RPGPundit Reviews: In Harm's Way: Starcluster

Two of Clash Bowley's more successful games, reviewed previously by myself, were "In Harm's Way", and "Starcluster".  Contrary to what it sounds, the present game being reviewed is not exactly an unlikely melding of the two. Instead, what it does is bring the "In Harm's Way" thematics into the Starcluster universe.

"In Harm's Way" is a roleplaying game of Napoleonic-era naval military adventure.  Starcluster is a very creative sci-fi game of the human race (plus aliens) surviving and colonizing in a distant, heavily populated area of space long after the earth is lost.  Neither of these previous games are necessary to enjoy "In Harm's Way: Starcluster", though of the two you could certainly make better use of Starcluster as a sourcebook and additional material for the present game.  As with most of Clash's games, IHW:Starcluster is compatible with either of the previous games, or most other games in Flying Mice's stable.

IHW:Starcluster is a big game, clocking in at 400 pages plus index and reference sheets in the back. Its a softcover that appears to have some nice binding. The cover is in colour, the interior is entirely black and white, with a combination of diagrams and realist-art of the sort found in most Flying Mice games.

I have to say something about the cover: this is probably the cover I liked least out of any of the Flying Mice games.  Its plain white, with a barely-visible faded outline of a starmap, and then a big red wavy streak through the middle that looks like a huge lipstick smear or something. Pretty artsy-fartsy for a military sci-fi game. The Wench, who is not a gamer, commented that at first glance she figured the game was some kind of soap-opera based game, or a romance theme or something.  I don't know what the idea was really, but the cover is not very impressive.

Fortunately, the interior makes up for that. If you liked the sci-fi of Starcluster, and the military style of IHW, then you're going to really like this book.

As with IHW, the point of the game is to play members of the military forces, in this case not the British or French navies, but of the "SaVaHuTa military", the military forces of the multi-species alliance in the starcluster. To explain in brief; human beings fled Earth (a long time in our future) on slow starships to avoid a cosmic disaster that would destroy the world.  They ended up in the Starcluster, a very densely-populated region of space, with over 500 habitable worlds, and began to settle there. They found there a number of other races, many of which were compatible with humanity (in a few cases literally, in the sense that interbreeding was possible; this due to the apparent intervention of an ancient "seeder" race), and others far less friendly. Over the last long while, humanity has settled and mostly prospered in the cluster, but its a big mess of countless different worlds and cultures and lots of possible conflicts.

Again as with IHW, in this game the "goal" is to win Notice, where your character exceptional service may rise through the military ranks to a position of command.  The Notice system is tried and true from IHW, and makes for a very good method (not unlike Pendragon's "glory" system) for tracking how the character fares in his military career.

There are a variety of possible adventures; characters could serve in the navy, marines, army, planetary state space or ground defense, or a variety of specialties therein.  Possible adventures involve opposing piracy and terrorism within the SaVaHuTa worlds, protecting commerce or the population of worlds from danger, preventing internal instability in the form of mutinies or attempts at "empire building", resolving conflicts between member worlds, stopping slave traders, diplomacy, civil war, natural disasters, and more.  A convenient list of potential adventures (complete with a random table) is provided.

Character creation in IHW:Starcluster is not unlike most of Bowley's other games, where you create your character in a "Traveller-esque" style. First determining attributes (and species), and then through a series of choices and rolls determining your course of studies and early career, gaining new skills as you go along in terms of service in schools or your chosen profession.

A note on species: Apart from humans, the game allows you to play Sastras (a kind of monkey-like humanoid with great climbing skills), Vantors (aquatic humanoids in the dolphin sense, not the fish-sense), or Tagris (large fairly furry humanoids). Since any of these races are apparently biologically compatible with humans, you can also play half-human variants of any of the above.

As with previous games, templates are provided for faster character creation, but a big part of the fun of character creation would be rolling for each term of service and essentially seeing the evolution of your character in his fortune or bad luck. You get starting background skills based on your circumstances of birth, with different categories (like rural, urban, artistic, social, sport, psychological, scientific, medical, wilderness, hunting, criminal, maritime, technical, urban plutocrat, rural plutocrat, urban/rural rich, urban/rural wealthy, urban/rural middle class, urban/rural working class), and the starting skills you receive are modified by the tech level of your place of origin. After that you get additional skills if you went to a college or graduate school (with different kinds of college studies providing different skills). Finally there are skills you get from the service branch your character is from, and from specialist schools within those service branches. This variety guarantees that starting characters will all have significantly unique combinations of skills.

Obviously, in this kind of game military rank is very important, and tables are given for the different ranks, and the added touch of illustrations for the rank insignias for the different service branches. Later on in the book (alongside the suggested Notice awards for a variety of different actions), there are also lists of the different kinds of military awards and decorations a character may receive in the line of duty.

