The book is split into eight chapters:
Chapter one: Systems check (Styles of play, etc.)
Chapter two: The Hegemony (Martians, Hegemony War, etc.)
Chapter three: Background (1920-1923, 1924-1925, etc.)
Chapter four: Campaign (French Star Republic, Kingdom of Holland, Reich Space, British Star Empire, etc.)
Chapter five: Characters (Archetypes/Careers)
Chapter six: Gear (Human/Hybrid/Xeno gear, Purchase lists, etc.)
Chapter seven: The Shipyards (Ship tables, Sample ship classes, etc.)
Chapter eight: Starship Designs (Starship examples, Starship quick build tables)
Background Centred around 1936, Rocketship poses hypothetical as to what might have happened if immediately on the heels of the Great War, aliens came to earth. In 1919 Martians come to earth and being impressed with our ability to make war, try to hire us as Mercenaries to fight an enemy they are currently losing to, and we have twenty years to grow into the role. We also find that Humans once had a great empire but were tyrants and are the demonspawn of more than half of the galactic religions out there, apparently humanities subjects revolted and imprisioned the human survivors on a exile planet millenia ago, we called this planet Earth.
The choice of campaign style is entirely up to the Director (Games Master), whether it be a pulp game, a horror in space game, a game following World War II across the vastenss of space, or perhaps an Intersteller Indiana Jones game. The core book provides guidelines to enable you to match the game system of your choice as well as a run down of the intersteller 'big boys'. Much of the plot which is built into the game is left purposely vague to allow the director to go his or her own way.
Over half the book is a starship creation system, based around an innovative slot system. This system easily creates a believeable framework to gauge how much shipboard equipment (weapons, engines, crew quarters etc.) a given ship can have. Small Fast Transports for example would have nowhere near as much space as an Atmo-Capable Freighter. The rest of the core book is dedicated to many and varied little items to give you the flavour of the game including history, equipment etc.
Quality: The artwork ranges from the amazing to the good enough, whilst the writing is interesting and well thought out (even if not immediately obvious) the only real downside is some of the spelling. However, StoryART are in the process of cleaning up this problem and have provided replacement copies to those people who have bought the hard copies. Really, given that StoryART is at this point pretty much just Ed Kaan this minor point is easily understandable. In addition to the core book, two other books have been released as to the writing of this review; one called the Gunslinger Betty is a book dedicated to a player character spacecraft based on a B-25B Mitchell Bomber and describes every compartment and procedure complete with very well drawn cutaways of the entire ship and is a unique player resource, the second book is In Fury Triumphant which is a daring forey into history and provides the backdrop to run a game (or at least a great many scenarios) in the middle of the Spanish Civil War.
Availability: The books are available in both PDF and Paperback versions, although when purchasing the paper versions you receive the PDF on a CD in the same package making it more cost effective to buy the paper version. The paper core rulebook is an A4 loose leaf black and white interior book, spiral bound with color cardstock front cover, very reminiscant of old traveller, with a protective sheet front and back. Whilst the other books so far available are A5 booklet versions which are even closer to the classic traveller booklets, stapled instead of spiral bound. Both types are pretty sturdy, in addition, the core book comes with a map (just shy of A3) and the Gunslinger Betty book comes with a cutaway veiw of the ship itself (about the same size). Although I do not have In Fury Triumphant in paper copy s yet my understanding is that a map is provided with that book as well.
In short I can heartily recommend this series. Visit www.rocketshipempires.com to see examples of the artwork and join the forum to gain a greater insight of the game itself. I hope that this review has helped and I look forward to meeting all you potential Rocketeers on Ed Kaans site.
