This was a free review book sent to me.

I want to say this book is showing it's age, but I can't tell if it was published in 1996, or if that is when Hinterwelt incorporated.  I rather hope it is the former.

I spent two weeks reading the book, an exceptionally long time for me, and I've written this review three times now.  I waffle between wishing to be kind and the realization that I shouldn't have to.  It is not a bad game, and my bile is better spent on games that deserve it.  The greatest flaw I could find here is a degree of incoherency, and I mean that in a totally non-jargon fashion.

The book is hardbound, with nice pulply pages, and very cheap artwork and a binding I can only describe in my layman's knowledge of bindings as 'glued bundles'.   It seems overpriced given the production. Don't get me wrong, I LIKE the pulpy pages over glossy pages, and I don't worry about cheap artwork... I just expect to see those reflected in the pricetag.

The game itself is mostly a setting with the Iridium system tacked on.   The book is a mess of a layout with character creation scattered over more than a hundred pages. That alone explains most of the problem I had reading this.  

The setting might be the other reason.  It's just not my cup of tea if you will.  The setting is somewhat generic without actually being generic. You have catmen, lizardmen and goat men, you have a great unplayable alien menace (not that I could tell why they were unplayable) and inscrutable alien former imperials still vaguely running the show. In short, it's a mess of cliches and sort of cliches. Then you have humans, who not only have no real connection to the setting (most... all of the galaxy shaping events happened without mankind) but are actually 'second class' choices as far as the game goes. They have no 'empires' no history, no influence on the setting. Even rules wise they are lacking.   To muddy up my own clear catagories of review: Every race has special abilities (and generally no 'penalty' except for humans, who are also saddled with the Roleplaying downside of being 'also rans' in the setting.  Frankly, I don't need humans to be the dominant power in the galaxy to have fun in Sci Fi, but I also don't expect them to be so heavily marginalized.  That alone is offputting, to say the least.

Leaving that aside, there were some interesting tidbits to be found here. The treatment of AI's are worth a look, both in the setting history, and in their treatment 'in present'.  Also, the amount of work that went into development of each race is worth taking a look at.  If you have cat aliens in your Sci-Fi campaign, you could do worse than to lift the entire culture from Nebuleon, and there are several of these species that all get equal love.  

System wise, the book is showing its presumbed age, and it's roots as a generic house system. For a Sci-fi game it appears very nearly fetishistic for archaic weapons, though not so if it were a fantasy game, say.  There is a mess of sub-systems, including percentile skills, level based percentile crits, d20 combat and so on.  Again, layout is an issue, as for example the Psionics rules are found only in the 'class' chapter, where no one would normally think to look for them.  Seriously glaring issues, for me, lay in the minute combat rounds with cluster attacks: that is, everyone makes all their attacks before the next guy goes.  Yes, D&D still does this, and people sneer at it there too. Given the comparative lethality of the system, however, this is less forgiveable here.  Likewise, the use of crit tables, inspired, I think, by Rolemaster. I can understand the appeal of being able to look at a chart and say 'Yup, your arrow goes in his right ear and out his left, he drops like a poleaxed steer', but frankly I find that combat moves faster if you don't have to flip through two pages of crit charts to read off an overly pointless description of 'he dies'.  More ever, a sci-fi game crit chart probably shouldn't include 'arrows'. Mostly.  Lastly, the second least favorite armor conceit is used. Largely a personal taste issue, but I hate the Armor as bonus hit points school of thought almost as much as I hate 'Armor makes you dodge better'.  

Last critique of system: In character creation you still have levels and classes both, though their primary purpose seems purely to determine your critical hit chances. In other words they are so reduced in purpose to become an appendix to the character. Now, I am not a real fan of either 'system' of defining characters, but if you are going to use them, own those mothers, make them MEAN something.  Otherwise, go ahead and dispose of them entirely.  I'm reasonably certain I could houserule them out of existance all together without disrupting the game at all, though I may have missed something in the reading.

