I love this campaign setting + ruleset. being able to bring such a wide variety of scifi flavors from cyberpunk, space western and scifi horror all in one D&D 5e game really is so much fun. The level of detail is initially daunting but once you and your players have a handle on it it is a blast! Usually i would insist on writing my own setting for campaigns but i loved this one so much that i've just been using it straight from the book, the lore is really engaging and deep. Much love to the creators.

It's taken me a year and a half to get around to playing S&S and I wholly wish I had started sooner. This expertly toes the line between allowing enough freedom to create settings/characters as unlimited as space, while also providing enough structure to guide the players through truly meaningful interactions, conflicts, and stories. As one of the kickstarter backers, this exceeded all of my expectations and I can't wait to start a full campaign!

really fantastic lore buolding. huge book for the price, uses the 5e rules to the fullest extent and is really easy to use as a springboard to do any existing sci fi setting off of.

highly reccomend if you are looking to add some sci fi flair to your table wothout learning an entirely new system.

This is a great science fiction mod for the 5e system. there are recognizable ideas from Pathfinder and third party books of old, repurposed and rebalanced for the new genre such as the Roboticist (Summoner) and the Oracle, among others. If pictures are what attracts you to books, rpgs may not be your thing though. Paying artists takes money, and this books very good price is the payoff for not as much art as others may have in their books.

I should be mentioned that this seems completely compatible with DnD5e, and should provide a better science fiction system than Starfinder if you still want your classic Elves, Dwarves, and Teiflings in your world. The races, or species, were built slightly differently, the humans most notably, and I'm not sure of the logic in this.

All in all though, a very good investment if you enjoy the 5e system but want some tech and spaceflight in your game.

[disclosure: I playtested this product and was compensated as an illustrator in the published version. I was not asked to write this review.]

If you've been looking for sci-fi mechanics in the 5e style, this is it.

Combat has been overhauled to focus on ranged fighting, with mechanics that make cover valuable, recontextualizes old abilities to value indirect damage or utility in a gunfight, and builds a suite of new abilities around this new system of combat. New classes and alternative versions of old classes give a suite of options to the new ranged combat. Melee fighting is still a viable choice, but the risks of doing so inform the payoffs of pushing up into someone's face. My favorite class is the rework of the Barbarian as the "Vanguard", a nanite-enhanced melee fighter who influences technology simply by being nearby. I personally don't usually go in for detailed spellcasting classes, but the new casting-focused options (Psion, Scientist, Oracle) have a lot of depth in their casting that can be explored.

The spaceship combat is my personal favorite throughout the TTRPGs that I've played. It focuses on a role-based style of running a spaceship, where everybody has something to do- the basic setup is pilot/mechanic/gunner/hacker, with room to flex around. These rules scale up and down from capital ships with whole crews to worry about to fighters that get more tricks and manuvers to play with. On the freighters and transports where most parties will be, though, it feels like the classic sci-fi scrappy hunk of junk that you're fixing and running around in on the fly.

The 13 new playable races ("species", here) give a lot of options to engage with the game. There's weird one-eyed dwarves with retractable eyestalks, deep-sea mermaids with mallable skin, big bug people with four arms... and there aren't any uncomfortable hangups here on a certain species being fundamentally evil. Instead, there's the reality of a complex setting, where old politics and wars inform the influence civilizations had on the galaxy and other species at large. Well, there's that, and a malevolent empire of humans from outside the galaxy that regularly threatens to end civilization, but I personally feel like it's about time we got around to that plotline as a community.

The setting itself has a wide range of detail and inspiration to support campaigns spanning the whole sci-fi gamut. Even if you have your own galaxy planned out, I'd recommend looking through the writings here on the worlds and species of S&S's setting.

Spaceships and Starwyrms is ready to go. I'm looking forward to the future.

This book has lots of text but VERY little art, unfortunately. Buy only if you don't mind imagining things without any artwork to help guide you.