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I have always been a "generic RPGs" advocate. While it is true that it's hard for a single set of mechanics to give the proper "feel" for every kind of settings, it is nonetheless something that can be valuable indeed. Especially if, like me, you have a problem with most of the comercially available settings out there. Not that they are all bad, mind you. It's just that sometimes, in the back of your mind, lurks a wonderful, wild and totally original new concept.

Plus, there's always time-travel and cross-genres. A generic game will let you do that. Hmmm. Not always, huh ? Well, it's true that unfortunately, most of the generic games out there right now are flawed. I already reviewed GURPS earlier last year and most of you should know by now that I'm not a fan of this game (anymore).

The fact is there are not so many generic RPGs on the market when you think about it. GURPS comes to mind immediately as being the premier generic engine of choice. We could also speak of the hero system and D6. After that, there is Fuzion (an offspring of Hero and the Interlok system). If you look at those systems, you will see that they share a similar philosophy. A "70-80's" philosophy. Heavy on mechanics, slow on resolution. But since the introduction of WW's storyteller system, the hobby HAS changed drastically. Not that I like the system, but now every game companies are taking a shot at the (yawn) next big thing. Dark-western, Anime, you name it. What does that mean ? It means that the greatest minds in the business today, those who are likely to come with groundbreaking mechanics are aiming at specific-settings RPGs. Guys like Jonathan Tweet who has given us great designs (Ars Magica, Over The Edge, Everway). But none of them have tried to build an ultimate set of mechanics. None ? Let me introduce you to Greg Porter, designer of CORPS.

CORPS has been around for a while, now. And it's a shame we don't hear about it more often. Not that CORPS is perfect, far from that. But it has at least the merit of being more "up-to-date" with the current trend. First, let's look at what the game claims to be able to achieve: CORPS is a generic RPG. In this single, 132 pages book, you're suppose to have EVERY rules you need to play in any setting. Furthermore, CORPS is a "dice-light" system and claims you should be able to skip 90% of dice rolls made with other systems. Finally, CORPS is supposed to be a realistic game.

Now, let's look at the facts:

APPEARANCE: This is a simple layout. This was obviously made on a small budget, but it actually looks better inside than some of the "big time" products out there. The cover is ordinary. A very simple design made on photoshop or something like that. The illustrations inside were all made by the same artist, Darryl Midgette. Some of them are quite good, but they lack a distinctive quality, something that would set the CORPS mood. (of course, we are talking about a generic game, but I think that there should be a way to achieve a feel for the game)

SETTING: haha. just kidding...

SYSTEM: It is obvious that Greg Porter must have been a long-time GURPS player. In fact, the annoying CORPS acronym is reminiscent of GURPS. In CORPS, a character is defined by 6 attributes, by some ads (advantages) and some disads (disadvantages). Attributes are pretty standard. Strenght, agility, awareness, will, health and power (measuring your paranormal potential). An average characteristic should be a 4 or 5 for a normal person. This make for an awfully short scale. For instance, the maximum weight a 5 STR person can carry is 125Kg, while a 1 STR would be 5Kg (!) and a 10 STR would be 500 Kg (!) This granularity in the system just kills me.

Furthermore, CORPS is a "points" system. For a real world campaign, the advice is to give 100 points with which to buy attributes. An attribute's cost is equal to its level times itself. For instance, a "1" attributes costs (1x1=1) and a "5" attribute costs (5x5=25). meaning with 100 points you couldn't event buy a 10 attributes, since you wouldn't have anything left for the rests !

All in all, don't expect your character's attributes to be much different from each others. "fighting-types" characters will usually end up with a 6 or 7 STR, intellectual characters will likely put a 7 in Awareness, etc...

The author manages to pack pages 16 to 29 with all sort of ads/disads. Most of the GURPS players will also be familiar with them. But there is a minor twist. Unlike GURPS, Porter actually invites you to build your own ads/disads instead of waiting for the next "Japan" or "Cyberpunk" supplement. Overall, you can pretty much design any ad or disad you could think of using this system as a guideline, but I would have maybe elected for one of the two extremes instead of being in the middle of the road: either make it a long list of ads and disads with a very short description of each, or use most of those 14 pages as guidelines to create your own ads or disads. Ads can be bought with "attribute points" or "skill points". Disads will give you more APs or SPs, depending on the severity.

