Review: Laundry Files: Agent's Handbook

This is a followup to my review of The Laundry RPG.

The Laundry Files: Agent's Handbook is a sort of player's guide to The Laundry. It adds a ton of options and bells and whistles to player characters in The Laundryverse and, by extension, Laundry games overall. Like the core rulebook, it's well-written and put together and chock full of good information.

Pretty much every base is covered by the additions: new character professions, training courses, additional information on how to navigate the Laundry bureaucracy, expanded weapon and equipment lists, and guidelines for playing atypical Laundry characters ranging from non-humans to clueless civilians, and character templates. The equipment lists I kind of glazed over (as I typically do) - they appear complete, and have a couple of cool little widgets, a bunch of firearms that should satisfy gun-bunnies, but their inclusion or lack thereof isn't a selling point for me.

The biggest appeal for me in this book is the first chapter: Tradecraft. This is something that I was chomping at the bit for when I finished the main rulebook. This is really, really good stuff that covers everything from how to keep an identity, gather information, recruit informants and agents, various ways of signalling and passing messages (with a great reason why the Laundry sticks to older methods such as dead drops), and field operations such as tailing, evasion, surveillance, etc. The section incorporates the occult elements and tactics The Laundry employs seamless with the time-honored traditions of spycraft.

My second favorite chapter is Black Budget, Red Tape which adds some more detail to navigating the bureaucracy surrounding The Laundry. There are even Bureaucracy Random Encounters to drop on unsuspecting players. They are intended to make things a little livelier (especially when failing the check on one of them requires that you return to the office to fix it).

The new training courses hit the mark with the kind of corporate training that I've seen (such as "Achieving More With Less", "Aspiring to Senior Civil Service" and "Managing Changelings") plus military training courses and (of course) occult courses such as "Eschatological Countermeasures" and "Occulinux Installation and Use." There is also a small selection of Special Instructor Courses, dealing with specific oaths, rites, and books - these are courses you can sign up for (they're assigned) and the cost doesn't come out of your departmental budget. They of course cost SAN instead.

The chapter on Weird Characters is one of the ones least likely by me to get any use, but it is nice to have a "template" to put over an existing character if you need to turn them into a Gorgon or a Residual Human Resource (aka zombie, but HR doesn't want us to use that term anymore - it's insensitive). Parallel Dimensional Refugee characters are interesting - basically they're people who have slipped through from a similar dimension. Fringe meets the Laundry makes Walter Bishop's form of crazy a lot more ominous.

Likewise, Outside the Laundry has some pointers for running non-Laundry campaigns, such as civilian paranormal investigators, independent sorcerers, or just plain cultists. Unfortunately, a lot of it can be distilled down to 1) avoiding the Laundry because if they catch up to you, it's pretty much over or 2) coming up with contrived reasons the Laundry is looking the other way. The options seem somewhat unsatisfying to me (at least at the moment), and I know that I'd rather just play a straight Laundry game. There are also more details for playing agents agents from other OCCINTEL agencies.

Join the Black Chamber! Kill, and become host to, unspeakable horror!

The final chapter gives a brief summary of The Laundry during different eras. An Eighties campaign would probably be pretty cool - while computing power wasn't anything near what it is today, but they were still potentially dangerous and we didn't have ubiquitous cell phones, or email, the Web, etc. In a way, it had the beginnings of the truly dangerous stuff without a lot of the technology to fight it.

The book wraps up with print-outs of various forms (such as the Incident Report Form  - SBB1C, Sorcery Licence Application, and Reality Excursion Assessment - SSB2) plus a copy of the Official Secrets Act of 1916 and a blank warrant card. The forms aren't intended to be something players are forced to always fill out, at least not without a good reason (having your line manager come and dump a stack of forms on your desk is probably the opening salvo in a round of bureaucratic maneuvering).

I don't typically buy every supplement for game lines unless I really like them, and usually there are a couple that I think are pretty much essential. Vimary Sourcebook for Tribe 8 is one of them, as was Scavenger Sons for Exalted. I tend to be partial to gazetteer-style books over "Look, new whiz-bangs!" books. I'd place the Agent's Handbook somewhere midway between Absolutely Essential and Nice To Have. There's a lot of good information, and the book is well worth the money. But the mileage you get out of it is is going to vary - you could run an Laundry campaign and not use 50% of the book. But the 50% that you do use is going to serve you well.

Review: The Laundry RPG

Before I go any further, I need to make a confession. I'm not a fan of BRP. It's a perfectly serviceable game system, but honestly I could take it or leave it. I know that this might be disconcerting to some people, but I'll chalk that up to exposure to QUEST RUNE GLORY. A nice man with a warrant card will be along shortly to ask you a few questions.

What I am a fan of is Lovecraftian-style occult trappings, various forms of geekery, and espionage.  Four or five years ago I was introduced to The Atrocity Archives - the first book of the Laundry series by Charles Stross - and I was hooked. It was only within the last year or so that I discovered Cubicle 7 had published an RPG set in the Laundryverse.

For those who aren't in the know, the Laundryverse is like Lovecraft meets The IT Crowd meets any variety of spy novels. The Laundry is a branch of British intelligence tasked with keeping the lid on occult happenings that are becoming all too frequent, because the ability to summon up things from beyond space and time is as (relatively) simple as getting the geometry right. Programmers can accidentally call up things that suck out their brain just by creating a new video compression algorithm, and that's pretty much the ramp up to the bigger show of the elder gods coming and turning everyone into meat puppets. Combine that with a self-sustaining bureaucracy that requires all of your paperwork to be filed on time and that you account for every expense or office supply requisition (for very good reasons, too) and you have a series full of dry British humor, obscure mathematical references, tech that can be re-purposed for occult workings (like the Necromiphone or "stoner guns" that reproduce the effects of a Gorgon's gaze) and of course all of the nasties that a good Call of Cthulhu game should include.

The book's foreward opens with Bob Howard - the protagonist of the novels - being assigned the task of reading over the rpg to make sure that it doesn't contain any real occult information. There a few faux-handscrawled notes in the margins that are Bob's comments, but they peter out toward the middle of the book and don't return. It's a nice touch, similar to the scrawls that are in The Dresden Files rpg. Overall the writing is wry and has a smart tone, and did a good job of keeping my interest. However, after a while the sardonic attitude starts to feel forced and wears thin. By the end I wanted to groan every time I read the words "squamous", "rugose" or how something wanted to evict me from my brain.  The artwork is pretty solid and generally matches the tone of the game, although I wasn't fond of the style of some of the character sketches.

System-wise, the game is vanilla Basic Roleplaying (BRP) - roughly 3d6 for stats, percentile for skills, roll under, various other dice from damage, SAN loss, etc., etc. At its heart BRP is a very simple, solid, and time-tested system. I'm reasonably sure there are a number of differences from the BRP that I learned playing Elfquest, Call of Cthulhu 1e or Runequest 1e (yes, it's been that long) but I couldn't tell you what they are because all of the basic elements are the same. The system for sorcery is pretty much tailored to the Laundryverse (it would have to be). Nothing jumps out at me as being horribly unbalanced or wrong, only a kind of ambivalence toward the system as a whole, and despite the ease of reading the underlying rules are fairly dry. One side effect of this is despite a lot of goodness in the book, personally I didn't get much of a "Gee whiz, that's cool!" feeling about the mechanics behind sorcery, or warrant cards (enchanted identification that can make the viewer think the holder is some other government official, or even bind them to silence), or other setting-specific elements.

