I dropped in at my local distributor's this morning looking for an extra
copy of Cats and Rats for a friend. I was pleased to see that Hard Times
is out. Hard Times is a sourcebook which explains the outline of the
Rebellion from 1120-1125, and provides rules for determining the course
of the break down of Imperial culture from 1125-1128. In addition, a
connected series of ten mini-adventures is provided to show the break down
in progress, and discuss the strategies that planets are using to cope
with it. Discussion and rules mods for starmercs, trade among the the
'wild' planets, new encounter tables, pirate group creation, and a few
other topics are included. In addition, the rules for pre-gravitic
spacecraft are repeated (with some modifications) from Challenge#45.
(No, the fuel consumption for fusion rockets isn't fixed--multiply by
100 for more reasonable values, and don't forget the house rule fission
fuel fix I use...1 yr/1 hr.) Data at the beginning and end of the decay
period are provided for two subsectors of Diaspora, on the borders of
Margaret's domain.
(Oh--new rules: cannibalized parts, trading in worn equipment...)
I'm generally a fan of the work Chuck Gannon has done in Challenge, which
is one of the few things that keeps me buying the magazine, and this is
up to his usual standard. In fact, I might go so far as to say that this is
possibly the best piece of MT support material to be issued by GDW, at
least as far as content. (I have some quibbles with the format in some
sections--use of two columns on facing pages in such a way as to cause the
text to be read 1 x x 2 is potentially confusing, and a bit annoying to me
personally. Your mileage may vary.) However, some of you will not be
interested--it is dark and grim. I find the release of this product
ironic in two ways: it shows marked improvement over previous GDW releases
at a time when they are just about to discontinue support of the game as we
know it, and it provides a reasonably well though out mechanism for providing
the 'Space Viking' setting without using any superviruses, and in a time
shift which isn't so great as to make playing through the intervening years
completely unthinkable. (Thus, it's what we've been requesting, thrown to
us a bone to pacify us before the big change comes.)
Rob Dean
(Good looking cover art too, if a bit Star-Wars-y...)