This is an optional but useful companion product to Interstellar Patrol. It expands on the situations and worlds found there. Note that you're still getting seeds, not fully fleshed-out adventures or worlds. This is good for a low-prep or pickup game.

The plot cards offer a good variety of situations. Each card gives you two brief situations that fit a certain theme, such as Strange Phenomenon or Enemy Action. As an earlier reviewer said, the description font could have been bigger. The adventure fractal icons on the plot cards are unnecessary, so they just take up real estate that could have left room for a bigger font. Each situation description is just a sentence or two, so it's up to you and your group to run with it.

The adventure fractal cards are for those who are following the adventure fractal model described by Ryan Danks. Here's his archived description: https://web.archive.org/web/20160309215516/http://ryanmdanks.com/?p=496

Each adventure fractal card assigns the values +0, +1, +2, and +3 to the adventure's or scene's four skills: combat, diplomacy, exploration, and science. In aggregate, the cards cover every possible combination of skills and values.

The world cards offer good variety. Each card gives the world a skill level, a world aspect (e.g., Well-Established Colony), a story aspect (e.g., Hidden Technologies), a world type, and a name. The world and story aspects and the names are unique to each card. The world type is one of those described briefly in Interstellar Patrol. Apply the world's skill level to the world's denizens and challenges. Invoke the aspects when appropriate, and use them as narrative guidance for the kinds of denizens, locations, things, and events you're likely to encounter.

You can play Interstellar Patrol without the cards, but the cards are a good addition.

As a standalone product this will be a great buy. Though as a Fate book, not so much. More than an actual new Fate book, it is a merger of several other books, where the text is more or less lifted directly from those books. Most of the DnD parts are actually from the Fate Freeport companion, it includes the most important parts of Fate Adversary Toolkit as well as the Fate core rules. There are aslo some extra rules from War of Ashes. While this is a great combo, it doesn't really add much new to Fate. As a fantasy version or DnD version of Fate, it doesn't really add much. The Freeport Companion adds monsters, a setting and characters, as well as most of the rules in this book. Dungeons of Fate is a quick and dirty version (one page) that allows you to mostly the same as this game. Aperitana Arcana, while not my favourite, adds original material and rules.The online Pathfinder Fate Accelerated conversion adds loads of details with example stunts and ways to play different character classes. And then there's Fate System Toolkit and Adversary Toolkit.

So if you want to play Fate in a DnD world, and don't own Freeport Companion, Fate Adversary Toolkit and Fate Core, buy this book. If you are a Fate player looking for good resources on how to play DnD fantasy with Fate, you don't really need this book.

Though, if they add a Bestiary (there's two monsters in the book now), and some more on how to play classic classes of DnD (ie. suggested stunts and aspects for a Warrior, Rogue, etc), this Fate hack would be worth the money.

Crashing Beasts & Crumbling Halls is a delightful dungeon-delving fantasy that leverages the mechanical strength of the Fate Condensed system to deliver an exciting and narrative-driven experience to players. There is a level of thoughtfulness and care that can be seen in the design of it's systems and writing that shows a both a deep love for the genre and expertise in it's craft.

Goregous layout with full illustration that sets the tone for the game well. Rules are concise and quick to pick up for folks familiar with popular dungeon-delving fantasy RPGs or other FATE-powered games.

Each of the 16 cards gives you an exotic fantasy location where you'd set a key scene or series of scenes. To give you an idea of the scale, locations include: an ancient monument, a forest, a bridge, a valley, and a castle. That is, these locations are neither single rooms nor vast realms.

The locations are described briefly in a few sentences each, such as the location's history, what goes on there now, and (in general terms) who or what you'll find there. Some locations describe something PCs can do while they're there. The descriptions are system-neutral.

Each location includes two situation aspects that are in effect while the PCs are there. They could be invoked by or compelled against the PCs. For example, one location has Supernatural Stillness and Reflections Reveal Truth. Another has WHIZ! BOOM! None of the aspects get direct explanations on what they mean or how you might use them. How you'd use them is based on how you interpret them in light of the location descriptions.