Finally, your character is defined by skills he gets to pick. Skills are organized in "tree skills". Each campaign designed by the GM should have its own "tree skill". The CORPS book gives you three sample three skill: one for fantasy settings, one for modern time, and one for space opera. The skills in CORPS have no description at all. The author suggests that the name of the skill should be enough for the players and gm to know what to do with it. Works for me, but it might not be for everyone's taste. Skills are bought with skill points using the same method as attributes. A 6 in a skill would cost (6x6= 36 points). Skills default to a specific attribute. Most of the physical skills default to agility, and most of the intellectual skills default to awareness. Having a high default attribute will lower the cost of buying a skill, but will not give any bonus when you use that skill. This "cost reduction" system is not elegant. I cannot even begin to describe it. Furthermore, the cost reduction is even more granular. THERE IS NO ACTUAL DIFFERENCE between two person with a skill 5 in say, pistol, even if one of them has an agility rating of 2 and the other has an agility of 5. The two characters will have exactly the same chance of hitting something, given the exact same condition. A major flaw in the system, in my opinion.

The purpose of everything I have described so far was obviously done this way for the sake of producing small numbers. In fact, one of the strenght of CORPS is the fact it uses and produces very small number that you can calculate easily and quickly. Unfortunately, most of the system is aimed at veteran role-players, so this is pretty much useless.

CORPS uses a "difficulty" system to determine the outcome of an action. Say your character wants to shoot a tire. The GM assigns a difficulty to this task. If your skill is higher than the given difficulty, you AUTOMATICALLY hit the tire. If the difficulty is higher than your skill, you will have to roll a target number or less on a 10 sided dice. Your base chance of success is 11 or less, MINUS TWO for every point of difficulty above your skill. Confused ? Here's how it goes: your pistol skill is 4, the difficulty to hit the tire is 6. The difficulty (6) is two point higher than the skill (4). I have to reduce the base chance (11) 2 times by -2, giving me a 7. So to hit the tire, I will have to roll 7 or less on this 10 sided dice.

Let's look at this skill 4 character again:

If the difficulty was 4 or less: whe would automatically hit the tire.

If the difficulty was 5: he would have 9 chances on a 10 sided dice to hit.

If the difficulty was 6: he would have 7 chances on a 10 sided dice to hit.

If the difficulty was 7: he would have 5 chances on a 10 sided dice to hit.

If the difficulty was 8: he would have 3 chances on a 10 sided dice to hit.

If the difficulty was 9: he would have 1 chance on a 10 sided dice to hit.

If the difficulty was 10: he wouldn't automatically fail.
Again, this is somewhat granular.

One case of a notable exception: if your skill is exactly equal to the difficulty, you WILL succeed, but this will count as a "graze success", meaning you succeeded but the result was not as good as a "full" success". Graze success are interpreted by the gm except in the case of a "combat" graze, which are covered in the combat section.

But how do you assign a difficulty ? CORPS provides a few exemple. A difficulty can be based on another characters attribute or skill, or it can be assign by the GM arbitrarily. I would have liked a few more guidance on this instance. Still, this task resolution system is easy and enjoyable. As for skipping 90% of the dice rolls...let's just say it was more in the range of 50%. It will depend on the GM.

Next come the BIG combat section. We are introduce to all sort of rules that expand on the skill system, but that covers combat specifically. One exception to this is "initiative" which apply to every task, not just combat (so why the hell did they put the rule there?). The initiative system of CORPS is somewhat unusual, even groundbreaking (well, at the time of the first CORPS printing, 1990, it was). Unfortunately, this part is one of the most special, but also complicated feature of CORPS. Time is divided in 1 seconds segments called "Turns". In a turn, a character can do numerous actions, but each one after the first will suffer from some penalties. This initiative system and the sequencing of actions is WIDELY covered in the book. There is a lot of stuff and a lot of options for PCs. Unfortunately, as groundbreaking as it seemed at the time, we discovered it SLOWS combat pretty much. This part is confusing, and almost turns CORPS in a wargame.

