Dawning Star - Helios Rising

[Vague Jayhawk]

Too many times I have expectantly waited for a movie, a book, or a game to come out and have been sorely disappointed. I had big expectations and I set myself up for a big fall.

Not this time! Helios Rising is proving to be 540 pages of sci-fi goodness. It is living up to those expectations.

I came really close to calling in sick to work today just so I could sit and read it.

I have only had time to give it a real quick skim so far. Tonight I will slow down and read a bit closer.

It is going to take me a little while to complete this thick book. Even if I use only a portion of Helios Rising, I still will have a year worth of good gaming material.

www.dawningstar.com

I was wondering what all of you think of it.

 

[Johnny Angel]

A lot of good material to work with here. Looking it over, I am even more convinced that this could have been put out as a series of splat books, given that each planet in the system is given its own chapter. Each chapter is self-contained. The gear lists, species and supplemental rules relevant to that world are all contained in the chapter. I mean, it is nice to have it all in one book, and there are problems associated with splat books. But, mercy, a GM can only take in so much information at a time.

The complexities of interstellar travel have been reduced to a simple chart indicating the number of days or years of travel required to get from place to place. This is a very useful expedient, because it would be a pain in the ass to have to dig out an astrolabe to figure out how long it would take to get somewhere. It bugs me, however, that there isn't much information about the distances at which these planets orbit the sun. I can probably get by without knowing the axial tilt, average density, perhelion, aphelion and albedo (hardly ever comes up), but I would like to know the orbital distance and the equatorial diameter. Possibly even the mass.

Actually, what I'd really like are some maps of the planets. I know, 540 pages and I'm complaining about not having enough details. I must be smoking the crack.

I notice, by the way, that the gravity of Atlas is 120 Kelvin. You know a planet is cold when even the gravity will freeze your ass off.

Although there is plenty of material here to keep GMs busy for a while, I would like to encourage Blue Devil, now that Helios Rising is finally out, to get back to that Shadow War module I've been jonesing to see.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

A lot of good material to work with here. Looking it over, I am even more convinced that this could have been put out as a series of splat books, given that each planet in the system is given its own chapter. Each chapter is self-contained. The gear lists, species and supplemental rules relevant to that world are all contained in the chapter. I mean, it is nice to have it all in one book, and there are problems associated with splat books. But, mercy, a GM can only take in so much information at a time.

This was something I considered, to be sure. In the end, I decided against it for three reasons. First, there would be pricing issues--not a major issue, but something I didn't want to tangle with. Second, flowing from the first, I thought it would be taken as something of a money grab. Assuming we price the individual pdfs appropriately, you're looking at a total price for all 13 chapters at over $100. I knew we'd get plenty of people complaining about the pricing then. And if we offer a compiled pdf or subscription at the $44.95 price, that kind of makes the individual offer moot. Third, there is a sufficient level of interplay between the worlds that I didn't think, it would work from a thematic standpoint. We could've edited the planets to make them more standalone, but that would detract from the setting overall.

The complexities of interstellar travel have been reduced to a simple chart indicating the number of days or years of travel required to get from place to place. This is a very useful expedient, because it would be a pain in the ass to have to dig out an astrolabe to figure out how long it would take to get somewhere. It bugs me, however, that there isn't much information about the distances at which these planets orbit the sun. I can probably get by without knowing the axial tilt, average density, perhelion, aphelion and albedo (hardly ever comes up), but I would like to know the orbital distance and the equatorial diameter. Possibly even the mass.

Actually, what I'd really like are some maps of the planets. I know, 540 pages and I'm complaining about not having enough details. I must be smoking the crack.

There are plenty of additional details we could have added to the book. R.J. Grady added his technical advice to HR, so we certainly could have included the things you're talking about. d20 Modern/d20 Future just doesn't take into account those levels of complexity. So, while nice to have, we decided against including it. That is something we will try to work on as a free download for the site.

I notice, by the way, that the gravity of Atlas is 120 Kelvin. You know a planet is cold when even the gravity will freeze your ass off.

Good catch. A real eye-opener for me was that editing a 540-page book is about 50 times more challenging than editing a 200-page book. It's been two years since we released OQL, and the only errata I've gotten on that was a typo "rofle" instead of "rifle". We had two separate editors for HR: the amazing Brandes Stoddard (seriously, I can't say enough about his work ethic and skill on this project) and myself. We've already found a few errors, but nothing I will lose sleep over yet.

