Raw Recruits

[Messageboard Golem]

Join the crew of the Evarstanza, a massive carrier converted to be the ultimate exploring vessel, and seek adventure.

Raw Recruits is the first in our licensed Dragonstar adventure series and is designed to take four to six player characters from first to fourth level.

In this campaign adventure series your characters can play the part of a newly formed unit of explorers aboard the Evarstanza. Built and commanded by the Gold Dragonkin Mercucio, the mighty ship sets out on a series of adventures in the Rimward Barrens. Strange planets, haunted factories, overrun freighters, experimental labs, pirate attacks; all of these can be found in these pages.

Each of the separate key adventures and the numerous Interludes (short encounters) in this book can be played as part of the ongoing plot as part of the Evarstanzas crew or each can be broken out and run separately with no connection. The choice is up to you.

 

[GameWyrd]

I’m not enamoured with pre-written adventures. You’ve heard me say that before. I’m not keen on packaged adventures because they tend to be inflexible and linear. If we’re lucky then they’re thinly disguised dungeon crawls. The pre-written adventures in Raw Recruits are not much better. Raw Recruits isn’t a just a single pre-written scenario, it is largely composed of them. The whole is fair greater than the sum of its parts.

This review isn’t going to go greatly into the details of the adventures but play safe and assume there are spoilers.

Dragonstar is a Sci-Fi campaign setting from Fantasy Flight Games. It’s a nice blend of science-fiction and traditional D&D fantasy. Raw Recruits uses the Dragonstar setting, requires the Starfarer’s Handbook but it isn’t a Fantasy Flight product. Mystic Eye Games are the d20 company behind Raw Recruits and the book is the only example of product licensing I can think of its league.

The licensing deal is a success. I don’t keep up with Fantasy Flight Games’ products. I’m not on their review list and their books arrive on the shores of the British Isles in dribs and drabs only. I didn’t have a copy of the Starfarer’s Handbook. I do keep up with Mystic Eye Games’ products and their distributor Osseum seems to have recently secured itself as the strongest transatlantic link. Letting another publisher do something with the Dragonstar license was a good move by Fantasy Flight, it broadens the would-be player base at a stroke. Letting another publisher in an entirely different distribution network do something with the Dragonstar license was a critical hit.

I flicked through Raw Recruits when it arrived. I skim first, read later. The skimming was enough to persuade me that it wouldn’t be remiss to splash out and buy myself a copy of the Starfarer’s Handbook rather than simply borrow a copy. Chalk up another success for the licensing deal and a good first impression from Raw Recruits.

The first 16 of the 160 pages are in colour. The change in text density between colour and standard print is striking. The text density decreases again at the end of the book and once more at the index. I started off holding the book nice and close so I could read it. Towards the end of the book I’m sure I could have placed entire rows of text from the introduction in the white space between the lines there. The colour section introduces the background to the campaign and then the crew of the spaceship on which the story is supposed to be set. The Everstanza is a nice looking ship. The smaller vessel that the PCs get to take out under their own control, the Midnight Angel, is too Star Trek. I don’t think it’s a silly point to make. If you’re going for an alternative sci-fi adventure then bend over backwards to make sure your ships don’t have a disk shape up front and then a two-pronged tail with engine shapes on either side. Just don’t. The good news is that each ship has a set of floorplans. The Everstanza has colour plates inside the front and back covers showing all the different levels and shields. The cartography throughout the book is good; not simply with the layouts of the spaceships but of the various buildings the characters are likely (read: will) end up exploring.

The book contains four adventures and they will take a group of four to six characters from first level to sixth. Even seventh, they say. I’d be alarmed at that. Let’s call that sixth to maybe seventh range at 19,000 XP. That’s over 110 XP per page, including the index, introduction, advert, blank notes page and Open Gaming License. You’ll get 220 XP for reading the OGL in this case. It’s about 4750 XP per adventure. I’m not all that worried though. Not that worried. One of Raw Recruit’s best selling points is that it’s more than four scenarios strung together. There are encounters in the book designed so that they can be put into play between the adventures. They’re "interludes" to use the phrase that readers of Mystic Eye’s partner Thunderhead Games will already be familiar with. These interludes really are just short encounters, rarely more than half a page of notes on their own but they do sometimes chain together into something bigger. I think they’re great. I wish there were more of them. I think there should have been more of them.