In fact, in all the combat section, you are presented with many options that will leave some of the players poundering: "what will be best for my character ? Should I wait next turn or try one last action ?". There are many defensive actions and you need to declare them BEFORE you are attacked. Many of my newer players, more attracted to the "social" aspect of gaming were not at all pleased by the system. I ended up having to skip most of the optional parts. And had to tweak the initiative system. Still, it IS something unusual. A great design, but not for everyone.

The Author warns us that combat should not be taken lightly because CORPS is a very realistic system according to him. Well... yes and no. True, some characters died an infamous death in no time, but others just survived when they SHOULD have died. It should be noted that there are actually three combat section:The basics, Melee combat, and Ranged combat. In the melee combat we are presented with a "called shots" option, but this option is only presented later in the ranged combat section. At the end of those three combat sections, we are presented with a sample combat between two characters. This exemple will certainly clarify a lot of the rules presented earlier. The exemple is presented on 3 full pages. Unfortunately, at the end of those three painstakingly long pages, you realize that only 5 turns have took place. Meaning it took three pages to describe 5 seconds of combat. You have been warned...

There is also a section devoted to paranormal power. This section will let you come up and design any powers conceivable, be it magic spells, psychic powers, mutant powers, super-heroes powers, even cyber-powers ! This somewhat reminiscent of the hero system method used since the early eighties. It is VERY flexible. You tweak the powers and they will do wathever you want them to do. This time, Porter opted for an ENGINE, something with which you must create from the very basics. This part is great, except there are few exemples. This will be great for creating your own powers, but it is a time-consuming task. You can assign limitations, additions, etc... to each power to mimic your favorite setting or create entirely new ones.

The equipment section is...short. That's the only way to put it. Especially regarding "older settings" like fantasy. Only about a dozen of melee weapons are covered and half of this consists of swords (why not 3 types of sword and give us something remotely looking like a spear ???) On the other hand, when modern weapons are concerned, there are a great arsenal of guns in this game. Most from the 20th century, a couple of sci-fi weapons are included, but it's sparse.

The rest of the book ? A section covering vehicles, another one concerning "MEGAFORCE" (powerful explosions), a section on campaigning and life in the real world. It should be noted that once again, those sections are strongly biased and cover almost exclusively the 20th century. All in all, they might be useful, depending on your personal experience and your knowledge of the modern times.

ORGANIZATION: The following statement is made by Mr.Porter in his introduction: "If you have to read a rule twice to understand it, we did something wrong". But alas, it happens on more than one occasion. I read a statement some time ago and I don't think I could put it in more efficient way here: "If you ever buy CORPS, read it SLOWLY from cover to cover". No rules are repeated twice in this book. If you miss something you might be lost in no times. Porter designed CORPS with an obvious desire for economy of words (and space) and it shows. This is aimed at the veteran gamer. Somebody familiar with the hobby.

ORIGINALITY: As demonstrated earlier, this game is reminiscent of GURPS and to a lesser extent, to the HERO system. Not always a bad thing, because in more than a few occasions, CORPS is superior to GURPS (something easy to do, in my opinion). Porter tried as much as he could to improve the generic genre. He stayed true to most of the conventions and added his own twist. While I must say I quickly gave up playing this game, I kind of like it. Every game designer would-be should own this game.

FLEXIBILITY: CORPS is unfortunately not as generic as I would like. It is more suited for gritty settings. Immediately, it loses a lot of it's appeal because of this. This game is almost exclusively used by gamers in "conspiracy" and "modern" settings. In that case, what's the point of making it generic ? Porter admits himself that the game is not really good at handling super-heroes. I personnally had trouble running a fantasy campaign with it. Maybe Greg Porter should turn this system into a modern-day game ? It would be probably more successful.

