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Its price has gone down to $14.95 of late, making it pretty damned cheap, all things considered. The website is still active, containing errata and additional goodies.
I recommend following the above link. Why? Because that page will give you a solidly effective idea as to whether Star Thugs is going to appeal to you. Possibly a more succinct one than I will ever be able to give you, but I'll try anyway.
As another link that will introduce you to the game, check out The Maggott Show. The archive is available here, making it even easier to get to Episode 1.
What is the Maggott Show, and why is it relevant? Well, Star Thugs is written by the same person as the Maggott Show, and set in the same universe. The Maggott Show itself is a fictional radio-show hosted by a sociopathic alien warlord known as the Byeard Maggott and his demonic co-host, Frugle. It's also damned funny, although there's the odd section of it which relies on in-jokes to which many people will not be part.
If you like the radio shows and the webpage for Star Thugs itself - which contains the cover and a link to sample pages, by the way - then you haven't been disturbed/upset by the style of comedy involved, and this might well be the game for you.
In case it's not obvious, there's Interesting Language involved in both the shows, the game, and the website, so Star Thugs is not for kids. For one thing, they simply wouldn't get a lot of the humour.
The Actual Review!
Star Thugs is written in a very strong and quite comedic narrative voice, which gives the game a very definite identity and 'feel.'
The essential idea is that Star Thugs is akin to Privateer on mescaline, where motley starships ply the lanes of a universe that is both unfriendly, unreliable and armed to the teeth, while being vile and hilarious. Suffice to say that this is an example of one of the "GM Treats" available on the website, known in other games as Disadvantages:
"Hunted (+5, requires Bountied): You tried telling them that it was like that when you got there, but when they pumped your stomach and found it was full of brains, it seemed to prejudice them against you. You start the game with a $100,000 credit bounty on your head."
Each player is the captain (and crew!) of a starship within a universe that combines Douglas Adams with Hunter S. Thompson, Paranoia and a significant amount of entertaining degeneracy. Again, the Maggott Show will give you a good idea of what you're getting into.
The book is fun to read, due to the aforementioned narrative voice and the fact that the author is just clever at comedy.
Rules and Tactical Crunch
Character generation and stats is relatively simple, although there's two different stages. Individual characters are quite simple, boiling down to four central stats: Engineering, Piloting, Mojo and Thuggery. Piloting is using technology and operational skill, whereas Engineering is messing with technology and technical knowledge. Mojo is a measure of your raw Kirkian charisma, and Thuggery has nothing whatsoever to do with flower arrangement.
Generating a Captain is quite simple, and Captains have Spiffiness Points which pretty much equate to 'PC Glow.' Then you create the crew of your ship, since each player is a ship, a captain and a crew. The crew are almost appendages to the Captain, which is a pretty elegant way of modelling things in a Star Trek mode.
The system itself is certainly creative. Dice rolls all involve the otherwise-ignored d12, and rules are an intriguing hybrid between approaches to rules that are typical in RPGs, and rules that are typical in CCGs. For example, the phrasing is that a particular crewmember can be used once per turn, and is then bent - just like tapping a card.
Skill rolls contain a dice element which I think is thoroughly clever. Your skill is what is called a 'stack number.' If you roll under or equal to your stack number, you get to roll again on a d12 and add that number to your result. This means that high stack numbers are good, and that you want to roll low (or as close to your stack number as possible) on your first roll, and then high for your second one.
The element of character generation which is less simple is building your ship. Star Thugs has a significant focus on intership combat, and a good majority of the book is rules devoted to this subject. As such, creating your ship is a strategy in itself, as the same components arranged in a different manner will have a significant impact on how it works in play.
The rules for ship combat and ship creation are elegant, but there are a lot of them. One of the elements of Star Thugs which feels a little disjointed is that on the one hand you have a hilariously weird universe to truck around in... And that the rules are given over to such detailed tactical crunch.
It's good crunch, and if I were running a tactical game of spacebattles and boarding strategies, I'd run straight to this book. But it feels like the game would have its 'vibe' more suited by something like Fudge, RISUS or perhaps a stripped down, streamlined ORE variant akin to Monsters and Other Childish Things.
Another factor is that, since all the players have a ship and crew, there isn't as much scope for inter-character RPing as I feel the universe would reward. It's certainly not just a tactical game, but I'd have appreciated a section on how to approach things/rearrange the system if people all wanted to play different characters on one ship.
It's easy enough to fudge, but is not in the book at present. I can see the design decisions that have gone into it, hell there's a Combat Manouvre called "Redshirt," where you damage a crewmember to reduce any incoming attack by a multiple of their Thuggery. You can practically see computer consoles exploding for no good reason for that one. The whole idea of focusing on Captain + Ship, with crew being appendages of one or almost systems of the other, is a good streamlining idea but it also narrows down options.
It's not all bad. The rules for trading commodities and managing cash doing so are very elegant, and if I were ever running a game where my players didn't want to just make money abstract, I'd come running straight to Star Thugs. Similarly, the rules for managing how your players accrue bounties on their heads in the course of Ongoing Mayhem is a joy to behold, and something that would lift out to apply to Shadowrun and games set in society's underbelly with little or no difficulty.
The rules for combat aren't hellishly complicated, and come with some lovely mook-rules for keeping things streamlined. The level of tactical/strategic depth in decision making is what pulls the game out from being fodder for Beer and Pretzels gaming - unless, I suppose, you are already total experts in the system.
Layout and Content.
The cover art for Star Thugs is superb and thematic, and the work of the glorious Steve Argyle. The art in the inside is much more hit and miss, and sadly very much feels like an afterthought. It's disappointing if you're impressed by the cover, and hope that the standard will continue inside.
The layout for text isn't bad, but is disconcertingly dense. A 122 page book may not sound like much, but the font is small and with at least two columns per page, there's a lot of text in there. The editing is good, with a minimum of typos, but the density of the text can still make it a bit of work to read.
There's no Index, which can be a bit of an issue at times when looking around within the more complicated rules.
What parts of the book aren't given over to neat, crunchy tactical rules are given over to descriptions and explanations of the setting that are either startlingly detailed or informative or just downright funny. For example, there's a convincingly historical discussion of why ship combat still occurs within visual range, despite the fact this doesn't make logical sense on paper, and others on why starships are so cheap (equivalent to cars on Earth) and thus why it's so common for idiot teenagers to spend a summer working at the equivalent of McDonalds and then turning space-pirate.
There are no sample missions or campaigns, but there is a random mission generator. And from my perspective, the schenigans present in the Maggott Show provide all the potential inspiration fodder you could ever need, but YMMV.
Conclusions!
Star Thugs is in no way bland, and this goes for its high and low points as well.
From a rules/substance perspective, we have a very cool, strategically crunchy system that I'd strip out/borrow for any other intership fighting/trading RPG I'd ever run... But it's attached to a hilarious universe which feels like it'd do better attached to something fast and silly for Beer and Pretzels gaming.
It certainly feels like the authors were biased to the strategy side of things. The game includes (again, very cool) a section on rules and rules modifications for how to play an entirely tactical variant of Star Thugs over email, for example, yet doesn't have one on how to play with everyone as characters/crew on one ship.
From a style perspective, the artwork and layout gets in the way of the core material, and it can be a bit of a slog to read through dense text with a small font. And yet the material itself radiates style and hilarity, while simultaneously being a very detailed source text on the world of the game.
Highs and Lows seem to even out, but as I say it's hardly a bland game for either style or substance.
However, it is a cheap purchase, and it is complete. Even flawed, $14.95 is pretty good for a complete system in my book, particularly one with this much flavour.
- The Unshaven.
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