Beyond Science: A Guide to FX (Alternity Sci-Fi Roleplaying) [Paperback]

Sean Reynolds (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Wizards of the Coast; 1St Edition edition (February 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786914327
• ISBN-13: 978-0786914326
• Product Dimensions: 10.8 x 8.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #703,427 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars THE definitive guide for adding magic to your Alternity game, March 27, 2000

By 

J. C. Staufer (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Beyond Science: A Guide to FX (Alternity Sci-Fi Roleplaying) (Paperback)

This guide presents everything you need to add FX (Arcane Magic, Faith FX, and Super Power FX) to your Alternity campaign world. In addition, it provides a few new FX creatures to add to the game, as well as instructions on how to create FX items and new FX abilities/skills.

FYI:

Arcane FX includes illusions, necromancy, diabolism, etc.

Faith FX is magic drawn from a user's beliefs, this includes Shamanism, Druidism, Taoism, etc.

Finally, Super Power FX is what you guessed it to be, your flying like Superman, wall-crawling like Spider Man abilities.

For those of you that play the Star Drive version of Alternity, this book contains a wealth of all-new material detailing the FX disciplines described above.

For those of you that enjoy the Dark Matter game, you will find about a 1/3 of the information presented to be a re-hash of the information presented in the Dark Matter source book. (For example, Diabolism is there, as are several of the Religion-related FX abilities, and a few of the FX creatures.)

Even though some of the FX material is re-cycled from the Dark Matter book, the new FX disciplines still make this a great value. New Disciplines like Alienism (Chthulu, anyone?) can definitely add flavor to an already dark world of consipiracies.

For those of you that want to try something completely different, the Super Power FX powers can be followed to make your favorite comic book heroes come to life. (Or to create a nasty villian to scare the hell out of your adventurers.)

In summary, the world of FX is opened by this new material, and the Alternity universe will never be the same again.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Quality Guide. A must have for any Alternity enthusiast., June 1, 2001

By 

"catz_clawz" (British Columbia, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Beyond Science: A Guide to FX (Alternity Sci-Fi Roleplaying) (Paperback)

It is a ..shame that Wizards discontinued Alternity.

This guide is an excellent example of the versatility of the system. Beyond Science gives you the strait goods on how to add magic, faith and super powers to any campaign. All the abilities are well thought out and pretty detailed. They even throw in some FX using monsters for fun like golems, familiars, demons, angels and vampires!

On book quality, the art work on the cover and the inside are well done.

Now...my gripes. I feel that such a versatile thing such as FX should have been included in the Player's Guide (I know, it was included in the Gamemaster's guide) along with Psionics and cyberware. I also was dissapointed by the lack of a FX skill page for photocopying and such. Finally, FX can wipe the floor with Psionics and the guide dosn't go into enough detail about how to counter this overpowering. They aknowledge it and go into some detail about balancing but not enough for my tastes.

It may seem like alot of complaints but I am still very satisfied with the guide!

5.0 out of 5 stars Triple Virtue FX +++, February 8, 2011

By 

Kevin Kiersky "oceaneagle" (Olympia, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Beyond Science: A Guide to FX (Alternity Sci-Fi Roleplaying) (Paperback)

I call "Beyond Science: A Guide to FX" one on "Triple Virtue FX" due to psionic, magical and superpowered FX being covered well in a single work in a wise, clever and balanced way. Each of the three FX types is covered well with major and minor sub-types presented for each. So we have active and passive psionics, faith and arcane magics and outer and inner superpowers. The creation and usage of all of these FX is well-explained and uses power-points for balanced game-usage of such FX. Some RPGs have grossly unlimited usage due to FX being automatic and others have very limited usage due to very limited sources of FX [such as vanishing books or scrolls]. For Alternity FX characters can make use of any FX at any time that they still have the current total FX points for out of a modest starting total which is restored slowly. This is very balanced and natural. With such a wide spectrum of FX possible there is opportunity for a wide spectrum of fresh RPG surprise. In the last part of this work is good advice on how to convert ADnD to Alternity FX +++