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Written mainly by Patrick Sweeny, originally for another game system that is not named, it was picked up by BTRC (Read: Greg Porter) after the original deal fell though.
FoH, early in it's ~400 pages, defines itself as more of an encyclopedia of space opera and not just a space opera setting. It is not, however, a generic SF setting creation guide and does devote a great deal of it's pages to the setting included in the book.
(At one time I'd actually worked on a general SF setting creation guide for EABA but there seemed to be inadequate interest depending on how well FoH does I may resume work on that....)
Still, it does cover enough SF related topics to make it a viable guide for anyone wanting to do a SF setting for EABA, especially if one were inclined to write one's own Traveller rules for EABA.
Speaking of Traveller, the game setting reminds me heavily of the somewhat misnamed GDW product “Traveller :2300”. There are similarities aplenty between the two settings. Both feature humanity as “the new kid on the block”, just emerging into starfaring culture while there are a few other races that have been around longer.
So, if you liked Traveller 2300, or just want a SFRPG that features the early days of humanities expansion into space, FoH is already the book for you.
FoH is not too terribly original, but is well done and avoids some of the pitfalls of similar products. It has a lot of familiar memes and tropes laying about, including the mysterious lost race of advanced creatures that disappeared long ago and no one knows why, leaving some interesting artifacts and ruins behind. It has a bad guy alien species that can't be negotiated with and some highly advanced, seemingly benign aliens so far above us that they seldom get involved with our affairs.
Also, like traveller, it has our old friend, psionics in it, with a slightly new rationalization.
Again, all this might make FoH attractive to Traveller players who want a somewhat fresher universe without all the endless conflicts over what is or is not canon, what version is better, whether or not you can make “jump torpedoes”, etc.
The fairly straightforward premise of FoH is that in the near future humanity has a big, nasty war involving genetic engineering in terms of plagues and terrifying super assassins/killers. In the aftermath the world finally gets it's act together better than it did after, say, WW2 and moves out into space as a way of jump starting a new economic and technological Renaissance and to get humans off earth to help the species survive in case of a true global extinction event.
Well, they quickly discover alien relics in the system, irrefutable proof that there are/were other intelligent beings in the universe. An eccentric Russian genius cobbles together enough research to create a FTL 'jump drive” and no sooner than one can say “Engage!” humanity takes to the stars.
There we find a couple advanced alien races who don't have much problem with us, a primitive alien species we end up helping along in their advancement to a starfaring race after we land on their planet without knowing it was inhabited, and some really nasty bitches called the Vorn, who only see other races as challenges to struggle with and overcome.
You can play a couple of the aliens, but the author admits that FoH is a humanocentric game system. (Figures, damn humans think everything ought to revolve around them...)
After a nasty war with the highly advanced Vorn, during which they simply broke off the attack when seemingly on the verge of total victory over humanity (Shades of babylon 5!) the various races decided it might be a good idea to form an alliance against these nasty crab bitches PDQ in case they ever return. Hence the “united worlds” was born, and fortunately for everyone it worked out one hell of a lot better than the united nations ever did. (BTW, the reason for the Vorn's cessation of hostilities is explained, no “Wonder what the big mystery is until we decide we need to sell another game book!” here. I won't tell you why they broke off, go buy FoH if you want to know.)
FoH is set in the millieu of the UW, and gives us an exhaustive look into every significant aspect of the UW. Government, military, law, society, etc. Many worlds are given fairly detailed writeups as well as are criminal, terrorist and other splinter organizations.
You won't need to wait for “Supplement X” to play a campaign of FoH, you do indeed get every last little thing you need in the initial PDF, assuming, of course, you already have the basic EABA system and, hopefully, the gear design supplement “Stuff!”.
Speaking of stuff, FoH has a fair amount of it, not exactly an exhaustive list of every conceivable type of equipment and weaponry, but enough to get your adventurers fairly well kitted out. The gear in FoH is compatible with the design system in “Stuff!” and vice versa, so if your campaign really needs that turbocharged plasma impeller, you can build it easily enough.
This, alone, puts it way ahead of one of it's competitors, “Gurps traveller, Interstellar wars” that had exactly nothing in terms of personal gear in it's main book.
