RPGPundit Reviews: Cubicle 7 Game-master Screens (Starblazer Adventures, Doctor Who, Qin)

I've been doing some unusual reviews of late; first a wargame (Richard III), and now, a gaming accessory.  I guess that the actual RPGs have dried up a bit on account of the pre-Gencon drought that usually happens what with everyone waiting till Gencon to release their new products.

So this is a review of three different, but very similar products by Cubicle 7.  They're all GM-screens, for three of the truly great games they publish: Starblazer Adventures, Doctor Who, and Qin.

Now, I'm not a GM who uses a screen, as a rule; at least, I haven't used one in probably decades.  I didn't even back when I lived in more cramped quarters, but now its particularly meaningless for me since I live in a freaking mansion-apartment, with a gigantic living room. My players sit on the couches and chairs on one side of the room, and I sit a good distance away on the other side of the room, and have a separate table from the one the players use.  They couldn't see my rolls unless they had telescopes or something. You could say I'm not the target market for these products, then, even though all three are games I've played (I'm currently running a Starblazer campaign, ran a fairly lengthy Qin campaign, and have played several one-shots of Doctor Who, which I helped playtest for).

That said, these are not your father's GM screen.  I remember the GM screens TSR used to do for D&D; I owned more than one of them in my day, back when I thought it was cool to have a screen.  The old D&D screens were flimsy cardboard affairs, with recycled art and tables of questionable usefulness (that is to say, mileage varied).

These are nothing like that. Each one of these screens is constructed in the same way: with very very thick board (enough that it makes a great noise if you tap on them), full colour with lush spectacular art, and a plethora of tables.  Each of them has four panels (rather than the two or sometimes three panels which was typical of the old D&D screens).

On the side that would face the players, you get marvelous images that directly evoke the game in question. The Qin screen has a spectacular image of a Chinese mountain-scape with mists, forests and pagodas, with two wuxia (one of them floating through the air) looking like they're about to engage in some serious kung-fu fighting. It looks like it could be taken right out of Hero or Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
The Doctor Who screen has a busy exploding landscape of photo images with an artistic backdrop of some volcanic world with asteroids and explosions in the background, and features a Dalek Army, Sontaran Warriors, and of course, the Doctor (tenth incarnation) and the TARDIS.
The Starblazer Adventures screen is a little different from the other two, featuring four separate images, one on each panel, instead of a single vast image. The four panels embody everything that is evocative of the "Rock and Roll Space Opera" style of Starblazer: You have one panel featuring a pair of astronauts on an alien moonscape under a gas giant, fleeing from a giant flying lizard-alien monster.  The next panel shows a totally 80s-style floating battle tank filled with 80s-esque space soldiers shooting the crap out of some unseen enemy, a high-tech city in the background.  The third panel features a space scene, with several planets in the background, a gigantic red space-station prominent with a golden star-cruiser flying toward it, extremely iconic of the Starblazer style. And the final scene shows a trio of some other kind of space stations or large motherships in some kind of golden nebula, with a smaller cruiser approaching, a large red moon in the background.

The material in each of the GM-screens interior is quite well designed, in most cases featuring the central material useful for quick-reference. Of course, in my experience its very difficult for such a screen to be truly perfect in this regard, you just can't put EVERYTHING in there, unless the game is extremely rules-lite, and none of these games really are. Starblazer Adventures is probably the biggest game of the three with the most material, so naturally its also the one that is least complete.  Its also the only one of the three screens I've actually had the opportunity to "playtest" (as it were) since its for a game I'm currently running. In my experience, there are many tables present in the screen that make my life much easier running the game. Its good to have a quick-reference of the stupid "values ladder", where I can quickly look up that "superb" means +5 (seriously, I wish they'd just used the numbers and not given them all titles). Having a weapons table is obviously useful too. As is having a quick reference for the Minion Groups and the bonuses they get based on number of minions. I've also made use of the table for Endurance/resolve bonuses to stress boxes, the Science:giving medical attention table, the Science:Computer hacking table, the Time Increments table, and the armour tables. Some of the other reference tables there are a bit too basic to be bothered with; I mean, after two sessions of play you pretty much know what needs to be rolled to attack or to charm someone, or the summary of play for task resolution, so I'd never look at these; of course, someone else might snap back at me that you'd think I'd remember what title equates to what difficulty number by now too.  A few other tables are super-rare in the sense of when they'd be useful, Like the costs and speed of vehicles table, the Climbing Height difficulty table for Athletics, or the radiation levels table; but this is more forgivable because these are the kind of things that come up more rarely in play, and precisely the place where the GM might end up being stuck searching through 500 pages of text to try to find the ruling for these things without this screen.  Finally, there are a few things that I can see the usefulness of, like the entire panel devoted to starship rules (starship combat sequence, ranges for starships, weapon ranges, starship repair, ship medical facilities, space terrain, etc) or the rules for travel costs by Resources skill, or the radiation level effects table; these just happen to be things that don't come up that often in my particular campaign.  I would imagine that most peoples' experiences will be similar with this product, they'll all find some tables on the screen that will be constantly useful, some that won't be useful at all to their campaign, and some that will be useful only occasionally, but they'd probably be happy to have when the need arises.

The Doctor Who RPG is relatively the least complex of the three games, and its screen uses relatively less tables. One entire panel is devoted only to the basic difficulty table (the central table for the entire game), and the table for degrees of results.  The second panel is dedicated to the conflict summary, guide to which skills to use, complications modifiers, random hit locations, and weapon damage tables. The third panel has tables for cover, chase rules summary, effects of damage on attributes, and terrain modifiers. The fourth panel has tables for tech levels, a table for suggested story point costs for different situations, a list/summary of the attributes and skills, and most importantly, a reference table with page numbers for the Gamemaster Guide, showing you where to find all the other stuff that didn't merit being on the Screen itself.  In a way, the Doctor Who game is probably just the right level of complexity to make the most of a GM Screen like this one, in this screen you have almost everything you need to run the game, plus the reference table showing you those few other things you might more occasionally need to quickly find.

Qin is somewhere in between the other two games; in many ways, its actually more complex than Starblazer, but as a game it is also less ambitious in its scope; its a physically smaller set of rules, and has less stuff to reference in that sense; but certainly more than Doctor Who. The first panel of this screen has the basic difficulties table, the table referencing the number of actions per round, a list of a few sample continuous tasks, the opposed tests results table, and tables for shields and armour. The second panel has the weapons tables, combat  modifiers, the formula for calculating damage, and the long-term injuries table.
The third panel is completely dedicated to the equipment lists. The fourth panel has tables for speed adjustments for travel, transport speeds, weights and measures, and the remainder of the equipment lists.  Its pretty good, but in some ways its maybe the most incomplete of the three products, because what it doesn't include at all is any kind of summary of the Taos, magic, or combat maneuvers, which I remember had to be referenced very regularly in the game.

On the whole, all three are good products if you like GM screens; even if you don't usually like GM screens, if you really love and frequently play any of the three games, you will be likely to fall in love with these tables.  I know that as long as I keep playing Starblazer, I'll keep using the screen, and that if I come back to playing either of the other games I will do likewise.

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The Starblazer screen is fantastic, my favorite since the old double screen from AD&D 1E. That was a great screen, and I was so pissed when they replaced it with a much shittier version for 2E.