The aspects are easily adapted to non-Fate systems. If a location is Hard to Reach or Haunted by Fae, for example (and we'll assume that's not a dig at the Fate Accelerated Edition -- I'll be here all week), you could easily use those ideas in some other RPG.

Each location includes a stunt. In most cases, the stunts can be used by any character present. A few are marked "after visiting," meaning the stunt is usable in later scenes. A few stunts are marked with a moon icon indicating that PCs can acquire them as stunts of their own at a later milestone.

The stunts are written in the style of Fate Core. You'd reinterpret them for Fate Accelerated. The stunts are the only Fate-specific elements on each card.

The images on the cards are great visuals to show your players.

The cards include names ("the planetouched inventor Filigree") and various assumptions about the setting ("pilgrims venture here"). Obviously, you can come up with your own versions of the text to fit your setting. The only small catch is that the original text is still there, overlaying the images, if you show the cards to the players.

These are specific locations, not templates for building similar locations. If the PCs visit the Ruin of Fal'Triaz, for example, the card describes that ruin in particular. It's not a template for other ruins. Because they're 16 specific locations, there's not really any replay value other than revisiting the exact same site. You wouldn't make every ruin the same as the Ruin of Fal'Triaz. However, the locations can inspire you as you create other sites: two descriptive aspects that make the location interesting or challenging, plus a stunt that goes with the place.

These cards include no maps, no lists of NPCs, no creature stats, no encounter tables, or anything else that would flesh out an adventure. There are no hooks in the sense of an initial encounter to grab the PCs. That's all up to you. They're locales for you to build on. Consider this a positive or a negative as you see fit.

I was a little disappointed in the cards, but maybe that's a matter of mismatched expectations. I was hoping it would be a rich set of situation aspects usable in a variety of settings. Instead, it seems more like a sampler pack - possibly useful as inspiration for creating your own.

There are 10 cards for environmental conditions. Most of them cover a scattered handful of specific weather conditions. I'd have used one card for weather, say, "Severe Weather," letting you adapt it to your setting. The other environmental cards offer a small sampling of environmental conditions. Again, they were a little over-specific. For example, instead of having two cards for different ways to have poor visibility, I'd have gone with "Poor Visibility" as one card, leaving you to adapt it for your setting. Your campaign probably has a lot of variety in your locations, but the environmental condition cards would be applicable to only a small subset of them. A better mix, if I had to squeeze a broadly useful set of environmental conditions into 10 cards, would have included other circumstances that could apply across a variety of settings, such as "Poor Footing" or "No Room for Vehicles" or "Creepy Surroundings."

The 10 personal condition cards are a decent mix, because they're more widely applicable to the things that can happen to characters, regardless of your setting. All the same, one could easily double the number of persoal conditions, especially if you have setting-specific conditions. D&D5e, for comparison, lists 15 personal conditions: 13 that are applicable across almost any setting, and two that are specific to a D&D-like setting.

The 10 social conditions aren't bad. Well, 9 of them actually. One of them had me wondering how it counted as a social condition. Anyway, they're not bad, but again, one could easily imagine some common social conditions that aren't represented here.

The 10 danger cards are good about covering a variety of settings, but as above, you could easily come up with dangers that aren't covered in these cards.

Bottom line: Don't expect this deck to stand in for coming up with your own situation aspects. It's effectively a sampler pack. Maybe you'll say "It's raining hard" and then you'll remember there happens to be a card that covers specifically that. Or maybe you'll say "The undergrowth makes progress difficult" and there won't be a card for that. The cards aren't bad, just eclectic.

Set your expectations correctly before ordering. It's only $1 and it's only 8 pages long. It'd be even shorter without the artwork, which is thematic filler, not illustrations of game elements.

In short, I'd use it to seed a Star Trek-like one-shot adventure.

You might like this title if you're expecting:

• Fate Accelerated. It's there in the title.
• A somewhat Star Trek-ish setting in that characters are members of a starship crew, facing aggressors and seeking out new worlds.
• A straightforward, non-crunchy way to handle starships.
• A page with some general discussion on creating characters for this setting, including some sample stunts.
• Material suitable for a one-shot: five basic world types, six typical plot seeds. These are seeds only, not fleshed-out worlds or fleshed-out adventures.

