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One of last year's surprise hits in the indie game community (well, maybe not that big a surprise) was the FATE-based pulp game Spirit of the Century. Quick character creation, solid rules-light play, and a neat game concept (a day on which dozens of heroes were born that happened to be the first day of the 20th century). And a lot of the SOTC material (though certainly not all of it) is Open Content. So naturally new FATE material inspired by SOTC can come from just about anywhere.

Even Britain.

Limitless Horizons is a “space pulp” game from a company in Yorkshire called UKG Publishing. Well, hardly a complete game: you need some sort of FATE rules to play, with a distinct preference for SOTC. It isn't a long book – my printout came to only 43 pages. Nor is it in any sense complete. But it's cheap to purchase, which is a plus for a sourcebook that is clearly aimed at fans of a wide array of SF books and shows. There isn't a lot here, but what is here works.

The book introduces the principal principles of the game; Freedom, Optimism and Identity. Characters value their freedom and individuality, and want to make the Universe a better place. Indeed, most LH universes are better places than our own times. The opposition forces are those who would stifle these goals, imposing a crushing conformity on the cosmos.

After a brief overview of Sci-Fi Pulp history, which mentions several of the books and series that influenced the game (I found it odd that a British author would mention Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica as influences but leave out Doctor Who, especially given that a Cybermen analogue features in one of the sub-rules sets.), we get to the rules themselves which are a series of options to add to FATE for the space environments. This section is full of euphemisms for trademarks they can't use, in a sort of “nudge-nudge wink-wink say-no-more” sort of way. Setting that aside, the examples given are fairly solid. The most prominent new ideas include the addition of aspects for species with several examples given. A new character generation process gives some guidelines for using character ideas, and again a set of examples. Scaling rules are put in place to enable structures or characters of any size desired, from individual PCs to starships the size of a small planet. The starships are even playable as PCs if desired. The book concludes with a sample campaign called Cunningham's Folly that takes up the entire second half, with four active “races” in the galaxy and a nicely-done sample adventure.

I'm kind of torn on what to make of Limitless Horizons. For what it is, it's decently put-together and the rules are sensible. But with some work and judicious use of the SRD for FATE, it could have been more complete. As it is, you need a set of FATE rules, ideally SOTC, to get any use out of the rules sections at all. I found that somewhat limiting. I could also have used a few more concrete examples; only the sample adventure contains any complete characters and those are NPCs. The color presentation is decent, but the use of Poser is very obvious.

However, you must give credit where credit is due. As a small genre-overview sourcebook, it does its job well. For the price, it gives some nice starting points for campaign ideas – and the book correctly assumes that PCs and GMs will be more interested in applying their own ideas to the genre than parroting established venues. I would have done the book quite differently, but that doesn't mean I'm not going to use and adapt from it.

Besides, it's two and a half bucks. Getting something this useful for that little is worth acknowledging.

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