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Looks: The art is simple, but good. Liked a lot the layout and format of the book, keeps it easy and quick to read and find stuff.
Writing: The writing is good, it shows the FATE system very well and it has nice explanations.
Content: Now, I think this is the best Sci-Fi FATE implementation out there. The organization of the book is very good, the FATE system rules are well presented and all the sic-fi stuff is pretty nicely done. It has some standard species (or races) and a great ruleset and guideline to create your own races, also I really like the way they incorporate races into the FATE system. Most parts of the contents includes guidelines to creating your own stuff with some really nice rules. You can create starships, weapons, species and stunts that match your scenario with ease and not worry about them being unbalanced. It also has some rules to work as a crew on your spaceship, you assign positions and responsibilities for the crew members and they act different in space combat, for example.
Awesome book! When I'm creating my own FATE games and settings I mostly use this book as a reference.
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As a lover of the FATE system, I bought this game mostly for the sake of completeness, but was pleasantly surprised to find a fun and whimsical universe (cigar-smoking, homicidal teddy bears are a core player race) backed up with an innovative take on the FATE rules. Races, a question often make difficult in FATE games, are clearly laid out and seem well-balanced. The skills have abandoned the "trapping" mechanic used in other FATE games (particularly Strange FATE as shown in the also-excellent Kerberos Club) for a system that lays out how each skill can be used to "overcome obstacles," "make declarations," "attack," and a handful of other categories. I find I still prefer the trappings concept for my own use, but the Bulldogs! system is well-thought-out and may simplify things for many players. There is just enough information on the various organizations, planetary systems, etc. in the game universe to help lay out a game (backed up by aspects and suggests on how to use them), without overwhelming us.
There is a core conceit assuming the PCs will work for the "TransGalaxy Corporation" as high-risk freighters, which is fun and sets the players on a clear path right away, but there is also a section laying out alternative campaign setups, with the rules to support them. I question the balance of the weapons system, as it seems overly deadly for space opera, and more rules-heavy than FATE usually uses, but this is a minor quibble. The ship combat takes the chase rules from Spirit of the Century, a fun system in itself, and adds some meat to make starship combat look like a lot of fun and definitely the right mood.
The game is also pretty as hell, with lovely art and layout making each page a joy to read, and look surprisingly professional for a $10 purchase.
I have a FATE game already running, so I'm not planning on actually running Bulldogs! (at least not at present), but I found the cheap $10 price tag more than worth the ideas I can steal for my own FATE hack, and just for the fun of reading it. And it looks like there's a bunch of free adventures available for download, allowing players to easily go out and kick ass!
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For those of you who may have missed it originally, Brennan Taylor of Galileo Games pushed out Bulldogs! earlier this year through Kickstarter. Bulldogs! (yes, the exclamation point is part of the name) is self-described as “Sci-Fi that Kicks Ass,” and I’m happy to report that boy howdy does it pay off.
The book is a gorgeous hardcover that clocks in at about 120 pages that are crammed full of great information and beautiful illustrations by Jaime Posadas and Kurt Komoda, and I want to give a big hand to the editing crew Amanda Valentine and Ryan Macklin who very much succeeded at making sure that every piece of text contributes to the “Sci-Fi that Kicks Ass” tagline.
Let me start the review of the actual content with an anecdote. I used to run Star Wars, as it was one of the few RPGs I could get my wife to play (sucker!), and after experiencing how troublesome Jedi are to run in the context of a full party, I opted to run mine as an all-scoundrels game (Scoundrels being the DnD Rogue-like character class). Sure, some folks still had some Force-powers in play, but having a crew that was largely free from the otherwise overriding Jedi vs. Sith / Rebellion vs. Empire constraints was very freeing and we were able to rock some awesome stories of my players being largely on the run, cashing in when they could, and in all ways running a story of “Sci-Fi that Kicks Ass.” In terms of the game mechanics though, it took a metric ton of extra Star Wars sourcebooks and system hacking to push the d20 revised rules set to customize relatively basic things like races, equipment, ships, et al.
