I didn’t know what to really expect when I got this book, and upon opening it and leafing through, I thought I had a book that contained a large collection of ships, planets and creatures. With only semi-interest, I tossed the book aside and didn’t bother looking at it for quite a while. Over time, I would occasionally open it up, leaf through it again, and find a thing or two that I hadn’t noticed before and go “oh, that’s pretty neat”. It wasn’t until quite a few years later that I actually took the time to sit down, look it all over, and realize the little gem that I had in my possession.
This book was essentially made as a sort of “sitrep” for three storylines that existed in novels; The Hapan Cluster Incident, the Black Fleet Crisis, and the Corellian Incident. Not being a reader of the novels, it meant little to me, but I had heard of all of them. This book is laid out like a briefing report from General Cracken, and has little ditties about what occurred during each incident. What is surprising, and something that I didn’t learn until much later, is that there are little treasure troves of information. In the Hapan Incident, there is an entire section dedicated to the Dathomir “incident”. One whole section, about 11 pages, explains the Dathomir magic, offering a whole new system of using the Force in Star Wars. Very neat! There are stats for the Dathomir witches, stats on the Dathomir Rancors, and even stats on Warlord Zsinj. Then they go on to give stats for several Hapan space vehicles, including capital ships and fighters. Finally, they wrap up the Hapan section with some creatures and weapons (not a lot, but a couple of unique items).
With that, they move on to the Black Fleet Crisis. In this section, they get more to the stats more quickly, probably due to the multitude of ships introduced. They start with a very brief description of Fallanassi powers. Then they move on to a pretty good description of the New Republic Government, including showing a flow chart on the assorted positions. Next they go on to give stats for a new race called the Yevethans…nasty fellows that they are. They add a couple NPCs to taste and then jump headlong into the starship stats; twenty three ships in all! While the art for the ships might be a little goofy, it’s rather neat to see stats for the New Republic ships and seeing the progression of the ships in Star Wars.
Finally they touch on the Corellian Incident. This area has a large introduction, with a lot of excerpts from Cracken about things that occurred. The stats that follow are listed in three distinct sections; NPCs, Planets, Ships. There are 14 people explained in the first section, including Mara Jade and Thracken Sal-Solo. The next section details 9 planets as well as Centerpoint station. Mind you, it’s not super heavy in detail, but does give the basic stats as well as a blurb on each. Finally they go on to give stats for 12 assorted starships. Some of the ships are unique, but most could be used anywhere in a Star Wars game.
This book, while I first thought it just ho hum, has turned out to be rather interesting for me. While I no little about the stories that are the focus of these sections, I find the stuff quite useful. For someone that knows about the stories, or wants to play during those times, this book can be quite useful for giving stats. It’s not heavy in flavor text, but it more than makes up for that with the sheer volume of material.
My rating: