Moderators Guide (Blue Planet) [ペーパーバック]

"Blue Planet: Moderator's Guide" is very well crafted as a book. It is a big sturdy hardbound with good binding and plenty of great colorful or grey-tone art, maps, charts and tables -- starting with the well-done vivid colorful cover. This handbook is sharply organized via topic and subtopic and has clear prose in clear font. A pleasure just to read as a book. Blue Planet is a superbly realistic AND superbly creative setting for sci-fi fantasy role-playing. This moderator's guide has many well-imagined details and aspects -- very realistic planetology, climatology, oceanography, physics, chemistry, biology, technology and social factors -- as well as having many creative plots and gaming hooks. I got a very pleased thrill upon seeing that it is actually based upon the real Lambda Serpentis Sol-like star system 38 light years from Sol and Terra -- and its real-world possibilities, including other Sol-like stars nearby [within 10 light years distance]. Yet manifold mystery flows out of the cracks between the scientific details -- just as suggested so well via "Blue Planet: Moderator's Guide". Jeffrey Barber is the original creator of Blue Planet with a great scientific background in oceanography related areas -- which shows thru-out this work via exact facts then clever ideas. Disbelief is suspended as mystery is extended.

Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau is paid tribute on the first page of print -- as he passed away when the first edition of this work went to press. He is one oceanographer that many can recall and honor and very fitting for a setting that is 97% oceanic. A quite seesaw future history of Terra up to 2199 is part of the setting -- with a GEO organization [and virtual world government] eventually leading Terra out of "the Blight". "The Blght" being an ecological catastrophy depopulating Earth of much of humanity and other species. So someone may suppose that this setting with a UN-appointed GEO ecological authority would be one-sided. BUT in "Blue Planet: Moderator's Guide" ALL the main agencies are in fluid counter-balance -- GEO versus Incorps [mega-corps] versus a few surviving state governments versus "Free Zones" versus colonists versus natives versus aborigines and all versus Blue Planet. Yet there are even manifold tensions within each type -- as well as individuals in co-operation or competition, indirect or direct and casual or mortal. This makes for vast game-playing interest, intrique and options -- as so skillfully shown by this handbook. Most of this fine handbook really is a guide to the Blue Planet setting -- so someone can easily use it within another overall setting and favorite RPG +++