Blood and Space: d20 Starship Adventure Toolkit

[PosterBoy]

A comprehensive starship adventure sourcebook designed to supplement or extend any of the popular d20 space based role-playing games. Blood and Space contains extensive rules for starship construction, combat, and crews as well as new classes, feats, and skills for space based adventures.

 

[trancejeremy]

Blood and Space is a science fiction 'tool kit' for d20 from RPG Objects (available from RPGNow), written by Charles Rice and Chris Davis, with interior art by V Shane and cover art by Scott Clark. Not quite a game on it's own, it's apparently aimed at supplementing one of the increasingly large number of d20 SF games (at least 6 by my count). It's a PDF, which I don't generally buy, but I just couldn't resist this. It sounded cool, and one of those things that would keep nagging me in my mind until I buy it (I have no willpower).

It's priced at $8.95, a bit on the expensive side. It is 117 pages, though, and you get a zip with two versions. One is the full graphic version, while the other is printer friendly. It's not as printer friendly as some PDFs I've seen, it still has rather nasty, ink sucking blue shading and artwork, but the header and sidebar graphics, the real ink killers, are removed, which is the main thing.

All in all, I'm fairly impressed with it. Some problems, but I'll definitely be using some of it. If it were a print book, I'd probably have crossed out a lot of things and written in new stuff.

The first chapter is introductory stuff. Besides an introductory story, it explains that this product has stuff for both space opera style science fiction and hard science fiction (ie, real science as we know it now). Certain things in this book are tagged with a label to let you know which is which.

The second chapter is on new classes. These are set up as normal d20 classes (as opposed to d20 Modern), although the classes also have a defense bonus, which D&D doesn't use, but some SF d20 games do use. There are 9 new core classes and 8 new prestige classes.

The new core classes are generally done pretty well, none over or under powered, and for the most part, are useful. I like the Doctor, the Engineer, the Scientist. (I have a minor problem with the Scientist, one of it's special abilities uses a d100% style roll, I think most rolls in the d20 system should use d20s, oddly enough.)

The Marine is just a renamed Fighter (more or less), and I think I would have liked to have seen more than just that. The Mercenary is close to a Barbarian, he 'rages' like one, anyway, but other than that, is like a Fighter. I think I would have liked to have seen something more different, or possibly see the Mercenary as a prestige class (since it's a job you usually take after being a soldier or thug, it's not something you start out in. This bugged me in T20, too).

One, the Hauler, seems weird. At first glance, it seems like just a space-teamster. But upon closer inspection, it's odd - it apparently assumes that space travel is controlled by Mafia-style familes (I think). Another, The Hot Shot, seems more suited for a prestige class (since there is a normal Pilot core class included).

Some of the prestige classes also seem a bit unnecessary (or perhaps suited for core classes). For instance, the Colonial Marine - that seems more suited for a core class, much to the regular Marine in this product as the Ranger or Paladin is to the Fighter in normal d20. Or the Starship Officer. Usually Officers are officers by going to an academy. As opposed to being enlisted, then promoted to officer. So they should start first level, I'd think.

So, while I generally like this chapter, I think it's somewhat of a hit or miss thing. Not all classes will be useful for your game.

Chapter Three introduces several new skills. Most are pretty much what you expect (and what you find in most SF games), though I think some are stretching it a bit. For instance, the Boarding skill lets you latch onto another ship while in Zero-G. That seems way too narrow. A more general EVA (ie, spacewalk) skill might have been more useful. There are several new craft skills, with examples provided.

There are also several new feats. Not so many general ones - lots of new feats for pilots, especially in a space opera style game. Also many for creating items and the usual proficiencies. The Leadership feat is also revised to work with the crew rules in this product.


Chapter Four is on new equipment. It's not a huge chapter (about 10 pages), as it says it aims to supplement the stuff found in most SF d20 games, not be a complete chapter on it's own.

It uses credits, not unlike most games, but the prices seem quite low. A 9mm pistol only costs 50 cr. In Dragonstar, a light pistol is 400 cr. In Traveller d20, it's 200 cr.

There's only a few new weapons, mostly lasers (Infrared and X-ray) plus something curious called a "Tesla Rifle".

There are several new armor types. Light and Medium armor improve AC, while the Heavy stuff provides Damage Reduction. Unfortunately, no acane spell failure was included, so you need to do some work if you're using a fantasy/sci-fi game.

There's also a system for trading/selling cargo, although it's pretty sketchy and quite random. Basically, you roll a d20, and that gives you the supply/demand ratio - you divide the d20 by 10, and that gives you the current price of that cargo on the planet. It doesn't really take into account the size of the planet you're selling it on, and while it says that you should give each planet an import preference, it doesn't give much in the way of guidelines.

There are some sample cargos, about a page's worth. It's almost like the list gets cut off, because it starts with A (Alcohol) and goes to M (Microbes) and stops. There's only 10 or so, so it's not that comprehensive (especially since many of the listed cargos are obscure, like magnetic bottles. And many are vague, like "Metals", instead of specific metals).

Chapter 5 is on Starships, and is about 30 pages long.

Starships are handled somewhat abstractly.

Apparently you just pick a hull. Each hull then has a Cargo Size rating in tons. You then fill up the ship with various bits of equipment. Simple, and it works well in computer games like Elite and Privateer and the like.

However, there are some problems. The corelation between the physical size of a hull and the amount of cargo space is odd. As ships get larger (much larger in terms of physical size), the amount of cargo space only increases a little. As does the crew and passenger capacity. (Note - crew sized is sometimes handled abstractly, sometimes it's handled exactly, just when which is which is somewhat confusing)

Also note, you apparently don't pick the size of the hull (that chart is just included for fun, I guess), but the "Hull Type". They are broken up into a number of categories and numbers, from 1 to 6, and listed on a chart. For instance, Fighter 5, or Civilian 3. (Not a lot of choice, all things considered, only about 20 different hulls for space ships.)