Now for the good stuff: yes, virginia, there is good stuff to be had here. Quite a bit, actually. For one, the combat system is actually rather smooth, the mechanical hiccups that I've mentioned are largely a matter of taste and jaded expirence with many many games. It is simple to grasp with plenty of complexity in use.  The examples provided are masterful illustrations of the system in use, something that can't be said of examples in more 'mainstream' gaming products.   I like the initiative system for reasons that go beyond rational. Sure, it's just an everyday diceroll plus modifiers, but it's a D6, for Doug's sake. Everyone and their cousin are going hog wild with huge dice and numbers, focusing more on the rolls than the potential of the characters, so its a wonderful change of pace. I like it.   Then there is the 'Spaceships' chapter. The first rule is that starships exist to get the characters from point A to point B, maybe to serve as a backdrop for other stories. Then he expands it to say: some folks like dogfights, so here are your rules... magic.   Too many games would simply provide the latter rules and exclude the former, some others might presume the former is the 'one true way' and exclude the latter.  I'm all for enclusive design, and presto. Simple and functional.


The book itself 'ends' with descriptions and details on a number of worlds then a huge chapter full of 'NPCs' for the GM to use. These are fully developed NPC character sheets and I suspect could be used as pregenerated characters if you wanted. It is a nice touch.  


At the end of the day, the Iridium system looks very workmanlike. It won't win raves for being pretty or innovative, but there is absolutely nothing objectively wrong with it.  I understand a 'second edition' of the system is under way, and I look forward to seeing how much  Hinterwelt has learned with 10 years (either way...) under their belt.    

Thanks for the review Spike.

Just to clarify, I sent him the free copy of the game for review not Hinterwelt.

I intend to get to the other book you sent me, but I've also got the 'liber geographica' and Cadwallon to go through, so it might be a little bit.

I am unsure of the protocol for identifying how I got a review book, so I decided to keep it neutral in the review. Yes Mcrow sent me the book to review.

Quote from: SpikeI intend to get to the other book you sent me, but I've also got the 'liber geographica' and Cadwallon to go through, so it might be a little bit.

I am unsure of the protocol for identifying how I got a review book, so I decided to keep it neutral in the review. Yes Mcrow sent me the book to review.

No problem, get to it when you get time.

Thanks Spike for the review. Points taken and will definitely be under consideration for Iridium V2. If you want, wander over to our forums and get into the discussion.

And Mike, no problem and I appreciate you being on top of it. Let me now if you need any other review material.

Bill

Hmmm - Nebuleon is one of my favorite SF RPGs. It's sweet to play, and the setting with humans as sort of the mice in the walls is inspiring for me as a GM. No disputing matters of taste, I quess.

-clash

Quote from: flyingmiceHmmm - Nebuleon is one of my favorite SF RPGs. It's sweet to play, and the setting with humans as sort of the mice in the walls is inspiring for me as a GM. No disputing matters of taste, I quess.

-clash

Thanks Clash.

Bill

I think another cool thing about Nebuleon (and other Hinterwelt systems?) is that you can create characters through an online character generator. I believe it's for free and it appeals to my inner progamming geek.

P.S.  Bill, the link to CHARGen in your sig doesn't work...it appears to be an issue with case-sensitivity in the link referring to a location 'chargen' instead of 'CHARGen' (which works).

Quote from: rcsampleI think another cool thing about Nebuleon (and other Hinterwelt systems?) is that you can create characters through an online character generator. I believe it's for free and it appeals to my inner progamming geek.

P.S.  Bill, the link to CHARGen in your sig doesn't work...it appears to be an issue with case-sensitivity in the link referring to a location 'chargen' instead of 'CHARGen' (which works).

The Chargen program is cool stuff. I have about 10 characters on there @ the moment. Cool things are you can update after getting xp and you can also access it from anywhere and print out a character sheet.

Quote from: rcsampleI think another cool thing about Nebuleon (and other Hinterwelt systems?) is that you can create characters through an online character generator. I believe it's for free and it appeals to my inner progamming geek.

P.S.  Bill, the link to CHARGen in your sig doesn't work...it appears to be an issue with case-sensitivity in the link referring to a location 'chargen' instead of 'CHARGen' (which works).

Ahh, sorry about that. I recently changed java containers and the new one works the way java should (i.e. case sensitive). It should work now. Here is a linkg
http://www.hinterwelt.com/CHARGen/

Still shaking it down after the switch so give me a yell if you run into problems. bilbo@hinterwelt.com .

FYI - To satisfy geek programmers everywhere I am running the CHARGen on Tomcat, SQL SERVER7 on the backend DB server, and is mostly written using the M-V-C architecture model. mmmm, geeky.

Bill