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In Short

However, this product does have a few problems. The editing leaves much to be desired, and the writing tends to be repetitive. This results in a product that, while large, actually contains less information than its size would suggest. The Helios system, for some, will feel overpopulated and the “space opera” approach of the product wont appeal to those looking for more of a “hard science” setting. While mecha and gravity guns are available, the reader will find little in the way of A.I. and gene manipulation. Finally, many of the setting elements are very classic in terms of science fiction. Insectoid and reptilian races tend to be the bad guys, plant and mineral races are strange and alien, and mammalian races tend to be friendly and similar.

The Physical Thing

Unfortunately, what could have been a great product is plagued with a variety of problems. Frequent grammar errors are found throughout the book, including sentence fragments by themselves (including one fragment from another chapter that begins a new chapter discussing the wrong planet) and a lot of other errors that should have been corrected through editing. All RPG books have some problems of this nature, and I normally just ignore them and consider them an inescapable part of RPGs. In this instance, however, they’re particularly egregious and I suspect the writers did little more than use a spellchecker before sending the product to print.

The $45 price tag is very high for a softcover black and white product. While the content seems like it would make up for this, there are two big problems. First, a softcover book of this size will quickly develop wear from use. This is especially true along the spine. Second, the writing tends to be redundant and repeats a lot of the same information. There’s just not as much information here as the size of the book would suggest.

Finally, the formatting of the product makes it difficult to work with at times. 11+ sentence paragraphs are not unusual. Further, the game mechanics are located at the end of every chapter but many of them are not chapter specific. This makes it a difficult product to work with for folk who just want to examine new Talents, Feats, equipment, and other character options.

This product requires d20 Modern, d20 Future, and Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch for play.

The Ideas

At the very end of this great war the Star Confederation seeded a variety of worlds with mixtures of their DNA, hoping new civilizations would emerge and continue their legacy. Time passed. The remains of the Vaasi learned of the seeding program and enacted a plan to destroy the seeded worlds. The most advanced of these civilizations fled their doomed homes, activating the transporters at the edge of their star systems. All were ultimately drawn to the Helios system, a heavily terraformed system filled with habitable worlds. Now a wide variety of alien races live on worlds of all shapes and sizes, dealing with a variety of internal problems while still trying to make sense of one another. At the edge of the star system lurk the Vaasi, an invasion fleet sent using slower than light travel that has just now arrived to destroy what’s left of the Star Confederation.

Under the Cover

Each chapter ranges from about 1/2 to 1/4 rules material. This includes NPC stats, starships, vehicles, mecha, weapons, armors, and stats for new species. Rather than discuss this material for every chapter I’m discussing it generally here.

The personal equipment added with this product is extremely varied, from guns that fire high velocity metal bearings to gravity weapons that rip organs out of people with micro-wormholes. The problem a lot of products will run into with such varied equipment tables is that some players will pick out the “best” equipment and use nothing else. To a moderate extent that is possible with this product, especially with melee weapons which often do not require power packs or ammunition. However, the great equalizer in this setting is that most of the really powerful weapons require rare ammunition. If the characters find a gravity gun that can only fire twice, with little hope of ever acquiring more ammunition, then it’s unlikely to be a real game breaker.

On the downside, however, there are an awful lot of storehouses of ancient weapons and armor in the Helios system. GMs would be wise to watch what sort of equipment falls into the hands of the PCs, as a lot of the advanced weapons could radically shift the power balance of a campaign.

Mecha continue to be rare as written, but most races seem to have access to mecha in one form or another. Ground vehicle of a wide variety are presented, from tanks to hovercraft of all sorts. In both instances the mecha and vehicles tend to be flavorful and very race/planet appropriate, giving every environment its own unique feel. That the dinosaur derivative race, the Saurians, have mecha with tails is great!

The spacecraft tend to be interesting in that there aren’t a whole lot of them in the system, and every race has access to at least one ship. This results in the reader carefully looking over the ship stats and noting which ones tend to be the most powerful, which really adds a lot of flavor to the setting. The ships here tend to conduct combat at short range, much like what a person would expect from the ships of Star Wars, as opposed to the long range combat of Transhuman Space or “hard” sci-fi settings that use lasers and other extreme long distance weapons. This is really just a d20 Future thing though.

