The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Remember Oscar the Grouch's trashcan on Sesame Street? Remember how it was just another insignificant, yucky trashcan on the outside, but how it was a lot bigger than it looked on the inside and had all kinds of cool stuff to find in there if you could just put up with all the garbage? Well, Waste World's kinda like that.

THE SETTING

Waste World is set on the continent of Avernus on a planet that may or may not be Earth - the book never says for sure. Either way, the planet has been devastated by the Armageddon Wars fought between humanity and its genetically-enhanced descendants, the Posthumans. Both sides used unbelievable weapons of mass destruction, including the dreaded entropic weapons - devices that ripped holes in the very fabric of reality. In the end, most of the world was reduced to multicolored toxic deserts and soupy, poisoned oceans. The races of the Galactic Compact, horrified by humanity's destructive nature and fearing entropic contamination, placed the planet under an Interdict enforced by a ring of Death Star-like space stations. No gets in, no one gets out.

Of the great megacities that survived the apocalypse, only five remain: Prometheus, where the xenophobic, cyberfetishist remnants of "true" humanity are ruled by the enigmatic Machine Gods; the Shogunate, with its ultratech samurai, ninjas, mystics, and mecha; Hydra, with its superpowered Posthumans and outrageous biotechnology; Ikarus, a flying city ruled by an incredibly arrogant and decadent race; and Janus, once a mighty spaceport, now a haven for both traders and the aliens stranded by the Interdict. Between the megacities, warlords, scavengers, and road warriors do their best to eke out a living. And all of these groups regularly slug it out over one thing: Drakonium. It's the ultimate power source, the thing that makes life possible on the hell that is Avernus. And it's running out.

This brings up one of the aspects of the game that made me hesitant to buy it: yet another world arranged around the contrived warring clan/tribe/guild/etc. concept. To make matters worse, each city has its own divisions as well: Prometheans worshipping the various Machine Gods, the Shogunate's clans, Hydra's Geneclans, Ikarus's houses, and Janus's kombines. Fortunately, the natures of these various groups are just different enough to keep them from seeming like just another game mechanic.

The setting also has a bit of a catch-all feel to it. This offers plenty of variety, but many of the elements seem a bit forced. For example, fantasy staples are shoehorned into Avernus under the auspices of scientific mumbo-jumbo that makes Star Trek look like a physics class. Want demons? They're humans who turned themselves into evil energy creatures. Zombies? There's a nanotech virus that raises the dead. Wizards? Waste World psionics are magic in all but name. Fantasy creatures? The Ancients used whiz-bang genetics to create them just for the hell of it. The insectoid human-coccooning xenomorphs (a la Aliens) and the army of killer machines (as in Terminator) just added to a strong feeling of deja vu. Heck, Waste World even has its own version of the Triffids! This anything-goes atmosphere suits the deliberately excessive setting up to a point, but more originality would have been welcome.

THE RULES

I've played a lot of roleplaying systems claiming to be fast and/or cinematic. Most of them, such as Feng Shui, sounded good on paper but were much slower in the implementation. Not Waste World. There's no other way to say it: this system is so fast it smokes.

The Waste World system is based on the roll of a single d20 modified by skills, attributes, and various situational modifiers. (Because both attributes and skills are based on a zero average, these modifiers tend to be small and easily manageable.) The higher the roll, the better the success. Ones are fumbles, while 20s are automatic successes with optional opening-ending.

In combat, a successful defense roll reduces the attacker's successes. Any remaining successes count as damage, which may be multiplied and/or added to by the weapon used and reduced by the defender's armor. (Armor is VERY important in this game, by the way. The deadliest close combat weapon is the light sabre-clone forceblade, which has no damage multiplier but which ignores armor.) As in Warhammer FRP, a character taking damage in excess of his life points is subject to critical hits. One weak spot is the fact that the criticals have an equal chance of hitting the head, torso, or limbs of the target; I'd suggest importing the probabilities from other games, such as RuneQuest or Deadlands. Overall, combat is extremely quick and deadly - in my first game, combats seldom lasted more than five rounds. Be aware that this deadliness cuts both ways: there is no "fate point" mechanic to tilt things in the player's favor.

