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Message: <blockquote data-quote="enrious" data-source="post: 2010041" data-attributes="member: 2126">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:CoreDoctor:  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.PrestigeColonial 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.</blockquote>

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