STELLAR CAMPAIGN

Another month: another

‘Hell by’...

book from the prolific pen of Jim Webster. One can certainly not accuse the author of failing to support his material! Last issue we featured Hell by Starlight:

a skirmish system aimed at SF games. This month we are reviewing a campaigns book for that system.

As usual, the author has produced an A4 soft back, of 67 or so pages which is available on Amazon for £9.50 although Kindle and electronic versions are also available, the latter from Wargames Vault for around £4. It is – like all of his products – a cleanly laid out: a ‘no frills’ document with zero internal illustrations aside from the cover plus a couple of hex-maps showing star placements for the ‘universe’. It is very much a ‘word processed’ style of publication. As with all of his products, Mr Webster has produced something that’s easy to read and full of information and ideas.

The Hell by Starlight system is aimed at 15mm skirmish gaming and this book aims at providing background material to support campaigns. It covers tech levels; economies (with sub-areas for the financial and calendar years etc); travel-time and space ships (plus the cost of travel); trade; currency; haulage; government; arms and weapons (with purchasing and arms-deal examples); trading and encounters on different worlds (with a list of example worlds and how trade is carried out); aliens (with examples) and more...

There’s a lot here to sink your teeth into and – even if you don’t want to use it all (off world double-entry book keeping and accountancy might not be your jam) – there’s still a lot of ideas to dip into.