 Goto [ Index ] |
The big book of all alien, all stellar, all singing, all dancing, all spectacular spectacular, The Ultimate Alien Anthology is a pricy but massively useful tome for d20 Star Wars. Packed with races, classes, and basic commoner stats, the book has everything it takes to make a great game book save one thing – panache.
The Book
223 pages of glossy color paper, decent art, and clean presentation makes the Ultimate Alien Anthology a very pretty book and a hefty one as well. Of course the price tag reflects this, with the bock clocking in at just 5 dollars lower than the 100 page longer MRB. I’m disinclined to complain, however, as the book is solidly constructed in a sturdy hardback that has taken all the abuse my game group gives without losing pages, having the spine get wobbly or broken, or any other obvious defect.
The Rundown
The Ultimate Alien Anthology is just what the title says – a massive anthology of aliens for the Star Wars RPG. Chapter 1 includes 180 alien species, including the core races from the main book, complete with full game stats for playing the species as PCs, a background of the race, and stats for a typical commoner of the race. The chapter also takes up the vast majority of the book, 197 pages of 223. Chapter 2 gives us 8 new prestige classes, largely themed around specific races or racial abilities. The book then rounds out with two appendixes: one full of new feats for aliens with non-standard abilities and the other all about playing the Yuuzhan Vong.
The Good
180 new PCable species is a good thing for most Star Wars games, as most Star Wars gamers I know live to recreate the cantina scene from Episode III with the members of their party. The fact that every one of those races also gets sample commoner stats also makes the GM's job that much easier. There are also a lot of nice touches through the book, such as detailed and stated new equipment, feats, and classes that play off the species backgrounds and abilities. Really though the best thing about the book is the sheer quantity of races, rather than the sheer quality of them.
The Bad
The worst thing for me was the number of pages given to the Yuuzhan Vong, whom I’ve always found boring, annoying, and ill-suited to Star Wars canon. Of course they had to be included as there are fans who will want to use them in their games, but even then they could have given a little less space to the ugly-faces and exchanged the room for a few more prestige classes.
Other than that personal complaint there isn’t much that is bad about the book, just that which is bland. Though all the races aren’t perfectly balanced, they’re close enough that the effect in actual play is minimal, and the feats and prestige classes are similarly “close enough for government service.”
The Ugly
The real problem with this book is that none of the races really shine or have enough detailed/innovative attention paid to them to make them really leap from the page. Rather than being fascinating races of their own they mostly seem to be humans in rubber masks. Other d20 games, such as Midnight, have done a much better job at making their non-humans both non-human and vibrant, and the Ultimate Alien Anthology suffers in comparison. While you get more than enough to play the race and have a few bonuses to attributes and maybe a special ability, you don’t get enough to make the race anything more than a +2 here and a long jump ability there.
The End
The Ultimate Alien Anthology is a big book full of many stats for alien PCs and NPCs. It does workhorse labor, giving a lot of game material that is virtual guaranteed to be useful to every single Star Wars campaign. At the same time it only does workhorse labor, we get no prancing Arabian black stallion or racing beauty here. The book is solid but flat, packed to the gills with stats at the expense of those stats being interesting or dynamic. Still, if you or your players can bring your own dynamism to the game (and I certainly hope you can) you can more than compensate for the lack.
For being packed to the gills with things with gills, the Ultimate Alien Anthology gets a 4 in substance. For being a bit flat and overly regular in presentation it gets a 3 in style.
