Future: 13 Starship Cargos

[Crothian]

The life of a smuggler or freetrader revolves around moving cargo -- either legal or illegal -- between systems. All but the wealthiest of starship captains are constantly on the lookout for their next lucrative load of cargo.

Future: 13 Starship Cargos features two PL 6 cargos, nine PL 7 cargos, and two PL 8 cargos for use with the official future SRD. Ranging from missiles to a new, terrible xenobiological hazard, these cargos are written to be used as straightforward materialistic items or, in some cases, as adventure ideas.

Also includes a new mecha design, a xenomorph from a previous open game content source, two new pieces of mecha equipment, a new gene therapy template, and a new piece of personal equipment.

The last two pages of this PDF feature two new e-Future Tiles -- cargo wings -- courtesy of SkeletonKey Games.

Written by Philip Reed.

The zip file includes two versions, one featuring the new graphic design for Ronin Arts' Future series and the second using a lighter graphics version similar to the older series design.

 

[Turanil]

d20 Sci-fi - 13 Starship Cargo

13 Starship Cargos, by Philip Reed, is a small 10 pages PDF (for 8 pages of actual game content) for d20 Future. It features 13 cargo for future space freighters or smugglers. It is 100% Open Gaming Content.

Art and layout: This PDF shares with the eight other “13 sci-fi stuff” supplements, the same good layout. It has no art, but I think the subject doesn’t need illustrations anyway, so it’s not a problem. There is otherwise a second PDF without black borders to spare your printer’s ink. I am disappointed by this, as I would have preferred a plain text file (as other in the same line propose) that let you to easily copypaste the content to your own documents.

I found all the material in this supplement to be extremely interesting. There are not only cargo descriptions, but also other stuff as well, such as new equipment, for a total of 8 additional descriptions. This is of course related to the cargo described, so a DM won’t have to fathom and invent what some of these items may be. Then, each cargo also gets a few stats, namely: Case Hardness / Hit Points; Cargo Space Requirements; Cargo Value / Purchase DC; and Restriction. Think about it: if one thing has a purchase DC of 12, what is the purchase DC of 50 of those things? 13 Starships Cargos has an answer for that. Anyway, for those curious here are the 13 cargos: 10 plasma missiles; 12 medium size mecha frames; 20 factory condition survival suits; 30 cryogenically frozen slaves; 1000 stemrush packs; 5000 man-machine interface chips; 10,500 identity chips; A caged xenomorph; Case of contaminated biocort injectors; Cylinder of magnetic slime; Discovered escape capsule; Gene tank with deceased test subject; and Prototype mecha and design schematics.

All in all, a good supplement that you may easily put to use in any space-opera or hard science fiction game. Traveller 20 comes to mind first (merchant ships of all sorts), but it could be equally useful in a Star-Wars d20 game (smugglers of all sorts). I think that where you may question the usefulness of many PDFs proposing weapons, classes, races or what not that you eventually realize you didn’t need, 13 Starships Cargos is worth the purchase. At one time or another, you will have PCs wanting to know what’s in the cargo bay. You may of course improvise, telling the first thing that crosses your mind. But then some PCs will shoot with a laser into it, others will want to use them for their own benefit, and no matter what they will try to sell their loot for a fair price. To your relief, 13 Starships Cargos has answers for all of this.

One of my regrets, as always, is that 13 descriptions are not enough. I would like at least 20 of them. I think 25 would be perfect. Then, about the price of this small supplement: bought alone, it’s not overly expensive. However, if you wanted to buy all the “13 sci-fi stuff” PDFs together, it suddenly makes for a (IMO) too high retail price. I wish all the nine “13 sci-fi stuff” PDFs be put together in a single compilation and sold at a lower price (i.e.: say at 7$ instead of 13.40$). But that’s another subject…

 

[philreed]

Thanks for the review. I feel it's important to note that the PDF is actually 12-pages in length, two of which are e-Future Tiles by Ed Bourelle of SkeletonKey Games.

Future: 13 Starship Cargos -- and for that matter, the other releases in the series -- is specifically only 13 items in order to keep expenses low and to leave the reader wanting more. It's always better, in my opinion, to leave a reader still excited and interested in more when he finishes reading a product than it is to bore them half-way in.

As to collections, Ronin Arts has a reputation for collecting some shorter PDFs after they've been available for several months. I prefer to keep the shorter PDFs as single products, though, because it allows a customer to pick and choose the products that he wants.

Again, thank you for taking the time to review Future: 13 Starship Cargos.