A younger me once fell in love with a game called Journeyman by this game's author. I see much in this product that reminds me of that old flame, and there is so much more as well. The rules give lots of hard sci-fi crunch and the art puts you in a mood for reaction massing, heat-sinking space adventure. It's like meeting my high school love only to find her having blossomed.

Being a bad, bad man, I somehow let this slip behind in my review list.

Which is a shame, since I love it. It has a lot of what I like in a game. A nice concrete rule system is bolstered by an admission that play should be play. Add in lots of sci-fi in the style I grew up reading, and you've got something I can't really find anything against.

It even manages to avoid all of my pet peeves with typesetting and art (well, not entirely, but if I can write that before thinking about that one image that looks like a few photoshop filters on each other, it's probably good enough), and I love the writing style. A short story that has a little installment at the beginning of each chapter really helps hook the reader in and is useful for providing a break from the numbers. I guess I could gripe about the random character generation, but I've gotten kinda tired about that, and let's be honest, if it's really bad, you can fudge the numbers.

Stellar Wind is a really, really hard game to play (actually, this just applies to the space travel/spaceship part), unless you're willing to fudge the numbers (or guestimate, just pick your euphemism of choice). They fudged the numbers in the core rule, and even with a decent knowledge (well, mediocre, but yeah) of introductory calculus I still have not a clue what a lot of the numbers mean or do, even in the simplified form, though I could probably saw them down if I had time to do it. Still easier than taxes, though. And, if done right, it's rewarding, because it all makes the game a lot more immersive and deep.

Definitely worth a grab for experienced gamers who love Asimov or other similar science fiction, if they won't be too frightened by the math. And don't worry, most of the math could come up as few as two or three times a session, so if you're fine not designing your own spaceships (though there is an additional $5 spreadsheet to automate the process).

This game has many options for the Hard Scifi fan. The amount of detail in the book is absolutely astounding. If a situation comes up in game, and you're not sure how to handle it, there's likely a description of how to go about resolving it in the book. Character generation is quick and fun, but almost entirely random. While it IS a lot of fun, I would have liked to see rules for a more planned out character generation process. I can easily think of some hacks to make it less random, but it would have been nice to see them in the book. Ship and Planet creation looks like it will take a bit of work. I, for one, would enjoy doing that, I just haven't had a chance to set the time aside and do it. There are a LOT of options for you to custom build what you want. When reading the book, the game seemed more complicated that I believe it actually is, simply because there are some many options for the players to choose from. Character advancement/growth occurs through putting your character in stressful situations. I love that, but really wanted to see an alternate method added in for training up skills. This system appears to do away with XP completely, which is a bonus, as now I can concentrate on the story and have my character get better organically, with all growth tied directly to the story and events that occur in game. As a Hard Scifi fan, this game has a lot of things that make me giddy and revving at the gate to play it.