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Starlight Manifesto Season 1 Campaign Book $10.00 $1.00
Publisher: Lightspress Media
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by Alex G. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 10/21/2017 03:53:22

The first sourcebook for Starlight Manifesto, this book imagines a TV show, Starlight Manifesto. and offers an entire first season of 13 episodes, taking inspiration from a certain venerable US show with a cult following.

Reading this, I sensed that I was binge watching a show on Netflix which I could only describe as "What if Star Trek had been created by Berin Kinsman, Verity Lambert and J Michael Straczynski?" The adventures dance around some familiar landmarks of old Trek territory - one could see elements of one episode and think "I know where this one's going," only to be blindsided when the story suddenly veers off into something else. Imagine binge watching Trek on Netflix and getting as far as "Mudd's Women," with elements of "The Perfect Mate," and while you're at the front door getting the pizza delivery someone switches the episode to "Balance of Terror," and you'll get the general idea of what happens in this sourcebook (Note: actual gameplay differs from advertised footage).

The 13 adventures are designed as interlinked, although with a bit of tweaking they could be made more episodic, and episodes could be devised by the guide and inserted between these episodes, but it can be played with just these thirteen. The interconnectedness of these episodes, however, gives "Starlight Manifesto Season One" a modern feel, closer to Star Trek: Discovery than to the original series.

The titles of the episodes are inspired by Milton ("As Morning Shows The Day"), Shakespeare ("Naked Villainy," "What We May Be") and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ("The Schemer Falls"). Each title hints at what the episode will be about. The episodes bring in new and recurring good guys and bad guys, feature new equipment, aliens, hazards and strangeness. There is a sense of introductions - just as Star Trek had to introduce the regulars and the signature aliens such as the Romulans and the Klingons for the first time, and just as it had to introduce Vulcan mind melds, the neck pinch, the Vulcan salute and "Live long and prosper" over several episodes, so too does this sourcebook feature episodes introducing some of the signatures of Starlight Manifesto for the first time such as the Zyrosh, the Brocour, the Fringe Worlds, the Tel'Keth and so on.

In the original Star Trek, all the best episodes were in the first and second seasons, with one or two gems emerging from the mire that was season 3, and ignoring "The Omega Glory," "The Empath" and that one with the space hippies. Please let's not have an episode in a future season where the player characters are required to play a bicycle wheel as a musical instrument.

I'm hoping that future series will appear, exploring other episodes from this much-loved series from a universe where Gene Roddenberry had landed a role writing Mission: Impossible and Bruce Geller ended up as showrunner for a Star Trek where Martin Landau played Spock, and Harlan Ellison wrote "The Naked Time."

And now I feel like I just binge watched an entire Netflix season of the show. Bring on Season 2.



Rating:
[5 of 5 Stars!]
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Starlight Manifesto Season 1 Campaign Book
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