It's also a bit weird, I think. Apparently no one but the military has huge ships. That doesn't make much sense, because in the real world, the largest ships are supertankers, and there are huge commercial liners and cargo carriers. And while the military has larger ships, they aren't really much better than the tiny models. Science Fiction is full of giant ships, from the Star Destroyers of Star Wars (not to mention the Death Star), to the Battlestars and Baseships of Battlestar Galactica, to the ships of the Aliens in V and Independance Day. Even in Science Fiction RPGs, huge ships are fairly common - in Traveller, ships go up to a million tons (and each Traveller ton equals 5 real world tons, at least for surface ships).

Another oddity is how it handles star drives. There are two general choices, hard SF slower than light (STL) drives, and a variety of different style Space Opera FTL drives. The trouble is, many science fiction settings are based on having a drive which propels the ship at STL speeds, as well as something that makes it go FTL. This doesn't provide something to do the former. It does a much better job with real world STL drives, but unfortunately, not many current SF games happen to use them.

Another thing - most fictional depictions of starships (and real ones) separate a starships powerplant from the drive it uses. This doesn't, exactly, though it has additional power plants you can buy to give more power.

There's also a variety of weapons. Again, some real world weapons, such as lasers and rail guns, along with space opera-ish weapons, like anti-matter torpedos and mass drivers. There's a lack of really big weapons, suitable for huge ships, like one finds in some SF games (for instance, Traveller, there are spinal mounts which displace 1000s of tons), despite the fact that the physical size of ships in Blood & Space should be large enough to accomadate them.

Again, the ship defenses are split into hard science and space opera. In this case, the names for the space opera defenses are a bit odd. Rather than resorting to technobabble, they have names like "Joust Shield" and "Lancer Shield". This didn't do much for me.

There's a variety of spaceship equipment that take up cargo space.. Some real world, some staples of sci-fi. They range from things like hospital bays to things like ram scoops. (The way Ram scoops are described and work give me fits). See this:

http://www.itsf.org/brochure/ramscoop.html

If it were fuel scoops like in Traveller, which lets you skim hydrogen from gas giants, then I'd understand.

It's not a bad chapter or system, but I think they tried to do much, and be too broad. And so, didn't do a great job. (I do think the hull size vs. ton amount is screwed up. And their tons seem to have no relation to any real world ton, which confused the heck out of me at first). So it works, I just don't think it doesn't make that much sense. It also works best at small-ish ships - there doesn't seem all that much point in building larger, super ships, since middle sized ones carry almost as much as the bigger ones (or as much, in some cases).

I also think that some facilities are too small, and some really need to be tailored to the size of the ship. For instance, in order to make a carrier, you need the carrier deck facility. It's only 10 tons, allowing it fit on most ships, even medium sized ones (100 feet long). However, there's a requirement that it only goes on huge ships. This seems like a kludge to have it make sense. A more robust system would have had the carrier deck take up say, 100 tons, but only a huge ship would have that much room to spare. That way, no special rules needed.

Operating costs are also really really low. Couple hundred of credits a month. Even with 9mm pistols costing only 50 cr, that's pretty cheap.

Chapter 6 is on starship crew. Essentially, it handles crew in a very abtract manner. It doesn't really use many (any?) d20 conventions, but is more similar to a wargame. They are rated as either Raw, Green, Inexperience, Average, Experience, Crack, Legendary, (with a XP chart) and there are several different crew types. While this is not bad, why not just use regular d20 levels? I mean, that's exactly what levels mean, a way of describing how competent someone is. This chapter also describes just what each crew type can do in combat. Crew pay is really really low. Even in a universe with a 9mm only costing 50 cr, 100 cr a month to pay the salary of a Legendary level crew is far too little.

Chapter 7 is on Starship combat, and is about 20 pages. You pretty much need a map for their method, either a hex map or square map. (I have several big hex maps from games like Knight Hawks and Star Fleet Battles). It's somewhat like a simple board game. Each hex 5,000 miles. Every weapon has a range in hexes. Ships have acceleration ratings. Much of the gameplay is handled like normal d20 system combat. You roll initiative, then act. Move, fire, etc. Seems pretty solid, and fairly newtonian, at least in the rules. I had some trouble figuring out the combat example, though.

The largest section in this part is on "terrain", mostly assorted space objects. Other than the really dense asteroid fields (real asteroid belts are not even remotely like you see in fiction), this section is well done. Even described the difference between a nova and supernova. (Though I think usually the term is "Kaboom", not "Kabomb".)

So, to sum up, I'd say this is good, but flawed. I like most of the new classes, and the new skills & feats are generally well done (if a bit redundant if you own a d20 SF game). The theory behind the starship construction system is good, but seems suited for smaller ships - it doesn't scale up well to larger ones. The starship combat system is fairly good (reminds me somewhat of the old Knight Hawks game), but the example of how it works could have been better, or less confusing (especially on movement and starting conditions). It's also perhaps too divorced from the d20 system in some areas, most notably crew experience. The trading system is basebones and perhaps a bit too detached from reality.

The interior art, at least for characters, is very good and is professional quality (as is the layout). I got this book about the same time as I got Galactic Races (from FFG), yet I noticed that the character art is better in this than in Galactic Races. The starship art, on the other hand, isn't quite as good. I don't know if it was due to the digitalization of the art, but there is a big problem with aliasing in the spaceship art. (That is, the lines of the ship look rough or jagged. Also happens in the character art, but it's much more noticeable with the spaceships). Some of the spaceships are also, well, odd looking.

B- is probably what I'd give it. It kind of reminds of the old spaceship supplement for Star Frontiers, Knight Hawks. Not quite as good, though.

The $9 question - was it worth the money?

