The Inside Scoop on Gaming

When it came to superhero gaming, I never got into it. "Champions" felt more like coding a MU* than playing a game, V&V never made it to my neck of the woods, "Heroes Unlimited" sucked just every other Palladium game (Until Rifts, it was the local choice for the munchkins of the neighborhood.), and GURPS' mechanics failed to capture the feel of the IST world. I wrote off all superheroes games as hopeless; if the game didn't suck, the players usually did.

All of that changed with "Aberrant".

Here is a superhero game that's where I am today. It has all of the attention to setting, mechanics, and playability that I demand from a RPG. The game runs the Trinity version of the Storyteller RPG engine; go read other Aberrant or Trinity reviews for the key details of this great improvement over the previous version. (It's the best engine that the company ever produced.) The book seperates the subjective data from the objective data, and it seperates setting from rules in the same way; the subjective/setting data is the full-color section in the front of the book, and the objective/rules data is the B&W section in the back of the book.

This game is an alternate future history, the result of which is what you see in "Trinity". That makes "Aberrant" the first prequel in the (as I call it) Aeon Continuum. (There is an ad in the backflap for a second prequel that's currently in development.) The first divergance is (as of "Aberrant") in 1920, but the first important one is in 1998 when the "Galatea" blows up in orbit and emits weird radiation upon the Earth. Within weeks, the first superhero--"Nova" or "Aberrant", depending on your opinion--appears, and by 2008 there are 6000 Novas around the world.

Nothing is unaffected by the Nova Revolution. "Erupting" into a Nova is the ticket to The Good Life. Because they are so rare, and often so powerful, even a dirt-poor peasant who erupts instantly becomes a rich and powerful demigod. The easy wealth means that very few Novas turn to crime; the super-smart become legitmate inventors who's new gadgets revolutionize everyday life, or academics who's ideas change (inter)national policy, or businessmen who amass fortunes and empires that make present-day corporate monoliths look weak and small by comparison. The classic bricks, flyers, projectors, sneaks, and mentalists find very-gainful employment with governments, corporations, and other entities.

Are there heroes and villains. Sure! The Aeon Society, through the entities they created in the wake of the Nova Revolution, created the internation nova force called "Team Tommorrow". Nova radicals formed the Teragen; they're a leaderless faction of like-minded novas who think a lot like Marvel's Magneato, and they are the bulk of the true supervillains. The remaining criminal syndicates--that that survived the international gang wars and supression campaigns--employ novas to protect them and attack their foes. Mercenaries, called "elites", replace or reinforce conventional militaries. It's a very different world in 2008.

How does character generation work? It goes in two steps. The first step is to create a mundane character. This is similar to how it goes in many White Wolf games. You put down the stats, then the abilities, then backgrounds, and then freebies. It sounds like a waste of time and space until you realize that, without needing another book, you can create mundane characters. (In a game about superhumans, there is an appeal to playing a normal--or "baseline"--instead.) The theory is that this forces the player to consider what the character was and did before his eruption, because the mundane life may be very different from what he became.

The second step is the nova character. Here the player spends Nova Points to buy Mega-Attributes and Powers. He can also use them to raise mundane Attributes, Abilities, Backgrounds, Willpower, Quantum, and so forth. This means that you can create Superman, Batman, The Shadow, The Phantom, Spiderman, The Hulk, or just about anyone else that you've seen or imagined. (The exception are gadgeteers, but that's suppossed to be covered in a future book.) One fellow I've heard from created a Lex Luthor clone; the versatility of this system is amazing.

The powers range from the simple--Flight, Quantum Bolt--to the very complex, such as Elemental Anima. The Mega-Attributes, beside being super-potent versions of mundane stats, also have certain extras to them. These would normally be powers under any other system; some of them are Heightened Hearing, or Regeneration. The details behind the powers' apperances and such are player-defined, but they seem to be easy to control in case of munchkinism.

The downside to all of this power is Taint. As "Trinity" notes, too much Quantum power drives a Nova away from sanity and humanity. The means by which this happens is Taint, and this accounts for things like green skins or odd habits in many beloved comic characters. A nova can gain it by pushing his powers too much, using Tainted powers, or possessing a large M-R Node (the source of all Nova power). Too much Taint mutates body and mind beyond human ken, turning a heroic Nova into a monstrous Aberrant. This is the key behind the theme of power and responsibility.

As written, the game is quite lethal. This is not four-color hero gaming, but it's not quite "Watchmen" either. Those familiar with recent-vintage superhero comics will know where to turn for proper inspiration (and I hope that they tell the rest of us where to look). If your character is one who gets into combat often, be certain to get a damned good Soak total or a damned high defense pool. You will need it, early and often, to survive.