SUPPORT: This game has virtually no support, either by BTRC or unofficial sources. I search the web constantly, almost everyday. I have found almost no sites with CORPS material with the exception of BTRC, of course. And Greg Porter is a busy designer, having made quite a few games lately. Question: why does Porter feels the need to design other games when he has a generic engine on the table ? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to turn those games into background for CORPS ? Currently, there are three CORPS books in the line (others were made in the early 90's, I don't know if they are still available but they were of poor quality) CORPS the main rulebook, Vehicles, and a strange but original fantasy setting by the name of DREAMTIME. That's not much for now. This game is begging for either a third, EXPANDED edition (which would hopefully correct the minor hassles of the system and give a lot more stuff) or a major re-design to be converted into a modern games with a good setting. I am aware that a lot of projects for CORPS are due soon, but it has been this way for a long time. A bestiary is in the making, as is a post-apocalyptic setting (a good match for CORPS)

ALL IN ALL: I wouldn't recommend this game to new gms or "social" players. Veteran players will have no problem understanding the rules, but will quickly discover that CORPS has some flaws. Not every player will like the time sequencing method. Numbers are small, but are "in your face" making it hard to have this "suspension of disbelief" feeling. Before you buy this game (or GURPS, for that matter) I would recommend you take a look at some of the FREE generic RPGs available on the web, namely Fuzion and FUDGE (but there are lots of others if you look carefully on the www). It never hurts to look for other options and it won't cost you anything to look at those . Furthermore, you will run into a lot of stuff for those free RPGs that are supported by a lot of fans AND companies. I still don't feel like I have been ripped off when I bought this game. Being a wanna-be designer myself, I learned a lot from this game. I certainly hope Greg Porter will make another try at a generic RPG instead of doing like Steve Jackson Games and building on something broken. That being said, the game IS playable, enjoyable and far superior to GURPS. Just choose your settings carefully.

Pros: only 132 pages, should be learned quickly if read carefully. Innovative mechanics for a generic engine. Clean layout, no typos. Covers a lot of stuff for such a small book.

Cons: only 132 pages, will become a nightmare if not read carefully, EVERY words count. Some of the mechanics will not fit certain players or certain campaign settings. Almost no support commercially or fan-wise. Covers so much stuff that at times, you wish the author had focused a little more on certain parts. Campaign stuff covers almost exclusively modern-times, making it less generic. Slow resolution at times.

Style: 3 (Average)
Substance: 3 (Average)

