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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 2009820" data-attributes="member: 172">Raw RecruitsRaw 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 LookRaw 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. ConclusionRaw 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</blockquote>

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