My ideal published campaign would be a book that presents sets of interesting people, their ambitions, how they’re going to go about reaching their targets and how they’ll respond and act to certain triggers. The PCs then get to come in and mix it all about. It’s the player characters who become the focus of the story and their actions or inactions affect the plot hugely. Raw Recruit’s makes a start down that idealised path of mine. There is a set up; a renegade officer of the ISPD has made off with the plans to build a powerful weapon. This renegade drow has made powerful enemies along the way but he’s virtually completed the device, the Dead Cannon, and is ready to sell it to the highest bidder. It’s not a simple matter of hunting this renegade down either; the PCs initially believe themselves to be exploring the frontier of the galaxy and not hunting a dangerous and powerful killer. There’s plenty of scope for surprises and betrayal. The groups involved are mentioned, key figures pointed out. It’s a start but it could be better. The important thing here is that the structure for an intelligent game is in place. The GM can use Raw Recruits as a handy guide. There is time and plenty of space available to put in as many encounters as needed. In fact, the GM need to run the adventures from Raw Recruits once it becomes clear that the players are willingly chasing a lead that will play into the hands of the plot.

The reverse is true. If you want to divorce the adventures in Raw Recruits from the backbone plot, you can. There are notes at the start of each for what would be required to run the adventure as a standalone. Little paragraphs like that add greatly to the book’s value for money. Similar chapters give advice on how to scale the difficulties to suit your player characters’ strengths better.

I like to say that if the first plot hole doesn’t come quickly then it’s not going to come at all. The Everstanza’s kindly captain put together a team of experts, known as the Alpha team, to try and thwart the renegade drow. The Alpha team failed on the first attempt. They all died. The captain’s response was to put together another team – the players. First level characters hired to succeed where the Alpha team failed. It’s right to say that the Everstanza’s dragonkin captain should have no concept of "first level" but surely he’s able to tell an experienced person from rookie? I must admit though, this must be one of the most common calls for the suspension of disbelief in any role-playing game so I’m not going to linger on this point for long. All it would take is an introduction where one of the players pitches the experience of the party above what it really is.

Raw Recruits is an easy book to pick up and get into. The layout uses two columns of text, a solid border all the way around the edges of the two-page spread, sections, game mechanics and notes are easy to find. The book uses black background boxes with white text to mark snippets of text that could be read out to the players. In an adventure set in space it is just about possible to get away with so much black background and it certainly does make these snippets easy to find. I wouldn’t read any of them though. Generally these GM friendly bites of flavour and role-playing are good but they use the word "you" too often. It’s easy to use "you" or "your" too often; they really shouldn’t be used at all. Here’s a particularly damning example of what could be read after a successful Search check. "After noticing small cracks in the wall, you find a tiny flush button at about waist height. When you push it, the concealed door slides into the wall, revealing a small room filed with electronic panels and sensors." My gosh; players I know would be throwing things at me if I decided their characters had started pushing strange buttons as a result of a Search check. It’s worth repeating that generally these bits of flavour text are much better than that. It’s also probably fair to say that if you’re a GM who likes to get into flavour heavy descriptions and wonderfully rich non-playing characters then you’re not likely to be reading these boxes in the first place.

Raw Recruits is successful as a whole. Each part of the book is adequate by itself but when it all comes together the result is something much better. Pages of NPC stats are average but when they’re there so you have names, quick descriptions and sometimes histories as well as stats for lots of NPCs in the spaceship you’re basing a campaign around then they’re more useful than just average. New magic spells and monsters are fair enough but they become twice as valuable if they’re presented as part of a campaign. Pre-written adventures rarely entertain me but when they’re down in black and white along with nicely drawn maps and can be used whenever appropriate in a wider game then their worth increases.

Raw Recruits is probably more expensive than most packaged scenarios. The book costs US$24.99. Raw Recruits isn’t a simple packaged scenario though. It is a great way to introduce players and even GMs to Dragonstar and it’s a campaign likely to entertain gamers for a while.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Psion]

Raw Recruits

Raw Recruits is a licensed adventure book for FFG's Dragonstar science fantasy setting. The book is published by Mystic Eye Games, and is written by Doug Herring, Andrew Thompson, Bret Boyd, Chuck Rice, and Charles Plemmons III. The book contains four adventures plus background information to use the adventures as a mini-campaign.

The adventures herein are designed to take characters from 1st to 6th level.