CORPS
Author: Greg Porter Category: game Company/Publisher: BTRC Line: CORPS Cost: $26 CAN Page count: 132 ISBN: http://www.btrc.net/ Playtest Review by man~o~king on 04/12/99. Genre tags: Generic	I have always been a "generic RPGs" advocate. While it is true that it's hard for a single set of mechanics to give the proper "feel" for every kind of settings, it is nonetheless something that can be valuable indeed. Especially if, like me, you have a problem with most of the comercially available settings out there. Not that they are all bad, mind you. It's just that sometimes, in the back of your mind, lurks a wonderful, wild and totally original new concept. Plus, there's always time-travel and cross-genres. A generic game will let you do that. Hmmm. Not always, huh ? Well, it's true that unfortunately, most of the generic games out there right now are flawed. I already reviewed GURPS earlier last year and most of you should know by now that I'm not a fan of this game (anymore). The fact is there are not so many generic RPGs on the market when you think about it. GURPS comes to mind immediately as being the premier generic engine of choice. We could also speak of the hero system and D6. After that, there is Fuzion (an offspring of Hero and the Interlok system). If you look at those systems, you will see that they share a similar philosophy. A "70-80's" philosophy. Heavy on mechanics, slow on resolution. But since the introduction of WW's storyteller system, the hobby HAS changed drastically. Not that I like the system, but now every game companies are taking a shot at the (yawn) next big thing. Dark-western, Anime, you name it. What does that mean ? It means that the greatest minds in the business today, those who are likely to come with groundbreaking mechanics are aiming at specific-settings RPGs. Guys like Jonathan Tweet who has given us great designs (Ars Magica, Over The Edge, Everway). But none of them have tried to build an ultimate set of mechanics. None ? Let me introduce you to Greg Porter, designer of CORPS. CORPS has been around for a while, now. And it's a shame we don't hear about it more often. Not that CORPS is perfect, far from that. But it has at least the merit of being more "up-to-date" with the current trend. First, let's look at what the game claims to be able to achieve: CORPS is a generic RPG. In this single, 132 pages book, you're suppose to have EVERY rules you need to play in any setting. Furthermore, CORPS is a "dice-light" system and claims you should be able to skip 90% of dice rolls made with other systems. Finally, CORPS is supposed to be a realistic game. Now, let's look at the facts: APPEARANCE: This is a simple layout. This was obviously made on a small budget, but it actually looks better inside than some of the "big time" products out there. The cover is ordinary. A very simple design made on photoshop or something like that. The illustrations inside were all made by the same artist, Darryl Midgette. Some of them are quite good, but they lack a distinctive quality, something that would set the CORPS mood. (of course, we are talking about a generic game, but I think that there should be a way to achieve a feel for the game) SETTING: haha. just kidding... SYSTEM: It is obvious that Greg Porter must have been a long-time GURPS player. In fact, the annoying CORPS acronym is reminiscent of GURPS. In CORPS, a character is defined by 6 attributes, by some ads (advantages) and some disads (disadvantages). Attributes are pretty standard. Strenght, agility, awareness, will, health and power (measuring your paranormal potential). An average characteristic should be a 4 or 5 for a normal person. This make for an awfully short scale. For instance, the maximum weight a 5 STR person can carry is 125Kg, while a 1 STR would be 5Kg (!) and a 10 STR would be 500 Kg (!) This granularity in the system just kills me. Furthermore, CORPS is a "points" system. For a real world campaign, the advice is to give 100 points with which to buy attributes. An attribute's cost is equal to its level times itself. For instance, a "1" attributes costs (1x1=1) and a "5" attribute costs (5x5=25). meaning with 100 points you couldn't event buy a 10 attributes, since you wouldn't have anything left for the rests ! All in all, don't expect your character's attributes to be much different from each others. "fighting-types" characters will usually end up with a 6 or 7 STR, intellectual characters will likely put a 7 in Awareness, etc... The author manages to pack pages 16 to 29 with all sort of ads/disads. Most of the GURPS players will also be familiar with them. But there is a minor twist. Unlike GURPS, Porter actually invites you to build your own ads/disads instead of waiting for the next "Japan" or "Cyberpunk" supplement. Overall, you can pretty much design any ad or disad you could think of using this system as a guideline, but I would have maybe elected for one of the two extremes instead of being in the middle of the road: either make it a long list of ads and disads with a very short description of each, or use most of those 14 pages as guidelines to create your own ads or disads. Ads can be bought with "attribute points" or "skill points". Disads will give you more APs or SPs, depending on the severity. Finally, your character is defined by skills he gets to pick. Skills are organized in "tree skills". Each campaign designed by the GM should have its own "tree skill". The CORPS book gives you three sample three skill: one for fantasy settings, one for modern time, and one for space opera. The skills in CORPS have no description at all. The author suggests that the name of the skill should be enough for the players and gm to know what to do with it. Works for me, but it might not be for everyone's taste. Skills are bought with skill points using the same method as attributes. A 6 in a skill would cost (6x6= 36 points). Skills default to