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Livin' on a Dream could be considered the best of the HeartQuest line of products, aside from the rules themselves. It blends good writing with good artwork and uses it to present a setting and campaign that one wouldn't consider a typical one for an RPG: the quest of a group of young dancers to win a summertime dance competition and the various summertime activities that they get involved in. Essentially, it's a very normal slice-of-life campaign of following the characters' dreams, with no powers or supernatural elements to it, which fits right in with the shoujo anime and manga themes that are at the core of HeartQuest.
It starts off with an introduction to the campaign setting and tone, as well as the explaining how the book's set up. Of particular interest is the section discussing the setting (Fukuoka City and Sandy Side Beach), along with the differences between the real version of it and the version as presented in the book. It shows how much thought went into creating the setting.
This is followed up with a very extensive chapter on characters. A lot of creativity went into creating the various character backgrounds (accompanied by stats in most cases), both main and supporting characters. There's also a subsection on roleplaying in the setting and getting the tone right, with much discouragement of combat (despite the presence of gang members among NPCs) and discussion of relationships in Japanese youth culture.
After that, the book gets into the various locations in the campaign setting, as well as running the campaign and various scenarios to run for the players. Again, a lot of thought went into setting up the city in which the characters live, giving it more depth than one might expect. Getting into the campaign chapter, alongside the main scenarios, there's also a list of possible random ones to insert to change things around a little (of course, players have their own ways of doing that by themselves!). Finally, there's the Extras chapter with various maps and references, as well as music suggestions to get folks into the right tone (no pun intended...awww...who am I fooling?).
The writings is very good, especially when describing the characters and places they can be found in, and the artwork's wonderful for the most part (even the pieces that aren't as good are still of good quality). Editing's pretty good as well...not perfect, but pretty good. All in all, this could be considered a must-get for any HeartQuest fan.
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<b>LIKED</b>: The writing and the artwork, both of which contribute towards creating a great setting to play in.<br><br><b>DISLIKED</b>: Can't really think of anything not to like about it<br><br><b>QUALITY</b>: Excellent<br><br><b>VALUE</b>: Very Satisfied<br>
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