A First Look

Raw Recruits is a 160 page perfect-bound softcover book priced at $24.99. The first 16 pages of the book are color pages with full color illustrations and a color background.

The cover art by Jhoneil Centeno depicts a half-dragon (doubtlessly Mecurio from the adventures) rebuking a group of crewmen aboard a starship.

The interior artwork is by Alan Dyson, Ed Bourelle, Marcio Fiorito, Chad Sergesketter, and Rob Thomas. The first 16 page section includes nice full color illustrations of central characters in the campaign. The inside covers and the 16 page section also have some very nice deckplans of the major ships used in the campaign. The black and white section of the book has fair to good illustrations, and further cartography in the black and white section is excellent.

The interior text varies wildly in density. In the color section, the interior text is conservatively sized, but the body text is larger in the black and white section, and large linespacing is used. The text in the index is extremely large. Further, in places where stat blocks are used, a large space is used between each, and a blank "notes" page is included near the end. Considering all of this, I was given to wonder if the book could not have been squeezed into 144 pages.

Most disconcerting, I found the layout a little unattractive and difficult to read. The use of large line spacing is not attractive. Worse, the book splits character descriptions from statistic blocks, and variously requires you to refer to statistic blocks at the beginning of the book (for crewmembers of the PC's ship), at the end of the given adventure, or the appendix, and provides no page references to make this task easier. Finally, the use of header text font and size is inconsistent, making it difficult to find some specific information.

A Deeper Look
(This section contains spoilers to secrets in the campaign.)

Raw Recruits includes four adventures for Dragonstar characters. The adventures are nominally designed as a linked campaign, but each also includes notes (including required changes and possible hooks) to allow them to be used as stand-alone adventures.

When used as a campaign, the nominal scenario is that the characters are an expeditionary team for a ship called the Evarstanza. The Evarstanza is a carrier converted to do exploratory work. The carrier is owned by a gold half-dragon named Mercurio whose life longing is to do exploratory work. Unbeknownst to the PCs, Mercurio has a deeper agenda. In order to get the starcaster for his ship, he had to agree to chase down a criminal operating in the frontier who is designing a device called the dead cannon, which kills the target and reanimates it as a zombie in a single shot.

The first section of the book (including all of the color section) includes details on the background of the campaign, the Evarstanza, and major characters in the crew. The character descriptions are listed separately from the statistic blocks, and one of the statistic blocks (a pilot that is likely to be used in two adventures if the players don't have enough pilots) is missing entirely.

The deckplans and details of the Evarstanza and the two explorer class ships are nicely done, and could potentially be used outside of the Raw Recruits campaign.

The campaign actually has two potential rivals/nemeses to the players. Shen is an ex-ISPD Drow who first conceived trying to mass produce the dead cannon, and the k-syndicate is a criminal syndicate that is related to the church of the destroyer.

The first adventure, Aftermath, has the PCs exploring Komanis, a world ravaged by magical storms which prevented an imperial invasion, but devastated the local populace. Komanis is the first link in the Dead Cannon campaign, as an essential component for the dead cannon can only be found here.

In Aftermath, the characters explore a vaguely described "mysterious power reading". While doing so, the players are assaulted by formians by are saved by the asharin, the remnants of the planet's dominant native species. If the PCs are in a helpful mood, they can help the asharin salvage weapons from an old imperil warship and prevail against the formians.

The major potential problem in Aftermath is that at one point, the adventure assumes that the relatively primitive asharin disarm the PCs and assumes that the players are going to tolerate this. I can really see a stubborn or non-diplomatic player throwing the adventure off the tracks here in refusing to knuckle under to a relatively primitive race.

The second adventure is Ancient Factory. The characters explore an automated mithril refinery controlled by a strange soulmech. The refinery is in an asteroid belt; the adventure uses the "asteroids that are a hazard to navigation" yarn.

The soulmech tries to kill the PCs using various mechanisms at its disposal while in the refinery, making a rogue or mechanist essential. There are a few problems with this adventure. The adventure assumes that a slowly draining air lock with be a tense and thrilling hazard in the campaign. However, the airlock in question is the one that the characters use to enter from the vacuum of space, so the chances that the PCs will be caught by this trap is just about zero.

