Rating:    Reviewed by:  Terren Bruce

MechWarrior's Guide to Solaris VII It took me awhile to give this sourcebook a rating.  I very much wanted this sourcebook to be something that it wasn't.  I really, really, wanted a sourcebook filled with background and info for running campaigns on Solaris VII.  That's not what I got, and I was, to say the least, disappointed.  That made me want to give it a low rating, but what WAS in the book wasn't too bad.  As a guide to Solaris VII I'd give this book a rating of one Timber Wolf.  As a book that covers a wide range of topics instead of concentrating on a single subject, adding lot's of stuff to the game, it deserves a higher rating.   War is a sport--the stakes are our life! Ok, so I wanted and expected this book to provide a campaign setting.  It didn't.  So what does it provide?  Basically, it's an all-in one book.  It covers a lot of things that were missing from the main rulebook.  It gives you a specific place to set games in, it gives you an adventure that can serve to introduce newbies to the game (or as an introduction to Solaris VII for those who have played before), new affiliations, six new life-paths, and rules for integrating 'Mech combat into your role-playing games. With the release of this book the MechWarrior Role-Playing game is much more filled out and complete. The Good: When the main rulebook came out, there was a few things people thought were missing.  Major factions like Comstar and Word of Blake were left out, there was no rules for fighting in mechs, there wasn't enough equipment to everyone's tastes, no adventure to ease people into the game, ect.  This book fills most of that in, except for the equipment which you can now find in the Lostech: MechWarriors Equipment Guide.  Still no conversion rules for 2nd edition characters, maybe in the upcoming MechWarrior's Companion?  Besides all the rule add-ons you'll also get the basic background on Solaris VII.  It's a good start, but there's not enough here to base an entire campaign on or anything.  What's in here is well written, there's just not enough of it.  The starting adventure is designed to introduce newbies to the game, and does it's job well, it starts things off slowly, allowing newbies to get used to everything.  Plenty of help for the Games Master, although it only gives him the basic adventure and requires him to fill some stuff in himself, strange in something designed for new players.  The adventure also gives many hooks for future adventures, giving the Games Master plenty of options on where to go next.  More sample characters are given in this book, perfect for people who just want to start playing, and even more useful as major NPC's.  You can find a Field Scientist, Young Gun, Word of Blake MechWarrior, and a Solaris Mechwarrior included here. You'll also find some useful rules for running campaigns on Solaris VII, and some NPC types the Player Characters might run into.  At the very end of the book is a section that lists major sites in Solaris City with a very brief description and the street it's located on.  Oh, and Loren Coleman gives us another short story which continues on from the story he wrote for the main rulebook which helps give Solaris VII more atmosphere.  The Bad: The worst thing about this book is the map of Solaris City.  It's not very detailed and it isn't very big.  The map of the center of the Inner Sphere is given an entire page, but Solaris City is given a small box.  WTF?  All it really shows is the sectors the city is divided into and the river.  It doesn't bother to name the streets or show the locations of any of the sites listed at the end of the book.  So what use is it?  Even the map in Illusions of Victory showed where the 5 major arena's were!  It's inexcusable that they didn't make the map a full page with major locations marked.  I haven't yet played a  game using the new Mech combat rules, so I can't comment on them, but I do think they belonged in the MechWarrior Companion, not in this book.  This would have freed A LOT of room which could have been dedicated to the Solaris VII setting.  Final Thoughts: Though it didn't provide the complete campaign setting I was hoping for, it does fill a lot of holes in the game and because of that it is well worth the money for MW RPG players.  It gives you a little bit of everything, and so should have something of use for everyone.