Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2011211" data-attributes="member: 172">Stargate SG-1 Fantastic Frontiers: Stargate Season OneStargate SG-1 Fantastic Frontiers: Stargate Season One (hereafter Stargate Season One) is a sourcebook for the Stargate SG-1 game by AEG, detailing events, races, worlds, and characters that appeared in the first season of the series as well as mechanics for handling specifics therein. The book credits writing to Rob Defendi, Scott Gearin, Dr. S. Alexander Gentry, PhD, Jack Kessler, Valerie Kessler, James Malizewski, Don Mappin, Clayton Oliver, Lou Prosperi, and Rodney Thompson.Disclaimer: I do no follow the series so can make no statements regarding the faithfulness or completeness with which this represents the series.A First LookStargate Season One is a 176-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $26.95. This is a fairly decend price, especially considering the book has all glossy pages with full color stills from the series.A Deeper LookThe book is divided into three chapters: Mission Logs, Pertinent NPCs, and New Rules.The mission logs are primarily a summary of the first season's episodes, 21 in all (including the season-end cliffhanger.) Wherever a new world is introduced, it has a "stat block" dedicated to it describing physical characteristics, inhabitants, and the locale of the stargate on that world. Each chapter then provides some fairly detailed background for the circumstances of the episode, in term that highlight the situation in enough depth that the GM can hopefully develop further missions from the world and situations. The chapter covers 78 pages in all, almost 4 pages per episode.However, the book stops short of actually providing new adventure hooks, which is something of a disappointment. It seems that in some cased, these worlds feel a little "played out", and I think many GMs would appreciate any assistance they could get in apply the material to games of their own.The Pertinent NPCs chapter is split into "feature NPCs" and "supporting NPCs." The features NPCs get more detail with longer background writeups. Each feature NPC (except for Goa'uld) receives three different sets of game statistiscs, one each for low-, mid-, and high-powered games. The Goa'uld and all supporting NPCs only receive one set of statistics (which varies in power.) The last chapter, new rules, provides primarily new character creation options necessary to round out characters that appeared in the first season, including new specialities (army medical corps, NID investigator), alien specialties (Goa'uld queen, dragon guard, Jaffa clergy, Kresh'taa, Abydonians, Argosians, Byrsa, The Untouched, and Displaced Near Human), New Races (Netjerians, Nox, Ohnes, The Unity), and new prestige classes (Grunt, Hazmat Specialist, and Valyrie), as well as new skills uses, feats, and equipment.A fair number of options is presented primarily for the GM use as well. These include spycraft-stlye NPC classes for use in generating quick "faceless" NPCs, including Abydonian Desert Fighter, Asura, Divine Minion, Eye of Hathor, Freedom Fighter, Jaffa Priest, Lightning Guard, Maruf, Nox Wanderer, Respected Elder, Simarkan Warrior, Thunder Guard, and Warrior of Akkad. Other GM resources include rules for specific conditions that show up in various episodes, such as forcing a stargate (as in Solitudes), and environment and diseases on various planets.One rule that does not strike me as immediately useful is the handling of the decaying orbit of Heliopolis. The rules provide guidelines for altering planet characteristics, but they occur on such a timescale that they are unimportant over any time less than 25 years (and then, it is only a slight change.)Finally, the chapter includes the addendum "SGC armory", which has notes on standard issue equipment and new and revised weapon bundles.ConclusionsNot following the series (or the game) I feel a little uncomfortable reviewing this. To my non-fannish (though Spycraft-trained) eye, the mechanics seem decent enough (indeed, several mechanics used in classes are tried and tested from Spycraft classes.) As mentioned, I think that a little more accommodation could be made to pave the way for new adventures using these worlds.Overall Grade: B -Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

Verification