Hammers Slammers

[saundby]

I'm very happy with HS. It's not so much a campaign as elements to use in a campaign. If you're pretty much just playing out story-type scenarios, the omissions can be hand-waved away at first, and sketched out lightly as the campaign progresses. There's enough material in the book to run straight from it for a couple of game sessions, after that it's worthwhile to build out the universe a bit with maps, politics, etc. The book covers characters and equipment pretty well, but leaves all the backstory setup material up to the ref. There are brief sketches of the universe, but that's pretty much it.

The DD intro is good stuff.

The only rules hitch I saw was skirt damage on the vehicles. Treating belly hits as skirt hits does the trick. This was originally suggested in the Mongoose forums by a poster there, and it's worked well for me.

I was skeptical of the powergun stats until I used them for a while. They play out well, though.

 

[Peter Schutze]

>One the other hand in this same universe the guys all the stories are based on are pretty much all the stories are based on so its a pretty limited genre

there are all the other outfits plus some interesting aliens etc in the books

>Oh, wait...on second thought, who's going to not play a Slammer? Who plays the other guys and how the heck am I going to make it challenging while staying true to the series?"

and yet people play sides other than TL15 Imperial Marines all the time. Some adventures even have a small group of players getting on the wrong side of the Imperial Marines (and hopefully running away !)
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I would expect other major league governments to be close to Slammers standard in kit too (Friesland manufactures and uses Slammers kit for their own forces for example) but the Slammers would probably still have the edge in experience.

I think the story on the "divided into peacekeeper zones" mining world would make a great intro to a Slammers universe campaign .... several other outfits on the world .... not quite as good as Slammers overall but each respected enough in their own speciality to discourage the Slammers from walking over them without big political juju on their side

 

[kafka47]

Slammers and Battlelords are good source ideas for the OTU Merc Campaigns or indeed as has mentioned Imperial Marine - save, one would have to come up with a reason why the Imperium would not employ Mercs rather than a mobile Company which if it violated the Imperial Rules of War. In the Rebellion era, changing the names and jump drive, it might be possible to channel some of the energies of Slammers into an official purpose.

As milieus, Slammers would be better suited for the Terra/Sol Campaign than the OTU.

Otherwise, I found the product to be good but not great. Just like all commercial spin-offs that make their way into RPGs they are limited by the IP owner in what they can describe and cannot describe. Case in point, Mongoose Conan is great because Howard is not around to say - no Conan would never become King so it allows for all sorts of freedom for the Gamemaster and players to even kill Conan and take his place (as happened in my Conan Campaign with more than a few lucky 20s). Living authors tend toward being more guarded...as I am sure Mongoose did not like when I blew up Babylon 5 before the Shadow War by the Soul Hunters...

 

[Kilgs]

...as I am sure Mongoose did not like when I blew up Babylon 5 before the Shadow War by the Soul Hunters...

That was YOU?! Ruined my pre-planned vacation, it did.