This adventure provides a subplot in the form of a card game, some rumors, and some interpersonal conflicts between NPCs that can be used if you are using the Evarstanza. Unfortunately, there are aspects of this subplot that simply do not make sense. For example, one part of the rumor that is supposed to cause the commotion involves one character in the rumor that had never been mentioned as part of the rumor before as if that NPC had been part of it all along, and the rumor involves a halfling impregnated by a human (which is a strange rumor indeed since there is nothing in the d20 system or Dragonstar background to suggest such a coupling is possible.) If you want to use this subplot, it will likely require some GM jimmying to get it to work.

The third adventure is potentially one of the best of the book. Freighter 237 has the players investigating a missing freighter. Reports of a crewman indicate that the freighter has been overrun by zombies; this makes Mercurio suspect that the dead cannon is involved. It really is not the dead cannon, but an unusual new creature introduced in the book. However, Mercurio is not the only one whose attention is attracted by the freighter. Soon, teams sent by Shen and the K-Syndicate arrive on the scene, creating a possible four way battle scenario.

This seems to be the best put together and the most dynamic of the adventures, and should be very easy to adapt to stand-alone adventures. Further, the deckplans of the freighter are nice and could see follow-on use in many campaigns.

The last adventure is entitled The Dead Cannon. If you are using the Evarstanza background, it is in this adventure that Mercurio lets the players in on the true nature of their mission. Using information obtained on the freighter mission, the players discover what they need to know to find Shen, and close in on the labs that he is using to create the dead cannon. Once again, the K-Syndicate gets involved and has attacked the labs themselves. The players will have to track Shen and his associates to a nearby planet, and try to keep Shen from escaping or the K-Syndicate from getting the plans, all while trying to keep their own necks intact. The adventure includes some explorations of the labs and Shen's hideout, as well as some gripping starship battles.

In addition to the four main adventures, six "interludes" are included, basically short adventures/encounters provided for variety, to help PCs get to know the ship and the crew, and to provide them with a little more information.

Conclusion

Raw Recruits is highly usable both as a mini-campaign in the Dragonstar universe for starting characters as well as parsed out as individual adventures. The deckplans and background provided are very nicely done, and even if you do not intend to use the Evarstanza background, you could easily use the deckplans and adventures without the backgrounds, and with or without the Dead Cannon plot in place. Overall, a very nice adventure resource for Dragonstar.

The book does have some shortcomings, however. As mentioned, the layout makes it a little difficult to find some information, and some of the adventures have some conceptual glitches (primarily the first two adventures.) Further, the book really need to reference the page number of statistics blocks to make it easier to navigate this large book.

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[trancejeremy]

Raw Recruits is a Dragonstar adventure Anthology from Mystic Eye Games. For some reason, FFG, the makers of Dragonstar, can't be bothered to put out adventures for it (despite the fact they put out tons of generic mini-adventures), so they licensed it out to Mystic Eye and Thunderhead games.

It's a semi-soft cover book, around 160 pages, and is priced at $24.99. It's a bit pricey for my tastes, but it's much better than some (I think Digital Burn is 160 pages and $35), and it's got a plastic-ish cover and the first 12 or so pages are in color which makes up for the price. I got it on Ebay for $19.

So, about a year after Dragonstar originally came out (the original book), we finally have a 1st level adventure for it (aside from a couple of freebies from the FFG website).

Was it worth the wait? Is it worth the money? Maybe! Depends on what you're looking for.

This is almost sort of a campaign, albeit a mini-one, and the 4 main adventures can be used on their own. The PCs are newly recruited crewmembers of an exploration ship that is due to explore a relatively unknown area of space. There's a bit more to it than that, though the PCs aren't in the know at the begining, so I won't go into it, except to say that whole thing reminds me a lot (a lot!) of the old Star Wars RPG "Darkstryder" campaign.

The ship the PCs are on is a converted carrier which bears a striking resemblance to a can-opener. It really really looks like a can-opener. It's almost something out of Spaceballs, which featured a RV spaceship as well as one shaped like a giant maid with a vaccum cleaner. There are probably a number of other objects that it looks more like than a spaceship. So this can perhaps be something of a sticking point.

The product starts off with a fairly detailed overview of the ship as well as the major NPCs on board. The NPC descriptions are in the color page section, so many have color illustrations. Most the illustrations are pretty good, though one elf lady bears a striking resemblance to Pam Dawber (Mindy from Mork & Mindy). And most of the NPCs are fairly original, though one seems like a rip-off of Star Trek (The guy with the air filter on his face from TNG. Though as if to say this is completely different from him, the NPC here is a while albino woman instead of black man).