I wish to hell that I’d had Bulldogs! for that game. This one single book contains information on how to work the Fate-based system to create entirely customized races / equipment / ships / skills / stunts without any overhead. It seriously blows my mind at how sleek this writing is, compared to how many books I used to have to look through to puzzle out how to morph one of the NPC races into a PC race or how to cost a +1 damage upgrade to someone’s blaster pistol.
The only tricky thing I ran into during my read-through of the book is that Bulldogs! uses a single stress track, which I hadn’t expected; but then I also have relatively limited experience running Fate system games - and looking into it, all of the individual games seem to have evolved their own specifically tailored versions of how Stress is applied.
I’ve grown to really appreciate the way the Fate system helps drive games in terms of the play style, and how much depth it adds to the game for the relatively small amount of actual work you have to put into it. And I think that this is part of what makes Bulldogs! great. Fate’s Aspects versus d20’s neutrality-of-character are something that I find inspiring.
I’m going to be running Bulldogs! for a home campaign in the near future (when I can get people over here), and I’m really looking forward to it. Thanks a ton to Brendan, Brian, and everyone else involved in putting this great game out!
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I'll preface this by saying I love space opera. I love stories like Elizabeth Moon's Vatta's War books. I've wanted to play a game, for so long, of a spaceship crew, going from place to place, looking for work and dealing with the problems they invariably get themselves into. I think I've found that game. Bulldogs! appears to be, in every way that matters, the game I have been looking for. Halleluiah. I cannot WAIT to play this game with my group!
To start, this version of the game runs on FATE. According to the book, there have been some changes made from core FATE, but as I'm not an expert on the system, I don't know where they are. But I will say that the system, as presented, seems to support fast paced action. There is a bit more crunch when dealing with things like combat, so I expect that the game will slow down a bit during combat. This is generally the case in most systems.
The presentation of the setting for Bulldogs! is a quick read and fun to go through. There is an interesting mix of scifi races and racial tension already built into the game. This should make for some wonderfully tense scenes, as the group of characters consists of individuals from every race. The characters in the game are all down on their luck spacers, who've joined a freight company and are running ships through the galaxy that really shouldn't be running at all.
The book also has a wonderful section for the GM, giving advice on how to set up adventures, create conflict and all the other general bad-assery that should be in a GM's toolbox. The book is organized and well laid out. It's a very fun read.
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It says it right there in the tagline - Bulldogs! Sci-Fi that Kicks Ass!
Now, to be honest, I could quite easily stop this review right here, proclaiming my agreement with the tagline, but that'd be a disservice to the folks at Galileo Games and my own enjoyment of my blathering reviews—so, obviously the review shall continue.
First off, that cut-n-dry stuff that I tend to glaze over since it doesn't really effect my review:
168-page PDF with a lot of color images throughout the piece, which I'm sure looks awesome in print (although I can't testify to that, since I don't have a hardcopy...yet). It uses the FATE system, with authors Brennan Taylor and Brian Engard getting on with their textuality. Kurt Komoda and Jaime Posadas get all artistic up on it, too.
By the way, now's a good time to point out that I've some indirect affiliation with Brian Engard, as I'm a freelancer that does a bit of work with Rite Publishing with whom Brian Engard's gonna be doing some work with. It's not on projects that I'm working on, currently or foreseeably, but clarity and transparency is a good thing. Also, this PDF was unpurchased by me, instead it was a present however it was not gifted by, or in connection with Galileo Games. But, I liked it enough that not only have I hawked it to friends, I also plan on buying more of it for myself, soon.
Now back to the blatherings...
I've only become recently exposed to the FATE system, it started with some preorders of the Dresden Files RPG from Evil Hat, then some PDF and hardcopy love of Diaspora by VSCA Publishing (in association with Evil Hat), and now more through Galileo Games' Bulldogs!—a product that is awesome, and quite in step with the august grouping I just blathered it into. Seriously, if you're a fan of bawdy and brash space opera then there is not need to look further than this fine offering here.
