This is RPGPundit's review of the Starcluster RPG, 2nd edition, by Clash Bowley, of Flying Mice games.  The review is of the print edition of the game.

What to say about Starcluster? Its awesome.  Its also, as I understand it, the first of Flying Mice's games? I could be wrong about that, but my reading of the book (even in its "2nd edition") tells me that this would seem to be the start of the empire that Clash Bowley has built, of excellent games and game settings all built on the same system.
Sadly, I had initially thought that Starcluster was yet another part of the series that begun with Cold Space and went on with FTL Now; the two RPGs about an alternate reality where humanity started travelling to the stars in the 1940s and developed much faster than in our timeline.
However, Starcluster is not the third part of that series, its not technically connected at all, as its setting information reveals. Instead, its another RPG altogether, again with a Hard Sci-Fi feel to it, but with no story connection to the other two sci-fi games of the company.

If anything, though, I've found I like Starcluster even more cool than CS or FTL Now! Mind you, for very different reasons.  FTL Now and Cold Space are cool for their originality; they take the concept of hard sci-fi and mix it with alternate history, and create a really fascinating world that's familiar but different.

Starcluster is not about being original, its about presenting Traveller for the 21st century.  Not in a stupid sense like Transhuman Space, trying to be all "state of the art"; but in the sense that really matters: updating the fun.

Bear in mind, I have never asked Clash if he's even ever played Traveller in his life. But I'm utterly convinced, from what I see, that not only did the author of Starcluster play Traveller, Starcluster must have started out as his own homebrew Traveller setting, and the system that he uses in all his RPGs was his houseruled Traveller system, that eventually evolved into something very different.

In fact, I'm going to present a theory in this review: looking at the "Starcluster System"; from the very beginning I'd noticed that something wasn't right, wasn't consistent about the way the system functioned. Half the stats were based on 2D6 rolls, the other half on Percentiles.  You gained skills in the form of "+1, +2" bonuses, but they were then converted in turn to percentile bonuses of +5.  The whole thing smelled to me of a game system that had undergone heavy modification.

And now, I think I've figured it out.  Originally, the "starcluster system" was a set of rules based on 2d6 rolls.  That's why the stats, that's why skills are made in "+1 format". Somewhere along the line, our intrepid game designer moved further and further away from the Traveller system, and adapted the game into a percentile game.  The "starcluster system" is a system that totally changed course in mid-stream, and was never fully adapted to its new format.

At least, that's my theory.  And I'm not saying that the Starcluster system is a bad system, though it is slightly awkward, and that awkwardness is, I theorize, due to this strange evolution.

Anyways, on to the book itself: this game will be an instant hit to anyone who's ever liked Traveller. It will likewise be an instant hit to anyone who ever wished he could like traveller, but didn't dig the setting. Or didn't like the outdated aspects of it.

The book's physical makeup is like the other books made by Flying Mice; attractive softcover, nice full colour cover with a number of photoshopped photos that are made to look like real imagery from the setting. Inside, you have a number of black and white illustrations (almost all photoshops of the sake kind). The layout for this, the "second edition" is still slightly sloppy as are most of FM's books, but (perhaps because this is 2e?) it is relatively less bothersome than it was in the case of In Harm's Way; and is mostly down to aesthetic issues, nothing that affects the game itself.

The basic concept of the game is that it is the year 4158 AD, and about 2000 years since the solar system was destroyed by a terrible space disaster. Humanity had detected the danger before hand, and had sent out colony ships deep into space, sleeper ships of different kinds, with the goal of surviving the destruction.  They ended up in the Starcluster, an area of closely-packed stars.  There they resettled, interacting at the same time with races and cultures that were native to the area.