Next come some "Interludes", which are meant to be role-playing events between the adventures in the book. Role-playing only, in that there is really no serious combat or anything, just stuff that happens. Very nice, but made me want more.

After that comes the adventures. There are basically 4 of them. They took great care to make sure that you don't have to be using the initial set up in order to use them, they could be used in most Dragonstar campaigns. This was a nice touch, I thought.

The first adventure is a planetary investigation. The PCs are sent to investigate a mysterious signal from a planet thought to be dead. It's fairly interesting, and adds a new race (fairly interesting in concept, but somewhat creepy in appearance. They look sort of like human sized Yodas, even the woman. Ick). This is probably the most original adventure, though it reminds me a bit of the old Star Frontiers Volturnus series (on a much smaller scale).

As a note, it's mentioned that this adventure was designed with certain asumptions in mind, most notably that the PCs will use blasters and lasers. However, with the release of Imperial Supply, players will possibly end up using gauss rifles (or rail guns as they are called in DS), which might alter things a bit and makes things easier. In any event, they seemed to make sure that this was survivable for 1st level characters without being too much of a cake walk.

The second adventure has the PCs investigating an abandoned (mostly) mining factory in an asteroid. This adventure gave me fits. For one, Dragonstar is supposedly set in a fairly realistic setting, there's magic, but otherwise, cosmically, it's like our universe. However, this is set in an 'asteroid' belt, which is incredibly dense. Popular in fiction, completely impossible in real life, not to mention, logically impossible. Think about it - just how many asteroids and such would it take to fill up a volume that big? A whole heck of a lot. Yes, I know you saw it in Star Wars, but Star Wars makes no sense, physically.

For another (and this is a bit of spoiler), in one room of the factory, there is a large amount of plastic explosives stored. The author then says that if the PCs are using torches (as in those with open flames), this will set off the explosives. Argh! One of the whole blood points of plastic explosives is that it only explodes when a detonator is used, it doesn't blow up accidently. It certainly won't blow up the minute someone with a torch enters a room full of it - it only burns, and even then, you'd have to hold it to it to light it. For the room to explode when you enter with an open flame, you'd have to have explosive fumes of some sort in the air. Plastic explosives don't give off fumes, and if they did, surely they would be stored in some sort of container that keeps them in, like say tupperware or the dragonstar equivalent. Bah! Like I said, sorry, this is a bit of a spoiler, but it's a place in which the laws of physics aren't working like they should.

There's also a weird bit sort of love triangle between 3 NPCs on the ship. Love triangles are pretty normal, except in this case it's beween 2 halflings and a human, and the rumor that the human got one of the halflings pregnant.

Most of the rest of the adventure is okay, if something of a cliche in sci-fi rpgs.

The third adventure has the PCs exploring a freighter drifting in deep space, apparently abandoned. That is the premise of just about every science fiction horror movie ever made (with the exception of those on mysteriously abandoned colonies, and Barbarella, which was scary because of Jane Fonda <shudder>). And the adventure pretty much follows those movies - not very original. Fairly competently done, though.

The last adventure is pretty much a final showdown with the bad guy. Though it's not quite that satisfying, since they had never met him before, and in fact, the PCs don't even learn about the whole story-line until the begining of this.

Essentially, they essentially assault a semi-secret base, which is being assaulted by another group as well. This can turn into a 3 way fight as they explore the base looking for the main bad guy. This isn't bad, but much of it is on rails in which the PCs really do little other than just follow along. The bad guy keeps getting away.

They also seem to treat it only like a science fiction adventure, not a science fiction & fantasy adventure. They seem to have forgotten quite a few handy spells, such as raise dead, etc. And this also goes into small things - like the PCs come across some dead crewmembers from an old ship. They can return the possessions, but what about the bodies themselves? Perhaps the families could afford a ressurection spell? So really, you'd think they want to return the remains as well. Little things like that seem to have been overlooking, as well as major things like scrying.

Good points: Lots of text, detailed info on a big starship, 4 fairly entertaining adventures, full of stuff salvageable for future use, index

Bad points: Picture of an elf that looks like Pam Dawber, a bit of rail-roading in places, silly looking starship, occasionally silly names (it is a Mystic Eye Games product, after all), a fair amount of cliches, seems a bit rushed or compressed (the plot is more ambitious than the page count).

