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To me, looking at it as a prospective GM, the strength of the book
lies in the detail and the “fluff” provided. The weakness is
organization and ease of use. Both the Table of Contents, and the
index in the back, is near to useless in my opinion. The Table of
Contents only has five and the index I would think would
embarrass any publisher. I would have to guess that someone
pushed the “Create Index” button on his or her formatting
program, and then never looked to see what it spat out. Near to
half of the entries are alphabetized by their paragraph or section
number rather than the title, and most of the other entries are
alphabetized by the straight section heading (i.e. there are 18
entries in a row that are under the letter “T” because they start
with the word “The”). Really, the only use I can find in the index
is locating NPC’s since their sections happen to have started with
their name, so they happen to have been alphabetized correctly.
Another weakness as far as I’m concerned, is ease of use while
playing. The stats for the NPC’s and Monsters are all there, but
they are listed in one long continuous sentence that wraps over 6-
10 lines. For me, this makes for a lot of time spent hunting for the
one stat you need. Although I have seen this style used before,
most people are well acquainted with, and used to, the more
standard d20 format used by other publishers. In my mind that
format had a reason for being the way it is (namely being able to
quickly get a desired stat in a glance) so I would prefer to see it
that way in any book I was using as a GM. I presume that they
did this to save space (the normal d20 format is indeed a page
hog), but for quick reference in game play; I think it’s a necessity.
BASICS
Raw Recruits is a supplemental book for the game of
Dragonstar. It contains a very detailed scenario and a series of
adventures for the Dragonstar setting that is meant to take
Player Characters from 1 st up to 6 th level. The book is a 160 page
softbound book put out by Mystic Eye Games. The cover and
interior art are mostly comic book quality with the cover and first
16 pages done in color. The quality of the book appears to on par
with other currently available softbound source books, but the
actual formatting leaves something to be desired as the font, line
spacing and organization vary enough from page to page to be a
little distracting. Use of the book requires you to have the
Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, third edition by Wizards
of the Coast, and the Dragonstar Starfarer’s Handbook. The
book’s retail price is $24.99 USD.
BETWEEN THE COVERS
There are four main adventures and over a half dozen short
encounters for the GM to sprinkle in where appropriate. Before
the book gets into the Primary missions, it details the background,
the setting and the primary personalities that the PCs will become
very familiar with. This does a fairly good job of providing the
theme for the entire book. The adventures are then listed in
order, with each having all the necessary detail, background,
encounters, etc for the GM to walk the PCs through the entire
adventure. At the end of each adventure there are the stats for
the NPC’s and Monster required for the particular adventure.
Unfortunately there are no “quick reference” sheets, or look-up
tables anywhere in the book, so finding any particular stat or
reference always requires a bit of page flipping.
As far as pre-fabs go, I have to say that I was very impressed with
the amount of detail and background given throughout the book.
In fact I liked it so much that I found it to be a fun read, with
many sections giving me ideas for other adventures and monsters
(something any self-respecting GM is always in the market for).
For the adventure, you will find a new race introduced, a little
under a dozen new magic items, a couple of new spells, and even
a new monster or two (not to mention a really cool cannon that
makes an insta-zombie out of its target).
VALUE
To me personally, the value this book has to a GM as a standalone
campaign is limited. I have to admit that if I were to used it
as a pre-fab, I would have to make myself a slew of quick
reference sheets, encounter sheets etc... There is simply too
much material, with too little way to find it that I can see it being
very frustrating to the GM and players alike. Now if you have a
photographic memory, and read it from cover to cover before you
started, then there is hope for you.
That being said, I do have to say that for those GMs that are
looking for good ideas in the Dragonstar setting, this book is full of
them. In fact if you are willing to put some work into it, you can
even use the scenarios spelled out for you in the book, everything
you need is there. If someone were to ask me if I thought that it
was worth dropping $25 for this book, my answer would have to
be that it depends on how desperate you are to get new ideas,
and how experienced of a GM you are. If you are a first time GM,
I would have to recommend something a little less involved, and
something a whole lot more play-friendly.
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