Some time back, I was ranting about everything in the world being
nothing but second editions of things that have already come out and games that
have been out before. But there are a
few out there that actually manage to be most of the things that a second edition
should be. Having just come from Longcon
where I ran this game, I felt compelled to review it.
Welcome to Mindjammer
The original Mindjammer was interesting, but it didn’t touch on the
wider aspects of the worlds and universe that made the field we were playing on
more interesting, it didn't give you what you needed to expand on these things. The new edition is bigger than the original in a number of
ways, devoting sufficient space to all the things that needed fleshing
out. To put some perspective on that,
the original Mindjammer was 160 pages of background that needed the Starblazer
adventures game to get it to work. The
new edition is 500 pages and has everything you need to play a game, rather than being just a
setting for another game, and that’s not the only difference that’s been made.
Whereas the original book was almost completely background, this one
has a massive number of rules, and the background and nature of the universe in
which you play is interspersed with those rules. As an example, the section that deals with
culture and cultural differences starts with a brief description of how
cultures differ in the universe, and then moves straight on to how you create a
culture and how the different rules of the culture make a difference in the
universe. Most of the sections follow a
similar pattern, with a brief explanation and then all the rules that you could
ever need to deal with it. This presents an interesting quandary, because the
original was based around all the information you could want to put something
together, and the new game is very much on how to play the game without giving
you all the background in the first place.
This is not to say that there isn’t a massive amount of background in
the sections as presented, but it’s not presented as concisely as the first
game (Which is understandable given the increase in rules), the problem
inherent with this is that if you already have some idea of the game and the
universe, the second edition will certainly enhance the game that you’re
playing, but if you’re picking this up and coming at it fresh, the rulebook
didn’t do much to get your mindset into the game before throwing rules at you. Five of us generated the characters for seven
people on Saturday evening, and from start to finish, it took us three hours to
get everything sorted for the characters.
It’s worth bearing in mind that four of us were beginners and one of us
was experienced at both character generation and the world in which we were
about to play. If we’d done it with a
book for each person, things would have been faster, but we only had three
copies of the game between us and that’s more than most groups will have. Obviously as you get used to the game and
setting, character creation will speed up, but the amount of time required to
make a character and integrate it with the other characters in the game is
large, large enough to take up a normal gaming session in the making of the
party.
That brings us to the game and the playing of it. The scenario I ran was one that was designed
to run on any system, all you have to do is transplant the system into the
game, and then run the game from there.
I took into account the differences in the world, particularly the
mindscape implants, and then ran it from there.
In playing, the game plays very much like a regular Fate Game, with the
use of aspects and stunts for the players and compels and complications from
the GM using fate points. In comparison
with similar systems such as Fate Core and Fate Accelerated, once you get past
character creation, there’s hardly anything to differentiate between them
There’s around 500 pages of rules and information in the book, and when
you get past the initial amount of time required to make a character, the
information available would be a great boon towards both beginning GM’s and
those who’ve been playing for years.
The overall impression given by the system is similar to that given off
by Traveller in its many incarnations, but this is more complete because it
also takes into account the different ways in which civilisations (other than
humans) work and doesn’t present new races as merely a set of statistics. The
races and civilisations presented here are given completely different mindsets
and cultures as well as being different in their physical appearance and
capability. The book itself has all the
rules you’ll ever need to make science fiction gaming at any level your players
could want, from gritty level cybernetics and street scum to high level
politics and courtly romance...
All you need to supply are the ideas...
