Ivory Siege Tower

mobile construct built of thoughts and parentheses

Cepheus Deluxe Enhanced Edition

by Stellagama Publishing

Catalog Entry

[2023-01-10]

books st_library_hall

First, the good sides:

  • Finally, a compendium of Cepheus rule variations neatly assembled in one place.

  • Tables, mostly tables, and text. Rules references are easy to find and to drop in VTT. As the reference to Cepheus this is the most useful book I've seen.

  • Rules in order, extended and make sense. The Stamina/Lifeblood pools of hit points should suit well for a Space Opera genre (for gritty grittiness there are HOSTILE Rules & Setting).

Now, what's bad:

  • Character creation rules. They are super-dull, with stats pre-selected from a pool of outcomes and trivialized career paths. Where there is an exciting mini-game in Traveller here is a boring point-selection. What is random only complicates one's life. That's why Traveller stays.

  • Ships and deck-plans. Those are basically non-existent. But again, we know where to find the right ones.

Also controversial is presence of character traits that remind a lot the foci in Stars Without Number (and mostly providing roll advantages). I'll try use them in upcoming actual plays, but expecting them to add pulp to the sauce.

To sum up, a nice set of Sci-Fi 2d6 reference material to slice up for a referee screen insets. This is very well needed, and a good job and product.

[2023-01-31 Tue] UPD: As the friendly community pointed out, the free add-on returns the Random Character Generation for Cepheus Deluxe. Together with additional materials from Cepheus Journal, like the CE - CD skills comparison table from issue #11 those form my near future Sci-Fi gaming board.

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