole book is the PC aliens. The aliens presented are taken directly from Alternity Star*Drive and Star Frontiers. Aleerin (Mechalus), Fraal, Sesheyan, T'sa and Weren come from Star*Drive. The Dralasite, Vrusk, and Yazirian hail from the original Star Frontiers RPG.
Mechalus are basically computerized humans. Imagine a race of people who can link naturally with computers, do very well with cybernetic enhancement and who play up the whole emotionless robo-stereotype. Fraal are the little green men (they're kind of Gray-ish, if you get the idea). They are telepathic little buggers. The Sesheyan are like humanoid bat dudes, that look quasi-devilish to boot; they have wings and can fly and are supposed to be skittish around technology since they're kind of new to anything beyond the bow and arrow. The Weren remind me of a cross between the Klingons and Wookies---big sasquatch-looking creatures that you wouldn't want to meet in a brightly lit alley much less....you get the picture. The T'sa are hyperactive lizardmen who are fascinated by and who love technology.
Dralasites are asexual blob-like creatures that can change their shape to a limited degree, kind of like silly putty. They have weird senses of humor and overdeveloped sense of smell since their entire body absorbs surrounding air (making poison gases and swimming a challenge). Vrusk are quasi-centaur-shaped bug people with a surprisingly fresh 'hive-mind' take on society (yes, that was sarcasm). Vrusk understand social interactions and value education but make poor swimmers due to their build. Yazirians remind me of a cross between Klingons and Wookies (yes, I used that description for the Weren, too---except skinnier and with flying squirrel gliding membranes under their arms). They can go into a rage and gain bonuses toward fighting and simultaneous penalties towards defense as they throw themselves headlong into combat. They are sensitive to bright light and can use those membrane skin folds to glide for short distances, if conditions are right.
All right, I dragged you through the book on a highlight tour. Here's my scorecard if you're still awake:
Good Things: The recurring toolbox theme that allows players and GMs design equipment and vehicles looks to be a nice resource if you're the type of player/GM who wants to customize things for your particular game. The rules also try to cover just about any area of interest a sci-fi RPGer might be interested in. From time travel to post apocalypse to space opera, you can probably find it in these pages.
I also enjoyed seeing older setting components like races, equipment, vehicles, etc. (specifically Star*Drive and Star Frontiers) presented in d20 format. Fans of Alternity and/or Star Frontiers, like myself, are often ticked to see their favorite settings get partial revival but I appreciate not having to convert the stats. Are these updates 100% faithful to the original? No. Are they workable in their own right? Yes.
Could Be Better Things: I wanted more out of the mini-settings included in the book. I felt like I was getting an nibble of adventure hook possibilities only to move on to the next one. I have to admit that I'm impressed with the variety presented in those mini-settings including the very nice adventure hooks. I guess I was just looking for more because I'm greedy like that.
Summary: d20 Future covers a lot of ground. It doesn't give the most in-depth views on every bit of sci-fi terrain but it does an impressive job of presenting the GM and players with options to be used. The book is attractive, well organized and pretty far-reaching in the sheer number of angles it tries to cover. Overall, I am impressed with the effort and view d20 Future as an excellent sourcebook.
