Earlier this year I had the opportunity to back another KickStarter campaign. The Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition by Stellagama Publishing. I had used some of Stellagama’s products in past Character Creation Challenges with Cepheus Deluxe (boy I have to be careful when I’m typing out that name) so I was a little familiar with their work. I think the biggest reasons that I backed this campaign was 1- I’ve been wanting to try one of the Traveller style 2d6 games for quite some time now. I keep hearing about how classic this system is, but I’ve never had a chance to play. 2- I’ve got a blog project coming up that uses different Fantasy RPG systems and I could use this game for that. 3- I can create a character for the upcoming challenge to see how the character creation system compares to the Cepheus Deluxe publication. And finally 4- They had a very reasonable price to back the KickStarter. A physical book and PDF for $12 (plus shipping)? Yea, I can spare a few clams to back that. Too many times I see an interesting KickStarter only to discover the prices are well out of my comfort zone for a publisher I don’t know very well.
The physical paperback book is printed in a digest size (I think this is called A5). I’ve commented on the print on demand quality from DriveThruRPG in the past and this looks to be just as good. As you can see from the above photo, there is a color cover by Maximilian Schmuecker with black and white art on the inside provided by a number of artists. It was written by Omer Golan-Joel, Richard Hazlewood and Josh Peters. It appears that the ISBN 2-370021-773978 and it has a copyright of 2024.
There are 377 pages in this publication. There are fifteen chapters, two appendixes and an index of spells. The chapters include: Introduction, Basic Game Mechanics (bless you for putting this at the front of the book), Skills, Character Generation (see you soon), Character Advancement, Adventuring, Environmental Hazards, Personal Combat, Chases and Vehicle Combat, Equipment, Sorcery, Bestiary, Treasure, Encounters and Adventure Seeds. Superscience and Inspirational Media make up the two appendixes. I noticed a LOT of references to other roleplaying games in the OGL credits. I’d never really looked at this before since it mostly goes over my head. I didn’t see a character sheet in the physical book, but if you purchase the PDF from DriveThruRPG, it comes with three different sheets. A standard one, a form fillable one and a character sheet with extra art.
With the holidays and prepping for the upcoming Character Creation Challenge I haven’t had a chance to do a deep dive into the rules, but from what little I’ve read, I want to read more. The text is pretty clear and uncluttered. Just the way the basics are explained in the front of the book made me want to play. Also reading about the differences between the three main themes to the game: Gritty Heroism (the characters are skilled), Dark Sorcery (magic can be unreliable and corrupting) and Open World (the world does not scale to the characters). This game could be used for Sword and Sorcery, Sword and Planet (think John Carter of Mars) and Sword and Sandal (think the legends of the Greece-Roman myths and legends).
Overall I’m very pleased with the reward for backing this KickStarter. This book will get used over the next year (at a minimum, making a character, but who knows perhaps I’ll be inspired to run a game at a future SaltCON).
Do you have any questions about Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition? Have you backed any Kickstarters lately? Tell me about it. This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
