The game is good for everybody who likes d20 adaptations and Stargate, but...

Don't buy this book. It's simple as that. The quality of the scan is abysmal, and there is no excuse for presenting such a shoddy work for sale, even less so at the pricepoint Alderac asks for. I have no idea who made this scan and thought what they presented here was acceptable, but it really isn't. I have no hope that Alderac will ever update this product with a better version, so my only advice is to stay clear of it.

I bought it at a sale for $19.96, and I can honestly say that these 20 dollars have been wasted.

Should there ever be an update to the file that improves on the quality, I will amend this review.

If you like Stargate and want this game don't buy the pdf, try and find a physical copy. The game itself is a nice take on spycraft/d20 which lets you play out your own tales of the SGC.

Despite the book claiming to be standalone it repeatedly refers players to the spycraft rule book rather than explaining rule points.

This pdf is a scanned copy of a book where most pages are at least partially out of focus and blurred from the scanner. I needed to borrow a friend's book to copy out parts of several rules tables which are illegible. Even printing out the pdf does nothing to make it more legible. If I had realised the image quality was this poor when I bought the pdf a couple of years ago I wouldn't have wasted my money.

Got to second another reviewer here- this is a ripoff, namely a non-operable file.. I can't even download this, and I've tried three browsers and multiple computers. Hopefully Drivethrurpg will see fit to blacklist Alderac- in over a decade as a customer at Drivethru, this is the first time I've ever been ripped off. Avoid this product!

DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY !

I am 100% very unhappy. This is a terrible scanned copy of the paper book. There is artifacts on every page, the text is blurred and it is not OCR. This low quality is not what I expect from DriveThru RPG.

I purchased this as a resource, and because I liked the series so much. I have not yet read the entire book through, and am finding it difficult to do so for a 3 main reasons.

First, I find the odd, slanted, two-column layout to be hard to follow. I'm sure someone thought it added character, but it just does not flow naturally.

Second, the chapter titles are done in a wretched font that I have to work at to decipher. Again, I can acknowledge the attempt to add character to the text, but being unreadable does not serve that purpose well.

Third, the font used for the body text is also a little hard to read across the various backgrounds, etc. This may also be exacerbated by the scanning used to create the PDF. (The fact that this is a scan was not mentioned in the description, but I noted it in the review after-the-fact)

I'm a huge Stargate fanboy, so this was a must-have for me. However, I found that I couldn't read it for extended periods of time due to the low quality of the scan. It is a scanned copy and there are track marks on the pages and the text is a bit fuzzy sometimes, making my eyes strain. The background information is wonderful, as well as the in depth look of the SGC. However, the number of options, while making for great choices during character creation can be a bit overwhelming.

This is an amazing book, the classes are well designed (though not necessarilly well balanced) and the races are departures from the stereotypical norms. Class / Race abilities are amazing. For someone who likes D&D 3.0 or 3.5 this book is a blast.

The other reviewer says that this is an almost unreadable scan, I disagree, I haven't had any problem with reading it. Some of the pages were at a bit of an angle when it was scanned in, however it is readable without any difficulty.

A great buy due to the GM Day (horray for us, guys!), this is a nice d20 (DnD 3.0 players handbook required, mind you) take on the well-loved if short-lived series. The only problem I see with it is that it's a scan of the actual book, so that means it is a bit on the heavy side (95 or so Mb), and that the text is not that clear. There's also the issue about the layout using an unconventional two colum format that gets a bit hard to get used to, or for some other it might get a wee bit hard to read after a while.

All in all, the spirit of the series is captured and there's no need to buy anything to flesh out your campaign as all the relevant information is in there, presented in concise, organized and useful manner.

It would definitely be a five-star product if only the quality of the file could be improved, but if you had any interest in the series or like Space-Opera settings, this is a really good buy and almost as steal at the sales price.

LIKED: The quality of the informations.

DISLIKED: The overall quality of the scans. To a lesser degree, the unconventional page layout.

OVERALL: Satisfied with the product.

This review applies to the recently updated version of the PDF.

The First Steps book contains a wealth of original material for the SG-1 game, ten new worlds to explore each described in detail. There are new alien and near-human races, new skills and new feats to go with these worlds.

The PDF is a scanned image of the book, rather than a publication created from the original typesetting material. The image format results in a large file size.

The tracking lines, evident in the previous version available here, have now gone. The image quality is much better than the previous version as well. The missing pages, pages 77 and 80, have made it in to the new scan.

A much better version of the PDF making this a good purchase for the SG-1 game.

Having enjoyed the TV series, I was excited when I noticed this product on the shelves of DriveThruRPG and was quick to purchase. I'm not disappointed by the content. The d20 implementation is well done, with the Wounds/Vitality game mechanic used for combat. There is also a wealth of background material for the SG-1 setting. The review of the game residing at RPGnet is excellent and covers the game content well: http://www.rpg.net/reviews/archive/10/10809.phtml

Specifically to this PDF version, I'm afraid it's not to the quality I've come to expect from DriveThruRPG. The PDF is a scanned image rather than a publication created from the original typesetting material. The image format results in a large file size, a whopping 88Mb. There are clearly visible track marks from the scanner down the pages. These are especially noticeable on pages including images where the darker background highlights the lines. The image quality is also not as crisp as a PDF published from the original material, some of the text being slightly out of focus and fuzzy. Again, this is more noticeable where there is a background to the text. Several pages are not quite square to the page sides, where the page has slipped as it has gone through the scanner. This is especially evident on pages 436 and 448 of the PDF.

All in all, an excellent d20 product let down by quality issues in the PDF version.