You'll be disappointed if you're expecting:

• Fate Core. There are no skill lists.
• Star Trek canon (or any other canon). That's not what this is.
• A full campaign setting. You get a one-paragraph overview, and that's it.
• An adventure generator or a sample adventure. These are simple seeds.
• A world generator a la Traveller. Each world type is described in a few sentences. The descriptions are qualitative, not quantitative.

Produced by Nothing Ventured Games, this PDF is 18 pages containing nineteen robots across a CR 1-19 spread, from the lowly Observation Bot right on up to the terrifying CR 19 Hellreaver Automaton, forged literally in the bloody fires of hell to destroy all level 17-20 PCs in it's path. I'll be using this book quite a bit, as anyone who has picked up the Alien Archive from Paizo will notice that it is woefully short on meaningful robotic foes. The PDF is clean, follows the Starfinder stat block protocol, and has some nice black/white illustrations that get the job done. I look forward to seeing what the author, Paul Stefko, comes up with next for Starfinder. This appears to be the first Starfinder resource from Nothing Ventured Games, and hopefully they make more thematically utility-driven resources in the near future.

Source review: http://realmsofchirak.blogspot.com/2018/01/starfinder-reviews-robots-of-known.html

The font on these cards is tiny... I mean get out your magnifying glass tiny. For me, there's no way I can make use of these; I'd have a headache by the time I got through 10 of them.

What a shame.

It's 5 pages of vague abstract description about creating a space campaign without much substance. It's NOT a campaign setting. It's flavour comes directly from shows like Star Trek TOS and it reads like the examples in the FAE rulebook. There are half a dozen 'plot seeds' and a basic description of 5 planet types (can you guess what they are?). A few lines of description for some example aspects and skills but nothing at all you couldn't easily develop on your own by watching a single episode of Star Trek or any other Sci-Fi show you like to get some basic concepts and archetypes. Nothing at all special here. For $1 is it worth it? It's only $1 but I'd give it a miss and I recommend you just spend 30 minutes of your own time to flesh out some of your own ideas.

After my previous review with some remarks, publisher contacted with me, and send an updated version. Now it's perfect. Good work!

Excellent work. A simple two page setting with everything needed to set up some great stories in a Camelot with a twist. Some great ideas with the clockwork armor and time travel (essentially Merlin is a Whovian style TimeLord). I am looking forward to playtesting a few sessions on roll20 virtual tabletop with this setting in the next few weeks. Thank you for contributing this to the hobby.

I really enjoy the ideas presented here and my only complaint is that I wish there was simply more of it. This CC would go great with narrative based charisma and presence based classes like the Bard, Dashing Hero, or Mask. Anyone who plays a character who utilizes fashion or poise would likely find this useful as well. Some might argue that this isn't as hardcore as your average Dungeon World CC, but I think it tackles the topic of being a fashion model as seriously as is possible.

A couple of pages of fun. They could have handled it a little more seriously; but that didn't seem to be the intent. If you are looking for something to add to your campaign, this isn't it. looking for a good joke and maybe something for a humor campaign, a good buy.

Outstanding! This is a short but rich collection of tools to use in making up a setting and adventures as you go. Paul Stefko has done a fantastic job bringing together key elements of optimistic space exploration in the vein of the original Star Trek, and making each bit intensely useful. It's loaded with insights that simply hadn't occurred to me before but made immediate sense the moment I saw them, like how the stunts each PC crew member take can help flesh out their part of a ship and implicitly the whole culture of their fleet. The idea of crew taking consequences on behalf of the ship while it's in battle - including damage from showers of sparks, being flung around, etc. - is another one of those "dang, I wish I'd thought of that" elements.

There's a lot of humor in here, but no mocking, and enough to allow for drama that's very real and consequential as the characters experience it. I highly recommend this to anyone interested in the genre. It's not a campaign ready to go, it's what you need to go ahead and go without everything done in advance.

eight pages of mostly so generic material that anyone could put down on paper in 5 minutes of thought. Take it for free, if you take it at all.