Black on white
The Galactic Codex this book is, meets the standards of the Starfleet. A hardcover and a ribbon for marking pages are the absolute minimum, which, however, is not always met by the publisher, so I’m glad that Warpstar!can be proud of them. The rules of being in outer space are written on nice chalky paper, and the whole thing is kept in monochrome colors. The black of the text and illustrations contrast well with the white of the pages, which makes the manual clear and easy to use. Needless to say, this 230-page manual is not a visual work of art. Its main task is to be as useful and easy to use as possible, which it does quite well, but unfortunately not perfectly. The main advantage is the drawings, without which this book would not be different from the user guide included with the plasma torch. In many places I miss underlines or bolds inside the text. Without this, it is not easy to distinguish the elements of the description that are part of the presentation of the game world,
The boundary drawn by our imaginations is surprisingly close
Warpstar! to bring this world to life and give it a certain framework. In this case, such a large amount of freedom may prove to be a limitation and make inexperienced players feel lost.
Too little and too much
It is difficult to clearly define what Warpstar is! . The creators could not decide how to show players the infinite possibilities in creating their own vision of the galaxy. Therefore, they delineated a certain skeleton and added quite accessible mechanics to it. It’s nice, but not really. It seems to me that the authors made the worst possible decision, wanting to add a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but nothing particularly much. And when something is good for everything, as you know it is for nothing. Unfortunately Warpstar! it is not a comprehensive system containing a detailed description of the world and extensive mechanics similar to Star Treknor is it a dozen or so pages of booklet, with easy-to-learn rules and tools to build your own universe like the Mothership . And this is its biggest drawback. In my opinion , Warpstar! it offers too little and has too many competitors in the market. I do not see the reason why I should reach for this fictional game set in the Sci-Fi realities instead of a huge franchise such as Star Wars , the incredibly atmospheric Cold and Dark or the iconic Alien. Many of the visions of the distant future we know already have their own role-playing games, which will almost always be better together than other universal mechanics, and if we want to draw our own version of space opera or horror, then Mothership will be better for it . What’s more, almost each of the above-mentioned games allows you to create your own part of the galaxy and play various adventures in it. So when I plan on running my next space odyssey, it’s Warpstar! it will not be a textbook that I will reach for.
