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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2567022" data-attributes="member: 172">[imager]http://www.dawningstar.com/images/cover_thumb.jpg[/imager]Dawning Star: Operation Quick Launch is a campaign setting sourcebook for d20 Modern and d20 Future (alas, the latter only unofficially, as Wizards of the Coast has not extended permissions to mention this product in compatible products using the modern and future SRDs.) The setting is a science fiction setting based in the far off helios system, colonized by remnants of the human race. The setting is published by Blue Devil Games, and credits writing to Lee Hammock, Chad Barr, and Justin D. Jacobson.A First LookDawning Star is available as a hardcover book and in PDF format. The hardcover runs $29.95 US, and the electronic version is available at RPGnow and DriveThruRPG for $12.95. This review will focus principally on the hardbound edition.The cover of the book features a dark green cloudy backdrop with a glow emanating from the symbol of the setting, embedded in the setting title.The interior is black and white. The art direction and art appear to be entirely by Danilo Moretti. I have appreciated his work in prior d20 roleplaying products, and having him as the sole talent for this book does it credit and lends it a strong, consistent feel.Thought the character, creature, and technology art is generally crisp and appealing, I found the singular land map in the book to be a bit behind the curve for RPG products when it comes to visual appeal and utility.I like the writing style of the book. I feel it has just enough flavor text to set a mood, but gets to the point in explaining setting details. This makes the book a nice, uncomplicated read, unburdened by the weary pretension of trying to be a work of fiction in addition to a gaming novel which afflicts many modern gaming products.There is one bit of the writing that bothered me. The book uses the term “hard science” where it seems to mean “hard science fiction” in a few places. The terms are not equivalent. Hard science specifically refers to actual scientific disciplines such as chemistry and physics that are thought to have a good degree of rigor; it does not refer to the SF subgenre that attempts to achieve a high degree of believability known as hard science fiction.A Deeper Look(Spoiler Warning: Some of the setting elements that are not normal PC knowledge are mentioned in this section of the review. Take care if you intend to play in the setting.)The Dawning Star setting aspires to be a hard science fiction setting, though it confesses that a few liberties were taken in the sake of fun. In reading the book, I see some conventions that have been part of classic science fiction literature, though many of the elements resemble those that have received attention in recent TV, movie, and videogame SF, such as Outpost, Sid Meyer’s Alpha Centauri, Homeworld, Aliens, Earth 2, and Babylon 5.The first chapter covers the history behind the setting. The basic premise of the setting is that Earth is doomed by the imminent collision of a moon sized object, which set the governments of Earth into motion to create a number of seeder ships with the intent of saving the human race and terraforming and colonizing a world around a nearby star.The ships never make it to their original destination. Instead, the fleet encounters an alien device outside of our solar system that transports one of the seeder ships, the Dawning Star and her supporting ships to the periphery of a system with multiple habitable planets. The central star of this system would become known as Helios, and the colony ship lands on the world (one of three habitable worlds in the system) that would become known as Eos. The fate of the remaining colony ships is unknown.The subsequent history of the world of Eos sets up a number of mysteries and challenges for the PCs. At the time the setting “begins”, over 50 years after the Dawning Star lands on the planet, a number of events occur that set up plot possibilities for the setting. Colonists encounter the very human-like, but apparently native, race known as the velin and the aloof and spacefaring “grey alien” like tentaari. Rebellions factions form among the humans, some eventually becoming part of the Eos freedom league. A number of ancient ruins are found with powerful relics, and the colonies are occasionally plagued by attacks by mysterious and mythical creatures known to humans only darklings.This leaves you with a setting with a technological society with a somewhat under-developed industry, frontier regions plagued by alien creatures and rebellious factions, fremen-style proud natives, and intelligent aliens whose presence here has a long history untold in the opening chapter... and with far reaching implications. Which I’ll touch on later.A single chapter covers all the new material needed to create characters for Dawning Star, including races, starting occupations, skills, talent trees, feats, and classes.Humans and Velin are the default playable races of the setting. Humans have statistics similar to the d20 norm; velin lack the human skill point bonus, but gain low light vision, survival related skill bonuses, and abilities to detect the hostile vaasi alien race. I think giving vaasi both an intelligence penalty and not giving them a skill bonus make them somewhat unappealing as a playable race in a modern/future setting. Though velin are somewhat the brutes of the setting, it seems to me that survival, stealth, and perception skills would be their forte and the double-hit is probably too much.The book tries to surmount the issue that d20 modern creates by making human skill bonuses implicit in descriptions by listing two totals for each class. This really is an issue created by D20 Modern itself. Handling skill points this way does a little to alleviate the possible confusion. A sidebar like the one that exists in Urban Arcana would have done more to dispel confusion over the issue.New talent trees include a strong rage and tough rage tree (for the strong and tough hero, respectively), resembling the D&D barbarian rage ability, but the strong version has a larger strength boost whereas the tough version provides a bigger constitution boost. The fast hero gets a footwork tree that gives them bonuses in grapple situation, which seems somewhat paltry compared to the new and existing trees; I would consider granting a larger bonus.Starting occupations correspond to common callings one might have on Eos such as dissident, explorer, or hunter. Some of these are more primitive occupations and velin are restricted to some of these more primitive occupations.There