John Cooper
Explorer
Space and Steel
By Michael McMullan
7 Mile Studios
47-page PDF, $2.51 (also available in print for $8.00)
I suppose I should start this off by stating this is not a playtest review.
Space and Steel is a standalone game system. Within its 47 pages (which includes the front and back covers, title page, and page of dedications), it has everything you'll need to run RPG game encounters of the type seen in the pages of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" series, Jack Vance's space operas, or pretty much any "sword-and-science-fiction" genre campaign. However, given the low page count, it's no real surprise that this is all very bare-bones material, and the GM will need to do some serious fleshing out of his game world (or, actually, I suppose "game universe" is a better term).
The cover art is simply phenomenal for a PDF. It consists of a collage painting of several humans and human-like aliens, some bearing facial tattoos and one with pale blue skin. One woman wields a sword, and there are various ruins in the background and foreground. While a somewhat "generic" piece, it manages to get across the numerous points of Space and Steel's default campaign world: numerous humanlike races from different worlds, sword technology, the ruins of an ancient civilization, and so on. Altogether, it's a very well-done piece, and I wish I could credit the artist, but the artwork credits are all lumped together so I don't know who specifically did the piece (all of the artwork in the PDF is from Paul Daly, Team Frog Studios, and OtherWorldly Art Portfolio). In any case, it's a striking piece.
The interior artwork is all black-and-white, consisting of 24 separate pieces, although some of these (small panels at the tops of the first page of each new chapter) are pieces of larger wholes that appear elsewhere in the PDF. These are also uniformly well-done, and I'd have to say that the artwork overall is of just about the highest quality I've seen in a PDF, where there isn't always a large budget for artwork. In any case, 5 of the illustrations are full-page pieces, and these at least are signed by Paul Daly (except for the one on page 34), so I can give proper credit where credit is due - he does a very nice job on layout, given that these are all collages as well (again, except for page 34). I wouldn't be surprised if Paul has some comic book experience.
Space and Steel is laid out as follows:
The Health system is a bit different from d20; while "Health" is pretty much directly equivalent to "hit points," in Space and Steel everybody's effectively got 8 hit points - that is, each character has 8 levels of Health (the exception is for the "mooks" - minor NPCs - who only have 4 Health levels, the easier to overcome them), and weapons deal a standard number of Health points: a single points for your fists, 2 points for a knife, 5 points for a blaster, and so on. It's a very streamlined system, as it does away with a whole lot of stuff that becomes unnecessary, like "character levels," "Hit Dice," "hit points," and so on. It does strike me, though, that with everyone having effectively "8 hit points," combat in Space and Steel is going to be somewhat short, and I foresee a somewhat high mortality rate. (Of course, just because you're hit doesn't necessarily mean that you lose one or more levels of Health, as you can still roll against your Physique to see if you take damage - so those who spend a lot of Attribute points on Physique probably won't be losing a whole lot of Health points.)
Getting back to the 2d10 resolution system, every time you roll for an action, you assign "high" and "low" to "Action Die" and "Support Die" - so either your Action Die is the lowest number rolled on the 2d10 and the Support Die is the highest number rolled, or vice versa. Again, you're trying to roll low to succeed, but sometimes it's more important to just get the lowest number for your Action Die, and sometimes (if it's likely that you'll succeed anyway), it's better to get a better roll on your Support Die (so that when you succeed, you do so really well - there's a chart that shows the differing levels of success and failure). It's a concept that it took me awhile to wrap my brain around, but I think I get it now, and I'm sure after playing the game a bit it'll become second nature.
The short synopsis of the default campaign is that the Citun Empire, which had conquered a thousand worlds and been kidnapping people from other worlds (including Earth, which explains why there are so many Earth humans on all of these other planets) for hundreds of thousands of years, suddenly crumbled. (Why? That's for the GM to decide - Michael provides three possible explanations for you to use, or you can create your own explanation.) Now, the various slave races are free to do as they wish, and as expected, the power vacuum makes for a lot of potential conflict. In the limited space, there isn't a whole lot of background information on which to base the campaign, but I suspect that many people who purchase Space and Steel will abandon the default campaign completely and run their own campaign - I know if I were to run a game, I'd probably try out the rules to create something more similar to Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" stories anyway.