The new Talents tend to be general d20 Modern Talents, though some are species appropriate (such as increasing unarmed natural weapon damage). The majority of Talents lack a science fiction element and could easily be transported to any d20 Modern game, though I wish there were more narrowly tailored Talents for this setting. On the downside, many Talents serve a questionably useful purpose. Increasing carrying capacity, in a science fiction game, may not be the most useful Talent for a Strong or Tough Hero.

The new Feats tend to be more setting appropriate, and in many cases are narrowly tailored to be useful to only a few species. The Honor feats of the Saurians, for example, are very flavorful. They provide a variety of social bonuses and support Saurian focused characters. On the downside, many of the species specific Feats are less useful in mixed campaigns. The product often seems to assume the characters are all from the same species or that the species will otherwise play a very common role in the game. While many roleplayers may enjoy a lengthy campaign focused on any one of the interesting species presented in this product, I suspect most will participate in more of a survey campaign that doesn’t focus on any one thing for too long.

The Advanced Classes and Prestige Classes are very often narrowly focused on a specific species, playing to stereotype in a pleasant way that emphasizes the common strengths of that species. I found most of the Advanced and Prestige Classes to be well tailored for the species they were based around, and believe the designers did a good job here. Every species has its own special 3 level class that emphasizes the strengths of that species, just as the Humans and Velin do in Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch.

The new species are an excellent mix. The differences between life forms, in terms of stats, tend to be minor which may please or displease various consumers. Here’s what you get:

The Saurians come in four different varieties, each with their own modifiers and specialty class. The Flyers are small, agile, winged lizard people that resemble Pterodactyls and perform a variety of scouting and technical duties. The Brachins are scholarly but slow herbivores who handle a great deal of the bureaucratic duties of the Saurian empire and resemble brachiosaurs. The Shellback are stout common workers who typically handle the large agricultural projects of the Saurians. They resemble anklosaurs. Finally, the Tyrans rule over the other Saurians and resemble tyrannosaurs. The Tyrans are the most physically powerful of all the Saurians.

The Haimedians are a race of generally passive plant people who specialize in biotechnology of all sorts. From horrific flesh eating virus to giant brains for computers, the Haimedians eschew non-organic technology and generally enjoy a simple and docile existence.

The Elgies are small humanoids that resemble monkeys and lemurs. They’re extremely clever, often working as technicians and financiers. Their allegiance to the Wolves (below) has resulted in their species going from Progress Level 3 to Progress Level 7 and beyond in just a few generations, no doubt thanks to their ingenuity.

The Straas are a race of, well, giant ants that communicate primarily through pheromones. Most of them are dedicated to conquest, due to being controlled by a Vaasi impersonating one of their hive queens. On the downside, a special class for controlled Straas is presented in the product. Since Straas tend to be foot soldier sorts of badguys, and since the controlled versions are unplayable, it seems like a waste to include an extra page of options for mind controlled foot soldiers. Rogue Straas that have broken away from the mind control, however, are quite playable.

The Wolves are wolf-people who are also the most accomplished and traveled spacers of all the races in the system, except perhaps the Tentaari and Vaasi. Their society is fragmented into 23 Tribes, each of which specializes in certain duties and crafts.

The Yaom are reptile-people who are deeply connected to the Red Truth, a dimension of psionics. The only playable race that can use psionics without a great deal of trouble, the Yaom live in a true democracy where they all scan one another’s minds continuously.

The Coqui are a silicon-based species (so they’re rock people) who tend to be aggressive and cynical. As rock people, they’re tough – gaining natural armor, damage reduction, physical stat increases, and other benefits. On the downside they’re slow and heal at a decreased rate.

The Mechites are as close to playable Artificial Intelligence as the setting gets. They’re sapient androids created by an ancient A.I. and are focused on repairing the jump-gate at the edge of the system. A passive people, the Mechites are loosely based off the Biodroids from the d20 Future SRD.

I’m a little disappointed that character creation rules for the Tentaari were not presented. While they are clearly an older species, they don’t seem particularly superior to any of the other species currently inhabiting the Helios system. Further, character options for many other unplayable species are presented in order to give the GM a variety of options for NPC creation.

Finally, Psionics in Helios Rising works a little bit differently than in d20 Future. Wisdom governs everything related to psionics, and the Yaom are the only playable race that can use psionics unless an individual has suffered permanent stat loss from exposure to the Red Truth *and* seeks out a mentor to learn psionics. Finally, characters may accept Wisdom drain to power abilities even after they run out of power points.

