I had mixed feelings coming to Big Eyes, Small Mouth: A Universal, Japanese Anime Role-Playing Game. First off, I’m a huge fan of anime. But having seen Ranma 1/2, Slayers, 3×3 Eyes, Kamui, and Mai (among many others) I know that if you’ve got a universal anime game what you’ve really got is a universal game, period. If you strip the affectation of the animation away from anime you’ve stripped away the only common element which binds all of it together – and since I don’t spend my game sessions madly sketching animation cels…

On the other hand I had heard nothing but unreserved praise for the game (except for a handful of people who had never laid eyes upon it declaring that they “don’t do anime” – the loss is theirs, of course). So, like I said, I came to BESM with mixed feelings.

I’m happy to say that not only were “they” right, but I was right, and Mark MacKinnon was right when he said that the game was “easy to learn, fun to play, and in the spirit of anime”.

To understand how all these contradictions resolve themselves you first have to understand how I feel about “universal games”. Many have said that a “truly universal” roleplaying game is impossible. When some people say that they mean that no single game engine can satisfy everybody. This is true. When some other people say that they mean that no single game engine can model at multiple levels simultaneously – a simple engine cannot adequately model ultra-realism; a complex engine cannot adequately perform when asked to run fast and furious action. This is also true.

But when some other people say that a “truly universal” roleplaying game is impossible what they mean is that no game engine can model all possible genres.

This is false.

(Actually all of these statements except the first are false if you expand them to include meta-systems in addition to systems proper. A meta-system such as FUDGE, for example, which gives you systems to modify the system itself can easily modulate itself to handle multiple levels simultaneously.)

It is false because it has been done quite successfully several times. GURPS and Hero, for starters, are both very successful at being universal engines – they just suck at being simple systems.

Which brings us back to BESM, which succeeds quite handily at being a universal anime game by giving us a set of rules which is quite adept at modeling the type of reality postulated by about 95% of the anime out there (it can model the other stuff, too, it just won’t be quite as good at it). You end up with fast, furious combat. You end up with simple, but richly developed characters. You end up, in short, with a very good game which is capable of not only handling your favorite anime – but just about any other story you care to throw at it. Sure it’ll handle some things better than others (the same way that GURPS handles modern day realism better than it will ever handle super-heroes or Hong Kong action flicks), but it will handle it.

THE BASIC SYSTEM

BESM is simple. Dead simple. Character creation:

1. Assign Stats. Roll 2d6, add 10 and distribute the points between your Body, Mind, and Soul stats.

2. Character Attributes. Take 10, 15, or 20 points (depending on the level of campaign your GM wants to run) and assign them to your attributes. These are things like “Extra Attacks” and “Own Big Robot (OBR)”; the more points you assign to each one, the more signficant that attribute is.

3. Character Defects. Take up to 3 defects (each worth either 1 or 2 bonus points, depending on their severity, which can be spent on other things).

4. Derived Values. Calculate your Combat Value, Health, and Energy Points from your basic stats and attributes.

(There are actually eight steps to character creation outlined in the book – I’ve omitted the ones that are purely conceptual in basis.)

Taking actions? Make a stat check by rolling 2d6 under your stat (modified by the difficulty of the situation). Combat? Initiative is determined through a die roll compared to your Combat Value. You can take one offensive and one defensive action in a round. To attack you roll 2d6 under your Combat Value. To defend you roll 2d6 under your Combat Value (negating damage). Damage equals your Combat Value plus the Weapon Damage Value. Mental combat is essentially identical with a couple of twists.

That’s basically it, folks. It don’t get much easier than this.

ANALYSIS

Before going any further, let’s get the bad stuff out of the way. First, while the art in the book is good, it is not great. Considering that the game is entirely built upon the precepts of a visual medium this was a little disappointing, but not heartbreaking. It’s clean line art and, like I said, is good. It just ain’t Takahashi.

Second, I consider the summary of all physical characteristics into the Body stat to be a mistake. I can name quite a few anime titles off the top of my head (Ranma 1/2 and Project A-ko for example) in which a massive, physically powerful character is laid waste by the quicker, faster main character. This is moderated somewhat by some elements of the attribute system (such as “Extra Attacks”), so it isn’t a complete killer.