The biggest problem with Space and Steel is that is seems to have been published without the proper amount of polish. This is evident in several ways. First and foremost is the proofreading and editing, which is somewhat lacking. There are numerous places where punctuation is being misused, the wrong word is used (like "spend" instead of "spent," "passed" instead of "past," "lead" instead of "led," "daring do" instead of "derring-do," "great" instead of "greet"), and Michael often switches between a single subject ("you" or "the character") and a plural subject ("they," "their") in mid-sentence. He also could have used a little tightening up on some of his game mechanics; for example, while character creation is done with point buy, I still am unsure whether you get to spend 21 or 24 points on Attributes, as the rule on page 15 states unequivocally that it's 24 points, yet in both of his examples he spend only 21 points. Likewise, I'm a little unclear on how the healing system works. Like I mentioned, everyone has 8 levels of Health, and as you take what in d20 would be "hit point damage," in Space and Steel you lose Health levels. As you lose levels in Health, you accumulate Difficulty Modifiers making it harder for you to succeed at your actions. As expected, the modifiers get worse the more levels of Health you lose. However, the Healing rules state that you have to gain back the lost Health levels in the order you received them, so you have to heal level 1 before healing level 2, and level 2 before level 3, and so on. That's where Michael loses me. If I've lost, say 6 Health levels, then I have a Difficulty Modifier of -2. Assuming I'm without medical treatment, it'll take me 12 hours to restore Health Level 1. But what does that get me? I should still be at a -2 DM penalty for having lost 6 levels. As written, it seems like I'm stuck at "lost level 6" while I heal up levels 1-2 (no DM), then levels 3-4 (DM -1), then levels 5-6 (DM -2), and then suddenly - bang, presto! - I'm back all the way up to no Difficulty Modifier. It seems like I should be healing my way "back up the list" from a DM of -2, then to DM -1, and finally back to no DM at all.
In any case, as always, I provided the list of errors noted to the publisher, so hopefully Michael can tweak Space and Steel a bit to polish up the rough spots.
Oh, one other thing I wanted to point out: apparently Michael is a Firefly fan, as one of his sample PCs (in the character creation chapter) is a woman who's the chief engineer on a salvaged trade ship that has little in the way of spare parts, and must be constantly patched together. The PC's name is "Jewel." (For those not in on the joke, actress Jewel Staite plays Kaylee, the engineer of the Firefly-class cargo ship Serenity on Joss Whedon's ill-fated TV sci-fi/western, Firefly.) Also, one of the figures in the full-page artwork on page 43 bears a strong resemblance to Zoe from the same TV show, as played by Gina Torres. Coincidence? You be the judge.
Space and Steel is a simple little game that gives you everything you need to create a space adventure campaign. It's probably geared more towards a one-shot or series of short adventures (although there's certainly nothing to stop you from running a lengthy, complex campaign with it); given that the rules can be read in a very short time and character creation is so easy, I can see a lot of people trying it out for a night's session just as a change of pace. It's a little rough in places at the moment, so I'm going to go with a fairly high "3 (Average)" for now. Still, at the price, it's a real steal.
By Michael McMullan
7 Mile Studios
47-page PDF, $2.51 (also available in print for $8.00)
I suppose I should start this off by stating this is not a playtest review.
Space and Steel is a standalone game system. Within its 47 pages (which includes the front and back covers, title page, and page of dedications), it has everything you'll need to run RPG game encounters of the type seen in the pages of Edgar Rice Burroughs' "John Carter of Mars" series, Jack Vance's space operas, or pretty much any "sword-and-science-fiction" genre campaign. However, given the low page count, it's no real surprise that this is all very bare-bones material, and the GM will need to do some serious fleshing out of his game world (or, actually, I suppose "game universe" is a better term).
