Into the Future: Derelict Starships

Crothian

First Post
With the current gaming market splintered with lots of different games of similar genres I am a little surprised that there are few generic books being published. I know that they have not always done well in the past and customers seem to like to want to stick to the game and buy only those supplements but perhaps with the success of the OGL people are willing to broaden their choices some. Pirates Guide to Freeport is of course the big system less setting that appears to have achieved success. Into the Future: Derelict Stations is a book of generic descriptions and as such makes it useful for most science fiction games.

Into the Future: Derelict Starships is a book by Tabletop Adventures. They have done many books like this that are generic in nature but filled with neat ideas and descriptions. This book boasts eighteen different authors so there is a wide variety of voices going into this project. The book is a almost seventy pages long although about twenty pages is repeated information formatted in a different way that could prove more useful at the gaming table.

The book is designed for DMs and Storytellers. There is nothing here for players. There is also nothing in here that ties it to any game system. There are no rules here at all nor are they needed. The book is deisgned for the science fiction space genre and can be useful with games like Star Wars, Star Trek, Dark Heresy, Starblazer Adventures, Spaceship Zero, and the many other games of the genre. Creative DMs who want to pull something like Expedition to the Barrier Peaks could also find it useful and it would work well for a straight game of Paranoia.

Now that one knows who the game is useful for one might be curious as to what the book is. It is a book of descriptions. There are over two hundred descriptions in here describing many things one would find on starships and stations. The idea behind the book is to aid the busy DM who when the players go off track. Sometimes it is easy to improve descriptions and for DMs good at that this product serves as a safety net. It is just something nice to have on hand and if one needs a descrption open up the book and see what one finds.

The book has what it calls Bits and Shards. Bits are smaller descprions then shards. The bits are a bit more random and the Shards are all labled. Some example Shard labels are Cold Damaged Hydroponics, Half Clean Cabin, and Zip Tracjks,. The Shards are grouped together so all of them that deal with tunnels/lifts are together as is everything dealing with Environmental.

The reprinted section I talked about above is the one hundred bits formatted to be easily printed and cut into note card sized pieces. It makes them east to store and have them on hand near one’s gaming table. Tabletop Adventures has done that for many of their books like this.

Into the Future: Derelict Starships is a useful book for the DM that does not have a lot of time. The descriptions will enhance a game and aid making some scenes a bit more memorable. It is simple to use and covers an area that DMs can need help with.
 

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