a specific attribute. Most of the physical skills default to agility, and most of the intellectual skills default to awareness. Having a high default attribute will lower the cost of buying a skill, but will not give any bonus when you use that skill. This "cost reduction" system is not elegant. I cannot even begin to describe it. Furthermore, the cost reduction is even more granular. THERE IS NO ACTUAL DIFFERENCE between two person with a skill 5 in say, pistol, even if one of them has an agility rating of 2 and the other has an agility of 5. The two characters will have exactly the same chance of hitting something, given the exact same condition. A major flaw in the system, in my opinion. The purpose of everything I have described so far was obviously done this way for the sake of producing small numbers. In fact, one of the strenght of CORPS is the fact it uses and produces very small number that you can calculate easily and quickly. Unfortunately, most of the system is aimed at veteran role-players, so this is pretty much useless. CORPS uses a "difficulty" system to determine the outcome of an action. Say your character wants to shoot a tire. The GM assigns a difficulty to this task. If your skill is higher than the given difficulty, you AUTOMATICALLY hit the tire. If the difficulty is higher than your skill, you will have to roll a target number or less on a 10 sided dice. Your base chance of success is 11 or less, MINUS TWO for every point of difficulty above your skill. Confused ? Here's how it goes: your pistol skill is 4, the difficulty to hit the tire is 6. The difficulty (6) is two point higher than the skill (4). I have to reduce the base chance (11) 2 times by -2, giving me a 7. So to hit the tire, I will have to roll 7 or less on this 10 sided dice. Let's look at this skill 4 character again: If the difficulty was 4 or less: whe would automatically hit the tire. If the difficulty was 5: he would have 9 chances on a 10 sided dice to hit. If the difficulty was 6: he would have 7 chances on a 10 sided dice to hit. If the difficulty was 7: he would have 5 chances on a 10 sided dice to hit. If the difficulty was 8: he would have 3 chances on a 10 sided dice to hit. If the difficulty was 9: he would have 1 chance on a 10 sided dice to hit. If the difficulty was 10: he wouldn't automatically fail. Again, this is somewhat granular. One case of a notable exception: if your skill is exactly equal to the difficulty, you WILL succeed, but this will count as a "graze success", meaning you succeeded but the result was not as good as a "full" success". Graze success are interpreted by the gm except in the case of a "combat" graze, which are covered in the combat section. But how do you assign a difficulty ? CORPS provides a few exemple. A difficulty can be based on another characters attribute or skill, or it can be assign by the GM arbitrarily. I would have liked a few more guidance on this instance. Still, this task resolution system is easy and enjoyable. As for skipping 90% of the dice rolls...let's just say it was more in the range of 50%. It will depend on the GM. Next come the BIG combat section. We are introduce to all sort of rules that expand on the skill system, but that covers combat specifically. One exception to this is "initiative" which apply to every task, not just combat (so why the hell did they put the rule there?). The initiative system of CORPS is somewhat unusual, even groundbreaking (well, at the time of the first CORPS printing, 1990, it was). Unfortunately, this part is one of the most special, but also complicated feature of CORPS. Time is divided in 1 seconds segments called "Turns". In a turn, a character can do numerous actions, but each one after the first will suffer from some penalties. This initiative system and the sequencing of actions is WIDELY covered in the book. There is a lot of stuff and a lot of options for PCs. Unfortunately, as groundbreaking as it seemed at the time, we discovered it SLOWS combat pretty much. This part is confusing, and almost turns CORPS in a wargame. In fact, in all the combat section, you are presented with many options that will leave some of the players poundering: "what will be best for my character ? Should I wait next turn or try one last action ?". There are many defensive actions and you need to declare them BEFORE you are attacked. Many of my newer players, more attracted to the "social" aspect of gaming were not at all pleased by the system. I ended up having to skip most of the optional parts. And had to tweak the initiative system. Still, it IS something unusual. A great design, but not for everyone. The Author warns us that combat should not be taken lightly because CORPS is a very realistic system according to him. Well... yes and no. True, some characters died an infamous death in no time, but others just survived when they SHOULD have died. It should be noted that there are actually three combat section:The basics, Melee combat, and Ranged combat. In the melee combat we are presented with a "called shots" option, but this option is only presented later in the ranged combat section. At the end of those three combat sections, we are presented with a sample combat between two characters. This exemple will certainly clarify a lot of the rules presented earlier. The exemple is presented on 3 full pages. Unfortunately, at the end of those three painstakingly long pages, you realize that only 5 turns have took place. Meaning it took three pages to describe 5 seconds of combat. You have been warned... There is also a section devoted to paranormal power. This section will let you come up and design any powers conceivable, be it magic spells, psychic powers, mutant powers, super-heroes powers, even cyber-powers ! This somewhat reminiscent of the hero system method used since the early eighties. It is VERY flexible. You tweak the powers and they will do wathever you