Where the book truly shined for me is in the remainder of the material. The detailed description of various aspects of the Laundry (structure, history, training, activities, personnel), as well as sorcery, various threats and other background information is remarkably well done. It's well-written in a lively manner, clear, and informative. Contrary to my tendency to gloss over descriptions of monsters, spells, equipment, etc. until needed I read pretty much every entry. There are quite a number of "handout" style pages scattered throughout the book that would be great to print out. In a move that is not seen in too many rpgs these days, there are a handful of scenarios in the back of the book. The designers also included neat extras like a random codename table (YELLOW WATCHER TACITURN) and even a random mission generator:

• Mission: recruit potential asset
• Real situation: there's a leaky source of thaumic power that needs to be contained before more weird stuff happens
• Hostiles: PLUTO KOBOLD (Mi-Go)
• Location: Airport, seaport or train station
• Bureaucratic Meddling: There's an issue with the agent's weapon permits, no lethal weapons can be used.
• Dramatic Situation: Perform an impossible heist.

Two chapters are dedicated to advice on playing in and GMing a Laundry game and give a good feel for how the game can be run and some other good advice. I did feel that there was distinct lack of discussion on tradecraft (as in, how to do spy work). I'm more than passably familiar with the basics, but it would have been nice to see more of a nod toward the Laundry's Special Operations Executive pedigree in terms of how they do their job. Of course, there is the Agent's Handbook (next up on my reading list) and from a cursory glance it does include this sort of information.

One great thing about the inherent nature of the Laundry is how well it molds itself to ensemble-style play with disparate character types. A number of people are brought into the Laundry because they've made some discovery or seen something and the Laundry's solution is to bring them in, give them jobs and make them useful. Because of the nature of the work, it's not like these people can continue with their former lives or live with any old random people - so the Laundry sets them up with secure accommodations and other Laundry employees as roommates. This creates a near-perfect setup for a group of a PCs, where a bunch of people who probably wouldn't willingly want to work together or share a bathroom kind of have to.

As I've been doing with all of my reviews, I created a sample character but unfortunately found that the form-fillable PDF I had created can't be saved. It was easy enough to create a character that had a few core competencies, but I felt the need to tweak the chosen profession slightly (consultant) in order to reflect my character concept more accurately. On a similar note, I noticed something about the skill bonuses for the Computer Hacker/Tech profession that kind of bugs me (and is true of many games that represent programmer-types). I don't know shit about electronics or electrical work, so why would I get a bonus to electronics or electrical repair skills? Maybe I know more than the average person does (likely) and maybe I'm atypical for computer nerds, but I pretty much know how to install PC components. The last time I tried to rewire a lamp I blew it up. But I can write SQL like there's no tomorrow. I know a reasonable number of programmers who are less computer savvy than I am regarding operating systems and hardware (I did do technical support for a few years), and I've seen power users who aren't techies that can run rings around me in applications like Excel.

Overall if you're a fan of the Laundry novels, think decidedly British humor is funny, or want something more geeky/sarcastic than Delta Green, you can't go wrong with this game. The authors and Cubicle 7 did a great job realizing Stross' universe in roleplaying form (which probably isn't surprising, considering that Stross has a roleplaying pedigree).

Nova Praxis Review

I’m going to kick off a new cycle of reviews with a game that I finally finished reading (it’s only be the better part of a year): Nova Praxis. With that, I’m also trying to get a rhythm and structure down to how I approach reviews so they’re informative without just rattling off a bunch of facts about the product (like how many pages are devoted to this or that, or dry chapter breakdowns). Most importantly, I’m eschewing any kind of rating scale at all.

Overview

Nova Praxis is the latest game from Voidstar Studios. It features a transhumanist-style, post-cyberpunk setting. Earth was pretty much rendered uninhabitable by a grey-goo type scenario, and mankind has since populated the stars. Society has changed, ideologies have changed, but ultimately people remain the same. The player characters are presumed to be edgerunner/troubleshooter types, either living on the edges of or beholden to a tarnished utopia. There are cybernetics, sleeves (the ability to download a consciousness into a new body), virtual reality, drones, and minds that exist only as software.

Nova Praxis’ Fate Pedigree

Before going any further, some comment on Nova Praxis’ flavor of Fate is probably useful. Nova Praxis uses a variant of Strands of Fate, which is itself a Fate variant. The game was apparently developed somewhat before and concurrently with Fate Core, but it sits firmly on the Strands side of the divide. Mostly this means the system tends to be a little more “crunchy” than Fate Core in terms of modifiers and extra systems...yet at its heart it’s still Fate (4DF, aspects, stress tracks, etc.). Overall, Nova Praxis is not as dense with subsystems as, say, Starblazer Adventures but still features a number of them. There are some departures from Strands that slide Nova Praxis a little closer to Fate Core. It eschews abilities for skills, and goes back to using stunts instead of advantages. It also reduces the number of character aspects to start with to 5. These changes bode well for Fate Core fans wanting a science fiction game, as it makes adapting it all the easier, but the game is solid on its own.

The Book

Well, in this case, the "enhanced PDF". Hands down this is one of the best looking and most feature-packed PDFs of any game I’ve read. The experience on a tablet is likely even better, but I only have a PC. Every page has a side menu on the left for accessing chapters and buttons on the right for moving from page to page. Chapter headers have menu buttons to go to specific subjects that seamlessly take you to the text. Every other PDF I have looks primitive in comparison. Plus, it’s fully bookmarked. There’s an appendix with a variety of NPC templates, glossary and the aforementioned character sheet. The artwork, as seen in the screen captures scattered throughout this review, is full-color, evocative and very high quality.

My copy has a slight problem with the back and forth arrows turning weird colors when I click on them. I may have an outdated PDF, or it could be my version of Acrobat or even my PC. If the case it is an outdated PDF that’s no fault of Voidstar’s, who have been on-the-ball with updating the PDF and getting it out to customers. I probably just haven’t downloaded an up-to-date version. My only real complaint is that the borders seem kind of busy, but not in a “ZOMG, why’d they layer the text over an image of Donald Rumsfeld?!” way. They don’t really detract from reading.

The Setting

The first few chapters of the book are dedicated to the setting’s history, locations, culture and politics. The setting is compelling, given that the Singularity kind of came and went with the birth and unexplained shutdown of the first true AI, named Mimir. Prior to shutting down it essentially spit out a ton of technological advancements (called Mimir-tech) - so many, and so advanced, that there are entire disciplines dedicated to decoding its archives. This technology is where pretty much everything comes from in Nova Praxis. This leads to humanity taking to the stars, but even in the wake of the end of scarcity and unparalleled technological advancement, doesn’t do anything to end conflict - it just makes it worse.

The end of a bitter war between two superpowers results in one side releasing the technophage - nanites that reconstruct matter into war machines. The technophage spirals out of control, and mankind is forced to try to fight it, then try to stop it, and eventually run from it. Earth is abandoned, leaving billions to die. The governments of the two superpowers become all but insolvent, forcing the largest corporations to have to step up and take charge. This leads to the formation of the Coalition, and the establishment of the current house system.