What I'm going to use it for, at least immediately, is replace many of the badly broken (IMHO) classes from Traveller d20 with the classes from here. And I like the starship design system well enough that I'll probably fiddle with it to make it mesh more with Dragonstar (particularly it's starship sizes) and make it more suitable for larger ships
If it were $5, I probably would feel very happy. But for $9, while I don't feel cheated, it is pushing the price for a PDF product (at least for me). I mean, $9. That's 1/3 of what I paid for the Traveller T20 book, which admittedly had lots of horrible rules, but was also was big enough to at least stun someone if you hit them with it. And maybe seriously injure them. But then again, I'm generally pretty cheap and don't like PDFs. But I still think that they didn't take enough advantage of the PDF format. At the very least, they could have reproduced various charts and such, in an easy printing format (ie, no color, no shading, no frills) at the back of the product. As it is, I can't really even use the blank starship form, because it's in color and has large solid boxes. Of course, as I said, I'm also cheap. So your mileage will vary.

OGL Note: While they didn't update section 15 of the OGL correctly (Instead of Blood & Space, it lists "Darwin's World", I guess they copy and pasted from that), much of the book is open content.

 

[GameWyrd]

Blood and Space is all about spaceships. It’s all about building and staffing your spaceship, about equipping it with the best in computers and defences and dodging around planets and gravity wells in a dogfight with rival space pirates. Blood and Space isn’t a game in it’s own right, although I do feel you could use it to run a tactical war-game campaign in space. You can run Blood and Space with either the fantasy core rules or D20 Modern and that’s a bonus. Blood and Space does a lot of things right. Heck, Blood and Space does an awful lot of things; there’s a whole host of rules in the supplement. Blood and Space also distinguishes between the nitty-gritty, as scientifically accurate as possible, sci-fi and the go with the flow, high action, space opera. Many Sci-Fi games give you one, the other or a bad mauling of both but Blood and Space gives you both separately. There are two sets of engines; one hard sci-fi and the other space opera and there are two sets of weapons; one hard sci-fi and the other space opera. You’re left to pick your favourite from the two sub-genres. This works well for me; the supplement does all the hard work and I’m left to cherry pick.

There’s a big long contents section at the start of the product and that’s just what you want in a PDF. The bookmarks are complete too; expanding lists based on chapters. I don’t like the resize option though; whenever you jump to a bookmark the page resizes. It moves from Fit to Width to Fit in Window. In my case it takes a clearly readable page resize to an unreadable 81% scale. Blood and Space is 118 pages in length and PDFs this long without bookmarks are a nightmare to navigate so despite the resizing, I’m glad they’re there.

There are seventeen new classes, nine basic classes and eight new prestige classes. It’s a little tricky getting all the usual sci-fi suspects into the class and prestige class structure. For example, both Hotshot pilots and Pilots are basic classes and Marine Commander, Marine NCO and Colonial Marine are all prestige classes. It’s almost as if there should be a class in between the two, perhaps something similar to "Character Concepts" seen in other books. However, Blood and Space makes the point of not re-inventing the wheel and of trying to keep things as simple as possible. This is a good call and probably rules out too much fiddling with the d20 system to get it to fit careers in the far future. By and large these classes are a success; there’s a reason to play every one of them, nothing looks broken and there’s no awkward "really wouldn’t be adventuring" career either (such as the allegedly Grove protecting Druid). The most obvious failing is the lack of academic prestige classes. There’s no natural progression for Engineers, Doctors or Scientists. It seems that if you want to get ahead in space you need to be a marine or a pilot.

Skills and feats share a chapter together. There are as nearly as many pages of new skills (eight) as there are of feats (seven). The quantity of new skills ensures that space adventures are possible. You’ll find more than the predictable sci-fi additions here like Computer Use, Repair and Demolitions. Skills like Boarding, Sensor Operations and Navigation (Hyperspace) add a bit of spice and flare. We start to see the first of the genre tagging here; Navigation (Hyperspace) is marked as suitable for Space Opera because in Hard Sci-Fi there is no Hyperspace. There’s also a nice advantage in setting out a long list of new skills along side a long list of new character classes; the class skill lists are straight from the start. The heroics of Space Opera lend themselves well to feats but Hard Sci-Fi grit does not. You’ll see that in the lack of Hard Sci-Fi feats and the quantity of Space Opera feats. It isn’t a problem though as there are enough General feats that are suitable to both. There’s a small set of Tactic feats too.

The equipment chapter is far more than a mere list of equipment. There isn’t a huge list of different weapons, armour and gadgets. I think this might disappoint some of the tech-heads. Blood and Space takes the approach of listing one of a type of weapon or armour, or sometimes two in the form of both a pistol and a rifle. So rather than inventing different brand names and nuisances for a whole bunch of laser rifles there is just an IR Laser Rifle and an X-Ray Laser Rifle. Later on we find out we can equip spaceships with UV Lasers. This is just enough science; it’s not so much as to make the game a physics lesson but it is enough to keep the Science in Sci-Fi. Although there aren’t long lists of space age stuff there is enough in each equipment category to warrant a list summary. I think there’s enough to keep shopping interesting. The highlight of the equipment chapter for me is the attention given to economics. Attention, yes, but again not so much as to turn the game into a school lesson, just enough to keep it interesting. Credits and the role of bartering are explained. Extra rules, for the likes of Charisma bonuses when wheeling and dealing, are offered and there’s a big bit on trade too. If you have fond memories of Elite and are looking to Blood and Space to revisit them then you’ll be in luck.