Also as a note, the cover illustration is really really odd. Especially one person, whose head is being petted by an apparent elf lady. I have to wonder, just what the heck is thing being petted supposed to be? I could rant about it like Chef does about Dr. Mephisto's companion from South park. But I'll just mention it. Still, it is creepy looking, whatever it is. The half-dragon is the only recognizable NPC (he's Mercucio, the captain of the ship. Not really like the literary Mercucio, though).

I would give this B, which probably translates to a 4 here.

 

[Simon Collins]

Beware! This review contains spoilers.
This is not a playtest review.

Raw Recruits contains adventure material for characters of levels 1 to 6, and is a licensed Dragonstar product by Mystic Eye Games, with permission from Fantasy Flight Games. For those of you who have not come across Dragonstar - its a campaign setting that is quickly, though somewhat unfairly, described as D&D in space.

Raw Recruits is a 160-page softcover product costing $24.99. Though the majority of the book is mono, the first 16 pages and the inside covers are full colour. Margins, font size and white space vary considerably - there are two full white pages for notes at the end, and the font size and line spacing change as the book progresses from good to poor. Art runs mainly from average to good and maps, though a little bland, are functional, with scale and compass direction where appropriate. Writing style is good, and editing is average with occasional but regular errors.

Raw Recruits actually consists of four separate adventures with advice for stringing them together to create a mini-campaign. The mini-campaign has as its focus a large space exploration vessel, the Evarstanza. The ship is owned by Mercucio, a half-dragon leader of the Sevartha Exploration League. Mercucio is looking for a group to go on exploration missions on his ship, offering generous rewards for those who join up...enter the PCs. Well, in fact the PCs have already entered, as the product presumes the PCs are already working for Mercucio and give no guidelines or presentation of the recruitment process other than a short piece of flavour text at the very beginning.

The colour pages at the beginning give a background to Mercucio, the Evarstanza and its crew. Its a shame that the crew's personality descriptions are separated from their stat blocks but the personalities are interesting and described well. The ship and its accompanying map are suitable for use outside the adventures (and outside the Dragonstar setting for that matter).

Six short 'interludes' give the GM some ideas for running life aboard the Evarstanza between the four adventures. These are followed by the stat blocks for the Evarstanza's crew, and then onto the four main adventures.

1. 'Aftermath' is a diplomacy-orientated adventure as the PCs investigate a mysterious power reading from a planet considered "off limits" by the Empire. Its designed for characters of levels 1 to 2 and contains stats for a new race, the Asharin, and advice for scaling the adventure.

2. 'Ancient Factory' takes place in a mithral refinery run by a soulmech. The PCs must brave the dangers of the old refinery. Again there is advice on scaling the adventure, and running it standalone. It is designed for PCs of levels 2 to 4.

3. 'Freighter 237' is designed for PCs of levels 3-5 and cleverly creates an aliens-style atmosphere of suspense and horror as they investigate a derelict spaceship.

4. 'The Dead Cannon' features a more combat-orientated adventure as the PCs attempt to recover a dangerous weapon from a lunar laboratory. This is probably most effective when run as the climax of the previous three adventures but there is still advice to run it standalone.

Appendix 1 offers new monsters and templates from the adventures, whilst appendix 2 has new items, and appendix 3 has new spells. There is a 6-page index which seems unnecessarily long due to the larger font used here.

Conclusion:
A clever set of adventures in that they each concentrate on a different set of player skills - roleplaying, skill use, puzzle solving, and combat & tactics. They can be used standalone but work most effectively as a linked series of adventures, and there is advice for scaling. The adventures themselves are not amazingly original, and do have some oddities (such as a halfling getting pregnant by a human) as well as occasionally being a bit railroaded. However, they should all provide a good basis for an adventure or campaign (with a little work) for Dragonstar, and could be raided for plot ideas for other settings.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer, d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
Dragonstar: Raw Recruits is a mega-adventure for the Dragonstar campaign setting from Mystic Eye Games. It is written by Doug Herring, Andrew Thompson, Bret Boyd, Chuck Rice, and Charles Plemons III, with illustrations by Alan Dyson, Marcio Fiorito, Chad Sergesketter, and Rob Thomas, and featuring the beautiful cartography of Ed Bourelle. It retails for $24.99 and totals 16 full-color and 144 black-and-white pages.