Speaking of “Extra Attacks”, however, brings me to my next objection. Each point you put into “Extra Attacks” only gives you one extra attack and defense in a combat round. Since you can only put five points into an attribute this means you can’t get more than six attacks in one round. Considering that Ranma can throw a couple hundred punches in the blink of an eye I found this tough to swallow. Sure this can be moderated, once again, if you begin to bring some other attributes into play (such as “Massive Damage”) and fudge around the edges – but now we’re edging more towards the power meta-system of Hero, and that’s painfully out of place in a game this simple.

And as long as we’re obsessing over the attribute system, let me point out the final injustice of all. Most of these attributes are very loose in describing what their actual effects are. This is understandable considering the breadth which must be covered by fairly simple categories. (“Item of Power”, for example, describes the Level 3 as being “item offers a good advantage to the character.” This is differentiated from Level 4, which “offers a great advantage to the character”.) My objection, as noted, is not this level of abstraction – rather it is the last attribute listed in the book: Unique Character Attribute. This is “covers” anything “not detailed above an anime character might possess”. While an understandable kludge (you can’t be expected to list everything) the insult is rubbed in when a list of twenty or so examples are then given. Considering how vague some of the preceding attributes were (others were quite concrete – like “Extra Attacks”) what was the point of this list?

Another minor quibble would be the partial randomization of attributes. As a general rule I dislike this. In specific I find it rather bizarre in this system, which is designed with open-ended interpretation in mind (note the vague, guideline-like nature of the attributes) to suddenly tie itself into the need for randomization. You trust your players to know the difference between a “good” item of power and a “great” item of power, but not enough to responsibly handle the point totals for character creation? On the plus side, there’s an optional rule that fixes all this.

Alright, that’s all the bad stuff out of the way. It makes quite a list, but you can ignore most of that because the system’s too simple for you to be sweating the small stuff. The cool things about this game far outweigh the bad.

First, as I’ve mentioned before this is a simple, elegant system. If you’re looking for a simple system which is also fairly rigid and objectively consistent you don’t want to look here (although you might want to take a look over at Unknown Armies, which has done that very well). This is a simple system which provides you with a very rough guide to how things should go – it is a framework on which stories are draped. It is just enough removed from cops and robbers that you’re not going to get into arguments over whether or not you were shot, but it also hasn’t become so formalized that the rules seriously bind you into much of anything. Sometimes that’s just the type of balance you need. And BESM finds that balance very, very well.

Second, this is a very well put together manual. It is very short and undersized, but that’s okay considering how simple the rules are (and the price – you aren’t being overcharged for the material). MacKinnon has done a simply brilliant job of organizing the material in a logical order and then, for added goodness, isolating the important information into two flow-charts (one for character creation and one for action resolution) and a single table (of weapon damage values). You can run the game from those three single-page references and never have to look at the rules. On top of it all a readable, clear font was used.

Third, there’s a lot of good stuff crammed in there besides the game. You’ve got an introduction to anime and roleplaying; plus a section on advice for players and GMs; a nice summation of anime adventure settings and adventure themes set in each of those settings; a bibliography of major anime series; a list of anime resources; a few optional rules; biographies of the creators; and (perhaps the most important test of all) a thorough, complete index.

All in all, Guardians of Order should be very proud of its first foray into publishing a roleplaying game. The game itself is good and well worth the money, but by including an extensive index and demonstrating more than competent organizational skills they’ve proven that they are capable of turning out high quality product in the future. I look forward to taking a look at their Sailor Moon game as soon as I get a chance.

CONCLUSION

What I think BESM would really excel at is as a introductory roleplaying game. The subject matter (capable of covering everything from Pokemon to Sailor Moon) is something which easily captures the attention of young children. The rules are simple and easy to learn, plus a strong emphasis is put on character over hack ‘n slash play (this is one of the few books that includes a section on player advice, instead of just GM advice). The book itself is cheap enough that you can easily afford to buy multiple copies for a group you’re interested in converting.

