This is my first review for RPG.net so I am just going to say a few things about my review format and then we will be off to the races. I will break the review down into three portions, physical book, setting and system. After each of these I will give a little wrap up paragraph then the RPG.net ratings out of five. With that said here we go.
Physical Book
The Underground main book (MFG. 350) 254 pages in total, all of which are a high gloss paper normally reserved for colour plates in most rpg books. The chapter division is fairly logical and ordered. Text layout on a page is limited to a wide center column, when a term or phrase is in a different colour (some colours are hard to distinguish from the text) there is a definition in a sidebar, in the corresponding colour. This is slightly distracting and leaves a lot of dead space on the page margins. Throughout the book there are full page and small sidebar drawings giving the reader a "window" to the world of Underground. Some of these images are amusing pop culture adaptations, like the soldier kissing the girl in a parade (the WW2 newspaper photo) and a gun deal in sleazy apartment (from taxi driver, the caption is a DeNiro quote). One thing that struck me as odd was the use of pictures in the power section. The pictures reminded me of the health films from grade school and safety signs. Most likely inserted to keep the combination of picture and text uniform throughout the book. The quality ranges but most is reminiscent of the 1st edition shadowrun archetypes and bad independent comics.
Setting
The world of Underground is an odd one. It tries to blend the dystopian dark future with the fantastic abilities of superheroes. You have costumed maniacs trying to overthrow a corrupt manipulative government, with wars in far off place that mean little to people on the home soil. This has been done in comics and Underground borrows from many of them. Its originality comes from how it mixes all the borrowed ideas. If it didn't then it would just be the "Official [insert comic name] RPG" and that wasn't the goal of the writers. Since there is a large deal of information to cover, the main book touches on all the major areas but does not provide much depth. It seems a bit cliche that the characters are the discarded veterans from some nameless war, out to change the world, but players need to be something, and ex-supersoldiers is far more exciting than garbage men.
System
Because the game was made by Mayfair Games, the mechanic used is a bastard child of MEGS (used in DC Heroes and now Blood of Heroes). Everything is based on a Unit system. Units can abstractly represent time, mass, distance and volume. It takes some getting used to, but once you have it figured out it helps thing to be more fluid. An example would be if a character were flying how far can he go in one turn? Well add his units of flight to the units of time in a turn and you get the total unit in distance. The unit scale is very mathematical, and unit representation doubles every three units.
Action resolutions are basic enough to grasp; there is an opposed (challenge) and a skill check (pass/fail roll). A challenge roll requires you to beat a GM roll; the difference gauges your success. In a pass/fail, you need only beat the GM roll. Combat is basically a series of challenge rolls; pass/fail rolls and automatic actions all used when their initiative allows.
Character creation was rather involved. It is one of those instances where too much detail is thrown at a player too soon. To start, you need to allocate your "funding" into four main areas, recruitment (base attributes and skills), genetic design (powers and boosted attributes), genetic surgery (basically a GM roll to see if you actually get the powers you pay for) and reconditioning ( see if your character survives the whole ordeal). To me the last two are unneeded. The character is already burdened by the powers they take, the fact that surgery might get botched or he may go bonkers in therapy seems to wear the "fragile balance" theme too far. On top of these character creation steps the character must pick personality traits, develop the military career (more rolling) and pick an optional archetype. It is true that a character can die before creation is finished. It is uncommon and usually the fault of a greedy player, trying to take too many powers to start with. A good roll during reconditioning will let this squeak past, but a low roll will end the character on the spot.
One very quirky part of the mechanic was near the end regarding the reward point system. Not only can players spend points to improve themselves, but also they can spend points to change the way the world is working around them. They can affect local all the way to federal scale events all based around "parameter settings". It offers not only clear cut goals for players but it helps the GM mold the campaign scenarios to what the players are trying to do.
Springer-esque Final Thoughts
So here is where I wrap it up and say a few things. I admit right now I have a soft spot for hero genre games, which is why I bought this book. As a game on its own, it does well, not super, but well. This is very much a game that if you run it, you will be looking to buy sourcebooks for more information. The main book alone would not make a good "idea mine" for a different system. The system may be intimidating using charts to calculate cost for powers and attributes, but I am familiar with MEGS so it wasn't a problem for me. I seriously think the production value of this book hurt it when it came out. The rules and such are good but the total color printing made it too expensive. The book is worth say $15, but the cover price is much more. Personally I scored this in an online auction for about $3.50 so I am very happy with my purchase.
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 3 (Average)
