In Harm's Way

This is a review for Flying Mice's (AKA Better Mousetrap Games) PDF product In Harm's Way currently available for $11.00 from RPGnow. I will try to keep this short and succinct.

Boilerplate: "In Harm's Way is a role-playing game about being a naval officer and a gentleman during the Napoleanic Wars. In Harm's Way is designed to emulate the feel of the historical naval adventures of Forster, O'Brian, Parkinson, Lambdin, Pope, and many others rather than the actual history. As such, it's heavy on the adventure and romance, and light on the blockade and convoy duty."

What you need to know: Though an independent role-playing game in its own right, In Harm's Way is powered by the StarCluster role-playing system. Which is to say it is a historical RPG using a system originally designed for space opera. Thus while In Harm's Way should be compatible with all games powered by the StarCluster system there are certain questions that we need to examine.

For instance, how well does a system designed for space opera capture the feel of Napoleonic era naval combat? To find out let's see what we have. .

Intent: From the author, "The first thing I had to decide was "Am I trying to emulate the real Napoleonic Era in naval terms, or am I interested in emulating modern Napoleonic Naval fiction?" Emulating the books won hands down." This is an important caveat and I shall be critiquing the work accordingly.

The Setting: The Napoleonic Era, as romanticized in fiction.

System Mechanics: In Harm's Way is an independent role-playing game using a modified version of the Starcluster 2.5 role-playing system.

As the Starcluster core rules have been thoroughly reviewed (search the reviews archive) I shall jump right to the heart of the matter: In Harm's Way is basically an setting specific overlay on an existing rule system with some minor modifications. For instance instead of determining a Homeworld players determine their Culture. It's amazing how seamless that alteration is. Too, as with Starcluster, the action revolves around ships. Only instead of starships it's sailing vessels. Mostly the changes are conceptual and relatively easy to follow. If you know the basic Starcluster rules you should be able to jump right in.

With sixteen basic character templates, skill sets organized by character background, and an in-depth rule set for establishing hierarchical divisions in accord with the period In Harm's Way is virtually anal in it’s attention to detail. Which is a very good thing in a historical role-playing game.

Too, there's a near fetishistic examination of NPC characters. I use the word "fetishistic" advisedly and only because many role-playing games treat non-player characters as toilet paper; use them once then throw them away. To see a game that actually takes the time to show GMs how to develop the NPC as a useful and dynamic adjunct of the game, rather than presenting them as 2-dimensional tools, is refreshing.

And then there's the section on ships. This section starts off with the following tidbit: "There were a multitude of vessel types in the period, distinguished by hull type, masts, rigging, number of decks, and size." There's no superfluous preamble, not a single unnecessary bit of fluff text, the authors jump straight to the point. I like that.

This section not only teaches us about schooners, brigs, cutters, and lets us know how many guns the typical vessel carried it also provides several sample vessels complete with deck plans. Then leads straight into the section on sailing and combat.

Appraisal

There are two primary concerns every reader of reviews wants to know upfront: 1) Is this worth spending my hard earned cash on? 2) Does it look like this game will be fun to play? Let's begin with the first question. .

As I've come to expect of all Flying Mice's RPG product this is jam packed with rules, including charts and illustrations. However In Harm's Way is almost exclusively 132 (PDF) pages of rules. There's a bit of historical reference here or there, the most notable being a timeline of events spanning 1793 to 1815, and some nice short (nearly flash) fiction, but the main focus of this product is to provide a rule set for running a Napoleonic era campaign. The PDF seems well put together and has no noticeable problems. However the lack of bookmarks was problematical as the only way to navigate the PDF was with hotlinks from the contents page. Too, and this really bugs me, there's no chapter indices.

There's a contents page and an index but no chapter divisions for a 100+ page work? Look I know this is a PDF but I am assuming you want people to not only buy and download it but also print it out and play it. As a GM when a player asks me where to find information on such-and-such I'd like to be able to tell them to reference chapter so-and-so. Taking the time to divide a work such as this up into delineated chapters make referencing a document of this size that much easier. Otherwise no worries.

Now for the hard part, finding out whether or not the game will be fun. The first caveat has to be about the rule system. If you don't like Starcluster then you probably wont like In Harm's Way. But does the reverse hold true?

To answer that you have to realize this is strictly a period game. It's set in a romanticized view of history but it's a historical time period nonetheless. If you're looking for a rule set to emulate the Honor Harrington universe or one of the numerous "Horatio Hornblower" in space series this is not it. In Harm's Way is designed strictly to emulate the feel of a Horatio Hornblower, the historical era, period.

If that sounds like fun to you then this is a RPG you will want to purchase. If that is not the sort of setting that appeals to you then save your money for something else. It's that simple.