Beyond that, though, BESM is simply a very good game. It is far too simplistic, in my opinion, to successfully support a long-term campaign, but I will definitely be giving it consideration the next time I sit down to design a one-shot or short series. At fourteen bucks I don’t think you can go wrong here – whether you like anime or not. (And if you don’t you’re not hurting anyone but yourself through your sad negligence of an amazing medium. “Time spent watching anime,” as MacKinnon says, “Is time well spent.”)

Style: 4
Substance: 4

Author: Mark C. MacKinnon
Company/Publisher: Guardians of Order
Cost: $13.95
Page count: 96
ISBN: 0-9682431-0-X

Originally Posted: 1999/04/26

It’s strange looking back at the earliest days of Guardians of Order, as we all began to figure out that this plucky little upstart was bringing something really special to the industry. Sadly, we also couldn’t foresee their eventual downfall. They came close to nailing something really special… but somehow they just missed it.

The second edition of Big Eyes, Small Mouth remains one of my “generic triumvirate”: If I’m looking for a generic system to run something, the first games I look to are BESM2, Hero, and D20. (It used to be BESM2, Hero, and Silhouette. But I haven’t run anything using the Silhouette system in over a decade.)

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

In my last review of a Field Report — Psi Laws — I pointed out that the great strength of the format was that it allowed Andrew Bates (Trinity’s creator and line developer) to explore themes and concepts which would otherwise be difficult to do in a standard roleplaying sourcebook. Psi Laws was an excellent example of this. So is the Media report.

Rick Jones takes a very good look at one possible course of evolution from the modern media of today to the future media of tomorrow – blending film, television, and the internet (along with a number of others) into a future of a fragmented OpNet and “the miracle of holovision”. The use of the Field Report motif of the product being a “real” Aeon Trinity field report to its field agents allows Jones to take a very subtle approach to what is far too often treated in a cavalier manner. As a result you end up truly believing that the pastiche of media forces he describes could actually exist.

If nothing else this product is a useful addition to your Trinity collection because it helps you make greater sense out of other Trinity products. That seems a little odd at first, but you need to realize that significant portions of most Trinity products consists of media excerpts of one variety or another (artifact storytelling is the technical term for this) – hence the Media field report serves as a guide to those excerpts.

The one major drawback of the Media field report, however, is that it pulls a Verhoeven. Paul Verhoeven is the director of Robocop, Total Recall, and Starship Troopers (among others). Anyone who has seen these films know that they hold a single trait in common: They all use fictional commercials and television programs as means of advancing a story or introducing a setting. The thing all of these fictional programs have in common is that they’re all cheesy – looking more like paraodies of television commercials rather than actual television commercials. Although some of the visual elements of programs covered in the Media field report are actually quite good (Retrospective with Warren Shaw — a news program whose dead host was replaced with a sim of himself — is a good example), others are quite pathetic (Tuna Sandwich and Jake Danger: Aberrant Hunter). This is a prime example of how poor visual presentation can spoil an otherwise decent product. Since the book deals with the media of the twenty-third century the fact that that media comes off looking hokey cheapens the whole thing.

In any case, although this Field Report doesn’t quite live up to the reputation of the others so far due to its poor visual performance, it is still worth $5 – particularly for Jones’ excellent work. It would take a lot more than this type of minor foul-up to make these products worth less than their dollar value.

(For those of you who are following the developing meta-story for Trinity check out the sidebar on pg. 15. It kinda ruins the mystique of this being an “actual” field report – but that’s a pretty juicy tidbit they’ve decided to give us.)

Style: 4
Substance: 5

Author: Rick Jones
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $4.95
Page count: 25
ISBN: 1-56504-771-0

Originally Posted: 1999/04/26

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: The Trinity Field Reports continue to be one of the best elements of the Trinity line.

