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Title: Threats from Beyond by Bill Slavicsek ISBN: 0-7869-1218-9 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: April, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (4 reviews)

Rating: 3
Summary: Solid Adventure Hooks Weakened by Strained Prose
Comment: Threats from Beyond acts as a campaign resource for Alternity's Star*Drive Campaign Setting. It is essentially a set of 18 adventure hooks presented with deep background information and rumors surrounding them. This book requires Star*Drive, the Alternity Player's Handbook, and the Alternity Gamemaster Guide for play.

Threats from Beyond centers on the politics and intrigue occuring on the Verge, the edge of explored space in Star*Drive. The material presented is narrowly focused at the Star*Drive universe and its history, with little that could be adapted for general Alternity campaigns. The adventure hooks are pretty solid, but could have benefited from a different, shorter, and less cliched background. Author Bill Slavicsek frames the "history" for the hooks as the desperate transmissions of an undercover reporter hiding out in the Verge, unearthing conspiracies and threats against civilization. The strained prose resembles chunks of a novel and a future history text interspersed with junior journalism, not very smooth reading. Another annoyance is a "security precaution" against sneaky players: decisions about which part of the background is true are left to the Gamemaster--less than helpful and a lot of extra work, considering how much of the entire book is given this treatment.

Could have been better; get it for the adventure hooks and ideas, not the fake news reports.

--Sharon Daugherty for Skirmisher Online Gaming Magazine

Rating: 5
Summary: A Great Resource
Comment: This is a great book for GM's. It has loads of adventure hooks. I don't like all the stuff Avatar says but I will use most of it, and leave out the ideas I hate. Definitely a buy for GM's in the Star-Drive setting.

Rating: 3
Summary: Lots of interesting background but no gaming information
Comment: This book seems to be a classic example of assuming that players are going to read the book as well as gamemasters. Therefore it becomes almost entirely background material. The GM is left on his own to determine what's really going on. That said, the book is enjoyable to read and provides lots of ideas. It just seems like this product should have had a "GM's Book" and a "Player's Book." Then the GM could give the one book to the players as they read the reports, while still having more information to use those materials. As it is, it's mostly a "Player's Book," but can't be used as such because of the few game notes present.