The character creation system is very similar to that of the other Flying Mice game: You roll up or point-buy your stats (again, some of which are generated on a 2-12 scale, others on a percentile), you then work out your "prior history": determining what kind of school you went to, what kind of college, what kind of career. Along the way, you generate skills. Cultures in the Starcluster range in technology from stone age to space age, so there are actually a wide variety of different educational and career tables for each possible tech level.  The tables occupy everything from pages 9-91 of a 268pg book, so you can see that Character creation is in and of itself a very important part of the game; and you can see just how many options there are.  Its like Traveller on overdrive! I love it.

There is a wide variety of races in the Starcluster; as to the ones available for PCs, besides human you have Sastras (which are vaguely monkeylike), Vantors (which are a humanoid water-living race, in the dolphin/whale sense), Tagris (which are catlike humanoids), and finally half-breeds between any of these and humans.

All the standard system stuff is well-accounted for. Combat and skills are the same as usual in Flying Mice games; based on percentile rolls.  There's a great collection of equiptment, and a great section on designing NPCs.
There's lots of material on spaceships and space travel; space travel in the setting is via "jump drives", that take up more objective time in our world while they appear instantaneous to those travelling.

But the meaty part of the book is the setting material. The starcluster is a complicated region filled with a plethora of planets, races, and societies. The main Starcluster book has pretty well all of what you need to get going with this (though I will mention at this point that with my review copy I received a pair of sourcebooks, LITERALLY called the "Big Book O' Tech" and the "Big Book O' Social Stuff"; these books are just like what they sound, The former a big equipment guide with new stuff for equipment, spaceships, a robot design guide, and rules for "uplifted animals"; the other presenting a bunch of new (mostly NON-humanoid) races, stuff about martial arts in the cluster, material about religions in the cluster, material on how a starship is run and operated, and a Space Station setting).
In the main book, we learn about Human relations with other races, and with each other; the League of Sastra, Vantor, Tagris and Humans (the main political body in the cluster); the much smaller and more xenophobic human "Diasporan Community", the Thieves Worlds and their Guild; and the Independent worlds.Beyond the human bits of the Starcluster you have the Tommu (carnivorous nonhumanoid reptiles) space; The Kolusian Sphere (the Kolusian being an aggresive race of underwater creatures that are hostile to the League), The Tumentamenata Polity (a mercantile race of wierd bird/insectlike  floating gasbag creatures), and many others.  You've got the wierd tentacle creatures that no one else understands, the race of aggresive arrogant Griffinlike creatures that are only as big as a housecat, completely incomprehensible invertebrate slime-slugs, and more to go.

There are 17 pages of tables listing full details of every system in the cluster, with its main worlds, their orbit, atmosphere, water coverage, gravity and temperature; followed immediately by another 20 pages of tables of the worlds in question, detailing their tech level, political affiliation, current political status, starport locations and quality, planetary government, and population.
Then we get ten pages of one sample system, detailing its worlds and particulars (the idea being to show this as a guide to how a DM could do it himself). Then we get 5 pages of AWESOME starcharts, showing the planetary routes between the systems, before the appendices and character sheets close the book.

My conclusions:

The Good: This is Traveller the way I like to play it. I was never a huge fan of the "Imperium" setting; The Cluster seems WAY more interesting to me. Its got that great quality that Traveller has, of more worlds to explore than you ever possibly could in a single campaign, and a lot of space to create your own little region within the cluster for your campaign, plus a lot of social material if you want to run a campaign in the heart of things.

The Bad: Well, the system is still a bit awkward. There's nothing wrong with it as such, other than what I've already mentioned in my review of In Harm's Way.  Its mostly a question of feeling like it has some un-necessary steps, all that converting a "+1 skill" into a percentage value.  Also, the layout is a little more amateur than would be ideal, but in this case nothing that is actually detrimental to the game's playability.

The Ugly: Nothing particularly ugly here, except maybe the monkeywomen.

If you want a great relatively "hard" sci-fi game with a fascinating setting with a shitload of material in the book, you can't go wrong with this book.

