Starting off with character generation, we roll for characteristics and cash, which consist of strength, coordination, agility, endurance, intelligence quotient, rank in society, and charisma. Then, as the character ages, you pick up a certain number of skills. From the age of 10, you can select a school to enter, which determines your skills, but you must meet the requirements of the school in order to enter. Schools can waive either the fees or the minimum requirements if your character is lacking in one or the other. After regular schooling, you go on to college and post grad school, and then onto employment. Once you begin to seek employment, you must match your skills with the profession you choose. You continue to learn skills during your employment, and can remain in a single profession for as long as you like. Every two years you remain in a single profession, you can attempt to be promoted, increasing both your level and your salary.
The Guide to Skills and Metaskills book provides the basics on how and when to use your skills as well as defining all the skills you have chosen to create your character.
The Guide to Humans and Humanoids provides a number of unique creatures that can be used to create a character. Each of these beings has their own advantages and disadvantages and they should be considered when generating your characteristics and learning your skills.
The Guide to Personal Equipment provides details of the materials available at different tech levels as well as lists of electronics equipment, clothing, armour, spacesuits, provisions and shelter, power tools, and miscellaneous items.
The Equipment Guide to Weapons provides a list of various weapons, the skills required to use the weapons, damage modifiers, ranges, costs, ammunition (if necessary), etc.
The Guide to Star Travel and Space Combat describes the various methods of space travel, travel based on technology levels, and rules for space combat (which are based on the rules for individual combat, described below).
The Character Worksheet allows you to keep all of the above information under control in four pages.
Finally, we get to the rules of StarCluster. The rules detail the combat system of the game, which involves minute based rounds consisting of 120 half-second initiative segments. Characters are able to make weapon attacks, psionic attacks, or perform major actions such as driving a vehicle, performing first aid, or moving long distances, during their initiative. When an attack is made during an initiative, a To Hit roll is made. Success results in damage, which is modified based on the weapon used. Damage is removed from a characters constitution, which is a combination of the character?s strength, coordination, agility, and endurance. There are also rules for cover, poisons, healing, task checks, etc.
Additionally, there are specific rules provided for the Book of Jalan. Jalan is a magical world and has variations on some rules for creating characters, death, healing, and other aspects of game play.
Overall, there is quite a bit of information packed into the various files in this kit. However, Flying Mice LLC could really use somebody to help them with the design and layout of their books. This is a disappointment I encountered while going through all the files. Being a pdf product, this kit could easily have been packaged into a single file with a nice index or table of contents keeping everything in its place. Also, a few of the tables use very small fonts. On screen, it's easy enough to zoom in, but if you printed out those pages, you'd be hard pressed to see what was written on it.