Coalition society is post-scarcity, at least in terms of ensuring that what is left of humanity has a baseline standard of living. The result is a society where the citizens have all of their basic needs provided for and have the freedom to do absolutely nothing - in exchange for near constant monitoring of every aspect of their lives. The Coalition economy runs almost solely on reputation, with those who contribute the most having access to more wealth. Predictably, there are those who who are unwilling or unable to live under the aegis of the Coalition and the Houses - they are called Apostates. Some hold-outs even try to continue a guerrilla war against the Coalition. Obviously, the Apostates, Houses and others exploit as many loopholes in the system that they can - otherwise it would be a pretty boring place to tell stories in.

Overall, I find the setting to be perfectly serviceable but not “Wow, that’s really awesome!” inspired. The aesthetics are good, and there are good justifications for why there would be groups of troublemakers running around stirring shit up. The structure of the Coalition with the Houses falls a little flat for me, but that’s mostly a taste preference. What the setting has in spades is a good mix of general tropes, ranging from a cyberpunk dystopia to Mass Effect-style space opera. It’s easy to drop things in that match any number of themes. I could see doing something in the vein of the Unincorporated Man, or even Blindsight, just as easily as a simple cyberpunk-style run with a Mr. Johnston and a double-cross and everything.

The Rules

Nova Praxis is basically Fate with a few differences. In case you’re not familiar with Fate, here’s the general rundown I included in my Fate Core review:

• Uses Fate (or Fudge, same thing) dice, specifically four (notated as 4DF). Two sides are marked with a +, two sides with a -, and two sides are blank. They are read by adding up the results, so ++ - is a +1.
• Skills are rated from 0 to 6 or higher. They add to the die roll. There are no attributes.
• Most importantly, uses descriptive "tags" called aspects. Aspects represent things that are important - to the character, to the scene, even to the campaign - and can be used to justify influencing the story or results such as getting bonuses to die rolls, rerolling bad rolls, creating a special effect or merely being used as a justification for an action. Aspects can be used by (called invoking) and against (called compelling) characters, and characters can take actions that will add new aspects into play.
• It uses a currency called Fate Points that players spend to use their character's aspects (called invoking). Players receive Fate Points when their aspects are used against them (called a compel).

The differences in Strands of Fate mostly revolve around nomenclature, the use of aspects and some specific cases regarding die rolls. Rolls that succeed over the difficulty can generate Spin, which follows the standard pattern of allowing the player to create a short-lived aspect. Rolls that fail to generate enough shifts generate Stall, which can result in a negative penalty or just something bad happening - a short-lived, negative aspect. Likewise, situational modifiers can be positive or negative, and compels can be used to impose a penalty on rolls. The game also multiple scopes for aspects, and doesn't allow more than one aspect from any one scope to be used on rolls. The system also keeps the concept of Persistent Aspects from Strands of Fate.

Since the game sits on a balance (and a rather nice one) between more traditional role-playing systems and Fate Core (which I’m taking as the “standard” to compare it to), there are a number of subsystems and specialized rules. For example, there are rules for sweeping beam weapons, falling, poisons and diseases, etc. Personally I’ve kind of moved away from needing or wanting these types of rules, but they are definitely useful as baseline examples for how to handle various situations that can come up in play.

There are two subsystems stand out: Rep-Ratings and Sleeves. Both of them are tied intrinsically to the transhuman nature of the setting, and so are totally appropriate to be given focus with their own rules.

The character’s Rep-Rating is an abstraction of the complex system that exists in the setting for tracking a person’s contributions to culture and society. Rep-Ratings are used in place of money, as well as calling in favors. They can also be used to limit membership or acceptance into various social institutions, schools, etc. People can give one another bumps or hits to their rep ratings pretty much at will, although it affects their own Rep-Rating when they do so.

Sleeves are new bodies that a mind can be downloaded into. They come in two types: biosleeves and cybersleeves. In order to utilize them, a character needs to undergo Apotheosis - effectively digitizing their mind. There are a number of stock sleeves available for characters, each with a cost, aspects, physical skills, built in augmentations, points for customization and any special rules. Not all characters are Apotheosized, although many augmentations can be purchased without the need for a sleeve.

Character Creation

As part of this review I’ve created a character, straight out of the rules and following the steps listed in the book. Nova Praxis comes with a form-fillable character sheet at the end of the PDF, and the same sheet is available as a stand-alone PDF. You can see the completed character here.

One thing I like about character creation in Nova Praxis is that various components - such as skills - are listed right there in the appropriate step. There’s lot a not of flipping between sections. The only exception is stunts, which makes sense. If they were listed with the stunt selection step, you’d just have to flip past all of them to get to the next section.

Unlike Fate Core, Nova Praxis does not include the character concept as one of its aspects. What it does with aspects though is something I’ve always liked: the aspect alphabet. While not hard rules on what the aspects have to be, they provide a nice guideline for the kinds of aspects that make well-rounded characters. The aspect alphabet goes in a bucket list of cool things to do for any Fate game, along with the mad-libs style template for phrasing invokes and compels from Fate Core.

Beyond aspects, characters have a starting state: Pure, Sleeved or as a SIM (basically software). The inclusion of an option and support for playing a character that is basically pure software is really interesting, as SIMs can control surveillance systems, download themselves into sleeves, and control drones. Each state has it’s own benefits in terms of bonus skill ratings, refresh and free stunts. After the state is determined, the player chooses skills. There are 20 skills total, plus three physical skills. The separation of the physical skills seems like it was a good way of dealing with characters that can have a wide-range of physical abilities (or, in the case of SIMs, none at all). Likewise, sleeves and drones have at the very least their own allocations of physical skill ranks.

To make it easier to distribute skill ranks, there are three skill sets (Specialist, Expert, and Generalist). The skill ranks between the sets are not the same - Specialist grants 22 ranks, with the highest skill rank at 5. Expert grants 30 with a max rank of 4, while Generalist gives 38 and a max rank of 3.

Finally you choose stunts, determine your character’s allegiance, choose gear and calculate starting Rep-Rating and stress boxes.

When creating a character I ran into an annoyance and a couple of issues. The annoyance was the character sheet - while it covers all the basics, it could have really used dedicated spaces for the character’s current state and allegiance. As it stands I jammed them under Notes. That’s relatively minor.

One of the issues was when calculating Physical stress. The first time that it's explicitly stated that humans are Size 0 is on page 151, under "Lifting Things" and there is no size chart in the game aside from vehicles (which starts at Size 1). It took some searching to find this out, and only after that I remembered that humans are Size 0 in Strands of Fate. Again, this may be changed in any revised PDF that may exist, and it's far from a showstopper. Still the character creation process is fairly straightforward, and the layout and writing make it relatively painless (aside from the dilemma I face any time I create a character in a vacuum).

Finally, there’s choosing starting gear. The method used to determine how much gear the character has is to determine the highest cost that the character can purchase and then choose one piece of gear for each step down to 0. So if, like my character, the starting value was 7 I would choose one piece of gear that costs 7, then 6, then 5, etc. I was barely able to squeeze in the types of items I thought this character would have, and had to do a lot of rearranging to fit in with the n = n - 1 pattern. The personal computer had to go in a slot one higher than it should have (so I added an aspect modification, which increased the cost by 1), and I left the 1 and 0 slots empty. To be fair, I restricted gear purchases only to what was actually listed without making anything up, which might be an unrealistic situation (more on the gear selection below).