RPGPundit
 

You came remarkably close, Pundit. StarCluster was not by homebrew Trav setting, nor were the mechanics my Trav system, but Traveller was my second game, purchased right after I'd recieved D&D as a gift, and before I'd ever played D&D. I loved Traveller immediately, but could seldome get my group to play it - or anything else besides D&D. After a few scattered sessions, I put it away and never read it for 20 years.

In the meantime I bought Ringworld, and fell in love again - and again couldn't get my group to play more than a few token sessions. StarCluster is the love child of the two, along with small but significant contributions from SPI's Universe. I began working on it in 1998, and my new group loved it. It was my first game, released in 2001. It was organized into several small books - sound familiar? It was harshly handled - deservedly - by critics, but it sold moderately well. I put a lot of effort into fixing it over the next few years. I released StarCluster 2 in 2004, and it took off.

I had always thought that Ringworld had influenced me more than Traveller, but sometime after I released StarCluster 2, I picked up my little black books for the first time in decades, and was amazed at how much Traveller had influenced what I had done. Even some of the names of my homebrew Trav star systems had been remembered somehow and been transferred. It had apparently lodged very deeply in my brain and brewed there slowly.

The stat ranges are a deliberate design decision, though, not a holdover from Trav. It facilitates some things I like to do. They bug you, I know.

-clash

The irregularity in their ranges (some are 2-12, some are percentile) is what bugs me. Its a little TOO "old school" for my tastes, and I never even liked it back when it was old school.

RPGPundit

Thing is, the physical (2-12) stats are percentiles. They're the percentile chances the character can perform a difficult unskilled task based on that attribute. They are just generated using 2d6. I could have used percentiles and a lookup table just as well, but 2d6 gave me the range I was looking for more easily. LUCK/PSI isn't an attribute at all, as it's a limited resource, though it's generated with a percentile roll - same with RANK. The real anomaly is IQ. I made IQ real-world IQ because players would always ask me "I have an Intelligence of 10. How smart is that? I mean what's that in real IQ?" and I couldn't answer them - the relationship isn't linear.

Here you go, Pundit!

IQ change to 2-15 scale - subtract 50 from IQ, divide by 10, cap at 15. Derived stat: Intelligence. - There will be a new Attribute, Intelligence, derived from SC's IQ. The formula for Intelligence is (IQ-50)/10, with a cap at 15. This puts Intelligence on the same scale as the other attributes.


-clash

Anyway - I thought I said this, but in re-reading I see I didn't - another excellent review, Pundit! You have an eye for getting what a game is all about - mine anyway!

-clash

We like very similar things in our RPGs.

RPGPundit

True!

-clash

Oh! Pundit! Were you going to review the Big Books?

-clash

At the moment, my policy is like this:

1. Top priority to RPGs I get in print format.

2. Then to RPGs I get in PDF.

3. Then to supplements (in print over PDF, I suppose).

This is a practical measure to make sure I don't end up doing a hundred reviews for one game line while everyone else is stuck waiting.
On a practical level, though, it means I might never be able to get to the supplements.  Let me just say here, though, that both seem really worthwhile, especially the Social one (for me, the stuff on droids and uplifted animals in the tech one might make it a perfect choice for others).

RPGPundit

OK! I wasn't sure what your policies might be, and thought I'd ask.

Thanks!

-clash

Yeah; let me note I really appreciate the inclusion of the sourcebooks; I hope you weren't counting that they'd get the review side-by-side with the mainbook. I'll try my best to get them reviewed eventually; but I figure you included them more as a favour to me than anything else.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditYeah; let me note I really appreciate the inclusion of the sourcebooks; I hope you weren't counting that they'd get the review side-by-side with the mainbook. I'll try my best to get them reviewed eventually; but I figure you included them more as a favour to me than anything else.

RPGPundit

No problemo - I sent them along for you. When and if you can review them, that's great, but getting them to you was the primary focus.

-clash