Since Dungeons & Dragons first appeared on the market over twenty-five years ago the vast majority of roleplaying games have shared a standard motif in which the roles that the player’s assume are always (and I mean always) individuals who spend 99% of their time together in what is essentially a gang, wandering around, and engaging in thinly rationalized acts of violence. It has been interesting to watch over the past few years as the seemingly inevitable backlash against this ideology has slowly materialized. The backlash, in fact, has almost reached the point where it is fashionable to include it as a disclaimer – even when doing so is patently absurd. (For example Unknown Armies includes the disclaimer that people who “follow this type of logic” usually end up in insane asylums… just before describing a game in which the players take on the role of people who believe that they can perform magic. Violence, I guess, gets you locked up a in a nuthouse. Thinking that you get magical powers through self-mutilation is perfectly normal.)

That being said, it’s not that bad a trend. Even if you aren’t looking to get your games completely bogged down in real world causalities (what fun would a Feng Shui campaign be, for example, if your PCs were always worrying about civil suits?), such things can occasionally be used to add an original twist to an old story. Take the storyline in the Flash comic books a couple years back, for example, in which the Flash is put on trial for failing to save someone from a fire. That’s clever. Or take the brilliancy of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns. Normally you just quietly ignore the fact that Batman is an unlicensed vigilante; Miller explores the concept (along with others) and creates something fresh and creative. (Costumed superheroes make an excellent example of this because so many realities are quietly put on hold in the genre; bring one or all of those realities back into play and you have a whole new playing field to explore.)

All of which brings us around to Trinity Field Report: Psi Laws. This is a product which probably never would have existed fifteen years ago, because the only question it asks is: If your main characters use their psionic abilities, what are the legal ramifications?

I’ve commented before on the greatness of the Field Report concept. It allows Andrew Bates to deal with concepts, fill holes, and correct sizable mistakes which just couldn’t be handled any other way. These are things which could not be expanded effectively to fill a full-sized sourcebook, but of such a nature that they cannot be incorporated into another product in a convenient matter (or, in one case, something which should have been included in a product but was not – letting them correct the mistake in as clean a manner as possible). Their unique, cheap nature means that the Trinity universe can be fleshed out in ways other universes cannot.

Psi Laws is an excellent example of this. Giving both the GM and the player (due to their format as field reports to Aeon Trinity agents) a general overview of the way psions are treated by laws in all the major areas of the Trinity setting – and, through inference, the way law functions in general two centuries in the future — Psi Laws gives Trinity something no other science fiction setting has: Laws. Most games simply assume (or rather, let you assume) that the laws of their future realities will be, for all intents and purposes, identical to those of 20th century America. It’s an interesting oversight considering that the laws of today are substantially different from the laws of twenty years ago… let alone a hundred or two hundred years ago. Often these future settings have new technologies and new societies, but no conceptual base for how the law has changed over the years. This is a particular oversight in settings where the PCs end up being law enforcers of one variety or another.

Taking all of that into consideration I can give Psi Laws the same high recommendation I’ve given the other Field Guides — this is $5 well spent.

(Psi Laws does contain one serious mistake where a block of text was apparently pasted into the wrong place (it appears in its correct place as well father down the page). I also have reservations about the cover – a blow up of an interior image which is severely pixellated. These are minor concerns, however.)

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: Bryant Durrell
Company/Publisher: White Wolf
Cost: $4.95
Page count: 25
ISBN: 1-56504-769-9

Originally Posted: 1999/04/26

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: Dream Pod 9 has given us a character compendium which is actually worth buying. Is there anything these guys can’t do?

I hate character compendiums.

There’s no getting around it. You give me a book full of non-player characters – who usually have little in common except that they happen to share the same game setting (or worse yet, nothing but a game system) – and you’re looking at a product which just isn’t going to be worth the amount of money I spent on it. NPCs just aren’t interesting enough when they’re all that’s being offered. Nor are they all that valuable a resource – NPCs created by other people are difficult to use effectively in your own game (first because they weren’t designed for your game; secondly because it’s harder to get into the head of a character someone else created). The time and money spent on developing these products could always, I feel, have been put to better use on just about anything except a character compendium.

So in picking up Character Compendium 1 for Heavy Gear I was confident that I had finally found a product released by the Pod which I was going to dislike. There was going to be something oddly satisfying in knowing that these guys were actually capable of making a mistake.