The tech level in FoH is fairly lowish. No teleporters, lightsabers or disintegrators, and most ships move under Newtonian physics with inertial debts to deal with. (Those damn Vorn have inertialess, turn on a dime drives to make them a truly nasty enemy.)
The game does have plasma weapons, for those of you that like them. However in a truly perverse twist, the rules in FoH actually make plasma weapons somewhat less powerful than the usual SF plasma blaster which is often portrayed as the ultimate weapon, destroying everything it hits in an incandescent paroxysm of thermonuclear fury.
FoH adds a spacecraft combat and design system, apparently written by Greg Porter himself. “nuff said.
Well, OK, it's by Greg Porter so it's great. It features, as I said earlier, inertial movement for everyone lacking the Vorn inertialess drive and has a sweet little combat system that lets you design a ship's very own custom damage allocation table with little effort.
Thus, freighters that are 60% cargo hold and 10% engines will take cargo hits much more often than a courier vessel that is 60% engines and 10% cargo. Nice touch! (In fact, I'd go so far as to say that while the ship system in FoH is only 90 pages, it has better damage allocation rules than the thousands of pages that comprise Starfleet Battles. I made Lieutenant in SFB before quitting, so I do know what I'm talking about.)
As far as EABA goes, FoH adds some new skills, rules suggestions and a damage allocation system that can and should be used for any significant vehicle, regardless of genre in addition to psionics rules useful in a variety of games.
It comes with a fair little introductory adventure on top of it all.
So, FoH gives us a fairly comprehensive, plausible future world, it keeps the tech within the realm of the feasible, (The author seemed to apologize for adding in artificial gravity, but that's already been proven plausible: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=596 ) and it creates an environment rich with adventure possibilities as humanity has, thus far, really only explored it's own back yard in galactic terms. Is there anything it doesn't do?
Well, there's no “star system generation” rules as were included in “Gurps traveller interstellar wars” or some other SF products, the author apparently feeling that GMs could make up their own star systems and planets well enough. (Really, do your players demand to know what a planet's “black body radiation” and “albedo” are? Have they ever dinged you because your planet's gravity, diameter and average density don't add up right? If they have, try switching them to decaf...)
Also, if you're into “transhumanism”, sorry. The FoH background rules out a transhumanist campaign as people are still whacked out over that whole “bioengineered plagues and super assassins war” thing a couple centuries ago, kind of like how people in Star Trek don't use genetic engineering for fear of producing another Khan Noonian Singh.
You can be bionic all you want, there are rules for making bionic characters, but with the exception of a few genetic tweaks to facilitate life in space or some planets, genetically engineered/enhanced people are a big no-no in the united worlds. (So, I'm already imagining a world beyond the edge of the UW sphere where those renegades believing in transhumanism have secretly fled to pursue their dreams of achieving a post human status. Hmm, that could go very very well, like “Olympus” from “Appleseed” or end up like “Rapture” in “Bioshock”. Hmmm indeed...)
One thing FoH does not deliver is artwork. The art in FoH is by far the weakest point of the game, and really, I see much better CGI art made for free as a hobby on www.scifi-meshes.com and I'd like to publicly urge BTRC to consider looking for artists there. I can guarantee that they could and would get infinitely better art there than they ended up with in FoH, and since a lot of people there do it for a hobby just to get feedback, they'd probably (I can't promise, though) do it for very little cash, or even, maybe, just for the ego boost of having their work, names and maybe their websites mentioned in a published work.
But then again I won't ding FoH for the art. As I've said before, if I want art, I'll go to a museum.
So, in sum, for 17$ you get a 400 or so page PDF that gives you a complete world and a functional ship construction and combat system, in addition to plenty of material to make your own SFRPG settings with.
For the price, Fires of Heaven is a very solid product that isn't remarkably original, but is nicely done with a lot of potential.
: Well done, comprehensive, complete and not overpriced due to slick paper, fancy art and hard covers. Has a fully functional starship system included. Deathly cool title.
-: Not much really new or original.
I give it 41/2 out of 5 Battlestars.
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