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Originally Posted by wheloc
Do you know what is ironic? Entitling a song "Ironic" and then not actually singing about anything ironic. Morissette has transcended to a state where she's either a genius or an idiot; she's abandoned the middle ground.
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For some reason this makes me think of Todd Snyder's song about the "alternative" band which took the alternate path of not playing at all - alternative to music. They were soon trumped by a band that wouldn't even actually form into a band. Odd thought path, but anyways...
Quote:
Originally Posted by wheloc
Back to the review at hand, so the game is based on a comic? Is the comic any good? What's it about? ...and it doesn't have anything to do with "Space Battleship Yamato", right?
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Starblazer Adventures was a long run of standalone comics that, as the reviewer pointed out, spanned a number of genres (Space Opera, Space Noir (or whatever you'd call it - the Maltese Millennium Falcon?), Fantasy Science Fiction, etc.). There isn't a single cohesive setting to put together from all of them, really - they describe several Eras of their default galaxy/setting to set your adventures in, but honestly that's just window-dressing. Nothing about the game rules is tied to Starblazer Adventures the comics, just some random life path tables (optional, and generic enough that they could fit in almost anything anyway) a few of the later chapters, and the copious amount of art that is scattered on nearly every page - note, the art may be somewhat dated, but it's usually pretty good, if a little corny at times. I guess you could equate it to Traveller (though I have never actually read through that game - I base this on reports and anecdotes related in the forums), in the sense that there's an implied setting, but you wouldn't have any trouble ditching it and putting your game in whatever universe you like, though I imagine that the vagueness and scale of the default setting would allow you to tell any story you liked, really.
This has nothing to do with "Starblazers" the japanimation thing with the Yamato.
What Starblazer Adventures is, to me (I've had the PDF version since ... July of 08 is what the file says - there was an update released for it in November), is a class-act job of taking the guts of Spirit of the Century (read: FATE 3.0 SRD) and dressing it up for good old-fashioned sci-fi adventure. The game could do Buck Rodgers, John Carter, Adam Strange, Star Wars, Battlestar... pretty much all the Sci-Fi/Pulp-Fi I can think of right now, and do them well. There are current projects working on turning FATE 3.0 into a more-streamlined game for harder science fiction (Diaspora), but if you want to play two-fisted starship captains with your trusty alien copilot and your stubborn princess hostage/passenger, then this game will suit you well.
One of the more interesting additions in Starblazer Adventures, I think, is the idea of Fractals (I think that's what they call them) - that you can model anything with the right set of skills/aspects/stunts, and an associated scale. This means your characters could wind up interacting with (leading or running from) vast interstellar corporations, galactic federations, star empires, whatever, all that fit on a short list of descriptions. I have used the scale system slightly differently when I ran a game, but the default in the book is a good starting point.
I guess I should actually sit down and write a review myself (I don't mean to imply any problem with Mike Fischer's review, I just figure if I'm going to think about and write this much stuff about the game, I might as well do it right), but I only really got to run a single session of it - but borrowed a lot of ideas for another FATE game.
Hope some of this helps, and nice review.