Unfortunately I’ve found that not only can I not dislike the Character Compendium, I also have to admit that it’s a top-notch product that you should definitely buy. I don’t know how they pulled it off, but the Pod has produced a Character Compendium which is actually compelling, fascinating reading. Is there nothing that these guys can’t do?

Actually I have to admit that I do know how they pulled it off, and it’s something that any game line developer who feels himself being consumed by the unquenchable desire to release a character compendium should study in depth to understand the secret. It all stems back to the first principle I always return to when discussing Heavy Gear: The system is one of the best, but the reason to keep coming back for more is the setting.

Anyone who has read my reviews of other Heavy Gear products knows that I consider the world of Terra Nova, where it is set, to be one of the best speculative worlds ever created (and possibly the best, period, for roleplaying games). The success of the Character Compendium can be directly traced back to the fact that Terra Nova is a rich, believable world in which characters truly seem to live and breathe because they are given a backdrop which is as vibrant and diverse as the world we live in today. Because the setting seems to truly live and develop in a believable way it means that Dream Pod 9, when sitting down to develop the Character Compendium was able to not just paint a bunch of thumbnails about particular characters, but to deepen our understanding of their fictional world. The characters in the Compendium are not isolated stereotypes or collections of stats (in several cases they don’t have stats provided at all), they are (first and foremost) characters. That makes all the difference in the world.

Take, for example, the first character in the book: Chief Justice Winston Stark of the CNCS. As part of the multi-page description of Stark we are given his biography, introduced to his politics and his active goals (as well as how he goes about accomplishing them), told about his allies and enemies, and then given a specific, indepth look at how this particular character can be used in various roles in a wide array of different campaign types. We are not just given a character, we are told how the character fits into the world and how the world adapts to the character. As a result the Character Compendium does not exist as a series of disjointed snapshots of little collective interest (like looking at pictures assembled from the family albums of complete strangers), but rather paints a deeper, richer understanding of the Heavy Gear universe. Indeed I would honestly say that without the Character Compendium as part of your collection your understanding of Terra Nova will be shallower. That’s high praise for any product, and one which I’ve never felt a character compendium has even come close to achieving.

The Character Compendium is also unique because it was the first Dream Pod 9 product to include fan-generated material (other products have followed a similar process since then). In designing the book the Pod sent out a call for submissions to the pertinent on-line newsgroups and mailing lists, and the response came pouring in. The thing all of these fan-generated characters have in common is that they are members of small, dynamic groups – such as Douglas Winter’s investigating team or the anthropological group headed by Dr. Langmuir. Once again this design philosophy means that the Heavy Gear Character Compendium is superior to its competition – two plus two equals five, and the sum total of these characters is greater than their singular worth.

Unfortunately the Character Compendium was also the first Dream Pod 9 product to suffer from a lack of proofreading (other products have regrettably made the same mistake since then). Spelling typos seem to be rare, but words are obviously omitted entirely at several points in the text – and in at least one place an editor’s note has made it through to the final product. This is fairly minor stuff and only crops up occasionally (leading me to believe that two or three characters were running late and hence lacked editorial attention), and it’s the only problem in an otherwise entertaining and useful product.

So I’ve given up on thinking that Dream Pod 9 will stumble and fall in their production of character compendiums. Maybe if I take a look at GM screens, the single largest excuse to waste cardboard the world has ever produced. Maybe…

Style: 5
Substance: 5

Author: Philippe R. Boulle and Others
Company/Publisher: Dream Pod 9
Cost: $22.95
Page Count: 162
ISBN: 1-896776-08-6

Originally Posted: 1999/04/26

My opinion of character compendiums has not improved in the last thirteen years. My theoretical opinion of GM screens, on the other hand, has improved considerably. (In actual practice, most GM screens are still horrid in their execution.)

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.

Tagline: A truly unique product. This is the crest of a new wave. How many sourcebooks can you say that about?

The New Breed: Battle Before the Storm, Campaign Setting One for the Heavy Gear game, is something which you very rarely see in this industry or anywhere else: Something completely original.

