Customer Reviews

Deep Beyond (Transhuman Space)

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Reading Transhuman Space, you're likely to be overwhelmed. In most games, it's pretty obvious who the characters will be, what the setting looks like, and what kind of adventures they will go on. In THS, you've got a whole solar system to play in, and its filled with unbelievable variety.

I'd say that Deep Beyond is a good place to start for a campaign. First, it's well written. There's a good overview of the major locations and the people and cultures you can find there. It hits just the right balance of summary and detail: enough of the former to cover everything and not get bogged down, and enough of the latter to be actually usable in planning a game.

The Duncanites get detailed treatment, and here you get a sense of how their society works on a day-to-day level. That's very important if you're PLAYING a duncanite, but also for visitors. The weirdness is made comprehensible enough that the GM can introduce the players to them. The setting in Saturnian space (and its US versus China dynamic) is very well developed. There is plenty of potential for conflict, but it's not one-dimensional. I can see players on either side, caught in between, or playing both sides. The conflict doesn't dominate the area, either. It's an essentially wild-west kind of place.

Which brings me to the other reason to start here. THS is big, very big. Too big for players or DM to get in their heads all at once. Games set in the Deep Beyond have all the "cool" stuff: lots of hardware and bioware and conflict (lots of transhumans, lots of space travel). But they're still isolated from the complexities and interdependencies of more civilized space and earth. So you can have a structurally simple game and introduce the complications gradually.

One warning to DM's: be aware that players could get TOO far out, to the point where it's them alone in space, with sporadic interactions with other travelers. At that point, the game can get a little boring. So be careful when you plan your game.

The bottom line is that this is a very useful supplement. The sample characters are interesting, the writing is clear and well-paced, and the setting itself is definitely fertile soil to grow a game in. My advice is to buy this one first.