The cover art is simply phenomenal for a PDF. It consists of a collage painting of several humans and human-like aliens, some bearing facial tattoos and one with pale blue skin. One woman wields a sword, and there are various ruins in the background and foreground. While a somewhat "generic" piece, it manages to get across the numerous points of Space and Steel's default campaign world: numerous humanlike races from different worlds, sword technology, the ruins of an ancient civilization, and so on. Altogether, it's a very well-done piece, and I wish I could credit the artist, but the artwork credits are all lumped together so I don't know who specifically did the piece (all of the artwork in the PDF is from Paul Daly, Team Frog Studios, and OtherWorldly Art Portfolio). In any case, it's a striking piece.
The interior artwork is all black-and-white, consisting of 24 separate pieces, although some of these (small panels at the tops of the first page of each new chapter) are pieces of larger wholes that appear elsewhere in the PDF. These are also uniformly well-done, and I'd have to say that the artwork overall is of just about the highest quality I've seen in a PDF, where there isn't always a large budget for artwork. In any case, 5 of the illustrations are full-page pieces, and these at least are signed by Paul Daly (except for the one on page 34), so I can give proper credit where credit is due - he does a very nice job on layout, given that these are all collages as well (again, except for page 34). I wouldn't be surprised if Paul has some comic book experience.
Space and Steel is laid out as follows:
- The Atavis Affair! - Subtitled "An Elaine Marvel Adventure," this is a short (3-page) piece of fiction set in the Space and Steel game world
- Introduction - 2 pages devoted to Michael's thoughts and inspirations as he created the game, a description of roleplaying games, and some final thoughts
- Chapter One: Setting - A brief history of the rise and fall of the Citun Empire; brief descriptions of the planets Citun and Atavis, Hylan (an asteroid city), and the Council of Free Planets (4 loosely united worlds); and a page devoted to transportation, time, and communication between worlds
- Chapter Two: Character Creation - Allocating points to Attributes and Traits (with descriptions of each); rules on creating new Traits; Health (the system used in place of hit points); Character Backgrounds; and 2 examples of character creation
- Chapter Three: Systems - The combat/task resolution system (involving 2 d10s); Degrees of Success/Failure; Contested Actions; Health Levels (including death and healing); Weapons and Armor; Advanced Equipment; General Difficulty Modifiers; 2 combat examples and an example of mental combat
- Chapter Four: Adventures in Space - 3 possible explanations as to what happened to the Citun; some ideas on adventures in each of the planets mentioned in Chapter One; Ship statistics and combat; and Character Advancement
The Health system is a bit different from d20; while "Health" is pretty much directly equivalent to "hit points," in Space and Steel everybody's effectively got 8 hit points - that is, each character has 8 levels of Health (the exception is for the "mooks" - minor NPCs - who only have 4 Health levels, the easier to overcome them), and weapons deal a standard number of Health points: a single points for your fists, 2 points for a knife, 5 points for a blaster, and so on. It's a very streamlined system, as it does away with a whole lot of stuff that becomes unnecessary, like "character levels," "Hit Dice," "hit points," and so on. It does strike me, though, that with everyone having effectively "8 hit points," combat in Space and Steel is going to be somewhat short, and I foresee a somewhat high mortality rate. (Of course, just because you're hit doesn't necessarily mean that you lose one or more levels of Health, as you can still roll against your Physique to see if you take damage - so those who spend a lot of Attribute points on Physique probably won't be losing a whole lot of Health points.)
Getting back to the 2d10 resolution system, every time you roll for an action, you assign "high" and "low" to "Action Die" and "Support Die" - so either your Action Die is the lowest number rolled on the 2d10 and the Support Die is the highest number rolled, or vice versa. Again, you're trying to roll low to succeed, but sometimes it's more important to just get the lowest number for your Action Die, and sometimes (if it's likely that you'll succeed anyway), it's better to get a better roll on your Support Die (so that when you succeed, you do so really well - there's a chart that shows the differing levels of success and failure). It's a concept that it took me awhile to wrap my brain around, but I think I get it now, and I'm sure after playing the game a bit it'll become second nature.
