Sweet Chariot

Game: Sweet Chariot
Publisher: Flying Mice LLC
Series: Sweet Chariot: StarCluster
Reviewer: Wyrdmaster
Review Dated: 10th, January 2005
Reviewer’s Rating: 6/10   [ On the ball ]
Total Score: 16
Average Score: 8.00

Sweet Chariot is a StarCluster RPG. Or, um, it seems equally correct to say that StarCluster is a Sweet Chariot game. You don’t need one to play the other but the two RPGs are closely tied. StarCluster is a space epic with a sweeping scale. Sweet Chariot picks a focus – the world of Chariot and the surrounding system.

The object of Sweet Chariot, we’re told, is to survive. Flying Mice’s occult horror Blood Games feels more like a survival game than this. There you have werewolves and vampires who’d be happy to maul here. Sweet Chariot’s threats to survival are more insidious. Here political rivals, trading opponents and the environment are threats. Space pirates too.

In the StarCluster/Sweet Chariot world the Earth is gone. It’s the far future and mankind thrives. There was, as you might expect, a mass exodus of the dying Earth. Thousands took to large spaceships with just enough time and technology to escape the dying planet and travel far enough to reach safety. Many more thousands took to spaceships which would not reach safety; either being unable to escape the blast of dead Earth or reach anywhere safely.

Some of those who fled Earth too late and being a rather bastardly mercenary when it comes to survival (a human trait) released that they did not need to reach any real safety. They just had to burn fuel as to catch up with the large “slowboats” with room and resources enough to make the journey.

Many of these pirate vessels left Earth with the intention of catching and boarding slowboats. It was the drama of one such boarding action on an unusually cosmopolitan slowboat which brought together the spacefarers who settle and colonise Chariot and neighbouring planets. The original crew have Chariot and the pirates have Fiske.

Actually, it’s more accurate to say that the descendants of the original crew and the descendants of the original pirates who have colonised these planets and moons. The journey from Earth to Chariot alone took many hundreds of years.

During the long drift through the cosmos entire generations of families born, wed and died. There was also use of life suspension pods. Waking people from centuries of frozen deep sleep has many problems – one of which is culture shock. For this reason and others suggested by Sweet Chariot, the civilizations onboard the slowboats tend to adopt “old” civilizations and stick to them.

Yeah. It’s a little weird. Potentially high tech civilisations are mixed with old fashioned world views, ethics and way of life. It’s this rather surreal mix which gives Sweet Chariot its unique flavour.

The front cover for the Sweet Chariot PDF shows what appears to be an old fashioned zeppelin. Zeppelins make for a good way to travel on Chariot as the low lands filled with heavy, argon rich, gas. Most people live in the mountains.

Sweet Chariot might be about survival but the system is very much about creating characters. The StarCluster rule system is creation intense.

Characters are created, almost, one year at a time. In the chargen characters start off too young to adventure but with an early set of skills (mother’s milk skills), they then spend years in education – how much depends on dice rolls and decisions – then move on to start one or more careers. Each year could bring promotions and either new or better skills. There’s a choice there; depth versus breadth.

The system which facilitates this advancement through career choice produces very many tables. Sweet Chariot is 167 pages in length (plenty for the $10 asking price) and much of it is full of career blocks and skills. Although Sweet Chariot uses the StarCluster rule set there is an important difference between the two RPGs.

Sweet Chariot begins with a summary of the game’s stats, combat and health rules. Then it launches into the campaign setting with the history of the colonisation and details of the many planets in the system. StarCluster concentrates initially on the system. This isn’t a trivial layout decision. I think it’s this ordering of contents which separates StarCluster from Sweet Chariot. Sweet Chariot really is a setting focused game.

The RPG provides decent summaries of a collection of planets. As the original colonists preserved old cultures from Earth and then took different parts of Chariot and Fiske for themselves (later different planets and moons to themselves) there is a heady mix of cultures in the Sci-Fi present. This leaves Sweet Chariot with a mass of demographic and geographic topics to cover.

The PDF lives up to the challenge; there’s everything from heat classifications (tropical to artic, for example), flora and fauna (and some creatures were transported from Earth), railroads, biochemistry, local cities and their landmarks.

Sweet Chariot is peppered with illustrations and coloured maps. The illustrations tend to have a distinctly modern rather than science fiction feel and the zeppelin paragraph block is common. The cartography is not on par with what you will see in products with a cartography speciality but it is good enough.

The combined effect of many maps for many different locales is one of strength in numbers. There’s a real feeling here that you’ve bought a substantial game.

Sweet Chariot is primed to be that epic campaign a gaming group talks about for years. Sweet Chariot games could entertain for years and be reminisced about ever after. Sweet Chariot might also be closed in a hurry and then never looked at again. This is an RPG which could easily provoke a love/hate reaction. There is a lot of potential here. There are a lot of rough edges here too.

Bizarrely, what Sweet Chariot seems to need the most is the professional touch of someone who knows nothing about it. An editor needs to be told to tackle all 167 pages head-on but should not be told anything about the game.

There are quite a few of “chicken and egg” situations where you need to know mechanics before you know rules which help understand the decision behind the original mechanics. Too often Sweet Chariot doesn’t seem to see these deadly circles and I suspect this is because the authors and production team know their creation inside out.

Sweet Chariot does have a retro feel to it. This is quite appropriate for the sci-fi game with such a mix of technologies and cultures! If you prefer the mechanic style of some of the older games (charts, tables, rules for specific situations) and want a unique gaming world with a load of potential then Sweet Chariot is one to look at.

If you’re used to a bit of spit and polish on your streamlined and turbocharged RPG then I doubt you’ll take to Sweet Chariot. Fortunately, there’s a demo to help you decide.