We begin the study on Starships with a sub-section on how to afford one in the first place. In fact you can make a whole campaign out of trying to finance your first starship and even then the characters might find themselves with an awkward lease. Something that all sci-fi games need to get right is the rules for spaceship construction. Blood and Space tries to do this within its straight forward framework and is largely successful. The complexities of Starships are reduced down into five key areas: the hull, the drive, weapons, computers and facilities. There are lists for each of these things and as with the weapons and armour they’re presented by type rather than some imaginary name – with the exception of the drive. For example, you might pick between hull design "Military #2" or "Military #3" but your star drive may be between "Pollux" or "Vega". It’s deceptive. At a first glance it doesn’t look as if there is much choice or art to spaceship design but there’s more to it. Weapon ports are the obvious example; it’s not just a matter of finding a hull with lots of weapon ports but a hull that can support the size of weapons you want. Then there’s cargo space. It seems like an easy thing to do without to begin with but when you add facilities like medical centres, gymnasiums or gun turrets you’ll need a hull able to carry a lot. You’ll want medical centres and gymnasium on a large vessel too and not just gun turrets. There are two types of damage a ship’s crew can receive, physical and morale. Both are bad. The medical centre heals the first and the gymnasium (and other similar recreational perks) heals the second.

I was really pleased to see a whole section for computers. Computers must be important in a starship and have played key roles in sci-fi ever since Orac stole the show in Blake’s 7, if not before. The computer rules in Blood and Space are a stab in the right direction but don’t quite work for me. In short a computer can run as many programs as it has an Intelligence modifier. Programs include viruses, anti-viruses, targeting, navigation, knowledge bases, etc. What about life support? Is that a freebie? Can one program do both anti-virus and navigation? Surely you’re doomed unless you build a +2 computer and spend the first slot on anti-virus protection. Can you have more than one computer in a spacecraft: one for navigation and the other for targeting? I couldn’t find out. As I started to read the computer rules I was immediately inspired – so the ground rules are right; they just need more work.

Crews are important. Crews have something to do in Blood and Space. The masses of unnamed crew that might be found in the large spacecrafts are broken down into job categories. You have the helm, science, medical, engineering, marines, damage control, flight and weapons crew. Crew also has different levels of experience, everything through raw recruits, to experienced crew and to legendary crews. You can issue different sets of orders to the crew and how successfully they carry their orders out and how much babysitting they need from PCs (or named NPCs) depends on their experience. You might tell your engineers to put "emergency powers to shields" – and that’s a sample order in Blood and Space that comes with game rules for doing just that. You might set your marines off to board and capture an enemy vessel or have your fighter pilots escort your big starship through dangerous space. Since boarding is possible then crew versus crew combat is possible. The rules for this just about work; they’re not skirmish rules but a further abstraction. There’s an example of crew combat that really does help see how the authors imagine the system working. Crew can gain experience (mostly through beating things up) and demand wages.

The last chapter describes starship combat. There’s a little muddle over maps with squares, hexes or octagons. A square has four sides and four corners and an octagon eight. So on page 94 where the supplement is considering how the rules for spaceship manoeuvrability are affected by your choice of map and when we’re told a ship can come about 360 degrees by turning through eight points on a square map – we’re not being lied to. A ship could make the turn in four moves as well though. Really though I shouldn’t start with that nit-pick. The spacecraft combat rules do work. Blood and Space sticks with its goal of not introducing confusing rules. Space ship combat is modelled on normal combat and it is really easy to follow. From this strong base added extras like dodging mines (or blasting through them), guided weapons and complexities of combat in Hyperspace tag on nicely.

Blood and Space concludes with some sample starships – further proof that there is flexibility in the design system – which are nicely presented on special space ship character sheets. You’ll recognise the illustrations though as they’ve been used elsewhere in the supplement. We get a blank starship character sheet (easy to print off) of our own too.

Blood and Space works. It’s rules for designing, staffing and fighting in space ships of all sizes work. The crew rules add an important element that seems all too often forgotten about and this addition comes without too much complexity. Including both Hard Sci-Fi and Space Opera but keeping them as separate options throughout the download also works. The inclusion of basic and prestige classes along with skills and feats ensures that Blood and Space is the only added extra you’ll need on top of one set of d20 rules to play in space.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[tjoneslo]

Blood and Space

Blood and Space is a 117 page PDF costing $8.95 available from RPGNow.com. The 7.8MB download package is a zip file with two versions of the document, a full version with the full color cover and added color edge bars, and a printer friendly version which lacks the cover and color on each page. Using D20 modern (or T20 or Dragonstar), Blood and Space adds space ships, space combat and a variety of equipment. Included are additional classes, feats, and skills to use the proper equipment. This book gets a poor rating due to its incomplete and unbalanced rules, poor writing, and unimaginative ideas.

Chapter 1 contains a two page introduction to the book describing its contents and offering some generic advice for the potential GM using this book.

Chapter 2 has the new classes, 9 classes and 8 prestige classes. Since all the classes are one or two pages it would have been nice if the layout allowed them to fit onto two pages rather than split across three. The Doctor, Engineer, Scientist and Pilot are all balanced reasonably well. The Marine is an unexciting fighter. The Hotshot really should be a prestige class. The Mercenary's 1st level Show me the money class feature (+2 to all skills and attacks for the adventure) is unbalanced, and the Rage feature (+4 STR, +4 Con, +2 hp/level, -2AC) is either unbalancing or ridiculous depending upon your view of futuristic combat.

The beginning of the section on prestige classes has four class feature/feats. As a layout problem, these should either be moved as class features for the prestige classes or become full fledged feats as they are used by several of the prestige classes. The Colonial marine as a prestige class adds nothing that isn't already available to the Marine class. The Pirate captain prestige class needs more work, in that if he's a great leader of evil men, he should have some of the leadership feats given to the marines or starship officers.

Chapter 3 covers new skills and feats. The 23 new skills cover obvious things needed for a space game, piloting, navigation, craft skills for modern equipment and so on. The 41 new feats are more mixed. The Armor, weapons and item creation proficiencies are obvious and useful. The piloting feats should either be class features for the pilot or hotshot class, or they should be listed as simple combat maneuvers in the starship combat rules.

Overall these three chapters are passable. There are some good ideas here, but as many bad parts as well.