Chapter 1 The Helios System 12 pages.

This chapter presents a general overview of the Helios system and this product. Two things, in particular, stand out here. First, the product does a good job of discussing different ways to use Helios Rising in a campaign. Throughout this product, in fact, a large variety of explicit plot hooks and adventure suggestions are provided which make adventure creation a snap (though at times the suggestions seem a tad silly). Second, travel times from everywhere in the system to everywhere else (with some variance for orbital position) are provided. This makes it very easy for a GM to say how long it takes a ship to get to its destination.

Chapter 2 The Markin Asteroid Belt 10 pages.

History, Geography, Atmosphere, Conditions – this information is provided for every stellar object discussed in Helios Rising and is often quite useful. This asteroid belt, created when a world got too close to Helios, holds the remains of an ancient A.I. and storehouses of Star Confederation technology. Originally placed there to assist the Confederation or their seed races after the war, the A.I. guarding these treasures has gone a little crazy and wont give them up without a fight.

Chapter 3 Hephaestus 40 pages.

Much like our Mercury, Hephaestus is a barren and blasted world too close to its star to have anything of interest but heavy metals. Having created lengthy tunnels throughout the planet while extracting iron, the Star Confederation decided Hephaestus would make an excellent prison for their undesirables and prisoners of war. The whole system failed long ago, and now the Law Keepers fight against a horde of Vaasi in dark, hot, wet tunnels filled with deadly bacteria and uncontrolled nanite swarms. The Law Keepers occasionally recruit others from the various races in the Helios system, taking the greatest warriors they can find to continue their battle against the Vaasi threat lurking deep inside Hephaestus.

Whether you want a traditional sci-fi bug hunt or a dark, creepy horror environment Hephaestus is an excellent tool for several traditional science fiction genres. That all the non-Vaasi species get along splendidly here, given their harsh conditions, makes this an excellent place to start any campaign filled with mixed species.

Chapter 4 Verdant 26 pages.

Similar to our Venus, Verdant is an oppressively hot world with an atmosphere of gaseous sulphuric acid. As one would imagine, there’s little of interest on the surface of this world – even the Star Confederation found it to be too harsh. However, a space station in orbit called the Green Research Facility provides an excellent location for adventure.

During the war with the Vaasi, the Star Confederation began experimenting with particularly devastating psionic weapons. The Green Research Facility was the principle location for all psionic research in the Helios system. While testing a new and powerful psionic weapon an accident occurred, killing every researcher on the station and creating a giant rift into the Red Truth. The Red Truth is psionic space, where superstrings can be clearly seen and a psionicist can recover any information.

During this accident many of the most psionically active researchers were turned into ghosts. Today the vast majority of them are completely insane, using their psionic abilities to slay anyone that comes into the area. A rare few, however, are still quite sane and want to bring intelligent species to the space station in order to escape their eternal fate as ghosts trapped in this part of space.

In addition to being an excellent vehicle for a classic ghost story, the Green Research Facility is also a treasure trove of advanced technology and could function as an excellent “dungeon” type environment for characters to explore.

Chapter 5 C’thalk 120 pages.

A warm, damp jungle world C’thalk is home to two major sapient species – the Saurians and the Haimedians. The Saurians control a large empire, which spans a significant portion of the globe, and maintain the strongest industry in all the Helios system. War-like and honor bound, this aggressive species focuses a lot of its energy on gearing up for battle and conducting assaults against the Wolves on the nearby world of Thres. The Saurian government tends to be very corrupt, dominated by Tyrans who oversee a feudal system.

The Haimedians, by contrast, are a peaceful plant people who almost completely lack an economy. They are, however, considered extremely dangerous since they have no concept of proportionate response. When a single member of their species is killed they deploy flesh eating bacteria and other extremely deadly attacks against any perceived enemies, resulting in the species that have contact with the Haimedians being very cautious around them. Their government is based around Mother Moss, the last surviving member of one of the ancient Star Confederation races, who guides the Haimedians in all things.

Chapter 6 The Moons of Eos 14 pages.

