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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2010766" data-attributes="member: 172">Heart of the MachineHeart of the Machine is a licensed adventure published by Mystic Eye Games for Fantasy Flight Games' Dragonstar setting. Heart of the Machine is written by Stefan Mears, and is designed for a party of 4th level characters.A First LookHeart of the Machine is a 64-page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $13.99. This is about average for a d20 System product of this size and format.The cover of the book has the black and blue circuitry pattern common to Dragonstar products. The cover has an illustration of four characters aboard some sort of airspeeder being fired upon by assailants on one-man flying vehicles. The driver looks way too happy for someone under attack. The cover art is by Jhoneil Centeno.The interior is black and white, with interior artwork attributed to Ed Bourelle, Brad McDevitt, and Jeremy McHugh. Ed Bourelle is responsible for the cartography, which is top-notch. The remaining artwork is of passable quality, but a bit bland in places.The interior body font text is of modest size, with close line and paragraph spacing. Generally, the use of space if better than average for MEG products. The layout is clean, and uses the "computerized" look of Dragonstar products.A Deeper Look(Warning: This section contains spoilers to the adventure.)Heart of the Machine is an event-driven adventure with some site-based sections.The adventure takes place on a backwater planet called Drelga, and much of the action takes place in the starport city of Drelandan. The adventure has provisions to have PCs be locals or travelers.The book is split roughly into introduction, background, events of the adventure, and game statistics material.The introductory section is brief, and contains an overview of the adventure and the background behind it, as well as plot hooks for involving either natives or visitors.The background sections describing the background and details of the planet and city takes up a whole 18 of the adventure's 64 pages. The city section focuses on establishments that the players are likely to visit, as well as providing rumors that they can find in various locations that relate to the adventure itself.There are three sections related to the events of the adventure itself. The adventure makes use of the "theme boxes", an innovation first used by Thunderhead Games before they merged with Mystic Eye Games. The theme boxes provides variations that you can insert into the adventure to better fit the competencies of the party. While these are generally a great boon to the adventure, I did catch an error in one of them: in one encounter designed to be for a tougher party, the theme box states that the modified encounter is EL5, where, in fact, the base encounter is EL5.The first part of the adventure gets the players involved. The PCs are stopped by a man pleading for help, alleging that he has seen a kidnaping. Just then, a couple of thugs round the corner and claim that the man owes them money, and that his claims are false. The adventure is rather flexible from here on, as regardless of what they do, the party is marked by the gang, who will attack them later.As they players investigate, they should stumble on a plot by a local gang in league with a member of a new alien race to kidnap locals and itinerants in a plot to turn them into soulmech slaves. There is one potential plot bottleneck between the second and third parts in that the party has to find and examine a specific data chip to find directions to the final encounter area/site. Fortunately, this is a small enough problem that the GM should be able to plot around it.The first two appendices in the back provide game statistics for characters and equipment used in the adventure. The first appendix has the statistics for new game material, such as a new creature (the marbuzi, the sinister race of the villain of the adventure), new spells, magic items, robots, and vehicles.The second appendix contains character statistics, including stock and specific NPCs opposing the players, and pregenerated statistics for a party of 4th level PCs.A third appendix contains three player handouts. There is no statement of permission to photocopy, which would have been nice if the only place you have to make copies is staffed by "copyright bullies."A fourth and final appendix provides plot hooks/adventure ideas for the GM to use other locations in the port city for other adventures.ConclusionHeart of the Machine is a fairly simple and well put-together adventure. Though it is not as ambitious as MEG's Raw Recruits, it lacks some of the aggravating mistakes and logical holes of that adventure.The actual adventure itself seem somewhat short, so you will probably get the most use out of the adventure if you run other adventures on the planet of Drelga.Overall Grade: B-Alan D. Kohler</blockquote>

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