"Escape pods, lifeboats, shuttles, gunboats and dropships – vital smallcraft that play an important part in the gritty American Sector setting of HOSTILE. Nearly all of the smallcraft featured in the setting are covered here, with write-ups, external views and comprehensive deckplans. Included also are two pieces of shuttle-related fiction and a bonus: 11 pages scanned in from the ICO’s Flight Handbook published in 2178!"

Gunboats & Shuttles by Paul Elliott has been sitting on the gaming table for a couple of months now. It stares at our gaming group like an angry marine waiting for its due. So after a couple monthes reading through the book. Using it & really diving into it helps to not take Gunboats & Shuttles for granted. You get a full spectrum of mid to small level ships in this book. These are not incidental & their very well done. These are working marines, roughnecks, spacers, & even cargo haulers ships. And in Gunboats & Shuttles you get a full spectrum of ships across the board: Neumayer Escape Pod Orchid Lifeboat Nomad Ship’s Boat Sabre Gunboat Starlifter Modular Shuttle (and 10 module variations) Halo Heavy Shuttle (all three versions) Thunderchief Heavy Shuttle Mustang Dropship

The layout is really well done & stats are right at the DM's or player's fingers you get a whole lotta bang for the dollar amount for Cepheus Engine and the HOSTILE setting. And these craft could potentially be applied for other Cepheus Engine settings as well with the same tech axioms. Everything in Gunboats & Shuttles is oriented towards actual use & play.

We really liked where the author took the craft giving us a very nice overview, application, & even possible game use in each entry. And this ties well into the Hostile setting as a whole. The ships here are very useful with artwork by Ian Stead, Algol, & Maxim Zhuravlevthat really makes it easy to show players yes this is what the PC is flying.

The Heavy lift shuttle is extremely useful for Roughneck or Explorer with a really nice entry. Gunboats & Shuttles brings the heat for adventurers looking for solid mission profiles. And it really feels like a Janes Weapons or vehicle books.

Gunboats & Shuttles is a great book for the DM looking to really add in a cinematic feel to their Hostile games. We get some great fake advertising & entries for Gunboats & Shuttles within the Hostile universe. And these could be used as in game player hand outs. Within this book are some excellent diagrams & maps for use with Cepheus Engine rpg games.

Gunboats & Shuttles is an excellent support book for craft that you need for both Cepheus Engine rpg as well the Hostile setting itself. The craft here are great support ships for both marine & even explorer or roughneck PC's. Gunboats & Shuttles is an excellent quality book to add to your own Cepheus Engine rpg collection.

Eric Fabiaschi Swords & Stitchery blog Want more OSR action? Subscribe to https://swordsandstitchery.blogspot.com/

I really need to rate and review all of these books - but here's some stuff I posted about this one on facebook as a starter:

For a small upcharge - the surivival canopy parachute of the Neumayer can be upgraded with an extremely brightly colored corporate or personal logo to aid search spotting from air or space. A default red and white emergency checkerboard pattern is standard (Think of a giant QR code spelling HELP that can be read from orbit)

My personal favorite is the Orchid ... for reasons... mine says "E1" and "Miss Piggy" on the nose and wing art.

The Nomad is also offered in custom modular lifter "skycrane" configuration which pick up a number of accessory modules... but not man-rated modules - use a Starlifter for that.

The Sabre seems like one of those ubiquitous utility things that are everywhere and often overlooked.

Starlifter will be a mainstay of the Omega-99 setting too hehehee - but all of those modules detailed in the book pretty much guarantee this is the mainstay for many games. Great workhorse here.

The Halo needs a table of unflattering nicknames commonly given it by its crews... which will cause them to start a fight with anyone who's not a Halo pilot who uses those nicknames...

The Thunderchief aka 'The Brick' ... I guess this is where Halo pilots graduate from when they leave military service and reenter civilian life?

Mustang - nice to see more of this - my favorite two examples of the Mustang class are the Bugstomper and the Smart Ass.

The general operations and flight handbook is standout addition for this - well done. I got a laugh from the "Baghdad approach?" scrawl.

This book is giving me an idea for a rather underserved niche of sci-fi gaming - the transit adventure. The Star Trek Kobayashi Maru book and a few episodes of Next Generation had this - where a couple of crew were stuck on a ship for a long ride together and either told stories or something specific happened. Marooned is probably one of the most famous. Each of these ships is, maybe unintentionally, an adventure hook of some sort waiting to happen.

Oh well I wrote this last bit before running into The Sands of Time in the book. Yeah basically that is what I meant.