want them to do. This time, Porter opted for an ENGINE, something with which you must create from the very basics. This part is great, except there are few exemples. This will be great for creating your own powers, but it is a time-consuming task. You can assign limitations, additions, etc... to each power to mimic your favorite setting or create entirely new ones. The equipment section is...short. That's the only way to put it. Especially regarding "older settings" like fantasy. Only about a dozen of melee weapons are covered and half of this consists of swords (why not 3 types of sword and give us something remotely looking like a spear ???) On the other hand, when modern weapons are concerned, there are a great arsenal of guns in this game. Most from the 20th century, a couple of sci-fi weapons are included, but it's sparse. The rest of the book ? A section covering vehicles, another one concerning "MEGAFORCE" (powerful explosions), a section on campaigning and life in the real world. It should be noted that once again, those sections are strongly biased and cover almost exclusively the 20th century. All in all, they might be useful, depending on your personal experience and your knowledge of the modern times. ORGANIZATION: The following statement is made by Mr.Porter in his introduction: "If you have to read a rule twice to understand it, we did something wrong". But alas, it happens on more than one occasion. I read a statement some time ago and I don't think I could put it in more efficient way here: "If you ever buy CORPS, read it SLOWLY from cover to cover". No rules are repeated twice in this book. If you miss something you might be lost in no times. Porter designed CORPS with an obvious desire for economy of words (and space) and it shows. This is aimed at the veteran gamer. Somebody familiar with the hobby. ORIGINALITY: As demonstrated earlier, this game is reminiscent of GURPS and to a lesser extent, to the HERO system. Not always a bad thing, because in more than a few occasions, CORPS is superior to GURPS (something easy to do, in my opinion). Porter tried as much as he could to improve the generic genre. He stayed true to most of the conventions and added his own twist. While I must say I quickly gave up playing this game, I kind of like it. Every game designer would-be should own this game. FLEXIBILITY: CORPS is unfortunately not as generic as I would like. It is more suited for gritty settings. Immediately, it loses a lot of it's appeal because of this. This game is almost exclusively used by gamers in "conspiracy" and "modern" settings. In that case, what's the point of making it generic ? Porter admits himself that the game is not really good at handling super-heroes. I personnally had trouble running a fantasy campaign with it. Maybe Greg Porter should turn this system into a modern-day game ? It would be probably more successful. SUPPORT: This game has virtually no support, either by BTRC or unofficial sources. I search the web constantly, almost everyday. I have found almost no sites with CORPS material with the exception of BTRC, of course. And Greg Porter is a busy designer, having made quite a few games lately. Question: why does Porter feels the need to design other games when he has a generic engine on the table ? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to turn those games into background for CORPS ? Currently, there are three CORPS books in the line (others were made in the early 90's, I don't know if they are still available but they were of poor quality) CORPS the main rulebook, Vehicles, and a strange but original fantasy setting by the name of DREAMTIME. That's not much for now. This game is begging for either a third, EXPANDED edition (which would hopefully correct the minor hassles of the system and give a lot more stuff) or a major re-design to be converted into a modern games with a good setting. I am aware that a lot of projects for CORPS are due soon, but it has been this way for a long time. A bestiary is in the making, as is a post-apocalyptic setting (a good match for CORPS) ALL IN ALL: I wouldn't recommend this game to new gms or "social" players. Veteran players will have no problem understanding the rules, but will quickly discover that CORPS has some flaws. Not every player will like the time sequencing method. Numbers are small, but are "in your face" making it hard to have this "suspension of disbelief" feeling. Before you buy this game (or GURPS, for that matter) I would recommend you take a look at some of the FREE generic RPGs available on the web, namely Fuzion and FUDGE (but there are lots of others if you look carefully on the www). It never hurts to look for other options and it won't cost you anything to look at those . Furthermore, you will run into a lot of stuff for those free RPGs that are supported by a lot of fans AND companies. I still don't feel like I have been ripped off when I bought this game. Being a wanna-be designer myself, I learned a lot from this game. I certainly hope Greg Porter will make another try at a generic RPG instead of doing like Steve Jackson Games and building on something broken. That being said, the game IS playable, enjoyable and far superior to GURPS. Just choose your settings carefully. Pros: only 132 pages, should be learned quickly if read carefully. Innovative mechanics for a generic engine. Clean layout, no typos. Covers a lot of stuff for such a small book. Cons: only 132 pages, will become a nightmare if not read carefully, EVERY words count. Some of the mechanics will not fit certain players or certain campaign settings. Almost no support commercially or fan-wise. Covers so much stuff that at times, you wish the author had focused a little more on certain parts. Campaign stuff covers almost exclusively modern-times, making it less generic. Slow resolution at times. Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 3 (Average)