The psionics rules are simple and efficient, with powers determining what you can do and power levels determining how well you can do it and how many abilities may be used at once. The range of abilities is fairly comprehensive, although the individual disciplines are a bit too narrow; pyrokinesis, for example, lets a character lob fireballs and create a flame aura; the more powerful the character are, the more fireballs he can lob. Disciplines can also be used defensively against appropriate psionic attacks - fire vs. ice, for example.

Character creation looks rather tiresome due to the wide variety of skills, powers, perks, and flaws available and the fact that the cost/level ratio of these increase at various rates. Luckily, the book includes seven ready-to-use characters that are well-rounded enough to be enjoyable. It took one player almost an hour just to tweak one of these templates, so I can't imagine how long it would take to make a character from scratch.

THE BOOK

Never have I seen a book of ANY sort with such uneven artwork - illustrations range from evocative vistas to godawful eyesores. If it weren't for the beautiful drawings at the beginning of each section pulling up the curve, my "style" rating would be much worse.

The quality of writing is thankfully a bit more consistent, , although not by much. The writer is a bit too fond of juvenile kewlspeak, making frequent use of words beginning with the prefix "mega" and replacing hard "c's" with the letter "k", as in "sandkrawler". On the other hand, each chapter's introductory fiction, like it's associated artwork, is quite good, offering a solid feel of the setting.

The book has no index, which is quite unfortunate - it really needs one. (Not that any RPG doesn't…) Ironically, the exhaustive table of contents reads like an index without the convenience of alphabetical organization.

SUMMARY

If you're above the age of, say, 13, it's doubtful that you'll be able to take this game seriously. That's okay, though - it's not a serious game. It is a gleefully over-the-top slugfest of a game with a wonderfully streamlined system. If that's what you're after - and if you aren't too worried about slick packaging - give Waste World a try.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)

