INTRODUCTION
I received a copy of Changed Stars to review from the creative team. They were very kind and accommodating of both my schedule and the way that I write reviews. While in the past, when reviews were requested,
I have had issues with developers taking criticism among colonial and racial elements, this did not happen this time. Regardless of any criticisms that I may have of the setting of the book and some assumptions
thereof, I have no criticisms of the creative team. I wish them all the luck in the world and I DO recommend this book! As usual, the first section of this will be a summary of the game's mechanics, followed by
a review of those mechanics and of the game's identity, then my conclusion. A game's identity is the setting, the narrative voice that the gamebook is written in, the art assets and any author's notes present
including the introduction and any inspiration pages if they exist.
To summarize, I overall enjoyed the game's worldbuilding. The anti-imperialist stance it takes is generally well argued but does not take away from the opportunity for players to influence the world around them.
Often, games with a positive mindset remove the ability for the players to change things. The world is already as good as it can possibly be and they are making incremental change if any through their massive
gunfights. This is absolutely not the case with Changed Stars. Internal corruption, organized crime and so on are all valid "enemies" for a heroic party. An anti-heroic or even villainous party are also possible
too, through the rules given. That said, this message is undercut by adherence to genre baggage. The game is a science fiction spacefaring fantasy and so, it has many of the narrative tropes that you expect
within such a work. One is the inclusion of alien races. While I understand the direction that this goes in, I have significant ideological and political disagreements with the concept that there exist discreet
races, that can be determined on a biological basis. This is not how race works and to write that it does work that way is to ratify race science. Even if the races are called species. The other is the inclusion
of cowboy film tropes such as outcast towns, borderlands, lawless zones and so on. The first is perhaps a necessary trope for the genre as much as I dislike it. The second is not and did not need to be there and
the fact that it was is a mistake.
Regarding the mechanics, the overall system is completely compentent and sets out to do (most) of what it intended to do. Yes, the neo-traditional game mechanics are familiar. This is because they are good and
useful and so a lot of games will include them. To me, this isn't a bug, it's a feature. What I particularly liked were the subsystems. They added an element of mechanical depth that you don't normally see with
these kinds of games. My favorite was the ship system which I found intuitive, creative and fun. I could easily see myself adding survival systems and spaceship fights just so myself and my players could engage
within the design space that the creators have made. One thing that I do wish for was that there was either the inclusion of social mechanics or that they were not present in the game at all but this is not
unusual for neo-traditional games and is a relatively minor gripe.
If you are interested in the full review, feel free to click ahead in the tabs where I go more in detail about my thoughts on various portions of the game.