are two new skills, barter and terraforming, with the appropriate support in terms of usage rules. Though there is nothing wrong with the skills per se, tucking them under profession might have given them better support from existing rules in other products that aid profession skill checks.Feats principally support unique aspects or common roles in the game. Many of the feats reflect your upbringing, memberships, or other recognizable traits that give you bonuses when dealing with certain groups of people/aliens. There is an array of advanced and prestige classes for various setting archetypes, but more noteworthy is that there are two racial paragon classes, a mechanical convention that has been making the rounds since Malhavoc’s Arcana Unearthed hit the streets. There is a Human Survivor racial paragon class and a Velin Hunter racial paragon class. Though in some ways, I feel the d20 Modern base classes fill some of the same space as paragon classes do (being sort of “pre-professional” classes), they do serve to help create character with more in the way of archetypal racial abilities without overloading the basic race with capabilities.Of the existing d20 modern advanced classes, there is little guidance on how they fit in the Dawning Star setting other than which are unavailable. New advanced and prestige classes reflect possible common character types, and include Air Runner (pilot that provides services to remote regions), Barter Jack, Colonial Leader, Gunhand (mercenary gunman), Lawman, Rancher, Rebuilder, Velin Guardian, Republic Ranger (elite law officer), and Velin Cheif.The technology available in the setting is normally d20 Future PL 6 or less, with limited PL 7 items. The technology chapter outlines which items are appropriate of Pls 6 or 7. For many item categories, the technology chapter defines its own setting specific technology items, such as energy weapons, vehicles, and mecha. Many more primitive equipment items are defined that exist as a consequence of the setting, such as Dawson dragon harnesses. Advanced and special versions of melee weapons and other primitive weapons get a lot of love here, helping to make more primitive velin characters more viable.The World of Eos chapter defines much of the settlements, geography, and politics of the world. There are four major political bodies covered here: the Dawning Star Republic, the Eos Freedom League, the Terraformer’s Guild, and the Velin Tribal Council. The chapter includes statistics blocks for major personalities, as well as stock stat blocks for common ordinaries of the world. All of the stat blocks listed here have 4 ordinary class levels, which is towards the low end of the scale for d20 Modern. This sort of leaves the implication that PCs are supposed to be more heroic exceptions than they are in a standard d20 Modern game.The Galactic Survey chapter is a bit of a misnomer. It really primarily concerns the Helios system, and as most civilization as the PCs know it exists on one planet, yet there are multiple habitable planets, the action may be confined to that system for some time to come. There are quite a few possibilities for adventure in the system. This is primarily related to exploring the two habitable planets other than Eos, but there are mysterious stations and ancient alien habitations to be dealt with...The xenomorphs chapter provides alien challenges for the players, both in terms of alien animals and sapient alien life forms. The animals are not so alien as you might expect, largely resembling mildly altered versions of Earth creatures like sharks and cows. This is a little of a disappointment in some ways, though it makes sense given some of the backstory.There are two sapient alien species defined here, the tentaari and the vaasi.The tentaari, as previously mentioned, are strongly modeled after UFO-folklore “greys.” Note that as the fraal from D20 Future are not open content, these are not statistically the same creatures. Tentaari are psionic creatures and somewhat decadent inheritors of the technology that they possess.The Vaasi are the setting’s “lurking alien threat”. Thematically, they play a role similar to the shadows of Babylon 5 or the Sathar of Star Frontiers. They are psuedo-insectoid creatures that once waged a terrible interstellar war. They are pretty much a fallen species, but they exist in troubling numbers in the Helios system and stand to become a new threat to the galaxy.The Master Control chapter is essentially a campaign guide for Dawning Star. It spells out some of the hidden secrets of the setting history, particularly regarding the positions of the tentaari and vaasi. The history of the setting presents a plethora of options for would-be adventurers, and many of those campaign models and some possible adventure seeds are spelled out here.The final chapter, A Day in the Life is a short adventure for low level characters. The adventure has the PCs intervening in a relic finding expedition on the frontier of Eos. The adventure has a good deal of built in level flexibility in the form of three different statistics blocks for a variety of encounters.The book also contains a character sheet and (thankfully) an index.ConclusionsDawning Star: Operation Quick Launch provides a setting with a strong “American Frontier” feel instead of the more typical “interstellar civilization” feel of SFRPGs. The book does a good job of presenting a setting ripe with setting possibilities. The setting as presented in this book is obviously in the very early stages of its lifecycle as a viable setting. There are a lot of setting possibilities and a lot of challenges for the PCs to face, as well as a lot of room for the publishers to expand the setting.Of published RPG settings, Dawning Star probably most resembles Centauri Knights by GOO, but lakcing that setting’s “nanotechnology as magic” features, but with a few more possibilities in terms of frontier survivalism and potential evolution into a campaign involving alien politics. The setting has a self stated goal of plausibility except where fun is sacrificed. I see a few minor places they could have brushed this up. The description of how the Dawning Star was transported by the gateway device seemed very hand-wavey to me, and the discussion of making a gas giant into an artificial star stands out as an implausibility in what is otherwise the most scientifically rigorous chapter of the book.Overall, this is a nice app for D20 Future, with some real possibilities in variety of gameplay, while breaking out of some RPG molds that may be getting a bit tired.Overall Grade: B -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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