I almost hate to give this product high marks. Its written for a new, but somewhat unexceptional setting...though if you use the optional "Dazed" rules Alternity seems to behave better. Nothing in the book really seems take my breath away...though the Lighthouse is a clever idea. Yet there's a lot of stuff in this book. I wouldn't be surprised if its word count exceeds the word count for Alternity's Player's and GM's Guide added together. There is so much stuff in this book that you can find something/anything that will spark ideas in nearly any other science fiction campaign.
It starts out by covering a huge chunk of space. A space that may be comparable in size to the default Traveller universe. This baby feels huge, but you feel like you have more information regarding the universe as a whole...unlike the Star Wars game. Star Wars may have spanned a galaxy, but I never really had a sense of "place." I never really had a sense of where things stood in relation to each other. This book gives you a piece of the galaxy, and then shows you how everything fits together. You find out where all of the coalitions/governments/Stellar Nations come from, and just when your mind is about to burst with information you're taken to the Verge...the universe in miniature. The Verge...the default campaign setting of a newly rediscovered section of space.
There are stats in here for all sorts of stuff...NPCs, governments, navies, commodities, ground forces, etc. There's even a nice, balanced (TSR is good at balancing things out) section regarding the different Stellar Nations, and the effects that this has on character creation and adventuring. This is nice stuff! It even has religion...often left out of games of this sort, with the notable exception of Fading Suns.
I hesitate to give this a grade, but this book gets a solid "B." It just doesn't soar, but if it did in certain areas I suspect that it would lose its general applicability to so many science fiction gamers. As someone from TSR said, "This is our Forgotten Realms." It certainly is...for all the good or ill that entails. You should be able to find something for any type of adventuring in this package. In fact this might be suited for any number of games, not just the Alternity game.
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)
