Wonders of the Cosmos: Strange Plants Under a Red Star by Jeff Collins is a role playing game supplement published by Fat Goblin Games for use with the Starfinder Roleplaying Game. As such, it is covered by the Open Game License and some parts are considered to be Open Game Content as a result.
This is a ten page PDF that is available from DriveThruRPG for $1.50 but was purchased at a greatly reduced price as part of a special bundle. One page is the front cover, one the front matter, one the Contents, one the Open Game License and one an ad for other supplements.
The first page is the Introduction, an in-character narration explaining that the rest of the content is the notes from a scientist who had disappeared whilst on an expedition to a habitable world orbiting a red dwarf.
The next three pages are more in-character notes from said missing scientist, detailing the plants and environment she had discovered on the planet, where lifeforms had adapted to take advantage of the rather low-levels of illumination provided by their star.
The final page of content, Botanical Hazards of UX-5396, has game stats for two of the previously described encountered plants, which are treated as hazards.
Wonders of the Cosmos: Strange Plants Under a Red Star in Review
The PDF is decently bookmarked, with the various sections linked, although there are more junk bookmarks than actual ones. These don’t actually hinder navigation. The Contents is to a similar level of detail and is also hyperlinked. Navigation for such a short supplement is very good. The text maintains a two column colour format and no errors were noticed and there are several colour illustrations, which may all be custom. Presentation is very good.
Most of the content – four-fifths of it – is fluff. Very nice fluff that explores a planet under a red dwarf, but fluff all the same. The main problem with this supplement is there is very little in the way of true content – only a single page containing two hazards. There are no lifeforms described, and admittedly the text does state, perhaps accurately, that the planet isn’t really suited to evolving dangerous creatures due to an energy deficiency. Still, it feels like this supplement is taking two hazards and padding them out to a substantial degree with fluff. At full price, this really doesn’t seem worth it. Wonders of the Cosmos: Strange Plants Under a Red Star is an interesting piece of fluff, but not much more, and it can be found by clicking here.
Leave a Reply