Gear

There is a whole chapter devoted to gear, and it gives some decent guidelines on restricted items, modifying gear, augmentations, as well as building sleeves, drones, and vehicles. The examples are rather sparse for weapons and equipment (one of the reasons that I struggled with equipping my character - I wanted to do it straight out of the book without adding anything). Strands of Fate actually has a slightly more varied equipment list, with a few items that would definitely have been useful in Nova Praxis (such as equipment kits).

Now I’m not a gearophile, but when there is an equipment list I like to see a good mix of generalized gear and special, setting-specific items. For a game like Nova Praxis, this would have been especially helpful. Personally, I would just wind up filling in the blanks with items from Strands of Fate, or other games such as Blue Planet, Jovian Chronicles, etc. Similarly, there are only a handful of sample drones and vehicles given. While the rules are there to build your own, it would be nice to see at least a small variety of stock vehicles for immediate use, as well as to get a feel for how “canon” vehicles and starships are statted out.

Some Room For Improvement

There are a few things I would have liked with a little more meat in Nova Praxis. First, some more utilitarian illustrations or description to give a better feel for the setting. One thing that I find with some settings is the zoom level is far enough out that there’s no real impression of how things are “day to day”. In contrast, Blue Planet does a good job of conveying what life on Poseidon is like in just the Player's Guide. The same goes for Jovian Chronicles in terms of living in various installations, what shipboard life is like etc. I suppose the difference is that both of those game lines are well developed with multiple books, while Nova Praxis packs everything into one. Still Voidstar might have included a few zone maps or illustrations of locations, vessels, stations, etc. The same goes for more example vehicles. Similarly, while each House has it's specialties listed there's little indication if there's any overlap. Is House Dalianis the only starship manufacturer? Does House Jinzhan manufacture them and, if so, how are they different? Likewise, I thought that the information on compilers was a bit on the skeletal side - enough to grok how they affect the setting and are used, but still leaving me with a couple of questions (particularly regarding PCs purchasing them).

tl;dr

Nova Praxis is a solid post-cyberpunk, transhumanist style roleplaying game. For anyone familiar with the genre it doesn’t hold a lot of surprises, but it does offer a good foundation for nearly any style of game that a group might want to run. While the setting could definitely work with nearly any system with minimum fuss, the tailored version of Strands of Fate that it is built on serves the game very well. The PDF is extremely well designed and organized, even if the links are a little on the busy side - just not enough to be a true distraction.

Nova Praxis is available from DriveThruRPG for $14.99, as well as in digital and hard copy from the Void Star store.

Review: Fractured Kingdom

A few months ago, T. Dave Silva of House Dok Productions contacted me about writing a review of the Fractured Kingdom rpg. It had been mentioned in an RPG.net thread about rpgs that involve dreams and sounded really interesting. I finally was able to get around to reading it, and here's my review based on the read through. I haven't yet had a chance to play the game but I'm going to probably be rectifying that situation when I get a chance. 

Overview

Fractured Kingdom is a horror/conspiracy roleplaying game set in the year 2202. A lot of knowledge was lost during the Great War and through the actions of a religious movement called the Church of the Reclaimer that gained a lot of power during the war. The war created large wastelands and forced large populations into huge megalopolises. The geopolitical landscape has changed as well, allowing the rise of mega corporations. For the average person, the world is filled with technology that just works without any real understanding of how or why. Even the most meager of apartments is basically a smart home, with an entertainment system, Internet access and appliances know when your food will spoil or you're out of toilet paper.

Through all of this a small number of people known as Lucids have become infused with supernatural power. They become Elucidated after some traumatic or important event causes them to travel to one of the four Outer Realms (the Dark, the Grave, the Slumber or the Verdant). Each Realm grants abilities that go along with that Realm's theme. There's a large dose of "secret world"-style conspiracy and mystery in the setting, as the player characters try to survive against other Lucids and the governments and corporations that want to use them for their own ends. Overall, the setting has a somewhat noir feeling, and harkens back to games like Kult or The Whispering Vault. 

Presentation, Writing & Art

I read the PDF version, which I assume is not much different from the print edition. The PDF is bookmarked but doesn't have hyperlinks. It is black and white with sidebars, and doesn't make use of annoying watermarks or obtrusive borders. For the most part the book is well-organized with a table of contents, glossary and reasonably complete index. The book is divided into five chapters with a few narrative pieces in between, as well as an introductory adventure.

The book is well written, with only a few grammatical errors and odd turns of phrase. These errors become more evident in chapter five, which gives additional background information on running Fractured Kingdom. The art is reasonably well done, and reminds me somewhat of Ghislaine Barbe's art or perhaps some of the artwork from earlier White Wolf books. It definitely carries a kind of 90s feel to it for me and builds on the noir/horror feeling of the setting without detracting from the text. 

Character Creation System

Characters in Fractured Kingdom are defined by groups of related characteristics. The base characteristics are ten Attribute "Trees", covering your standard attributes like Dexterity, Sense, Constitution, Mental, etc. From there, characters can also invest points in Skills, Abilities, and Boons. Skills and Abilities both have a parent Attribute Tree. Basically, Skills are focused applications of an Attribute, while Abilities are more ambiguous things that a character can do, ranging from Martial Arts styles to other things that might be considered "advantages" in other systems. Skills can also have Specialties and Abilities can have a Focus. Each Lucid additionally has a Realm that they have affinity with, which defines the kinds of supernatural abilities they can purchase. All characteristics that have a value range from 1 to 24 (or higher). 

Characteristics are bought with points, with a separate pool of Characteristic Points for each Tree that are used for purchasing Attributes, Skills and Abilities under that Tree. In addition, Lucids have a pool of Lucid points that can be used to purchase abilities or boons that are supernatural in nature or tied to the character's Realm. Finally, starting characters get Experience Points that can be traded in for Characteristic or Lucid Points, or can be spent to buy bonuses or other effects in game. The number of points given for each pool depends on the experience level that is chosen for the game (New Lucid, Expert or Veteran). Characters also start with a couple of background skills and a pair each of basic Lucid Abilities and Foci to round them out. Finally, characters can take Drawbacks which give them some extra Experience Points to spend.

Boons are what make the game shine for Lucids. Each Boon is either Mundane, Supernatural, or tied to one of the four Outer Realms. They give each of the Realms a specific feel. Luckily there is a section on Boon Chains, which are lists of related Boons so a player can just pick one of the chains, buy up some required Boons, and go. 

There are a lot of moving parts in character creation (which the game freely admits), and the setup allows for a wide variety of character types from very narrow and focused to more broad and generalized. The example characters range from a sword god to a close combat character to a kindly-seeming elderly woman who can extend an aura of terror. When I sat down to create a sample character things started to fall into place pretty quickly, but I wound up setting up a spreadsheet to track point totals. It still took maybe an hour and a half with spending points and tweaking things out. I can see how it would be possible to nerf a character concept and wind up with characteristics that don't quite work as the player intended. Luckily, the characteristics don't have a lot of side-effecting mechanics (unlike, say, Charms in Exalted where every Charm is a rules-exception). Every characteristic is on the same scale and uses the same rules, perhaps with the exception of Boons - and even they aren't very complicated. 

