I’ve seen a lot of gamemaster screens, for a lot of games, and none of them come as close to a complete GM screen as this one does. In this product, you get a screen and a booklet (staple-bound). I’ll detail each one separately:
First, the screen. Starts off with nice cover art. Boba Fett on the cover gives the thing a nice look. If you’re not a huge fan of Fett, then the cover is only “okay”. Inside the screen, it’s not simply two pages, joined in the middles, but it’s about a 4 page layout. All of the pages are connected, which makes this a better product than the first GM screen that West End Games did for Star Wars. First page of the screen has an equipment chart. Quick easy reference for GM or player alike, as if you open the screen all the way up, this will be facing the players. Equipment has availability, cost, difficulty or ranges, and damages. It’s got armor, weapons, miscellaneous items, droids and some vehicles and starships.
On the other side of that, for the GM to see when totally opened up, is the Spacecraft Performance Chart and Starship Damage chart. Helpful for quick reference to the real bare-bones or some fighters and a couple of capital ships. Next page over is the much needed Difficulty Numbers Chart, the Round Sequence, the Scale Chart, Vehicle Damage, and little ditties on “Rules of Thumb” and the Wild Die.
Next page over from that is the Damage Charts, the Combat Modifiers, Character Injury Effects, and a breakdown of Skill Levels (how your players stack up to the rest of the people in the galaxy). The last page that’s readily visible to the GM while the thing is opened fully, is a page with the Healing Table, a Weapons chart, which touches back on the weapons mentioned in the Equipment Chart...so the GM doesn’t have to keep switching back and forth. There’s also an Armor chart, a Movement Chart, and a Grenade Scatter Chart.
Finally, the last page, though one that the players will be looking at most likely, has Player Character Templates (only a real rough guide), Creating A Character (a quick-ish version) and Important Skills. This is helpful for the newer players.
I like the fact that the screen has player oriented stuff where players will see it, and GM oriented stuff where the GMs will see it. I was so tired of some game screens that the GM had to keep flipping the screen all over, looking for the chart he needed….or having the players see GM information when they shouldn’t.
Now we get into the real treat of the product. This is like the icing on the cake! The booklet is a whopping 64 pages of useful information. First off, it opens with a good, blank character sheet. Then it jumps right into a bunch of templates. After 16 character templates comes a comprehensive skill list. Not only does it list all of the skills, but it lists a ton of ideas for specializations for each skill. After that comes a Character Quick Reference. This is WONDERFUL! It’s got tons of information here. Imperial Forces, Rebel Forces, Neutral Forces, Average Aliens, and Droids. This is great for when you need a quick handful of Rebel troops and don’t want to write out all of the information for each.
Next comes the Force Powers. It lists nearly ALL of the Force Powers, and gives a guiding idea on the difficulty of each. This product doesn’t describe each power, simply lists it. Next up is the Starship Quick Reference. What the Character Quick Reference was to ground troops, this is to starships. Capital Ships, Transports and Starfighters are all detailed here. Great for a quick battle of ships.
Following is the Vehicle Quick Reference. Gobs and gobs more info here about surface vehicles. There’s some blank templates for various things, such as ship or vehicle information, system information, and Wanted posters….all neat and handy. Then comes an Imperial Section. The infractions and Imperial “alphabet” are here. Then there’s a decent Timeline that briefly touches on the major events in Star Wars. Finally comes the Rules Summary. This touches on just about anything that might occur in the game, and gives you ideas on how to handle them. That rounds out this little gem of a booklet. Sixty four pages of information galore!
My rating for this:
© 1997 grimacePCH@aol.com
Get your own Free Home Page