Stargate Living Gods
Every great series needs its nemesis. For SG-1 and the people of Stargate Command it is the System Lords. They are ancient creatures that take human hosts. They are smart, they have better technology, and they cannot seem to defeat the little old humans. This book tells all about the System Lords and gives great information on their rise to power, the different ones they are, as well as rules for creating them.
Licing gods is the third of the five books in the Stargate Line. It is one hundred and seventy six pages and the layout is pretty much like the rest of the series. It is soft bound book but is full color with a lot of good pictures from the show and well positioned tables. The team of writers and developers obviously did a lot of research with the show and this has really paid off.
The book starts with a good introduction and then the time line of the System Lords dating all the way back to over fifty million years ago. It really does a great job of expanding on what people have learned from the series and bringing it together with go thought and detail. Then the stats and backgrounds of many of the system Lords are given. There are about eighteen system lords defined in her like Apophis, Kali, Nirrti, And Yu. They have important planets and underlings also described. This information is very good making it easy to use any of these evil and vile creatures as the main bad guy for an adventure, a season arc, or even for an entire campaign.
The book then moves on to more general and player oriented information like new alien specialties, new near human races to use, a few classes, some feats and skills. One of the nice additions in the inclusion of the Unas the original hosts of the System Lords.
The Last section deals with the mechanics of the system lords and also how to play one. There is some great detail her on what it might be like and what their lives are like. Being a god to their people gives them a great confidence and arrogance. This trait is their big weakness. There are six prestige classes designed just for the System Lords. They are named to make them easy to figure out what type of System Lord would get the class. They are Conqueror, Eternal, Manipulator, Mentor, Predator, and Tyrant. This last section on the System Lords is really the highlight for me. Portraying these very non human creatures can be tough and the information here is essential.
Living Gods is a great addition to the Stargate line. It takes the enemies of the show for the past eight years and makes them easy to use and gives lots of information for adventure ideas. AEG has really done a fine job with the Stargate line and now that they are done with publishing books for the line it is a good time for fans of the show and the game to pick these books up.