(The pedants among you – you know who you are – are already saying to themselves: “But nothing’s completely original!” Yes, you are right. This book is still made of paper. Ink was still used in the printing. The rest of us safely conclude that things can still be completely original, even if you are still breathing air while partaking of them.)

I say this for several reasons. First, The New Breed was the first of Dream Pod’s campaign supplements. Any serious line of roleplaying product always, at some point, begins publishing adventure supplements of one variety or another (this dates all the way back to the original D&D modules as everyone well knows). Like so many other things the Pod has done, however, their campaign supplements take the industry to a whole new level and challenge everyone else to follow suit or get out of the game.

Second, this product demonstrates how to combine a tactical and a roleplaying campaign into one; plus it is designed in a modular fashion such that either one can be removed and played without the other.

Third, this isn’t actually a single campaign, but two. One of them puts the players on the northern landship Vigilance; the other puts them on the southern landship Draco. Although this may have been done before outside of my knowledge, I’ve never seen a roleplaying product be daring enough to assume that the players could take part on both sides of a conflict. Of course this is merely endemic of the overriding brilliancy of Heavy Gear’s world design: The setting is real, not manufactured. The players can play both sides of a conflict because both sides of the conflict truly exist – one side is not merely there to provide an imaginary foil for the other.

Fourth, this product is not just a supplement for roleplaying or tactical players, but also a companion volume to the Heavy Gear computer game designed by Activision. Throughout the design process of the computer game Dream Pod 9’s creative staff and the creative staff at Activision collaborated extensively to incorporate the setting into the game and the game into the setting. The New Breed serves in places not only as a behind-the-scenes peek at the computer game, but also provides a depth to the characters and the situations found in the game which would otherwise be impossible. Don’t mistake me with this at all – this is not a cheat guide or a self-congratulatory tract: It is a valuable product in its own right. Think of it like this: Typically a really excellent campaign supplement provides a plethora of background material and the outlines of an adventure, built upon this background material, which you then use to create your own particular version of the story with your players. In the case of The New Breed you are shown the plethora of background material which was then used to create the computer game, and then given the outlines of two series of adventures which serve as preludes to the computer game. The New Breed can exist entirely separately from the computer game and the computer game can exist entirely separately from The New Breed; but the two complement each other in an amazing fashion (with events in one suggesting and leading to events in the other, for example). Only a handful of other companies in this industry (TSR/WOTC, FASA, SJG, and White Wolf) have ever had the opportunity to create a product such as this – none of them have.

The Heavy Gear campaign settings hold a particularly dear place in my heart. The second campaign setting, The Paxton Gambit, was one of the first supplements to the game I ever read. It was to me, at the time, such an amazing and original product that I immediately felt compelled to write a review of it and share its wonders with the rest of the world. It was the first review I ever wrote for an RPG (I did a stint of reviewing computer games when I was much younger), and it can be found elsewhere on RPGNet the Alexandrian.

I like to think, however, that I’ve improved as a reviewer since then. The New Breed is a much different product from The Paxton Gambit (the latter wasn’t complementing a computer game and was designed strictly for roleplaying use, for example) and also cruder in some ways, but I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the general way in which the roleplaying campaigns in both are set up. The tools which Dream Pod 9 used in creating these products are unique and are, arguably, the greatest strength of these two books.

First, the campaign is broken up into scenarios. These function like the episodes of a television drama – thematically united series of events with a beginning, middle, and end which, nonetheless, make up a part of a greater whole. In The Paxton Gambit each scenario was clearly designed to comprise a single session of gameplay. Things are a little less clear-cut in The New Breed, but the amount of space given to each scenario is also smaller in The New Breed and things are slightly more broken up due to the tactical components (which I will discuss in a moment) – this is one of the reasons why I call the effort in The New Breed “cruder” than that found The Paxton Gambit.