First Blood
Let me begin by saying that I have only a passing familiarity with Dragonstar. I have the Starfarer’s Handbook, but I’ve never really taken an in-depth look at the setting. With that in mind, I’ll open by saying that Raw Recruits sparked my interest enough to make me take a look. I’ll be starting a campaign eventually and this certainly seems like a great adventure to kick things off.

Raw Recruits opens with 16 full-color pages detailing the history, specifications, and crew of the Evarstanza, the massive exploration vessel on which the characters will be serving during the campaign. The vessel and her crew are given excellent treatment here, including some detailed maps (both in this section and on the cover). This is good, because the characters will be spending a lot of time on this ship. Two organizations with which the PCs will become intimately familiar, the Sevartha Exploration League and the K-Syndicate, are also touched on in this section.

From there, the GM is provided with a half-dozen brief encounters designed to promote role-playing and to give the characters some familiarity with the vessel and her crew. This is followed by a more detailed treatment of the major crew members detailed in the 16-page introduction. From there, the rest of the book is devoted to four major adventures, each of which will doubtlessly require from two to four (possibly more) play sessions to complete. During the course of these adventures, the players will investigate a strange power reading from a dead planet, explore an ancient, automated refinery, enter and investigate a derelict freighter, and face terrible danger from a new and deadly threat.

There is plenty of excitement to be had during the course of these adventures. Hidden mysteries, combat encounters, role-playing opportunities, classic sci-fi moments, and elements of horror can all be found herein. The adventures are well written, easy to follow, and are sure to provide hours of fun for both players and GMs. Also introduced are a new race, a handful of new magical items and equipment, and two new spells.

All of the adventures in Raw Recruits can also function as stand-alones, to be inserted into a GMs campaign with a minimum of fuss (but to get the full effect, you really should use the whole setting because there’s so much role-playing opportunity here). Alternate openings are provided to help facilitate those who wish to use them separately.

Critical Hits
One of the most interesting things about Raw Recruits is, in my view, the part of the Evarstanza known as Evartown. Evartown is a huge section of the cargo deck designed to resemble a small town, complete with artificial periods of light and dark and disguised beams and hull platings to enhance the illusion. A half-dozen points of interest are given detail, leaving plenty of room for expansion by the GM.

Evartown is of particular interest to me because many years ago, before role-playing came into vogue, I used to daydream up adventures on a great star-faring vessel that had a similar arrangement. Thus, in a way, this is a dream come true for me. The idea of a small village as part of a larger “city-in-space” (and what is a large spaceship, really?) strikes me as not only very interesting, but remarkably human.

I also like the prelude that proceeds each adventure. From the celebration of the captain’s “Hatching Day” (he is a half-dragon), to the weekly poker game, to just the daily rotuine of shipboard life, the preludes serve to build the role-playing atmosphere that keeps the campaign from seeming like going from one adventure to the next. The idea that there is something in-between adventures seems to be missing from many campaigns and I was glad to see it stressed here. Kudos to the design team for this inclusion.

Critical Misses
If there is anything missing or overlooked in this product, I’m damned if I could find it. The supporting cast are both believable and very well-detailed and several are given illustrations to further the imagery. The adventures are complete, self-contained, and each leads nicely into the next, providing a very linear campaign outline, but still loose enough to permit the GM to slip in a few of his or her own side treks.

Coup de Grace
With a fair amount of Open Game Content (all stat blocks and new goodies) and excellent d20 compliance, this product is a great way to kick off a new Dragonstar campaign. If you’ve been holding off buying the Starfarer’s Handbook because you weren’t sure if you could design adventures for the setting, grab it and Raw Recruits and by the time you play through this mega-adventure, you’ll be well on your way to designing your own. It certainly opened my eyes to the possibilities and has made me excited to be beginning my own Dragonstar campaign. (Playability score is low because much of what is here is for the GM’s eyes only, but rest assured that the players will enjoy it.)

To see the graded evaluation of this product, go to The Critic's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Raw Recruits starts off strong but goes south quickly. The book boasts some fantastic starting interiors of full color illustrations on slick paper with highly packed pages of information that help set the stage for the adventure itself.

The module includes maps for the Evaarstanza, the exploration vessel that the party has joined. It includes maps of the Explore-class ships the Midnight Angel and Evening Star (same map as it’s the same ship), interludes that can be placed between primary missions to help expanded the module beyond its original purpose, and several potentially interlinked adventures.

