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Title: Star Drive : Alien Compendium : Creatures of the Verge (Accessory) by Baker Richard, Bill Slavicsek, Richard Baker ISBN: 0-7869-0778-9 Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Pub. Date: July, 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4 (3 reviews)

Rating: 4
Summary: A Decent Collection of Sci-fi Creatures
Comment: Alien Compendium: Creatures of the Verge is an accessory for Alternity and its Star*Drive Campaign Setting, essentially a sci-fi monster manual for Star*Drive's unexplored frontier. This book requires both the Alternity Player's Handbook and Alternity Gamemaster Guide for play, but may be used with or without the Star*Drive Campaign.

This full-color, 128-page volume details 57 organisms from the 18 solar systems of the Verge (an area just beyond the borders of Star*Drive's "civilized" sectors), six sentient species and one laboratory creature of "Old Space" (right, the civilized areas), and six sentient "External" species (from outside the bounds of Galactic society). Five of the entries from "Old Space" will be familiar to any Alternity gamer from the basic books (it would have been nice to pad out the roster beyond two new entries: the laboratory Warbeasts and the insane Cykotek cultists). Plenty of good concepts here and high-quality art. There are a few irritating glitches in the book, such as the authors' unnecessary straining for pseudo-scientific description (sorry guys, arachnids don't have six legs), and a few stinkers, such as the alien koala bears and a picture of an egistron that doesn't match the text. Still in all a nice collection.

Good for Star*Drive and for general Alternity use; a decent idea mine.

--Sharon Daugherty for Skirmisher Online Gaming Magazine

Rating: 5
Summary: Not quite a compendium
Comment: This is a great book with a lot of useful information, although it is a bit light on the aliens, should maybe have not been a compendium, but still worth the purchase

Rating: 3
Summary: THIS is what the Verge has to offer?!?
Comment: Sadly, The Alien Compendium has lots of great stuff in it: new rules, eratta on Series of life, mysteries of the Verge, Externals, planetary plot developments, and aliens... IN THAT ORDER.

There's a lot of stuff that was left out of the Gamemaster Guide in this (random encounter rules and alien NPC templates), and some equally cool things worth stealing to add to your own campaign (the Externals.) The non-External aliens themselves, however, aren't great: for every one that seems cool, there are a few that are, bluntly, overlookable. The aliens themselves range from neat to virtually plagiarized, and the Alien Compendium leaves you feeling that the Verge has become that much less eye-catching. If your Star*Drive group spends time hopping to all sorts of out-of-the-way places, check this out, but be warned - Alternity has better things than this running for it.