Great supplement that opens with exactly the right reason; with the wars going on, fighting in "real" countries is often times uncomfortable cause of the real suffering that's happening.

The supplement contains both the broad strokes and smaller details and implicitly asks you to not just roll up a nation/conflict but also engage with it. Also included are some real nifty ways to generate coastlines and borders, what kind of conflict it is and, unexpectedly, ideas for missions and solo rules. While I haven't had time to actually playtest them, the fact that this was thought of at all is a pleasant surprise.

Fully worth it for all the generation tables alone, potentially amazing if you want to play with the nation you created on your own.

I use this product in my homebrew Traveller campaign universe without fail, it does a great job at adding depth and tension to EVA.

Thanks for a great read. Also appreciated are your updates with detailed changes listed.

I played it using Goggle Gemini Pro and Chatgpt to help move the game along. It did a great job, lots of interesting decisions and scenes for my simple corporate espionage mission that barely succeeded and with the team captured. (dice started out hot and then poof... nothing) I can't wait to start the Star Crew aspect in the Traveller setting and get my hands on my hard copy. I also plan on seeing what expansions they have as well. Here is my report on my first mission, it started out so well! https://rpggeek.com/thread/3336643/starting-an-ai-assisted-session-after-buying-it-on

This was pitched to me as "Blade Runner/Alien with the serial numbers filed off". I found it to be so much more. It's a love letter to all the best sci-fi movies from the late 70's through the 90's. While the setting initially seemed to lack the flash and flair so common in RPGs this day, I find myself loving this setting more and more the more I read about it. The NPCs and organizations in this game are believable and grounded. This is a masterpiece of worldbuilding. Much effort was put into making the retro-future believable and a detailed history depicts a future that maybe could have been ours, had things turned out just a little bit differently.

It is this setting that sets Hostile apart from other games in the survival-horror-in-space genre.

A lot of people have good memories of Classic Traveller being a ‘simple rules-light system’. And it is. Except due to its age it’s got a lot of D&Disms that don’t make any sense in a science fiction game. This gets rid of them and makes the game much easier and faster to play.

The whole Classic Traveller system has been streamlined and I’d recommend this book for ANY science fiction game. This is Traveller with only the good parts!

More Cepheus all over the universe. As big as it was, they still had to add random term creation separately. Glad to see it made it here as well as the Player Handbook.

Zaibatsu is a successful cyberpunk setting. However, it was incomprehensibly cut. The original concept contained features that are missing in the current version. Most wanted: The Repo Man.

Mandatory update necessary: Hospitals are institutions that are often part of corporations. Their business activities are sometimes questionable. Where do they obtain transplant organs from, for example? This is where the organ legger comes in.

Well, transplants and artificial organs are not cheap and only the well-heeled can usually afford them. Corporations are profit-oriented. So why not implant organs on credit?

It is not uncommon for patients to find themselves in the precarious position of being unable to pay. This is where the Repo Man comes into play (see the 2010 movie of the same name).

Quote from the original concept: "REPO MAN You are an agent working for a genetics company that repossesses failed clones. Clone insurance gives the wealthy the chance to live again in young bodies, but the treatment is still experimental and there are many problems. All the clients require confidentiality, and the zaibatsu cannot afford its mistakes to be made public. Perhaps they got two minds mixed up, or the client died in an unusual place and his head needs to be returned to the zaibatsu so the mind can be scanned into the new clone. You know all about the clone business. SKILL: Meditech. GEAR: Riotgun or Riot Pistol."

Why wasn't the character concept adopted in an adapted form?

I found this to be a great version of the game. I liked Zozer's approach to the various rules. Simple enough to allow easy teaching and play, but enough meat to allow one to build a setting if desired.

This is a combo setting and series of "sandboxy" missions with maps, npcs, corporations and politics in what feels like a living breathing world.

What I appreciate is none of it requires the characters to be involved in any way. The dynamic between the various factions is going to happen whether PCs show up or not. They could influence or even change what might happen. But if they sit in a bar and do nothing things will happen anyway, and the PCs may regret it.

Very much recommended.

I do have some quibbles. The factions and various companies are fairly involved and so it is not easy to pick up who is whom on the first read. This would be fine except important information is scattered in various blocks of detail paragraphs. A cheat sheet or two beyond what was provided would be helpful. Even a page or two summary up front explaining everything going on with spoilers would have made my first foray much easier.

For the pedantic there are a few spelling and grammar errors, not unreasonable for something of this size.

After reading I wanted to get on and leave a review. To be honest after I read Roberts review I don't think I could say it anymore succinctly. I'm very happy with my purchase and the hardbound should be delivered by Monday.

Very happy with my purchase. The Task System and Character Gen suits my tastes now better than classic. Animal generation is great too. Still baffled as to why ability checks are so convoluted, can't I just roll <= my ability score can call it a day?

Really love this pdf, any idea when a dead tree version will be out?

There's a lot going on in this book and a pile of sheets to use with it. It's not just a "best" or "mishmash" collection of stuff - its an entire universe DIY kit of battle-tested Cepheus Engine rules and alternatives put together to be a single source for any science-fiction you care to run. I recognize the origins of a lot of these pieces as snippets from a number of games and settings and expansions, all gathered and integrated here as one. Kudos for this - while I haven't hit a table with it yet, my read through with demanding settings like Zozer's own Hostile and Independence Games Clement Sector in mind looks like this can more than handle those jobs. I can see this as a great foundation for anyone's science-fiction settings. While there are psionics, one area that is not present is strong magic support which could drive science-fantasy / space opera such as Star Wars style "Force" powers. I have not looked at the existing psionics included to see if they are adaptable enough to serve. But, I also don't really count this off because its Cepheus and Zozer's own Fast Magic or Stellagama's Sword of Cepheus can easily integrate for this through the shared 2d6 core. Glad I jumped on this. If you run Cepheus games with any sort of science-fiction aspect, then you will probably appreciate this library of system help as well.

Zozer made a winner with this one. If you're looking for a game for playing agents in the shadows of the world of big money and high politics, you found it.