Also as typical with this series of games, there's a ton of different skills (we're not quite talking palladium level of variety here, but pretty close), and in the Starcluster setting there are some psychic powers, which are also chosen as skills.

As in previous games, IHW:Starcluster includes a section on generating NPCs, with a number of random tables for very quick and easy generation of NPC characters.

As with most recent publications of Bowley's games, IHW:Starcluster has the curious quality of working with several different methods of task resolution. The very same stats can be used with each of these different systems for mechanical resolution, and the choice of which you want to use is mostly a question of what type of dice you'd rather be rolling.  The first presented is the StarPerc system, which essentially converts each of the bonuses involved into a percentile value, and resolution is done rolling percentile dice.
Next you have the Starpool system, which converts the skill values into numbers of D20 that you roll in a dice-pool resolution system, where you roll a number of D20 dice and count the number of successes.
Then you have the Star20 dice mechanic, which curiously despite the name involves not a D20 roll, but a roll of 4d6-4, giving a bell-curve value range between 0-20. You add your attribute and skill bonuses to the roll to determine levels of success.

This being a military game, a significant chunk of the book is dedicated to military type equipment: you have a significant listing of armor, weapons, miscellaneous equipment, Unit Resources (supplies that the unit as a whole will receive, varying according to the type and quality of the unit; including things like repairs, quarters, supplies, etc; done in a worksheet-style format that the GM or PCs can utilize). These sections add up to almost 40 pages of the book.

But even more impressive is the section on ships and vehicles. Fans of IHW will recall that a central aspect of that game was its detailed system for naval combat and listings of types of sailing ships of the time. In this Starcluster variant, you get a spectacular listing of starships and vehicles, and highly detailed rules similar to those in IHW covering starship and vehicle combat. The section detailing ships includes diagrams of the vessels and full worksheets of their statistics. There are also full rules for starship construction. The combat rules are very thorough, including rules (and diagrams) for a variety of combat maneuvers and the modifiers they incur. Vehicle rules include air and ground vehicles, with combat rules for each. Altogether, these sections cover about 160 pages of the book.

The setting section of the game covers the history and sometimes complex nature of the Starcluster, and includes a ton of random tables for working out things like the cultures of different worlds, rules for generating random areas of the cluster, random star systems, and rules for random alien species (along with the coolest illustration in the book, of an octopoid-alien, that just about makes up for the fairly godawful cover).

The GM notes section includes information about running the game Troupe style (with each character playing his main PC and then less detailed secondary PCs to play when his character's own specialty would not call for him to be present in a given situation), very interesting notes on the assumptions behind the technology and nature of the Starcluster, and a great deal of detail on how to run particular types of missions. The appendices also contain a whole second set of starship combat rules for running this kind of combat in a more "cinematic" fashion than the basic rules do.

To sum up: the back cover of the game promises that IHW: Starcluster is "a toolbox filled to bursting with creative tools". Within the context of its theme, it certainly is. The random tables and sub-mechanics for handling military units, and the rules for starship combat, are all excellent elements that can be of use to anyone running a sci-fi military game. More importantly, the game stays true to the emulation of the specific genre of play, within the larger Starcluster universe.
If you liked IHW and want a sci-fi version of that game, this is the product you've been waiting for.  If you like Starcluster, and were waiting for a new product that adds to the existing material available for that setting, this is likewise a great product to get.

On the whole, the only bad thing I can say about this book is that the cover sucks. The rest, awesome.

RPGPundit

Currently Smoking: Masonic meerschaum + Altadis' Fox & Hound

Thanks, Pundit! Glad you enjoyed it, and an excellent, detailed review, as always! As for the cover, de gustibus non est disputandem. I liked it, and wanted to do something a bit different. In fact, there was a rather long thread here about the cover. Given your reaction, you'll hate the cover of StarCluster 3E just as much!

Anyway, thank you for the incisive review!

-clash

...Yeah, that cover looks like a "romance RPG" to me, as well.

Maybe I'll write a romance RPG and put a bullet hole on the cover - just to balance things...

I'm just happy Pundit liked the actual game.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmice;387175Maybe I'll write a romance RPG and put a bullet hole on the cover - just to balance things...

I'm just happy Pundit liked the actual game.

-clash

...Yeah, but I still don't see any flying pigs. Or mice.

Don't be silly! Flying pigs are extinct! Flying Mice on the other hand, will someday rule the world!

-clash

...Look, we're going to need more than jetpacks to take over the world. We'll need lasers, too, at least.

I should point out here that In Harm's Way was originally a single game, but grew to a family of (currently) six military-themed games: In Harm's Way: A Napoleonic Haval RPG, IHW: Aces In Spades, IHW: Aces And Angels, IHW: Dragons!, IHW: Wild Blue, and now IHW: StarCluster. I'm currently working on the civilian side of this game, StarCluster 3rd Edition, currently in Alpha Playtest.

-clash