Although there is plenty of material here to keep GMs busy for a while, I would like to encourage Blue Devil, now that Helios Rising is finally out, to get back to that Shadow War module I've been jonesing to see.

After Gen Con, we will re-evaluate and start work on either Heroes of Helios or Silver Eclipse. We definitely have Shadow War on the radar.

Thanks for the kind words.

 

[Kanegrundar]

Picked up a pdf copy last night. So far, I'm hooked! Justin, it looks like you hit another one out of the park!

 

[Khairn]

To the folks at Blue Devil ... Ya done good !
Helios Rising is an excellent addition to the DS setting. Kudo's!

And for those looking for vibrant D20 modern / sci-fi setting that is more advanced than today but not yet in the space opera / Star Trek / Star Wars vein (Firefly/Serenity as an example) please do yourself a favor and check out Dawning Star. You won't regret it.

 

[andrew_kenrick]

I downloaded Helios Rising yesterday and what more can I say than ... wow, just wow. This book definitely sets the bar very high indeed for campaign settings in general, not just d20 Future campaign settings. I haven't read very much yet, but I'm loving what I see! Good work guys!

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

I downloaded Helios Rising yesterday and what more can I say than ... wow, just wow. This book definitely sets the bar very high indeed for campaign settings in general, not just d20 Future campaign settings. I haven't read very much yet, but I'm loving what I see! Good work guys!

High praise indeed, coming from the mind behind the Lemurian Candidate.

Thanks to everyone for all the kinds words.

 

[Johnny Angel]

Probably the Future d20 Support Products thread could use an update. Obviously, Helios Rising is new, but I suspect also other products have come out since 10/05/05. It looks like I bought the Future Player's Companion: Tommorrow's Evolution in December, but it's not listed in that thread.

 

[Michael Dean]

To the folks at Blue Devil ... Ya done good !
Helios Rising is an excellent addition to the DS setting. Kudo's!

And for those looking for vibrant D20 modern / sci-fi setting that is more advanced than today but not yet in the space opera / Star Trek / Star Wars vein (Firefly/Serenity as an example) please do yourself a favor and check out Dawning Star. You won't regret it.

Yeah, this just made it to the top of my Gen Con shopping list. I don't know how I could have missed the talk about this game, but it sounds right up my alley. And if I'm not mistaken, Blue Devil is sharing the same booth as the guys selling Burning Empires? If it is, it will be my one-stop shopping booth at Gen Con.

BTW, do you need to get Operation Quick Launch too or is Helios Rising a complete setting? I will probably get both anyway, but I'm just curious.

 

[Justin D. Jacobson]

Yeah, this just made it to the top of my Gen Con shopping list. I don't know how I could have missed the talk about this game, but it sounds right up my alley. And if I'm not mistaken, Blue Devil is sharing the same booth as the guys selling Burning Empires? If it is, it will be my one-stop shopping booth at Gen Con.

Luke and I are indeed both using the Forge/IPR booth as our base of operations this year. I must say, Burning Empires looks very cool.

BTW, do you need to get Operation Quick Launch too or is Helios Rising a complete setting? I will probably get both anyway, but I'm just curious.

In response, I'll quote my answer from the press release thread:

Yes, if you want to get the full campaign setting, you'd want to get both books. OQL covers only Eos; HR covers the rest of the system excluding Eos. It's hard to call Helios Rising a supplement to the core setting. It stands on its own. (Not to mention that it's more than twice the size of OQL.)

By way of analogy, it would be like if the Eberron book covered Khorvaire, and the next Eberron book covered the rest of the world other than Khorvaire. Or if the FR book covered the Sword Coast, and the second FR book covered the rest of the world other than the Sword Coast. If you only wanted to run a campaign in Khorvaire or the Sword Coast, you'd do just fine with the first books; if you only wanted to run a campaign elsewhere, you'd do just fine with the second books. In either case, you'd get a ton of information by buying the other book that you could still use in your campaign: items, feats, equipment, monsters, etc. If you wanted to run a campaign that spanned the whole world, you'd certainly want both books.

If you want to run a campaign that takes place only on Eos, you only need OQL, but HR will have a ton of material you'd readily be able to use. If you want to run a planet-hopping campaign that never touches Eos, you only need HR, but OQL will have a ton of material you'd readily be able to use. Frankly, HR is a great resource for a planet-hopping campaign in any setting. With a few tweaks, you could drop the individual planets into a Star Trek, Star Wars, Star Frontiers, etc. setting.