Chapter 4 covers money, equipment and trade. There are 24 new weapons, ranging from the simple baton (club) to the nasty sounding Tesla rifle. The weapon statistic have a damage type with each one which isn't explained anywhere. In the description of the 9mm pistol: "These old-fashioned weapons require oxygen to fire". I've never known any guns in real life or any science fiction to require oxygen to fire. The chainknife sounds nasty, but there's no rules on what happens when it runs out of power. There are 19 new armors ranging from basic flak through the heavy servo powered Orbital insertion armor.

The Trade system rules are unclear. The rules seem to be the GM rolls on the supply/demand radio table, which gives a base price multiplier, plus a Negotiation DC. I make a check against this DC with Merchants skill. Failing the check means I can't buy the goods at all. Succeeded by more than one means I can buy them, with a better roll giving me a better price. Not mentioned is when I sell the goods, does the GM roll on the table again, or do I keep the same roll? Either seems wrong. A better way to handle the negotiations would be an opposed skill check against the NPC buyer, with the winner getting the 10% price difference per point of difference in the roll and letting the characters decide if they want to accept or not. The list of potential trade goods seems chopped off in the middle. And what is a pork plant?

Chapter 5 is starship construction. This is the chapter I was most looking forward to in the book. This chapter is filled with inconsistencies and bad technobabble, reading it was like having my teeth dragged across a chalkboard.

Starship construction is a five step process, and the book contains 26 pages of components to put in your ship. Step 1 is the hull. The Hull size table, which gives an overview of the hull sizes based around the D20 size names, but has no relation to the normal D20 sizes. All the hull dimensions are given in x by y feet, but most starships I've ever seen have a number of decks in a vertical direction. Each hull size is also given a maximum cargo rating, presumably the maximum size of the cargo hold after all the basic stuff like engines, weapons, crew spaces and so on are included. Except the Huge and Capital sized ships have the same cargo space, despite the fact that the Capital ship is eight times larger than the Huge ship. The hull types table has 25 predetermined hull sizes, ranging from tiny fighters to the enormous battle stations. As much as the having a fixed list of hulls makes building ships simple, there's no way to build a ship that isn't a size presented on the table.

Step 2 is the drives, which make a ship go. The hard science, normal space drives have no size, they are presumed to be sized to fit these hull into which they are put, so each drive gives the same performance. I have a basic understanding of rocketry and the descriptions herein are a mix-mash of tech terms. They may sound impressive, but they are completely nonsense. The particularly two teeth grinding statements in this section: "Acceleration +20 is rated in game terms as .99 c". Either the author doesn't understand the difference between velocity and acceleration, or doesn't bother to explain it. And "[super hot Plasma] then ejected from the rear of the craft at supersonic velocities.". I suppose, but wouldn't something like "near light speed velocities" be more impressive? And why are there no space opera style normal space drives?

For rules, all engines cost exactly the same amount, mounted in a fighter or in a Capital ship. Shouldn't the engines for the larger ships cost more?

Step 3 is adding weapons and armor. In this section the division between the hard science components and the space opera components is particularly arbitrary. This section also has some of the worst of the technobabble, for example:

"The Quantum Space-Time Flux Amplifier is one of the most bizarre and terrifying weapons ever conceived. The Casmir effect is used to filter attractive quantum space-time flux from normal space. The attractive or negative flux is captured, stored, and amplified in a gravitational torus."

The disturbing aspect of technobabble like this is it's apparent the author hasn't considered what else can be done with the technology besides making one cool sounding weapon (or other piece of equipment). There are two problems that come out of this, the first is the law of well applied technology. Which is, if there is a technology which can do X, it is the nature of humans (or any spacefaring alien race) to try and apply that technology to as many different endeavors as possible. The second is the law of unintended consequences, which is if there is a device which can do X, the players will find any number of unusual uses for it. If I, or another clever player, can think of an alternative use for the technology descriptions, the first breaks suspension of disbelief, the second can break the game.

Step 4 is miscellaneous systems and computer. The 16 miscellaneous systems are designed to enhance the performance of one or another part of the ship. None of the items have any size, only a cost. The descriptions imply only one of each type of system need be installed. But there are no rules stating so and no description of what happens if more than one system is mounted.

Step 5 is adding facilities, which occupy the limited amount of cargo space on ships to add space for more crew, passengers, labs, or transporting specific items like figher craft or additional weapons. A total of 39 items to modify the internal spaces of the ship.

Chapter 6 discusses starship crews. This is one of the more interesting sections of the book. It ranks the crew into one of seven levels, each of which has a skill modifier for performing or assisting the PCs. What's missing here is an idea of how to convert Joe Redshirt the faceless crewman into a named NPC, who has a full set of statistics. The abstracted unit vs. unit combat system is both quick and easy, though I would increase the lethality of the rules for having a PC accompany a unit on a combat mission.

Chapter 7 is the starship combat system, using the ships built and using the crew rules. The combat section also has a number of omissions. The most glaring deals with the map. The book suggests two methods of dealing with the fact ships may well leave the map. The first (and as the author admits) unrealistic method is to have the map wrap. The second is to simply have any ship leaving the map be out of the game as escaped from combat. The book omits the fairly obvious option of shifting the map. That is, if during the combat all of the ships end up on the left side of the map, the GM can shift all the counters right by the same number of hexes (or squares) to give more space for continued combat.

The combat system itself is a D20 combat with the addition of a few rules. The movement system as described plays like flying airplanes rather than spaceships, but this is neither good nor bad. Combat is D20 simple, roll to hit, roll damage, subtract DR for armor and shields, apply HP to ship. There is a optional system for damaging internal components when weapons fire gets through shields and armor.

Here again are incomplete or missing rules. The rules for mines are suited for a more abstract combat system in that you are given the choice of going through the mines (and taking damage) or around the mines and loosing the pursuit of the enemy ship, even if your ship is faster and they're not escaping. Missing are the rules for the Hauler's class feature of adding more cargo space to the outside of the ship.

