Review of The Lure of Venus

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Blurb from the publisher: 'Venus. The Emerald Planet. A planet of unimaginable wealth, power, freedom, fame, adventure, immortality. Can you escape its lure or will you fall victim to its dangers?

Lure of Venus is a supplement for use with the Rocket Age roleplaying game.'

What you get: Your USD 29,99 or GBP 19,99 will buy you The Lure Of Venus, a 144-page black and white glossy softcover for the retro sci-fi Rocket Age game line. With that price the buyer gets both the pdf and the physical version when purchasing either from Cubicle 7's e-shop or from the physical stores participating in the Bits & Mortar programme. The game can also be purchased as a pdf only for EUR 13,71 or USD 14,55 or GBP 11,66. The pdf is a single, 144-page file, also in black and white, front cover excluded.

Contents: What Blood Red Mars does for the red planet, Lure Of Venus does for the lush, verdant planet with the name of the goddess of love. The first chapter is Planetology, and its 19 pages discuss Venus as a planet. This might not be as impressive as the 42 pages of Blood Red Mars' chapter with the same function, yet it allows you to visit the Ishtar Plateau, discover the mysteries of The White Spire, or dive beneath the Mists of Venus where few earthlings have ventured up to now. As in Rocket Age proper as well as Blood Red Mars, many of the entries are accompanied by one liners about their themes, complication and a dominant personality. I also counted 41 story hooks with an average of 3 per location.

The People Of Venus - Venusians is the second chapter, and it alters Rocket Age in a major way. The Venusians are not a singular culture. There are seven different cultures of natives on Venus like the H'silt, the Gratili Skaldirir and the Vanastiku'll, as well as a number of Secret Societies, Cults and Lodges. Venus is a land of lost treasures, of civilizations that were once far grander than the ones currently occupying the planet. The gamemaster will also get to know a few of the secrets of some of the allegedly more retarded-looking Venusians; it will be far more interesting for the players to explore this theme through the game. In any event, and in contrast to the Martians, these cultures continue to have identical stats and follow the character creation of the main rulebook, they do however have tons of plot hooks, as well as entries on the history, appearance, society and technology of each.

Not only Venusians inhabit the planet however; The People Of Venus - Aliens, showcases all those who do. The chapter mostly covers locales and who can be found there, be it the US Corps' controlled Camp Butler and Staff Sergeant Val'to or the Floss Gosse with its tough-as-nails German colonists and Frau Nadine Muench, a larger-than-life woman. There is also a number of alien organizations active on Venus, like the Roosevelt Station Exploration Society, a social club, and the Union, the first syndicate of wildcatters on the planet. As with every chapter, character and story hooks abound.

Flora And Fauna is what chapter four deals with. In addition to being an eighteen-creature bestiary, each entry again contains three story hooks, for the GM to incorporate the most possible of the alien landscape into his adventures. How many species of carnivorous bromeliad are there? Would you utilize a howling death as a bodyguard? Do you dare eat the fruit of the sawbark plantain? A very useful table on this chapter shows where the flora and fauna of Rocket Age is situated on other products in addition to the one presented here.

The last chapter is The Downey Creek War, a three-reel (three-scene, if you prefer), 17-page adventure for four to six characters with less than 15 story points each. The first and third real are partially scripted, while reel two, the heart of the episode, is sandboxy. As with all traditional RPG adventures, it starts in a bar.

The Lure Of Venus ends with an appendix of new character options (14 new Traits, two new occupational packages: Big Game Hunter and Storm Rider, as well as instructions on how to alter the stats in a rather minor way in order to play alternate Venusians), an appendix on new equipment (both equipment Traits as well as equipment proper).

The strong points: The paradigm of a lush, jungle-like Venus is beautifully executed in another well-designed supplement that explores the heroic sci-fi universe of Rocket Age. The injustice that the Venusians suffered in the rulebook where they were presented as a rather monolithic culture (as opposed to the Martians, and especially when it comes to the rules) is finally corrected. Their primate cultures are explored in quite the detail. There are concrete numbers to base a game on and proceed with cities, tribes and settlements from there; e.g., there are 2,8 million H'Silt. Would it be that hard for supplements in other settings like the otherwise excellent Mutant Chronicles game line to contain such crunch and not leave the game master in despair? Vantastiku'll was my favourite people to read about, seeing how their males wither at an unhealthily young age and society is dominated by women. So what the secret of [redacted], which can create tremendous role-playing opportunities, and especially if it prepared through an adequate number of sessions. There's quite the dry humour too, like the human hat fashion amongst the Venusians of the Western Venusian Concordats. Not all ideas are as groundbreaking or original, there are however many nuggets like this that more serious genres of sci-fi would have been envious about.