System

The system is pretty simple and satisfies my, "Can I remember how it works without looking it up?" test. Basically, when attempting a task the player chooses or makes the case for the characteristics that would impact the roll. The ratings for all of those characteristics are added up. Then the player rolls a base d6, plus one more for each type of characteristic that applies (Attribute, Skill, Specialty, Ability, Focus). The result is summed and the rating total added, and that result is compared to a difficulty number.

One interesting thing is there are no "botch" mechanics, and critical successes are either a function of Specialties or Foci, or bought with Experience Points. Besides buying the possibility of critical successes, characters can spend experience points on rolls to get bonuses, double the value of rolls, and recuperate or recover energy.

So what is going to stop a character from trying to open a can of peas using five Characteristics? Well, if he's in the comfort of his own home, nothing. If he's doing it while fighting off nightmare monsters, he has to spend Energy. An average Expert Lucid seems to have about 100 to 110 points in their Energy Pool. Every time you do something in a stressful situation, you have to spend 1 point per characteristic used on the roll.. This doesn't work like the dice - if you are using two Skills for a roll, you are paying 2 Energy even if you only get one extra die on the roll. Boons have Energy costs as well.

I have my doubts about the result ranges involved in the dice rolls. It seems like under a lot of circumstances the base number from summing the characteristics is going to be high - at least over the median result for the die roll (the example in the book has a character rolling 6d6+54). When I see this kind of setup I always think, "If the values were reduced and the die roll scaled down, wouldn't it have the same result spread?". In a way it's the opposite of what we've been conditioned to look for in die rolls, where we expect the bonus to be some fraction of what the highest possible roll. I'd honestly have to play a few sessions to suss out how smoothly it works.

Combat is resolved by rolling attack versus defense. Weapons have a Weapon Rating which is added to the roll, while Armor has an Armor Rating that is added to the defense. The amount of damage done is equal to 2 points for each Characteristic used in the attack, plus the weapon's Strength rating. Armor has a Strength rating that reduces the damage done. Depending on the type of damage done (Health or Ego) it is subtracted from the appropriate Life Pool. Attacks that do a significant amount of damage result in Wounds, which are represented by placing a checkmark next to an attribute (again, depending on the type of damage). The part I like is that whenever the character uses a characteristic from a Tree that is wounded, they suffer additional Ego damage. Suffering too many Wounds results in more serious injuries (called Limitations). Eventually, the character will start dying. The system avoids a "death spiral" while at the same time penalizing the character in an abstract way. There are a number of attack and defense maneuvers that can affect rolls and actions, and they seem to cover most of the basics - aiming, all out attacks or defenses, etc. 

Setting

The setting chapter covers the basics of the world of 2202, including the history of The Great War, the current geopolitical landscape, and the cities that have the highest concentration of Lucids. It also goes into the Baronies, groups of Lucids that can be antagonists or protagonists, as well as supernatural creatures and a more mundane bestiary.

The setting itself does not have a lot of detail. To me this is a good thing, because in the end Fractured Kingdom could work with nearly any modern setting with very little fuss. One thing that the section lacks is any hard details on the Bridges which allow crossing from the mundane world to the Realms. It's known that they cause problems with the local environment, but otherwise aren't detailed in terms of the system. Do they provide bonuses when using Realm abilities near them? Are they merely gateways to the Realms and nothing else? Obviously the GM can fill in those blanks, but it would have been nice if they got a more detailed treatment.

The introductory scenario, Song of Silence, includes write-ups for the characters who are introduced throughout the rulebook. They are a good mix of different Lucid abilities and are good for getting a feel for what Lucid characters should look like. Without giving away any spoilers, the scenario is a good introduction to the elements of the setting and has a mix of combat and noncombat options.

Miscellany

Support for "Mundane" characters is present, but they have limitations when compared to Lucids who simply tend to be tougher, more capable and have all kinds of nifty powers. Playing a Mundane among a group of Lucids would get boring pretty fast.

A gear chapter rounds out the book, covering basic equipment, weapons, and armor. The game uses Purchase Values in lieu of currency, representing how difficult an item is to obtain. The Fortune Attribute governs how much purchasing power a character has, and there are other characteristics such as Wealth that can add to rolls when trying to obtain an item. 

Summary

In all Fractured Kingdom has an interesting premise and is a good addition to the horror/conspiracy genre. For me it is right up there in terms of feel as Kult and The Whispering Vault, but with its own twists and a cosmology that isn't obviously derivative. It's a good buy for gamers interested in the genre, but does lack a little bit on the supporting details which could be a problem for newer GMs. On the player end, character creation can seem a little daunting but not overwhelmingly so. Even without a play through it appears that the system is utilitarian but has some nice features to help support the style of the game, and it's entirely possible that some of the elements that seem a little clumsy (such as adding up characteristics, then rolling and adding that) would be just fine in play.
Fractured Kingdom can be purchased on DriveThruRPG or Studio2Publishing if you prefer a print copy.

Fate Core Review

Introduction

Now that I have the final copy of Fate Core PDF in front of my eyeballs, I've decided to do a somewhat more formal review.

Fate Core will be available from Evil Hat Productions no later than July. The PDF is going to be on, to quote Fred Hicks, a "pay what you want, including nothing" model. EDIT: It is actually available now, at least the PDF, on the Evil Hat webstore. There have been a couple draft copies that went out to backers - this review is of a fresh reading of the final electronic version. I don't expect it will change significantly between now and then.

First, for those who are unfamiliar with Fate I'll break it down as simply as possible. Fate Core is a game that is intended to let the narrative drive the rules and not the other way around. Characters are assumed to be competent and proactive, and those elements are baked into the system philosophically and mechanically:

• Uses Fate (or Fudge dice, same thing), specifically four. Two sides are marked with a +, two sides with a -, and two sides are blank. They are read by adding up the results, so ++ - is a +1.
• Skills are rated from 0 to 4 by default (though this range can be extended). They add to the die roll. There are no attributes.
• Most importantly, uses descriptive "tags" called aspects. Aspects represent things that are important - to the character, to the scene, even to the campaign - and can be used to justify influencing the story or results such as getting bonuses to die rolls, rerolling bad rolls, creating a special effect or merely being used as a justification for an action. Aspects can be used by and against characters, and characters can take actions that will add new aspects into play.
• It uses a currency called Fate Points that players spend to use their character's aspects (called invoking). Players receive Fate Points when their aspects are used against them (called a compel).

Production Values

The Fate Core PDF is 310 pages including the index and other extras. The book is black-and-white and laid out in a single column with sidebars on either side. The sidebars tend to be informative, calling attention to concepts, offering advice and giving examples - often there will be hyperlinks to other relevant sections of the document, which I have found very handy. Another nice touch is the sidebars typically have a black background with white text, a format I've always liked in other books. There isn't a default setting, although a fantasy setting called Steel Hearts is used for many of the examples. That setting and two others are depicted in the game's art: Hong Kong action Ancestral Affairs featuring magic-using cops in an alternate Chinese-colonized America, and semi-supers Chrome City featuring a cybernetic gorilla. On the subject of the art, it is all evocative of Fate's themes and very well done - that's what happens when you have a super-successful Kickstarter.

