This particular book I have mixed opinions about. On one hand, I love it. On the other, I despise it. As a whole, I recommend it. Go figure.
First, let me tell you why I love it.
Have you ever wanted to modify your punky little YT-1300 into something befitting the Star Wars universe? Maybe something to make Han Solo a little green with envy? This book lets you know how to do it! They’ve got rules in here that allows you to tweak things this way or that way, or it’s got stats for simply buying the fancy stuff outright! It’s got shields and hyperdrives and weapons and all sorts of fancy things to add on to your ship. You’ll soon find that it costs a small fortune to upgrade your ship.
The book also has a fairly extensive section on a place called the Minos Cluster. It offers lots of story ideas, and has a couple stats smattered here or there on ships, planets, even some NPCs. The back of the book has handy “mishap” charts for any of those “tweaked” systems, and a supply and demand chart. There’s only one character template, however, which is kind of a downfall.
Which brings us to the “bad” aspect of the book. It’s called Tramp Freighters, so you’d expect there to be a smattering of ships or something. Nope! Oh sure, there’s a half dozen that belong to NPCs that you could probably mold around to fit a player party, but there is nothing as far as new freighter ships available. Then there’s the thing about the options for your ship. Overall, the ideas that they presented were nothing surprising. You get your standard sublight drives, hyperdrives, shields, and weapons, but as far as unique things that I couldn’t have thought up….nothing. Helpful information is hard to find in this book, other than the modification charts. They’ve got a section in there on Loan Sharks and Black Market, but the true meat of the sections are hard to find. I felt like the old lady of the 80’s yelling “Where’s the beef?”
Let’s also look at that supply and demand chart I mentioned above. At first glance, you think “Oh cool”, but as you continue to look over it, you begin to scratch your head. As a whole, the chart isn’t much help at all. You could get a better idea of trading and supply and demand by getting into baseball cards. The other thing that kind of burned me a little was the inclusion of only 1 character template. That’s not real bad when you consider that some books have none, but this one had a repeat of something that came out in an Adventure Journal already. It was old hack to me.
As a whole, I was slightly disappointed in this book. I still refer it to people who want to have an idea on how to modify a ship. I think I could probably come up with a better system of doing it, and more interesting ideas than this book, but this product paved the way to other things. If anything, West End Games made up for the lack of ships in here by including a lot in the product Pirates and Privateers.
My rating:
© 1997 grimacePCH@aol.com
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