Aurora 4x
Off Topic => Game/Book Reviews => Topic started by: Kurt on July 24, 2018, 10:21:36 AM
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If you like the web comic Schlock Mercenary, and you should ;D, then their "Planet Mercenary" RPG is a must! I recently purchased it and although I like won't play the game it is great reading. It is chock full of the same humor that makes Schlock so great, and it has a lot of background and source material for the Schlockverse.
Ugh, on re-reading the above I sound like an ad for the company. I tried re-writing it but it ended up just as "salesy". Anyway, it's great!
Kurt
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I've been reading that one for must be like fifteen years now, I agree with all of the above.
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I have played in a couple of games and the system works well to recreate the style of the comics and is a fun experience with a different feel to many other sci-fi games .
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Tried to play a campaign of this a few months ago. As a group we concurred that the balance is terrible. The manual has questionable layout decisions and important information is not usually at hand; i.e. critical information on how your weapons and armor work is concealed in the custom design rules. The game leans heavily on the mook system as well and the mook system is difficult to use and again terribly balanced. (For example, there's literally no reason to take anything except officers in your mook squad.) One big problem is that the 'mercenary company' structure puts a heavy burden on the captain's shoulders... and means they receive the lion's share of meaningful plot time. This is in direct comparison to the adventuring party of typical RPGs, where you can split attention between all members reasonably equally.
The GM also had trouble getting the job structure to work smoothly. The utter freedom the universe gives you - what with the teleporting spaceships in a universe of functionally infinite scale - results in choice paralysis. If you do give this a go, I recommend a hefty dose of railroading. Or a captain and GM willing to arbitrarily and capriciously issue issue orders to restrict freedom of action.
All in all cannot recommend. Needs a heavy dose of polish and remastering.