That's not a hover gorilla

The rules themselves are broken down into chapters on the basics, game and character creation, aspects, actions, running the game, setting up scenarios, etc. It's rounded out with a hyperlinked index as well as cheat sheet, a couple worksheets and sample characters.

Introduction and Character Creation

The introductory chapters lay out Fate's basics clearly and concisely, starting with the dice and moving to Fate Points and aspects. Fate uses a scale called the Ladder to rank things - skills, difficulties, whatever. It combines numerical values with descriptors, starting with -2 as Terrible, 0 as Mediocre and up to 8 as Legendary, but is really open-ended.  It's intended to be used to assess values on a descriptive scale, as in:

"I think that it would take Great effort to move that rock. That means it should be a 4 or higher to do it."

Rolls that are higher than the difficulty generate shifts, which are used to judge how successful the roll was. Invokes are used when an aspect is going to be used to change the die result (typically as a bonus or a reroll), while compels are used when an aspect gets in the way. The older terminology of  "tagging" has been renamed free invocation, while what used to be known as "invoking for effect" is simply a compel. Personally, I find it easier to remember Fate Core's terminology and when to apply it than, say, Spirit of the Century's.

The chapter on game creation is similar to the city creation guidelines from the Dresden Files rpg. The method given of "drilling down" into the setting by defining issues, then attaching locations, and finally personalities is one that I've found to be very useful, even with pre-existing settings and even other rpgs. 

Character creation is very straightforward: select aspects, assign skills, take stunts or Extras. The number of aspects has been cut down from other Fate implementations to five, which to me is a good move (in other games, I sometimes felt like I was swimming in Aspects). Characters have a High Concept and a Trouble aspect, then three more aspects that come from the Phase Trio. The Phase Trio is similar to the phases in Spirit of the Century, where players are passed someone else's character and then decide how their character contributed to the other character's background story.  I wish there were some examples of alternates to the Phase Trio, because I'm not completely sold on it for every potential game (or group). Skills are assigned by the skill pyramid, where the character has one "apex" skill with rows of lower ranked skills to support it. This is only for character creation, after which skills move to a "column" pattern. In practice, sometimes the pyramid seems stifling but I'm the type who always winds up feeling like my character is "done" even when I have a couple skill slots left to fill.

Aspects

Because aspects are such a large part of Fate, virtually every chapter discusses them to one degree or another, and an entire chapter is devoted to them. The aspects chapter goes into detail about how aspects are used, what they can do, creating good aspects, and gives a lot of advice on getting the most out of them.  One thing I love is the "Mad Libs" approach to deciding when to compel an aspect:

You have ____ aspect and are in ____ situation, so it makes sense that, unfortunately, ____ would happen to you. Damn your luck.

Even for seasoned Fate veterans there is a lot of goodness in this chapter, not only for the excellent overview of aspects but because there has been some divergence among Fate games regarding what aspects can be used for and how to apply them. Fate Core consolidates the "party line" on aspects and snaps them back to a common center.

One of the biggest changes to Fate Core regarding aspects is the Create Advantage action (which I talk about below). Essentially, the character can sacrifice an action to place an aspect that they can justify, without spending a Fate Point. For example, a character trying to run away from some thugs in a market can use an action to create the advantage, Rolling Fruit Cart and then use the free invoke to get a bonus to getting away.

Another way an aspect can be created is through a boost, which is the result of trying to create advantage and tying or as an extra bonus because of a high roll. Unlike advantages, which stay around around at least until the end of the scene (or when they would logically go away), boosts can only be invoked once and then they disappear.

If there is one weak spot regarding aspects, it's that the book glosses over the idea that aspects are always true, even when they are not being invoked. There is this sentence in character creation:

This may seem self-evident, but we figured we’d call it out anyway—the aspects on your character sheet are true of your character at all times, not just when they’re invoked or compelled.

And then this under Situation Aspects:

Sometimes situation aspects become obstacles that characters need to overcome. Other times they give you justification to provide active opposition against someone else’s action.

But that's it. The implications, particularly for players coming from other Fate games where this was either not the case or wasn't explicit, aren't immediately made clear. In Fate Core, a character who has the aspect Breathes Underwater can always breathe underwater, regardless of whether the aspect is invoked. A situation aspect of Pitch Black means that characters can't see where they're going or what they're doing - no invoke required. A character who is Handcuffed and Shackled doesn't need to have the aspect compelled to prevent the use of their hands or being able to run. I feel the concept needed more discussion in the rules to make it more clear to GMs how to apply it, especially for players of older Fate games or other rpgs in general.

The section also delves into the Fate Point economy, and how the players and GM earn and spend Fate Points. One important element is refresh, which dictates how many Fate Points the character starts each scenario with. Refresh can traded for extra Stunt slots, down to a minimum of 1.

Skills

On to skills. The default skill list is generic with broad-based skills. I've found from tinkering around with various settings that the default skill list covers all of the right bases, and is easily tweaked to provide the right feel for different games. I attribute the ease of working with the skill list to the new standardized actions each skill has. These actions - overcome, create advantage, attack and defend - cover everything a skill can be used for, and are a slight reduction from the number of actions that could be performed in previous versions of Fate.

• Overcome is used anytime the character wants to do something with a skill (and is kind of the de facto action when there's ever a question as to which action to use).
• Create advantage encompasses the assessment/declaration/maneuvers from previous versions of Fate. Characters use their action during an exchange in order to create advantage and gain a free invoke on that aspect.
• Attack and Defend should be self-explanatory.

Not every skill has all four actions available - for example, Deceive isn't typically used to attack. Each skill only gets a couple of example stunts, which I think was a good break from having pages and pages of them in other Fate games. Also, because of the standardization the skill and stunt descriptions seem to be a lot shorter page-count wise (only about 40 pages - I actually read them all too!).

Stunts are abilities that allow the character to add new actions to a skill or otherwise break the rules in some way. They are a way of differentiating characters and providing a narrower focus or specialization to skills. Characters start with 3 free stunts by default, but can trade refresh (down to 1) for more. The section on Stunts covers how to build stunts and the various things they can do. It does it well enough that it's been  invaluable when creating my own stunts for the games I'm planning. This stunt for a skill called Pilfer in one of my settings is a good example (and is based on a stunt in Fate Core):

Memory Hole: You are so good at hiding things, you can actively roll against attempts to find them even if you are not physically present.