Odds are if you're looking at FATE system games, then you're already a convert of the FATE system and there's not reason for me to sell you on the mechanic. If you're not a fan of it, save the link to Bulldogs! and go take a look at FATE...if you like it, and like space opera, then buy this PDF. It's that simple, honestly.
With respect to how highly I think of Bulldogs! as a RPG setting, that's quite easy, too. See, I cut roleplaying game teeth at a young age some 30+ years ago, first on Dungeons & Dragons and then, a couple years later I further cut them on Star Frontiers. Sure, I watched Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Alien (probably shouldn't have watched it that young, but sue me I liked it), and other such stuff, but I didn't set the bar I measured games with by those movies since that's what I had action figures for...tabletop was different.
So, if you wanna be an awesome tabletop, space opera scifi game for me, then you gotta pass the Star Frontiers test and Bulldogs! does that quite easily. It mashes the same buttons, slaps similar knees, and jerks the right chains and I love it. It might mesh up with some of your more irreverent Traveller games, too, but I don't think that was their collective aims when they wrote it. I'm guess here, maybe even hopefully so, but I hope that it was meant to hit the same genre vibe as Star Frontiers, because it did so. Heck, I bet you could just convert the hell out of certain races and drop them right into a campaign and no one would notice...at least no one would feel it didn't fit.
Seriously, Urseminites and Dralasites would hang out, get drunk, cause problems, and bond in the weirdest ways and you all know it. It wouldn't be that hard, either, since the rules for creating your own races are right in there, too.
Gotta love that "Say yes, or roll" mentality that FATE promotes in its designers and developers. grins
Bulldogs! walks you right through the framework of its setting, the places and species within, as well as including a leveling mechanic, and the general stuff that comes with a FATE game.
Personally I sat stop reading this and buy the PDF, already!
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I've never been much for the FATE system until now. Bulldogs provides a mix of great art and writing with an easy-to-understand handling of the FATE system.
Bulldogs! does exactly what it sets out to do, and it does it well. It provides science fiction adventure with lots of quirky aliens (though nothing too unusual, it's a decent selection, and rules are provided for custom species). The game does a good job of presenting the setting, and the system is far above average.
A lot of the setting is reminiscent of Schlock Mercenary, which is one of my favorite webcomics ever, so I have no complaints about it (it's a little on the softer edge of science-fiction, but not too incredibly soft).
For $10, Bulldogs! provides an affordable and awesome science fiction experience.
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BULLDOGS is SCi-Fi that kicks ass (and takes names!). This is one of the best presentations of the FATE system on the market. Impressive.Most impressive.....
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Liked: Very few errata (for example, only saw one XX reference (on pg. 63); well-organized and focused action (with expansion examples). Really well written with plenty of examples.
Disliked: no adventure? well, shoot-out in a loading dock is just the map and a sketch of things to destroy. On the other tentacle, good advice on adventure design specific for the setting.
Overall: Enthusiasm overwhelms the few flaws. Hopefully more adventures soon. Although FATE-based, not based on the other SF games Diaspora or Starblazers but very easy to learn (all the rules for Bulldogs here).
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Bulldogs! is exactly what it says on the tin. The FATE system powers this sci-fi game to a streamlined and cinematic level of play, and there's a refreshing lack of gravitas that accompanies the setting. The action is fast and furious and free of any complications of any gray areas. There's you and there's them, and when the smoke clears, there had better be only you standing.
There's plenty of things to do in the Bulldogs! setting, the author does a fantastic job at painting the broad strokes right, leaving plenty of inspiration along the way for GMs to pick up and run their own high action campaigns with.
Bulldogs! features great writing, clean layout and great artwork. Definitely a great buy.
This is an excerpt from the full review on my blog. To read the rest of the review, please visit: http://wp.me/p5H0U-P8
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