The players are members of the ship and are working for the half-dragon Mercucio who has a hidden agenda that he will slowly reveal to the players. The only problem is that the reason he needs the characters is that the old crew he had died while investigating this issue. Now either that first crew was really terrible at what they did and Mercucio is no judge of character or they were really good and Mercucio is no judge of character.

The adventures start off at 1st level with Aftermath, a standard exploration mission on the world of Komanis where the party is detecting a power source on this supposed dead world. Excellent use is made of different skills to check for knowledge of the planet and the information varies depending on the skill used. The PCs are dispatched to the planet and get to meet the locals, both friendly and hostile and role-playing has just as much impact as roll playing here. The party even gets to test its mettle against a young dragon, but the advantage of technology should enable even a 1st level party victory.

The section ends with the major NPCs, organizations, and help in determining the experience point awards for the section. These things can help make the small adventure into a much larger experience as the GM can use the motivations and details provided to extend the duration of the adventure well past a single session. The help with the experience points is a little more tricky though as it provides rough guidelines only and two different GMs running Raw Recruits may have one party end at 2nd level and another end at 3rd level. Such is the nature of the beast though.

The good news is that this sets up a fairly good method for the other adventures. The reason why the characters are doing the mission, what happens, and guidelines to help move the plot along. There is a lack of advice on how to scale the adventures themselves though. In some cases its in the front of the adventure and provides brief details like increase X by 1 for every level, in other cases, it’s in the back and provides ideas on how to change the encounters for higher and lower level parties.

For example, Ancient Factory, while relying a bit more on puzzle solving and exploration than hack and slash and role playing, still has a set up that can be used either as part of the Raw Recruits campaign or a separate set up with some reasons why the players would be investigating the factory. Those running the Raw Recruits get a little more benefit though as the adventure includes several bits of information regarding the crew of Evarstanza, which can help bond the players more closely to the crew with card games and background details. This pattern of expanding the crew to tie in closer to the PCs is done in all the sections and provides a tighter weave for GMs capable of playing multiple NPCs. Newer GMs might be a little overwhelmed by the amount of characters and their different backgrounds.

The other adventures, Freighter 237 and The Dead Cannon, continue to use this format. Introduce the party members to the problem, offer alternatives, the adventure, a wrap of including NPCs, and monster stats.

Internal art varies from good to average with fan favorite Marcio Fiorito providing a lot of material as well as Chad Sergesketter, Rob Thomas, Ed Bourelle and Alan Dyson. Maps are crisp and clean but lack a map key often. Fortunately the text clears any issues so this is a non-problem.

Raw Recruits has some flaws. Among those are the terrible changes in layout and the use of justification for the alignment. Whole sentences of one word are not a good thing, especially when it happens often. The layout changes text size often and this makes the book very ugly in some spots. The blank page for notes is also a waste in a product with initial color illustrations on slick paper. Heck, I question MEG’s use of the slick paper. It’s nice to have the credits on two pages but two pages of slick paper? I don’t like it when other companies use a page for intros and another for credits and I certainly like it less when the paper being used is glossy.

It makes this a product with a lot of internal contrasts and makes me wonder not if the product if overpriced, but if it should’ve been a smaller page count with a better layout. The organization is troubled in several places, like putting information on the crew on the slick paper and then their stats latter on, repetition of the same information for no good reason.

Another problem is with the design of the module itself. Even though Dragonstar is a fairly new campaign setting with little published material, especially in the forms of adventures, a module starting off at 1st level probably isn’t the best way to start things. I say this because there are many common, and a few uncommon, races in the Dragonstar setting that are more powerful than standard first level characters. Thankfully there are notes on how to sale the adventure but these are brief snippets instead of detailed recommendations.

The organization needs some serious rework too. For example, Appendix I has new monsters and templates so we get the Dead Cannon Zombie Template, the JggHul, (an insect that creates slaves), and the Infected Host, but the new race, the Asharin, are in the front part of the module without a standard monster block.

The module does provide solid entertainment and will give players a nice taste of the setting. The four adventures can be strung together with some additional background information to make for a wonderful starting campaign. Poor layout and a heavy focus on the campaign setting though, potentially cut a lot of the module out and while still useable as four separate adventures, is not in the same rating as the campaign itself.