Running the Game

Two chapters cover actions and then conflicts, challenges and contests. This is another area where Fate Core has been simplified compared to previous games - the number of actions has been reduced and the potential outcomes simplified. A nice side effect to this is each skill or stunt is no longer its own little packet full of rules exceptions. The character makes rolls versus another roll or a static number, and either fails, ties, succeeds or succeeds with style. A failure is exactly that, although there is the option of succeeding at a cost, which personally is more satisfying than failure. For example, a character who is trying to use Resources to buy something and fails the roll can opt to actually get it, but wind up taking a Consequence or an aspect such as In Debt. A tie depends on the action that was being attempted, but generally it means succeeding at a small cost or getting a boost. Success also depends on the action but it means just that - success without a cost. Success with style typically means creating an aspect with a free invocation (or if you were trying to create one, two free invocations),

Contests and challenges are both outlined with steps for resolving them. Contests are used when a number of discrete actions need to be performed to obtain a goal. Challenges are when two or more characters are competing for the same thing but not trying to harm one another. In both cases the rules have been simplified from previous Fate versions. Conflict is broken into rounds called exchanges and, aside from the reduction in actions and changes due to the four outcomes, isn't much different than older Fate versions. Movement is done within Zones and is not precisely tracked - anyone can reach anyone else within the same zone. Zone boundaries from previous Fate games have been replaced with passive or active opposition, requiring an overcome roll - in fact, all movement between zones is treated as an overcome if applicable. There aren't any additional actions or tables of maneuvers or modifiers - the difficulty is set by the GM and adjusted by the presence of any obstacles or aspects.

Another thing most players of traditional roleplaying games will find novel is how Fate Core (and most other Fate games) handles injury or other effects of conflict. Each character has two stress tracks: physical and mental. Whenever a character fails their defense roll against an attack, the shifts from the attack have to be absorbed somehow. The stress tracks each have two boxes, although certain skills may add one or two more, which are checked off based on the shifts the attack generates. So if you take a 2-shift hit, you check off the #2 box. Characters also have Consequence slots - a Mild, a Moderate and  and a Severe. These Consequence slots can also absorb shifts - 2, 4 or 6 respectively. So if the character had marked off the #2 stress box and then takes another 2-shift hit, they would then take a Mild Consequence. Consequences are a form of aspect, and as a result can be invoked or compelled normally but are overall more negative than aspects (it's hard to invoke Broken Leg, but I suppose it could be done). Each has specific time periods that have to be pass before the character can recover and take them off of their sheet. Once the character does not have any more stress boxes or Consequences they are Taken Out (unless the character Concedes). Conceding means the character is taken out of the conflict (they get some extra Fate Points for this) and the opposition wins - but the character is still around. Getting taken out means the person who took out the character gets to decide what happens to them, including their character dying.

The next two chapters should be required reading for all GMs, everywhere. They cover running the game, scenes, scenarios, and campaigns. If you aren't interested in Fate's system, just throwing down however much you're willing to pay for the PDF is well worth those two chapters alone (did I mention that the Fate Core PDF, once it is released, will be on a "Pay what you like" model?).  From a sidebar titled, "Let The Players Help You" to discussions of campaign scale to the Golden Rule of "Decide what you’re trying to accomplish first, then consult the rules to help you do it", to more "Mad Libs" for helping decide what aspects are appropriate, these chapters are purified GMing awesome. One of my favorite parts is a sidebar called "Powerful Session-Starting Ninja GM Trick" that segues right into my preference for starting scenarios in medias res, by suggesting opening a scenario with "pre-loaded compels" and a few extra Fate points.

The chapter Long Game covers campaigns and character advancement and includes both a break from previous versions of Fate with little or no support for advancement and more traditional rpgs. Instead of using experience points, character advancement is accomplished by changing aspects, skills and stunts during minor and major milestones. The reason I like this system for advancement is it heads off trying to balance point costs of disparate things and gives a more "natural" feel to character advancement. As an aside, there is no standard conversion rate between skills, aspects or stunts in Fate Core. You can't trade a number of skill points for an aspect, or a stunt for a number of skill points. My feeling is these are different buckets and are truly apples and oranges. The chapter closes with the astounding concept (at least to me) of "world advancement", where the campaign or setting has its own milestones that prompt changes to the setting, locations and NPCs.

The last chapter covers Extras, which is anything that gets special attention. This can be super powers, cybernetics, a magic system, mecha, etc. It starts out with describing the Fate Fractal, which is basically the concept that anything in Fate Core can be treated like a character. There isn't a framework or point buy system for Extras - as the chapter rightly points out, creating Extras is an art and not a science. Examples include weapons and equipment (Fate does not have a default weapon or armor list, because it assumes that all gear a character would use is implied by their skills), as well as vehicles, a magic system, factions, and sample superpowers  Since Fate Core is a toolkit, the examples seem sparse and I think the section spreads itself thin, but other than adding another dozen or more pages I'm not sure I would have wanted to see anything different. It just takes utilizing some of the examples with a little out of the box thinking to get a specific implementation. Certainly what would have helped is some more discussion of the different approaches to the same Extra, such as aspect only, as a stunt, as a skill, etc.

Conclusion

In the end, Fate Core is an astoundingly well done product. Not only is it a well-produced book, but the system has been refined and distilled to be the best version of Fate so far. The result is a tightly focused game with very little fat and a nice change in direction from the bulked out Fate implementations of the last few years. At a price of "pay what you want" and concepts and advice that can be applied even to non-Fate games, there's really very little excuse to pick it up.

The only problems I can see are relatively minor, and easily fixed with a little supplemental reading: Extras not having enough in depth examples and a sparse discussion on a very important concept regarding aspects always being true. I don't envy the folks at Evil Hat for having had to decide what to include, what to go in depth about, and what to leave out. It's very likely that beefing up some other areas would have resulted in others being less detailed. Fortunately these are elements where a player with questions could get clarification on FateRPG website, blogs, etc., but I have to give the game a slight ding because the concepts aren't quite as fleshed out as maybe they should have been.

Do RPGs Have To Be Played Before Reviewing?

This came up in reference to my review of The Future Belongs to Us. The author emailed me and wasn't happy I had reviewed the game without playing it.

But do you have to play an rpg to review it? Is it unreasonable to evaluate one on reading alone?

From this perspective, the entire game must be reviewed, from soup to nuts. If you don't it's like forming an  opinion of a movie or piece of music without experiencing it. Anything else is invalid and not a complete picture. Nobody would take a review of a movie seriously if the reviewer hadn't viewed the whole thing.

But rpgs are books. They can be evaluated on content, layout, art, writing and the rules. Anyone with a technical eye toward game mechanics can get a good idea of how the game will play just with a read through. I don't need to play a game to know a single d20 has a flat distribution of results, or that 1s being fumbles and 20s being critical results in a 10% chance of an extreme result and how that will affect play. I've been there and done that. When I read Exalted 2nd edition I knew the ticks, AV, and DV would be problematic for me. Turns out when I tried to run it, I was right.

That's not to say playtest reviews aren't desirable. They are - but the subjective nature of actual play, makes it no more valid than a "capsule review". The two things exist for a reason. Reviews are opinions based on experience and  subject knowledge. Anybody who has played more than a handful of systems (and I've played more than a handful) can see how all of the pieces fit together, just as they can make any game "work" and likely have fun while playing it.

But there's a final piece here that's particularly relevant to The Future Belongs To Us review: I couldn't have playtested it fully because it's a player's guide. The book has swathes of information that is vague or simply not there which is most likely in the gamemaster's guide. A playtest wouldn't have done it justice, and had I done that the review would have been much worse. Plus, there were hover gorillas and Lando Calrissian fighting ninjas over a treasure chest and I don't think I could live up to that challenge.

The Future Belongs To Us Review

Full disclosure: the author approached me to do a review and I agreed, on the condition that I would make the review fair but there was no guarantee it would be favorable. I’ll try, but as Nick Lowe said, “Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.” EDIT: the author has requested I clarify that this is not a playtest review. More on this subject tomorrow.