Once again, I couldn't get my eyes off the book. I found it a very addictive read, and even more so because of the prevalence of story hooks within each chapter. There's quite the diversity, with stories reminiscent of imperialist Africa and Latin America (once again), interspersed with adventures about how to list a newly discovered plant, scenes that look and feel like well-designed random encounters, stories on the trail, murder mysteris and so on and so forth. Once again, hats off to the writer; the hooks are generic enough to be used not only in other planets, but also on other settings. I wouldn't be surprised if one purchased this book for the hooks alone.

Rules-wise, there are more rules here than in Blood Red Mars, seeing how Venus was not as fairly treated in the rulebook. Thankfully things don't get out of hand like they did with Heroes Of The Solar System where the rules were a tad too much for what the setting sets out to do.

There's this table on page 107 that deserves a special mention: 'where to find all the critters'. What the table does, and it's very simple really, is to list the flora and fauna that is not mentioned in this supplement but in other ones, so that the weary GM can immediately find what he is looking for. Brilliant! Why this idea isn't followed up on pretty much everything else (e.g. traits) or why it is not accompanied by much needed lists if what the present supplement contains is beyond me.

The adventure left me positively surprised. It is formulaic in some ways (trouble starts at a bar), yet it is the delivery that makes it entertaining. I kept getting old western flashbacks, a feel for frontier life, big interests swallowing up land and rugged personalities that don't easily fit elsewhere. Some of the things the characters will deal with are rather mundane tasks while working a claim. Even though that's a far cry from the chromed nature of the setting, I excitedly applaud. What better way to make heroic actions stand out, than to compare them with the everyday stuff that has to be undertaken?

I really enjoyed the supplement's black and white art. Primates dominate, as expected, yet nothing prepared me for the gorilla in the Red Army hat and cigarette, the female gorilla in the almost Mayan outfit and a retro-design laser pistol and a suit of armor that comes straight out of vintage sci-fi imagery. The GM that doesn't show his players these images during the game is doing his group a disservice. The cover is based in two colours instead of one which is the standard for the line, namely green and black. It's incredible how tight these books look next to one another. Other game lines could really learn from this sort of art direction.

The pdf version is excellent, as has been pretty much every pdf rendition of Cubicle 7 products. It is heavily bookmarked with all the chapters and subchapters finding their way in the listings. Pictures are extractable, for you to use as you wish.

The weak points: As much as it provides detail, The Lure Of Venus does not fundamentally alter the basic concept of Rocket Age. The setting remains chromed, better framed than before but still with gaps and questions that only the GM himself can answer. The bad example that was set by Blood Red Mars is unfortunately followed through: There is only a single page of two extremely generic maps for the whole planet. If you want to take things to the next level, you will undoubtedly have work to do, and that applies to many other things.

Just like with Heroes Of The Solar System and Blood Red Mars, some of the information in this book should have been contained in Rocket Age proper. Idem for the crunchier stuff like new Character and Equipment Traits. An abundance of those, and presto; your character can become irrelevant in a number of situations, something rather counterintuitive for a setting with larger than life characters.

Once again, there are practically zero lists in this book. How weird is it, for the book to contain a list of critters in other supplements (cool!), and not contain a comprehensive list of the flora and fauna to be found in this supplement? It's as if two different people edited the same chapter. The worst, of course, is that this exacerbates an existing problem that has been already identified in previous supplements. To have a fast and furious game with chrome, as Rocket Age tries to be, the GM needs to find the rules in an instant. If one feels that searching for flora and fauna is unlikely to happen during a session, finding Traits and Equipment in no time is a must. Page-flipping through supplements to resolve a question in the heat of the action is self-defeating for a game that strives for a cinematic pace.

The only negative I found on the adventure is that it touches upon the Venus colonists, while giving a wide berth to the Venusians, the major inhabitants of the planet, as well as the Erisians, their technologically advanced forbearers. That's as bad as having a western story with token native tribes or no native tribes at all. That isn't just counterintuitive; it's wrong in many ways.

On a more pedantic observation, and setting aside the typos I noticed, the headers in the pages are painfully small. Good luck page-flipping from a chapter to another in the heat of the moment. The good news on the other hand is that a well-prepared GM is really unlikely to use the rulebook during the session. The few rules that the game uses simply don't warrant it.

Conclusion: The Lure Of Venus is a great supplement because it follows a well-proven principle: it is an entertaining read that takes your imagination to places before dealing with its main job as an RPG product. This is yet another Rocket Age supplement that is strongly recommended, irrespective if you plan to use it with Rocket Age or not.

For more info on The Lure Of Venus and Rocket Age overall, visit Cubicle 7 at http://cubicle7.co.uk.

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