Where this format really shines, however, is in the second step – where each scenario is broken down into important milestones. This is an important change over the way published adventures have previously been presented in this industry. Ever since the first modules for D&D were produced, adventure supplements have generally attempted to be as complete as possible. The early D&D attempts did this through their location-by-number designs (so that the GM knew what would happen everywhere the PCs went); White Wolf does it by detailing the actions of every scene. The problem with these approaches (and others) is that it is extremely easy for the adventure to become railroaded – players have a difficult time feeling that their characters have any impact on the outcome since not only the outcome, but the course they would take to get there, has been charted out in advance. To counteract that was almost impossible. Either you had to generalize the adventure down to a basic premise (making it less useful for the GM) or you had to accurately predict possible actions PCs would take even though you knew next to nothing about the PCs themselves (as everyone knows, players have an uncanny knack for finding unexpected courses of actions even when you’ve known them for years) or you had to chart out as many possible courses of action as possible (which meant that your adventure was either short and simple or that your product was of mammoth proportions).

Dream Pod 9 has apparently found a third way, so to speak. Instead of detailing the exact course an adventure must take, they have specified only the important “milestones” which must be passed along the way. These milestones provide a general map which can then be easily particularized to the needs of the individual GM almost on the fly. Because only the broad outlines have been provided the characters are not railroaded. Because it is the essential elements which are discussed the GM is not left on his own. The perfect balance between two unsavory and difficult extremes.

The other strength of the milestone system is that it extremely flexible. The set of milestones presented give a complete adventure, but in many cases these milestones can be switched around with ease. Plus additional scenes and situations can be inserted between the existing milestones with ease. Dream Pod 9, again, takes advantage of this by giving several possible “complications” and “continuing hooks” which can be used to modify the basic package which is presented.

Finally each scenario is rounded out with the statistics for the NPCs found in it. These stats take advantage of the archetypes found in the Heavy Gear Rulebook and the campaign book itself, noting only the modifications necessary to personalize them to the particular character. This method means that the NPC stat section only takes up about an inch of space on the page (the personalities of the NPCs are discussed in the text of the milestones).

The end result? A modularized set of adventures which are easily customizable without requiring massive commitment from the GM – you get most of the advantages of designing your own adventures, while still gaining the primary strengths of a published scenario (less time and work spent on preparation). Plus, since the format for these adventures takes up less space than those designed in the “completist” tradition, you end up with a dozen or so scenarios – more than enough to make the book truly a campaign resource.

And that’s only half of the book. The other half is a sourcebook for the location the adventures are set. As it has been noted before by myself and others: Dream Pod 9 may have a reputation for slim, expensive books… that’s only because they cram about ten times as much material into the same amount of space.

All of that being said, I did mention earlier that I consider The New Breed to be a cruder effort than The Paxton Gambit. This is to be expected considering that The Paxton Gambit is the later of the two products, but allow me to take a moment to clarify those comments further so that there is no misunderstanding. The New Breed is an exceptional, powerful product which – in my opinion – revolutionizes the way in which adventures will be presented in the future of the roleplaying industry. It introduces a plethora of tools which are extremely powerful. It also fumbles the ball a bit in a couple of places, which is fairly typical for any product which breaks new ground. The Paxton Gambit takes these tools, polishes them up, and uses them to their full effectiveness. The New Breed, for example, has some milestones and scenarios which blend into each other, its continuing hooks are listed at the beginning of each campaign, and NPC stats are listed with every scenario they appear in. The Paxton Gambit has a much firmer grasp of how to define each scenario and how to break each scenario down into milestones; it also moves the continuing hooks so that they supplement each scenario, rather than supplementing the campaign as a whole; and, finally, NPC stats appear only once so that there is less sense of repetition. It’s a subtle set of differences, but an impressive improvement from one product to the next.

Of course the important thing in any set of adventures is the quality of the stories being told. Whatever the mechanical difficulties, the story told in The New Breed is nothing to be ashamed of. As usual Dream Pod 9 has excelled. The fact that I am getting hung up on analyzing minor technical improvements and differences between their product only demonstrates the general excellence of those products.

The other difference between The New Breed and The Paxton Gambit campaigns, however, is the inclusion of tactical scenarios in the former. These tactical scenarios are designed to be playable in tangent with the roleplaying scenarios, or they can be spun off by themselves (just as the roleplaying elements of the campaign can be). These scenarios appear to be generally sound and look like a lot of fun, although I have not had a chance to playtest them.