Eos is, of course, the home base of the Humans in the Dawning Star setting. While Eos has become a welcoming home for humanity, the two moons surrounding it hold deadly secrets. One moon is completely covered with up to 10 meters of nanites leftover from the Vaasi attack on the Helios system. These nanites await more raw material in order to build a vessel and escape the moon they have been left on. Several plot hooks surround these nanites, but it’s difficult to imagine how the player characters could interact with them successfully.

The other moon is home to the Tentaari (the greys of popular fiction) who use the moon as a storehouse for their scavenged technology. The moon is also former home to the frezin, a race the Tentaari eradicated out of spite. Their frozen corpses still litter the moon.

Chapter 7 Thres 120 pages.

Home to four different sapient species, each of which colonized Thres only recently, this temperate world is as varied in its geography as it is in cultures.

The home world of the Wolves was endangered by a large meteor just as Earth was, but the Wolves did not find the Helios system so quickly. In their wanderings they briefly settled on the world of another species (the Elgie), but soon after a horrible plague engineered by the Vaasi killed off most of both species. A few who were free of disease fled, and over time the two species finally found Helios and settled on Thres. With the most powerful and skilled space fleet in the system, the Wolves quickly became a military force to be reckoned with. The Elgie were assimilated into the Wolves tribal structure, becoming the 24th Tribe, and the two species have developed an almost symbiotic relationship.

The Straas are an ant-like species who communicate with pheromones and lived on a world where hive-queens made up a communal government. The Vaasi, upon discovering this species, altered some of their number to appear as hive-queens and give off controlling pheromones. For a time the Vaasi managed to control the entire Straas home, but an immunity crept into the populace and a great rebellion occurred. The last false hive-queen, who had learned to counter this early immunity, led her followers to the stars and eventually to Thres. Here she began increasing her population of servitors, biding her time until the Vaasi invade the Helios system and she may take her rightful place among them. In the mean time, some Straas have become immune and have begun a small rebellion against her with the help of the Wolf tribes and others.

The Yaom, the only true psionicists other than the Tentaari and Vaasi, are the fourth race dwelling on Thres. They maintain a peaceful presence and go out of their way to avoid violence wherever possible, but when violence has occurred that have shown themselves to be extremely deadly and frightening adversaries. They have a reputation as a wise and contemplative people, and considering that they can see the Red Truth this is a worthy reputation. The Yaom have a truly democratic government, as every member of the society can read the thoughts of other members. This results in a largely uniform culture where no one hides secrets and little injustice occurs. While generally uninterested in conflict, the Yaom have allied themselves with the Wolf Tribes and rebel Straas.

Finally, a fifth civilization has begun to colonize Thres. The Saurians have setup several colonies on Thres and regularly engage in open conflict with the Wolf Tribes. The Saurians are expansionist, but are only willing to expand through conquering others. Despite having room to continue to expand their empire on their home world, the Empire continues to attack the Wolf Tribes where it can. This has been difficult, however, since the Wolves possess significantly more powerful starships.

There’s a lot to do on Thres, and any one of the species presented in this product could have several campaigns based around it. From exploring ancient relics, fighting off nanite infested zombies, or aiding the rebel Straas in their battle against the masquerading Vaasi hive-queen, this chapter provides a wealth of adventuring opportunities.

Chapter 8 Hesperos 48 pages.

Hesperos is a great gas giant, not unlike Jupiter, and this chapter focuses on the most interesting moons in orbit around Hesperos. One of these moons is home to the Mechites, a race of androids created by an ancient A.I.

Computer One, once the most powerful A.I. in the Star Confederation, spent millions of years traveling. Towards the end of its journeys it became the victim of a Vaasi trap that destroyed a significant amount of its outer area. In order to survive it reprogrammed all of its servitor androids and sent them out with instructions to thrive and, one day, save it. The androids became a new species, the Mechites, and today inhabit one of the moons of Hesperos. Their goal is to one day repair the great gateway at the edge of the star system and return for Computer One.

Shortly after founding their civilization in the Helios sytem, the Mechites encountered a new race named the Coqui. A silicate species, the Coqui fled a home world dying from a Vaasi attack. Eventually they discovered the Helios sytem, made contact with the Mechites, and now enjoy a mutually beneficial relationship with the Mechites. The extremely aggressive Coqui find the Mechites to be naïve, and constantly counsel them to be more assertive and aggressive towards the other species they deal with.