The chapter completes with a description and rules for a variety of "terrain" to add spice to the combat system. These features are reasonably well described, but some (the Accretion disks, black holes, nebulas and novas) are so much larger than the combat scale you probably won't ever include them, though rules for comets, asteroids (even if the fields are too dense), moons and planets are good.

The book completes with a collection of four pirate ships, two survey vessels, a cargo hauler and a light scout/warship.

The book fails because it is incomplete. On every page I found something that I felt was wrong, incomplete or simply missing. And while I don't have high expectations for a $9 PDF, the amount of work required to make any or all of the sections useful for playing is too great.

Blood and Space also fails by what it lacks as well. B&S perpetuates D&D's schizophrenic attitude toward classes. In an advanced, technological society everyone needs a good set of skills to be productive members of society. Skills which can only be gained by having one or more levels in a class. But all of the classes presented are not designed for "normal people", they are designed around PCs who want to be above the crowd. I don't expect a whole slew of new classes for the common folk, but I do expect a generic campaign book to address the issue.

B&S is also missing a much needed chapter on how to run campaigns. There are hint's dropped throughout the book about how this class or that group of people work together and it may be an interesting idea for a group of players. For example, the hauler family in space, the marines at war, pirates vs. the patrol, and exploring new worlds are all lightly glossed over. These ideas need to be gathered into one chapter and expanded upon.

Conclusion: Avoid this product unless you are desperate for D20 science fiction rules, and be prepared to do a great deal of work to make them useful.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This is the author of Blood and Space. I have never responded to a review before, because I think reviews are more for the fans than for the writers (although a great review can help us learn to be better writers).

However, this review makes many claims that I feel deserve a response.

"The Marine is an unexciting fighter. "

The Marine is identical to the fighter in many respects. However, it is included to show what feats from d20 Modern/Blood and Space are appropriate for the space combat genre. I thought it would be better to include the entire class for convenience, so you didn't have to flip back and forth between a list of fighter bonus feats and the fighter class from the PHB. It was an attempt to make things easier on the player.

"The Hotshot really should be a prestige class. "

Oh really? The Hotshot is balanced with the Pilot. Neither is more powerful than the other. The difference between the Hotshot and Pilot is akin to the difference between a fighter and a barbarian. The Pilot gets bonus feats. The Hotshot gets Outside of the envelope, allowing him to squeeze extra speed from his craft, and is on the whole a less polished, more instinctive brand of pilot than the Pilot.

The Hotshot is a science fiction icon. Luke Skywalker and Annikin Skywalker are both Hotshots. Never formally trained as pilots, loving danger and speed. Luke is even called "hotshot" several times by Han in Star Wars, hence the name. Since the class is no more powerful than the Pilot, and since the characters that provided its inspiration had the class at very low levels, I decided to make it a core class.

"The Mercenary's 1st level Show me the money class feature (+2 to all skills and attacks for the adventure) is unbalanced"

The ability comes and goes on an encounter by encounter basis, and only appears when the Mercenary has the chance to gain "significant wealth". Now let's look at that. In the first place, it's an ability like the Favored Enemy, in that the Game Master has complete control over when it does and does not appear. In the second place, as the Mercenary rises in level, the ability will appear less and less often, because "significant wealth" will come to mean more and more money.

"and the Rage feature (+4 STR, +4 Con, +2 hp/level, -2AC) is either unbalancing or ridiculous depending upon your view of futuristic combat."

It's the standard Barbarian ability, only the skills affected (since the Merc has different skills than the Barbarian) were changed. So if it's unbalancing I guess the PHB is too. As for it being ridiculous, melee combat never goes away.

"The Colonial marine as a prestige class adds nothing that isn't already available to the Marine class. "

Really? Colonial Marines are very similar to Marines this is true. They are still Marines after all. But I wouldn't call the Favored Enemy ability, which the Colonial Marine gets for all unintelligent aliens ("bugs" as he calls them) "Nothing".

"The Pirate captain prestige class needs more work, in that if he's a great leader of evil men, he should have some of the leadership feats given to the marines or starship officers. "

This claim is outright specious. The Pirate, in fact, has several abilities that make him a great leader of evil men. He doesn't have the Marine Commander's abilities, because he leads in a different way. The Pirate Captain can give his crew bonuses in Boarding combat, recruit more experienced Boarders, and gains a special cohort to either act as a first officer or lead his Marine boarding parties. I'd say those abilities make him perfectly suited to his mission: seizing cargo.

"Except the Huge and Capital sized ships have the same cargo space, despite the fact that the Capital ship is eight times larger than the Huge ship. "

This is true. However, the Capital ship has a LOT more weapons, armor and HP. It was determined that these things would eat up room that could be given to cargo space. However, after reading Jeremy's review, it has been decided to include larger civilian vessels with more cargo space for the print run.

"The particularly two teeth grinding statements in this section: "Acceleration +20 is rated in game terms as .99 c". Either the author doesn't understand the difference between velocity and acceleration, or doesn't bother to explain it. "

The speeds of all ships in the game are given by an Acceleration modifier. It's a game statistic for Blood and Space. When I speak of Acceleration +20 Im obviously referring to a game statistic. The reason Acceleration is used to determine speed in the game is that space ships typically Accelerate half way to their destination, then slow down half way to their destination. Therefore, when combat begins, both ships have usually been Accelerating for quite some time (perhaps months), and so their Acceleration, their ability to increase speed relative to their opponent is the key statistic.

