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Iron Crown appears to have come back from the brink and is busily issuing old and new product. Best known for their RoleMaster system, they issued a SpaceMaster system back in the day (early 80s) that had a similar feel. The Vehicle Manual is a much needed addition to the SpaceMaster system.
For those not familiar with the ICE method, they have been what I would call "masters of the overkill." RoleMaster and SpaceMaster are heavily stat and skill driven. The die mechanic is open-ended d100; rolling above a certain number required re-rolling and adding the results together. Thus, it was easily possible to roll results well over 100. The manuals regularly feature very detailed critical results tables for nearly every kind of event.
A positive side effect of such relentless attention to detail is a product that lends itself to many game systems, not just the publisher's. The Vehicle Manual, while written for SpaceMaster, is readily adapted to a variety of other games; a good thing considering the cover price.
The Vehicle Manual addresses the requisite tech levels (albeit in smaller gradations than most systems) and breaks them out into constituent components (agriculture, arms and armor, engineering, sociology, travel, etc). Further suggestions are provided for racial and cultural development. Again, the ICE trademark of more-detail-is-better flourishes throughout. It's a testament to the author's creativity to provide such detail. The detail does make it easy to align the book's tech levels to those in other systems.
The meat of the book, however, are the starships and vehicles. A wide variety, ranging from traditional ground vehicles to small spacecraft are covered. You won't find capital ships here; this book is largely aimed at vehicles a player or small group of players can manage. While the book discusses the wide range of tech levels, the vehicles are all for futuristic campaigns.
Naturally, rules are provided for vehicular combat, mixed combat (personal weapons vs. vehicles, weapons vs. structures), movement, mods, and weapons. And, of course, there are the requisite rules for constructing one's own vehicle (both quick-n-dirty and more comprehensive).
All of the above occupy 123 pages of the Vehicle Manual. The balance is attack tables and critical tables. There are attack tables for the various kinds of ordnance mentioned in the book, infantry vs. vehicles, vehicles vs. infantry, and infantry vs. infantry. The tables cross-reference armor type vs. the player's success roll. The result is a number and a letter. The letter refers to the column in the critical table and the number corresponds to the row.
The critical tables are ICE's trademark, in my opinion. Each table is broken down into twenty rows and four or five columns. That's 80-100 different result descriptions. Granted, the descriptions aren't terribly different in many cases, but it's still a lot of work. If you're at a loss for a description of the results of a battle, ICE provides them in spades.
Layout, editing, and artwork are up to ICE's high standards. There are many black and white illustrations throughout, some recycled from older Tech Law books. More illustrations of the individual vehicles would have been nice, but there's plenty to work with here. Overall, a well-produced book. If you run a sci-fi game, this is a good, if pricey, addition.
Tech Law: Vehicle Manual
From: Iron Crown Enterprises
Type of Game: RPG Supplement
Designer: Robert J. Defendi
Cover art by: Quinton Hoover
Additional art by: Alan Fore, John P. Grigni, Jon M. Holsten, Eric Pence,
Matthew J. Plog, Dan Smith, Charles Shell
Number of Pages: 139
Retail Price: $25.00 (US)
Item Number: 4513
IBSN: 1-55806-565-2
Added: July 18th 2002
Reviewer: David Anderson
Score: 4.5 stars
Related Link: Vehicle Manual
Hits: 108
Language: eng
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