Other than these two species, the other moons tend to be barren of anything particularly interesting (or completely available for a GM to mess with as they will). Several Star Confederation terraforming and supply stations still orbit Helios and could make an excellent base of operations for a group of player character privateers.

Chapter 9 Poseidon 10 pages.

Poseidon is a giant chunk of ice located in the mid to outer portion of the Helios system. Once heavily mined for water, towards the end of the Confederation / Vaasi war an engineer armed and reprogrammed all of the mining robots for combat. Unfortunately, they were never deployed against the Vaasi (took too long to reprogram them). The A.I. that control them have gotten downright unhappy over the years, and now are more than willing to kill anyone that approaches Poseidon and take their ship.

This would be a neat adventure hook if not for the fact that many of these (500) mining robots are CR 40. While it’s reasonable enough to acknowledge that many conflicts don’t have violence as a solution, the write up makes it seem unlikely that the robots will negotiate with the characters unless the characters can provide the robots with Vaasi to fight. A lot of things written about in the product are clearly meant to be possible solutions to the Vaasi invasion, which the product often assumes will be the focus of a campaign.

Chapter 10 Apollo 12 pages.

Apollo, a massive gas giant like Saturn, has a group of A.I. controlled space stations around it that are trying to open a wormhole to send it to the Vaasi home system in order to eradicate their civilization. The problem is the A.I. need parts in order to finish their efforts and teleport the planet into the Vaasi system. Clearly, there is background as to why this is being performed. It amounts to a last act of revenge against the Vaasi on behalf of a long dead Star Confederation hero.

Chapter 11 Atlas 18 pages.

A cold, rocky world, Atlas is the furthest planet from Helios. During the reign of the Star Confederation it served as a trade outpost and major port for traffic through the gateway, at least for half of its revolution. Today it is completely controlled by the Vaasi and is a major staging area for their genetic experimentation, cloning programs, and intelligence gathering. The Vaasi are currently trying to create duplicates of the species that inhabit the Helios system to use as spies against them. All of this takes place in underground tunnels and complexes, many of which the Vaasi have not explored, in order to assist in hiding the large Vaasi invasion force lurking at the edge of the Helios system.

Chapter 12 Cronus Belt 62 pages.

A large cluster of asteroids orbiting on the far edge of the Helios system, the Cronus Belt has become the main staging area for a new Vaasi invasion of the Helios system. The Vaasi are currently biding their times, gathering intelligence, and breeding more soldiers before a major offensive. They do this because they know they only have one shot to wipe out the last remains of the Star Confederation once and for all. In the mean time, Vaasi geneticists continue to create more horrors and slave races to fill the Vaasi military force with.

This chapter functions as an overview of the Vaasi culture, including their caste system (Leader, Scientist/Warriors, Bureaucrat, etc.) and alien mentality (everything is either a predator or prey, and should be destroyed). A significant portion of the chapter provides a wide range of Vaasi servitor and NPC statistics to make it easy for the GM to run a Vaasi invasion at a variety of power levels. The true-Vaasi, the ones controlling the lesser species, commonly have challenge ratings in the high teens to low twenties.

Chapter 13 Gateway Station 32 pages.

Gateway Station is the large wormhole generating super structure at the far edge of the system that everyone has at least a moderate interest in. The station is currently being ignored by the Vaasi due to its extremely powerful armament.

A rogue Tentaari who feels much more passion and drive than the rest of his people, lives on Gateway Station, and constantly works to repair it with the assistance of a variety of robots. This Tentaari, Illmind, is considered insane by the rest of his people. He actively tries to contact friendly species to aid him in his efforts. In addition to his robotic servitors, Gateway Station is home to a wide variety of pieces of Star Confederation technology including one very powerful mecha.

My Take

However, I feel like this product should have had at least one more editing pass. In addition to the problems I have laid out above, I also feel like many parts of this product are one trick ponies. Many of the locations only have one or two big conflicts going on, and as soon as those are resolved there’s nothing else of interest there. Additionally, the extremely large number of sapient species make the Helios system feel a little crowded to me. I would have preferred more downright mysterious objects, more transhumanist ideas, and more strange alien life instead. Those are mostly personal preferences, however, and don’t reflect the score or the value I see in this product.

If you’re looking for a detailed star system for d20 Future adventures then Helios Rising can definitely handle the task.

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