The short synopsis of the default campaign is that the Citun Empire, which had conquered a thousand worlds and been kidnapping people from other worlds (including Earth, which explains why there are so many Earth humans on all of these other planets) for hundreds of thousands of years, suddenly crumbled. (Why? That's for the GM to decide - Michael provides three possible explanations for you to use, or you can create your own explanation.) Now, the various slave races are free to do as they wish, and as expected, the power vacuum makes for a lot of potential conflict. In the limited space, there isn't a whole lot of background information on which to base the campaign, but I suspect that many people who purchase Space and Steel will abandon the default campaign completely and run their own campaign - I know if I were to run a game, I'd probably try out the rules to create something more similar to Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Barsoom" stories anyway.
The biggest problem with Space and Steel is that is seems to have been published without the proper amount of polish. This is evident in several ways. First and foremost is the proofreading and editing, which is somewhat lacking. There are numerous places where punctuation is being misused, the wrong word is used (like "spend" instead of "spent," "passed" instead of "past," "lead" instead of "led," "daring do" instead of "derring-do," "great" instead of "greet"), and Michael often switches between a single subject ("you" or "the character") and a plural subject ("they," "their") in mid-sentence. He also could have used a little tightening up on some of his game mechanics; for example, while character creation is done with point buy, I still am unsure whether you get to spend 21 or 24 points on Attributes, as the rule on page 15 states unequivocally that it's 24 points, yet in both of his examples he spend only 21 points. Likewise, I'm a little unclear on how the healing system works. Like I mentioned, everyone has 8 levels of Health, and as you take what in d20 would be "hit point damage," in Space and Steel you lose Health levels. As you lose levels in Health, you accumulate Difficulty Modifiers making it harder for you to succeed at your actions. As expected, the modifiers get worse the more levels of Health you lose. However, the Healing rules state that you have to gain back the lost Health levels in the order you received them, so you have to heal level 1 before healing level 2, and level 2 before level 3, and so on. That's where Michael loses me. If I've lost, say 6 Health levels, then I have a Difficulty Modifier of -2. Assuming I'm without medical treatment, it'll take me 12 hours to restore Health Level 1. But what does that get me? I should still be at a -2 DM penalty for having lost 6 levels. As written, it seems like I'm stuck at "lost level 6" while I heal up levels 1-2 (no DM), then levels 3-4 (DM -1), then levels 5-6 (DM -2), and then suddenly - bang, presto! - I'm back all the way up to no Difficulty Modifier. It seems like I should be healing my way "back up the list" from a DM of -2, then to DM -1, and finally back to no DM at all.
In any case, as always, I provided the list of errors noted to the publisher, so hopefully Michael can tweak Space and Steel a bit to polish up the rough spots.
Oh, one other thing I wanted to point out: apparently Michael is a Firefly fan, as one of his sample PCs (in the character creation chapter) is a woman who's the chief engineer on a salvaged trade ship that has little in the way of spare parts, and must be constantly patched together. The PC's name is "Jewel." (For those not in on the joke, actress Jewel Staite plays Kaylee, the engineer of the Firefly-class cargo ship Serenity on Joss Whedon's ill-fated TV sci-fi/western, Firefly.) Also, one of the figures in the full-page artwork on page 43 bears a strong resemblance to Zoe from the same TV show, as played by Gina Torres. Coincidence? You be the judge.
Space and Steel is a simple little game that gives you everything you need to create a space adventure campaign. It's probably geared more towards a one-shot or series of short adventures (although there's certainly nothing to stop you from running a lengthy, complex campaign with it); given that the rules can be read in a very short time and character creation is so easy, I can see a lot of people trying it out for a night's session just as a change of pace. It's a little rough in places at the moment, so I'm going to go with a fairly high "3 (Average)" for now. Still, at the price, it's a real steal.