All of this now leads me to discuss the problems with the campaigns, which is the primary reason why this book garnered a lower substance score than is typical for a Dream Pod 9 product. First, both roleplaying campaigns suffer severely because they fall prey to that classic flaw of adventure design: All the interesting stuff is happening to the NPCs and the only thing the players get to do is watch it happen. It is easy to understand how this happened. The scenarios are designed to be preludes to the computer game. The Pod didn’t want to force players into playing pre-generated characters, but all of the interesting stuff in such a prelude is going to happen to the characters who show up in the later story – i.e., the NPCs. The fix to this is simple: Either have your players play the NPCs, or adapt the primary story so that the player-designed characters become the focus of the described events. Either is fairly easy, but should have been unnecessary.

More serious, however, are what I see as fundamental flaws in the southern campaign set onboard the Draco. It is difficult to quantify them specifically in a short review such as this, but I’ll take a general stab at it. First, the storyline is fairly disjoint – acting as a series of episodic problems which are only loosely connected. Plus actions which are initiated are never followed up. In the northern campaign PCs are distanced from the action, but this problem is aggravated to new heights in the southern campaign – in one case an entire landship is nearly destroyed while the PCs are in town spending an entire scenario buying supplies. Finally, the tactical scenarios are almost completely disconnected form

It is difficult to quantify them specifically in a short review such as this, but suffice it to say that the storyline is fairly disjoint. Whereas the PCs are minorly distanced from the action in the northern campaign this problem is further aggravated in the southern campaign – in one case an entire landship is nearly destroyed while the PCs are in town spending an entire scenario buying supplies. Some of the tactical scenarios are almost completely disconnected from the actions described in the roleplaying campaign. Finally, major plot points which are raised and discussed early in the campaign are never followed through on in the later part of the campaign.

The campaigns are not the only strength of The New Breed however. Both the Draco and the Vigilance (the two landships) are given an indepth treatment, as are their important crewmembers. They provide a vivid resource for any GM thinking about running a Heavy Gear campaign set onboard a landship and display the typical technical accuracy and adeptness which Dream Pod 9 has demonstrated in the past. The technology in Heavy Gear is not composed merely of pretty pictures, but of hard military and scientific knowledge.

Finally the book is fleshed with the stuff which directly complements the computer game – a few brief words from some of its designers; a full color section providing a look at design sketches; an overview of the major Gear designs intended to serve as an introduction for those coming to the roleplaying game from the computer game (but also useful for anybody); and some other miscellaneous stuff.

So let’s wrap it up. For your twenty-five bucks you get a fairly thick Heavy Gear supplement with a full color section; two complete campaigns presented in a revolutionary style; more background material than you would typically get in any other company’s dedicated sourcebooks; a prelude look at the characters and settings which make up the Heavy Gear computer game; a look behind the scenes of that same computer game; and a host of other miscellaneous resources. It’s like an all-the-stuff-you-can-eat special for a roleplaying game! Whatever flaws might exist in this product are quickly overwhelmed by the pure amount of high-quality material which is present.

Style: 5
Substance: 4

Author: Jean Carrieres, Tyler Millson-Tyler, Marc Alexandre-Vezina
Company/Publisher: Dream Pod 9
Cost: $24.95
Page Count: 136
ISBN: 1-896776-20-5

Originally Posted: 1999/04/13

I actually ended up writing one of these campaign supplements for Heavy Gear. In fact, it was my first professional assignment in the RPG industry. Unfortunately, it was never published because these supplements drastically underperformed in the marketplace. (Some of the material was rewritten to become part of Storm on the Horizon.)

My assessment of these books would probably be quite different today. The structures are heavily based around linear plots and the milestone approach — while allowing you to pack a lot of territory into a very small page count — nevertheless eschews the type of gritty prep work (like stat blocks) that I think are most valuable in terms of saving time for the busy GM. Nevertheless, there’s a lot of good stuff to be found in them. And I consider them really important antecedents to the modern era of Adventure Paths and the like.

For an explanation of where these reviews came from and why you can no longer find them at RPGNet, click here.