"For rules, all engines cost exactly the same amount, mounted in a fighter or in a Capital ship. Shouldn't the engines for the larger ships cost more? "

In some science fiction, Large ships have no trouble mounting fast engines that make them as fast, if not faster, than their smaller counterparts. Witness the Star Destroyer in Star Wars, and the Enterprise in Star Trek. They are both fully capable of keeping up with smaller ships. On the flip side, small ships in many genres, like Star Wars, are fast and nimble, like earth-bound fighter jets. So both needed to be able to mount good engines.

I decided, since I was writing a game, and not a scientific technical manual, to use one price for the engines, since in the fiction the game is based on, both small and large ships are capable of being fast and agile.

"The disturbing aspect of technobabble like this is it's apparent the author hasn't considered what else can be done with the technology besides making one cool sounding weapon (or other piece of equipment). "

In the flavor text, I also use the phrase "the temporal spike would affect the ship's lateral slipstream". It's a game. Technolbabble is part of the fun. Just repeat to yourself "It's just a game... I need to relax". There, doesn't that feel better?

"The descriptions imply only one of each type of system need be installed. But there are no rules stating so and no description of what happens if more than one system is mounted. "

Good point and one that slipped past the editors and playtesters. It will be fixed before the game goes to print.

"What's missing here is an idea of how to convert Joe Redshirt the faceless crewman into a named NPC, who has a full set of statistics. "

It's not missing. There is no need for such a system. In the genre, the redshirts never rise in rank and become PCs or named NPCs. Even when Chekhov first appeared on star trek, as a lowly ensign (the same rank as the redshirts), he was not treated like Joe Crew. PCs are different, regardless of rank.

"The book omits the fairly obvious option of shifting the map. That is, if during the combat all of the ships end up on the left side of the map, the GM can shift all the counters right by the same number of hexes (or squares) to give more space for continued combat. "

That is exactly what was described. As Jeremy rightly pointed out.

"Here again are incomplete or missing rules. The rules for mines are suited for a more abstract combat system in that you are given the choice of going through the mines (and taking damage) or around the mines and loosing the pursuit of the enemy ship, even if your ship is faster and they're not escaping. "

Score one for you. That is an editorial mistake, that rule is left over from an earlier, abstract version of the combat system and will be fixed before the game goes to print. However, I would like to take this opportunity to point out, that you have labeled an entire 30 page chapter "incomplete" on the basis of that one paragraph. One paragraph. Feeling nit picky today?

"B&S perpetuates D&D's schizophrenic attitude toward classes. "

It's a d20 game. It's kind of hard to write a d20 game and not have the idiosyncracies of a d... 20... game...

"Skills which can only be gained by having one or more levels in a class. But all of the classes presented are not designed for "normal people", they are designed around PCs who want to be above the crowd. "

Any d20 game is going to be based around characters. Player Characters. Heroes. It's a d... 20... game...

"B&S is also missing a much needed chapter on how to run campaigns. "

That is not the point of this book. It's a "toolkit". It says so right in the title I promise! It's designed to either help people make homebrew sci-fi (these Game Masters usually already have an idea in mind and don't want my bothersome notions of the future), or for those looking to add a little more detail to a Star Wars, Dragonstar et al game. These people also do not need campaign information.

 

[enrious]

Overview:

Blood and Space (B&S) is an 118 page PDF document by RPG Objects (makers of Darwin’s World). The stated goal of this product is to provide a generic toolkit for d20 science fiction games (such as Star Wars or Dragonstar). B&S contains generic information that can assist with character generation, such as new core classes, prestige classes, skills, feats, and equipment. It also provides a system of starship (and spacebase) combat and construction, again with the focus being replacement or inclusion in an existing game.

B&S contains a color drawing, colored headers, black and white border, and black and white interior illustrations. These illustrations are for various spacecraft and prestige classes for the most part. I’m reminded of some earlier Traveller artwork when viewing the ship illustrations. For those of you on a nostalgia kick, you’re likely to appreciate it more than I do.

The prestige class illustrations, on the other hand, seem more contemporary and more detailed. I think they convey the respective class very well.

The printer-friendly version, included along with the full-color version, lacks the cover, borders, and headers.
B&S is organized into a table of contents and seven chapters detailing the new rules, along with pre-made ships and a ship record sheet at the back of the document.

In Detail:

The first chapter is the introduction to the product. It provides an introductory story, reminds you that this is a toolkit and not meant to be an independent sourcebook. It also informs you that there are rules that will be of use in a “space opera” game while others will fit in a “hard sci-fi” game. As an example, in “hard sci-fi”, you will not have faster than light travel but you will in “space opera”. You can mix and match these genres to suit a given campaign.

Chapter Two introduces the new core and prestige classes. These are as follows:

Core

Doctor: This class provides advanced medical support and can even bring back characters who have been dead for up to a day at high levels.

Engineer: This class focuses on applied science and physics, more concerned with doing something than how to do it. This class is somewhat akin to the harried engineer that manages to keep an old engine running smoothly by using cologne and safety pins.

Hauler: This class can also be thought of as a type of merchant class. Haulers are akin to space gypsies, traveling from one place to another bartering valuable cargo.

Hotshot: This class reflects a maverick pilot archetype. They get skills and feats which give them a better chance of surviving spaceship battle.

Marine: This is essentially an updated Fighter, equipped for space combat.

Mercenary: This fight-for-hire class has the ability to rage (much like the Barbarian class); they get bonuses when dealing with other Mercenaries and when fighting for pay.

Starship Pilot: This is a more disciplined version of the Hotshot and receives abilities that reflect this.

Scientist: This is a character class that concerns itself more with the theoretical than the practical (almost the opposite of the Engineer). This class can be used to reflect anything from a mad scientist bent on creating forbidden androids to an archeology professor who instructs the crew.

Smuggler: This class, like the Hauler, is a merchant class although they tend to conduct more illegal activities and thus get more attention from the authorities.

Prestige

Colonial Marine: This is essentially an advanced Marine, gaining bonuses against unintelligent aliens. (Think of the movie Starship Troopers)

Contact Specialist: This class is primarily concerned with making contact with alien cultures and thus is more concerned with communications than combat.

