Spacer's Toolkit review on RPGnet

[BobGreenwade]

Originally posted by Polaris

PS: Ben, I hope none of the comments from people are discouraging to you. Perhaps Steve will let you write a personal equipment book that some people seem to be wanting??

I can say right now that I'd be all over that book in a flash minute. STK doesn't suffer at all from poor writing quality; its fault is in the outline, giving too much emphasis to starships.

[James_Kiley]

Originally posted by Ben Seeman

Well, at least he didn't trash it... which is good enough for me.

 

Ben:

 

I couldn't have trashed it, honestly; I really did like a fair amount of Spacer's Toolkit. It just lacked a lot of material that would have been useful for my game. I happily admit that my reaction was selfish -- I wanted (and still want) cool stuff for use in my own game.

 

I'll probably also contribute to the online toolkit as well, as soon as I have time to make up more of my own stuff.

 

jk

(the guy who wrote the review on rpg.net)

[Toadmaster]

Originally posted by Dauntless

What I'm worried about with the direction of DOJ and Hero Games is that by supporting their own homegrown "universes" we'll see less and less generic stuff and genre books.

 

I agree with you, while the "old" HERO suffered from a lack of support for its genre books, I am a bit concerned that DoJ is overcompensating for this. I think it is good that they are putting out campaign materials, but it is starting to look like they are completely ignoring the generic aspect of HERO. I liked the Spacers Toolkit because it does what I wanted, it gave me examples of equipment I can modify for my own nefarious purposes, but I would have preferred something more along the lines of Gurps: Ultratech. I hope that all future StarHero material is not restricted to TE. I don't have TE yet but I know many will want to use StarHero for Traveller, Starwars, etc. Lack of generic material may give people the idea that TE is the only setting.

[GamePhil]

Originally posted by Toadmaster

I agree with you, while the "old" HERO suffered from a lack of support for its genre books, I am a bit concerned that DoJ is overcompensating for this.

 

Well, settings sell. And if all HERO puts out is rule books and genre books, they are basically selling only to that segment of the market that likes and uses the HERO system. There are people that won't use our favorite system, but will pick up the settings for ideas to convert for their own. The HERO people would be missing a portion of the market, which makes it harder for them to put out the books you want.

[Toadmaster]

Originally posted by GamePhil

Well, settings sell. And if all HERO puts out is rule books and genre books, they are basically selling only to that segment of the market that likes and uses the HERO system. There are people that won't use our favorite system, but will pick up the settings for ideas to convert for their own. The HERO people would be missing a portion of the market, which makes it harder for them to put out the books you want.

 

I agree that HERO should be selling setting books along with Genre books, my concern is only that it is starting to look like HERO is going to produce setting books at the expense of generic books. So far StarHero is my only experience (I bought Champions but I'm not following the rest of the Supers stuff), What I have seen is StarHero (generic), followed by Terren Empire and the Spacers Toolkit (also based on TE), and the last time I looked I don't recall seeing any non setting specific supplements for SH. What I would prefer to see (and I realize its just my opinion) would be StarHERO, TE and then a generic book of scifi gadgets and a generic starships / sci fi vehicles book, then go ahead and put out more setting specific books. So far FH looks like it will fall more into the mold I described since the Grimore looks like it will be a generic book.

 

Not bashing the idea of HERO selling settings, just concerned they are going to get to far away from the generic angle. Sure settigs may sell, but if I don't like the setting I'm not going to buy it, while generic material will likely appeal to all gamers of the genre.

[Nato]

I don't understand how Spacer's Toolkit isn't generic enough. Yes, it is descriptively set in the TE universe, but isn't it easy enough to use in whatever setting you've adopted?

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Nato

I don't understand how Spacer's Toolkit isn't generic enough. Yes, it is descriptively set in the TE universe, but isn't it easy enough to use in whatever setting you've adopted?

I do not understand that either. Just because the paragraph or two of "flavor" text discusses the Terran Empire does not mean that the equipment and vehicles cannot be considered generic. A "Goliath" Battleship is completely generic if you remove the TE flavor text. The equipment listings in TE and STK cover some 200 years and 3-4 ATRI levels. There is plenty of material there that can be used us generic.

 

To me every supplement produced is generic. If you do not want to use the Champions Universe then you just make Mechanon part of your personal universe. Just because Mechanon or a Goliath Battleship is written for the HERO Universe does not mean it cannot be used in a homebrew campaign.

 

Ultimately though, the entire Ultimate line is about generic material. UMA and TUV are designed to be used by anyone. The same goes for the upcoming Ultimate Brick, Ultimate Mystic, and HERO System Vehicle Book. I also think that the upcoming Gadgets & Gear and Villany Amok will also be fairly generic products. That is 5 books for next year that are generic, not include the new Dark Champions Genre book. That is one-third of the entire line for next year. I think DOJ is doing enough generic information.

[Agent X]

Yep, unless the setting is very unusual, it is quite easy to "borrow" from "setting-specific" gadgets and place them in your own setting. I have no problem with generic or setting stuff.

 

I do agree with the original criticism. I would have liked more emphasis on personal gear and less on ships. Ben, there isn't a thing wrong with your writing or what you presented. I would just have preferred more personal gear and I imagine there are plenty of others who would have preferred that. I really enjoyed what personal gear was given and the ships, for that matter, were cool; I just won't get much use out of all of those ships and I can see almost all of the gear being used extensively.

[Polaris]

I would have to agree that setting material that is not overly unique can provide a lot of useful information. I am not playing in the TE setting, but have found good use for most of the material in the TE book.

 

I would prefer that the online Spacers Toolkit not be required to be bound to the TE setting, but that is because I believe it excludes material that could be very useful... not that the material that is included is not useful. I find TE material useful for my non-TE campaign.

 

Just my opinion..

 

Polaris

[Talon]

I think that all the campaign-specific stuff Hero has put out remains pretty generic. Details are left for the GM to fill in as he sees fit; while of course there's standardization and choices made in terms of available special effects and power levels, there's very little that you couldn't lift for a campaign that uses a similar tech level. If anything, I'd say Hero is lacking that bottom level of specificity: it's very hard to impossible for someone to run an "off the shelf" campaign using existing Hero products, without doing a decent amount of customization work.