Waste World
Author: Bill King Category: game Company/Publisher: Manticore Productions Limited Cost: 25.00 Page count: 288 ISBN: 1-90-162100-6 Playtest Review by Dan Davenport on 10/26/98. Genre tags: Science_fiction Far_Future Anime Post-apocalypse	Remember Oscar the Grouch's trashcan on Sesame Street? Remember how it was just another insignificant, yucky trashcan on the outside, but how it was a lot bigger than it looked on the inside and had all kinds of cool stuff to find in there if you could just put up with all the garbage? Well, Waste World's kinda like that. THE SETTING Waste World is set on the continent of Avernus on a planet that may or may not be Earth - the book never says for sure. Either way, the planet has been devastated by the Armageddon Wars fought between humanity and its genetically-enhanced descendants, the Posthumans. Both sides used unbelievable weapons of mass destruction, including the dreaded entropic weapons - devices that ripped holes in the very fabric of reality. In the end, most of the world was reduced to multicolored toxic deserts and soupy, poisoned oceans. The races of the Galactic Compact, horrified by humanity's destructive nature and fearing entropic contamination, placed the planet under an Interdict enforced by a ring of Death Star-like space stations. No gets in, no one gets out. Of the great megacities that survived the apocalypse, only five remain: Prometheus, where the xenophobic, cyberfetishist remnants of "true" humanity are ruled by the enigmatic Machine Gods; the Shogunate, with its ultratech samurai, ninjas, mystics, and mecha; Hydra, with its superpowered Posthumans and outrageous biotechnology; Ikarus, a flying city ruled by an incredibly arrogant and decadent race; and Janus, once a mighty spaceport, now a haven for both traders and the aliens stranded by the Interdict. Between the megacities, warlords, scavengers, and road warriors do their best to eke out a living. And all of these groups regularly slug it out over one thing: Drakonium. It's the ultimate power source, the thing that makes life possible on the hell that is Avernus. And it's running out. This brings up one of the aspects of the game that made me hesitant to buy it: yet another world arranged around the contrived warring clan/tribe/guild/etc. concept. To make matters worse, each city has its own divisions as well: Prometheans worshipping the various Machine Gods, the Shogunate's clans, Hydra's Geneclans, Ikarus's houses, and Janus's kombines. Fortunately, the natures of these various groups are just different enough to keep them from seeming like just another game mechanic. The setting also has a bit of a catch-all feel to it. This offers plenty of variety, but many of the elements seem a bit forced. For example, fantasy staples are shoehorned into Avernus under the auspices of scientific mumbo-jumbo that makes Star Trek look like a physics class. Want demons? They're humans who turned themselves into evil energy creatures. Zombies? There's a nanotech virus that raises the dead. Wizards? Waste World psionics are magic in all but name. Fantasy creatures? The Ancients used whiz-bang genetics to create them just for the hell of it. The insectoid human-coccooning xenomorphs (a la Aliens) and the army of killer machines (as in Terminator) just added to a strong feeling of deja vu. Heck, Waste World even has its own version of the Triffids! This anything-goes atmosphere suits the deliberately excessive setting up to a point, but more originality would have been welcome. THE RULES I've played a lot of roleplaying systems claiming to be fast and/or cinematic. Most of them, such as Feng Shui, sounded good on paper but were much slower in the implementation. Not Waste World. There's no other way to say it: this system is so fast it smokes. The Waste World system is based on the roll of a single d20 modified by skills, attributes, and various situational modifiers. (Because both attributes and skills are based on a zero average, these modifiers tend to be small and easily manageable.) The higher the roll, the better the success. Ones are fumbles, while 20s are automatic successes with optional opening-ending. In combat, a successful defense roll reduces the attacker's successes. Any remaining successes count as damage, which may be multiplied and/or added to by the weapon used and reduced by the defender's armor. (Armor is VERY important in this game, by the way. The deadliest close combat weapon is the light sabre-clone forceblade, which has no damage multiplier but which ignores armor.) As in Warhammer FRP, a character taking damage in excess of his life points is subject to critical hits. One weak spot is the fact that the criticals have an equal chance of hitting the head, torso, or limbs of the target; I'd suggest importing the probabilities from other games, such as RuneQuest or Deadlands. Overall, combat is extremely quick and deadly - in my first game, combats seldom lasted more than five rounds. Be aware that this deadliness cuts both ways: there is no "fate point" mechanic to tilt things in the player's favor. The psionics rules are simple and efficient, with powers determining what you can do and power levels determining how well you can do it and how many abilities may be used at once. The range of abilities is fairly comprehensive, although the individual disciplines are a bit too narrow; pyrokinesis, for example, lets a character lob fireballs and create a flame aura; the more powerful the character are, the more fireballs he can lob. Disciplines can also be used defensively against appropriate psionic attacks - fire vs. ice, for example. Character creation looks rather tiresome due to the wide variety of skills, powers, perks, and flaws available and the fact that the cost/level ratio of these increase at various rates. Luckily, the book includes seven ready-to-use characters that are well-rounded enough to be enjoyable. It took one player almost an hour just to tweak one of these templates, so I can't imagine how long it would take to make a character from scratch. THE BOOK Never have I seen a book of ANY sort with such uneven artwork - illustrations range from evocative vistas to godawful eyesores. If it weren't for the beautiful drawings at the beginning of each section pulling up the curve, my "style" rating would be much worse. The quality of writing is thankfully a bit more consistent, , although not by much. The writer is a bit too fond of juvenile kewlspeak, making frequent use of words beginning with the prefix "mega" and replacing hard "c's" with the letter "k", as in "sandkrawler". On the other hand, each chapter's introductory fiction, like it's associated artwork, is quite good, offering a solid feel of the setting. The book has no index, which is quite unfortunate - it really needs one. (Not that any RPG doesn't…) Ironically, the exhaustive table of contents reads like an index without the convenience of alphabetical organization. SUMMARY If you're above the age of, say, 13, it's doubtful that you'll be able to take this game seriously. That's okay, though - it's not a serious game. It is a gleefully over-the-top slugfest of a game with a wonderfully streamlined system. If that's what you're after - and if you aren't too worried about slick packaging - give Waste World a try. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 4 (Meaty)