Marine Commander: These are Marines that have more Leadership style features than a typical Marine.

Marine NCO: Marines that are better instructors than Marine Commanders, able to whip a crew into shape quickly.

Pirate Captain: The Pirate Captain is designed to run a pirate ship, from recruiting better pirates to making operations more profitable.

Squadron Commander: Designed to provide leadership to small groups of fighters, the Squadron Commander receives several leadership bonuses.

Starship Commander: This reflects a legendary captain of a ship, able to inspire and guide a crew to better performance.

Starship Officer: A Starship Officer is a specialist in a given area of expertise that usually has ship responsibilities in this area. Examples could be a Flight Officer who navigates the ship, a Weapons Officer responsible for the maintenance or use of weapons, or the Engineer who keeps the ship in operation.

Chapter Three introduces skills and feats appropriate for science fiction campaigns. Some of these skills include Boarding, Merchant, and Sensor Operations. Most of these are geared either for controlling a space ship or engaging in combat, but there are also those suited for more scholarly pursuits.

Chapter Four presents a variety of space-oriented equipment for use in your campaign. This includes the standards, like laser pistols and space suits. Also of note in this chapter is the section introducing a system for conducting trade, something that can provide inspiration for a story arc with little trouble.

Starships are the focus of Chapter Five. From building a starship to maintaining it, this chapter provides you with the rules you need to translate your favorite ship design into your campaign.

Crews explained in Chapter Six. There are rules for handling differing crew quality, the effects of training and battle on a crew, resolving crew losses and so on. Chapter Six also details various “actions” you can order your crew to perform in stressful situations. For example, you can order the Medical section to perform quarantine actions or to prepare for casualties, each with game implications. You’ll also find rules on using the crew in combat or other perilous situations (such as large numbers of crew to an ill-tempered space bass or disease).

The fun chapter for me is Chapter Seven, Starship Combat. Herein lies advice for using B&S to resolve space battles using hex maps and counters or miniatures, although you can resolve combat without a hex board, just as you can resolve a D&D battle without grid maps. There are rules for handling many standard combat maneuvers, space terrain, and of course trading blasters with each other.

What I liked about Blood and Space:

The space combat system is simple yet flexible, making it useful to implement in a variety of space genres.

The construction system is easily modified to fit. If there’s a portion of it you’d like to change to better reflect a given campaign, this is easily done with effects that are easy to plan ahead of time.

Having the main genres (Hard Sci-fi and Space Opera) makes it easy to mix and match given technology and rules to fit a given campaign. This is useful because few science fiction series or games stick to one type of science realism. Having them defined into these categories can help shape the way that science is used in your campaign.

Some of the class features are very well done, being useful without being overpowering. An example of this would be the various abilities for a Doctor reviving dead characters (within reason).

The rules for handling crew actions (such as boarding) are easily resolved.

Ship construction is very easy to do, it’s simply a matter of making selections from a series of charts. Once you have a ship concept in mind, it’s extremely quick to translate it into the system.

I like the effects of crew quality having a tangible impact on many ship’s functions. This reminds me of the classic Avalon Hill game, Wooden Ships & Iron Men (among others) in which you could win with either a small elite crew or a large poor crew but the manner in which you won would be vastly different. This is true to a large extent in B&S.

What I didn't like about Blood and Space:

Some of the features of the classes don’t strike me as fitting. For example, I’ve never thought of mercenaries as being berserkers but they have this ability in B&S. It’s not a big deal because you can rename the class or replace the ability.

Some of the units of measure (like cargo capacity) don’t hold up well when you get to the extreme sizes. This is easy to modify however.

I tend to not like percentile die rolls (such as in a chart) when the options are divided into 5% blocks. I think it’s more consistent and “clean” to have them reduced to a d20 roll instead.

There were some glaring editing copy/paste errors that are present, such as one classes alignment notes and the OGL containing information for Darwin’s World. Overall these are minor but jarring.

I would like to have seen some specific examples for of converting B&S to a specific campaign, even if it were a campaign of the author’s invention.

I’m surprised that this product didn’t have a few pages in the Appendix that consolidated all of the various charts together into a few pages. Such reference pages are very welcome when you have to quickly reference a given part or rule chart.

Summary:

Blood and Space attempts to provide a toolkit for an existing campaign and I think that many of the design decisions reflect this. This product is a useful product for game masters looking to replace or supplement their space combat rules, but it comes with a caveat. There will be some work involved in adapting these rules to a specific game, do not expect to pick up B&S and use the rules without modification and have them fit your campaign perfectly. Having said that, it is very easy to adapt the rules to fit and don’t require a lot of time doing the conversion.

Blood and Space mixes flexibility with simplicity. Within a matter of moments, a workable Star Destroyer could be created to do battle with a Galaxy class starship or a GM could quickly provide a small merchant ship for the party to “acquire.” Once the basic principles are grasped, it is merely a matter of selecting items from the provided charts to create or modify a ship. This greatly eases the burden of campaign which have dozens of existing ships that need conversion into B&S or for the person looking to mix campaign material.

Blood and Space is not without problems, but they are minor editing errors or easily house-ruled changes. Due to the relative simplicity of B&S, it is easy to make such changes while being able to easily grasp the ramifications of them.

The price for this product seems to be in the upper range for comparable products, but I believe it worth it to an enterprising GM that would like to adapt a more generic, uniform approach to his campaign. This is not to say that you can’t use B&S in a full-flavored campaign, only that the underlying rules would be more generic thus leaving to worry more with the campaign flavor than the rules.

Open Content Used:

Blood and Space uses no external open content and designates all text except for the introductory stories and names of the example ships as open. This should make it easy for other publishers to adopt some or all of the B&S rules.

Reviewers Notes:

This review is based on a supplied reviewer’s copy.