A couple days ago I received a package containing The Future Belongs To Us Player’s Guide (hereafter TFBTU) from Ataraxy Publishing. It is 192 pages long, soft-bound book with a full color cover that could do with less deformed-breasted porn-star. The back cover blurb says:

“After the Dragons...

 After the Wolf...

 The next generation of role-playing excitement”

And claims:

“The DiceLight system brings many new innovations to the RPG hobby”

That is...not encouraging, because those pronouncements in back cover blurbs are almost a guarantee that none of those things are happening inside the book.

Layout and Art

The book’s layout is very simple and no frills, without any decorative borders or other embellishments. The text is large and easy to read - it may be a tad too large. The book is divided into sections covering the setting, rules, character creation, skills, etc. The organization is a little scattered, causing some page flipping. It does get points for having clear writing with very few spelling or grammatical errors.

But the art...you just have to see it because I can’t describe it. It’s not bad, it’s “LOL WTF”. Every piece lacks perspective and proportion, and many are weird or have nonsensical subjects. When I showed one of the pieces to a coworker he just stared at it for a few seconds - his mind couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing. What’s worse is the art doesn’t seem to match up to anything in the setting.

If I ever play this game, I am demanding a hover gorilla

I'm still trying to parse this one...

Setting

The setting is basically this: the UN has taken over all of the things, there’s one world currency, firearms are illegal everywhere so only criminals have guns, violent crime is on the rise, there isn’t any privacy, and a single gang called the Hardbodies has somehow taken over all organized crime. Somehow the Hardbodies managed to massacre 10,000 police officers in New York. Business charge entry fees and run background checks before customers can enter. Just like  the art, if this were tongue in cheek like Underground or something along the lines of John Shirley’s Eclipse Trilogy I could suspend disbelief. This makes me feel like I’m reading my Facebook friends feed (how did so many of my friends become survivalist-types, anyway?), or a Left Behind book crossed with one of those alarmist speculative fiction books written by a survivalist to scare people into buying ammo and gold.

The System

The attributes in TFBTU are a typical spread: Dexterity, Agility, Strength, Perception, Build, Ego, Stamina. Ego and Stamina are “Determining Attributes” that set the value for two derived...I mean “Dynamic”...attributes: Passion and Energy. Aside from attributes you have Knowledges, Skills and Proficiencies. The delineation is a little hazy, but Knowledges do not have ratings and are things the character has, well, a knowledge of. Skills are areas of expertise and Proficiencies are kind of narrow areas of Attribute focus. There is also a martial arts system, technically making four areas for players to purchase abilities.

The die mechanic is roll d20 + attribute + bonuses from proficiencies or other modifiers versus a target number. Skills have different automatic effects per level, such as being able to write a specific complexity of software. As such, skills are not rolled for. There's very little in the book on adjudicating how skills and proficiencies tie together when rolling.

Passion seems to be part of the game’s claim of innovation. Every day the Passion attribute resets itself, and points can be spent from it to increase rolls, reroll extraordinary failures, or revive from being knocked unconscious. When things happen, like something good or bad happens to the character, Passion can be increased or decreased. Along with Extropic Points this gives two pools that can be used to get bonuses or effects on die rolls.

One issue with the skill/knowledge/proficiency arrangement can be seen in how firearms are handled. There is a Firearms Knowledge that means the character knows which end to point at the target and not shoot their own face off. Then there is a Weaponry skill that means the character has...knowledge of weapons. Finally there is a Ranged Weapon proficiency that provides a bonus to attacks. Whether all of it makes sense is arguable, so I’ll leave it alone because system-wise there’s bigger fish to fry.

There are also some odd choices in terms of how things are categorized. Telecommunications inexplicably encompasses hacking and bypassing computer/network security. The proficiency to get a bonus for piloting a rotary wing aircraft, submarine or spacecraft is called Free Motion Vehicles. There is a skilled called Rearrangement for switching weapons and proficiencies for Leg Strength and Upper Body Strength. I’ve never once asked myself why these things aren’t present in other games...and probably for good reason.

But the bigger fish I mentioned is attributes, skills, and proficiencies all have different ranges. Not just between types, but between one another. The attributes are on one of five different ranges ranging from 1-3 to 2-30 (in case you’re keeping score at home, that means only two attributes have the same range). Likewise, the ranges for the skills and proficiencies can range from just a couple to ten or more. Each has customized benefits or modifiers for each level, meaning each one is its own little self-contained rules packet. It makes it very fiddly and more complicated than it needs to be.

The points that are used to buy all of this stuff are called Extropic Points, and a starting character not using a template has 4000 of them. Just like each attribute, knowledge or skill has its own rating ranges, each one has its own costs per level. Stamina is 3 per level, but Perception is 5, Strength is 30 and Dexterity is 160. Climbing is 3 per level, while Surface Vehicles are 23, Running is 11 and Leg Strength is 23. Meanwhile, skills are 1 per level and knowledges just cost 1 each. Starting wealth can be purchased with Extropic points as well, plus various character enhancements. Extropic Points are also given out as experience points and can be spent on character improvement, as well as various character enhancements. What those enhancements are is mentioned but not details, because they are actually going to be in a separate book (the equipment section is 27 pages of gun porn, followed by some vehicles, some robots and some miscellaneous equipment).

There are a number of character templates provided so the player doesn’t have to try to distribute 4000 points in increments from 1 to a 1000. How the templates work with one another would require a playthrough, so I’ll trust they work well with one another. 

Now, aside from the Extropic Points being oddball amounts, there’s the question of whether or not the relative differences are really equal. Is having a point of Strength really 10 times more useful/expensive/whatever than a point of Stamina? It’s an extension of the same problem I have with systems like GURPs. Is there really any need to measure the skill levels in hundreds of points? It comes off as overcomplicated and (more) arbitrary than a game needs to be.

Conclusion

As a player's guide, the book fulfills its mission - it describes how to create a character and seems to cover all of the bases. Undoubtedly the GM's Guide will cover adjudicating the rules, so aside from the basic mechanics covered in the Player's Guide it's hard to judge how good the system is. It definitely fulfills the "DiceLight" moniker by only using one die and having a single resolution mechanic. The over complicated system of having each attribute, skill, proficiency, etc. essentially have its own rules does a lot to turn me off from the system - I'm not fond of "exception-based systems", such as Exalted's Charms or the proliferation of stunts in Spirit of the Century.

However, TFBTU is a freshman effort and it shows. It’s obvious a lot of work went into the product, the writing, and the rules. But the system isn’t really anything new or innovative, and could probably fall through a wormhole into 1988 and nobody would look twice. It has some of the hallmarks of a heartbreaker: enthusiasm from the author that the game contains stunningly new concepts, a little bit of naivety regarding marketing their games (what first brought the game to my attention was a "press release" on Tabletop Gaming News). The Passion attribute has promise, but there are plenty of other systems out there that offer similar mechanics - and a number (such as Fate) that go even further to give narrative control to the players. Finally, in a perfect world, artwork wouldn’t be important - but no art is better than poor art. The Future Belongs To Us just isn’t quite ready to live up to its own hype.