So yes, go get a copy of this game as soon as you can. Everyone must have and play this RPG. It's the sliced bread of superhero gaming, and bully to White Wolf for finally nailing down this slippery little bugger of a genre. May this game produce a thousand rock-solid games and suppliments for generations to come.

Style: 5 (Excellent!)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Aberrant
Author: A pack of White Wolf regulars, and a few who weren't. Category: game Company/Publisher: White Wolf Game Studio Line: Aberrant Cost: $29.95 (hardcover)/$24.95 (softcover (US) Page count: 296 pages ISBN: 1-56504-625-0 (hardcover)/ 1-56504-626-9 (softcover) SKU: WW8500 Capsule Review by Bradford C. Walker on 07/24/99. Genre tags: Fantasy Science_fiction Modern_day Espionage Conspiracy	When it came to superhero gaming, I never got into it. "Champions" felt more like coding a MU* than playing a game, V&V never made it to my neck of the woods, "Heroes Unlimited" sucked just every other Palladium game (Until Rifts, it was the local choice for the munchkins of the neighborhood.), and GURPS' mechanics failed to capture the feel of the IST world. I wrote off all superheroes games as hopeless; if the game didn't suck, the players usually did. All of that changed with "Aberrant". Here is a superhero game that's where I am today. It has all of the attention to setting, mechanics, and playability that I demand from a RPG. The game runs the Trinity version of the Storyteller RPG engine; go read other Aberrant or Trinity reviews for the key details of this great improvement over the previous version. (It's the best engine that the company ever produced.) The book seperates the subjective data from the objective data, and it seperates setting from rules in the same way; the subjective/setting data is the full-color section in the front of the book, and the objective/rules data is the B&W section in the back of the book. This game is an alternate future history, the result of which is what you see in "Trinity". That makes "Aberrant" the first prequel in the (as I call it) Aeon Continuum. (There is an ad in the backflap for a second prequel that's currently in development.) The first divergance is (as of "Aberrant") in 1920, but the first important one is in 1998 when the "Galatea" blows up in orbit and emits weird radiation upon the Earth. Within weeks, the first superhero--"Nova" or "Aberrant", depending on your opinion--appears, and by 2008 there are 6000 Novas around the world. Nothing is unaffected by the Nova Revolution. "Erupting" into a Nova is the ticket to The Good Life. Because they are so rare, and often so powerful, even a dirt-poor peasant who erupts instantly becomes a rich and powerful demigod. The easy wealth means that very few Novas turn to crime; the super-smart become legitmate inventors who's new gadgets revolutionize everyday life, or academics who's ideas change (inter)national policy, or businessmen who amass fortunes and empires that make present-day corporate monoliths look weak and small by comparison. The classic bricks, flyers, projectors, sneaks, and mentalists find very-gainful employment with governments, corporations, and other entities. Are there heroes and villains. Sure! The Aeon Society, through the entities they created in the wake of the Nova Revolution, created the internation nova force called "Team Tommorrow". Nova radicals formed the Teragen; they're a leaderless faction of like-minded novas who think a lot like Marvel's Magneato, and they are the bulk of the true supervillains. The remaining criminal syndicates--that that survived the international gang wars and supression campaigns--employ novas to protect them and attack their foes. Mercenaries, called "elites", replace or reinforce conventional militaries. It's a very different world in 2008. How does character generation work? It goes in two steps. The first step is to create a mundane character. This is similar to how it goes in many White Wolf games. You put down the stats, then the abilities, then backgrounds, and then freebies. It sounds like a waste of time and space until you realize that, without needing another book, you can create mundane characters. (In a game about superhumans, there is an appeal to playing a normal--or "baseline"--instead.) The theory is that this forces the player to consider what the character was and did before his eruption, because the mundane life may be very different from what he became. The second step is the nova character. Here the player spends Nova Points to buy Mega-Attributes and Powers. He can also use them to raise mundane Attributes, Abilities, Backgrounds, Willpower, Quantum, and so forth. This means that you can create Superman, Batman, The Shadow, The Phantom, Spiderman, The Hulk, or just about anyone else that you've seen or imagined. (The exception are gadgeteers, but that's suppossed to be covered in a future book.) One fellow I've heard from created a Lex Luthor clone; the versatility of this system is amazing. The powers range from the simple--Flight, Quantum Bolt--to the very complex, such as Elemental Anima. The Mega-Attributes, beside being super-potent versions of mundane stats, also have certain extras to them. These would normally be powers under any other system; some of them are Heightened Hearing, or Regeneration. The details behind the powers' apperances and such are player-defined, but they seem to be easy to control in case of munchkinism. The downside to all of this power is Taint. As "Trinity" notes, too much Quantum power drives a Nova away from sanity and humanity. The means by which this happens is Taint, and this accounts for things like green skins or odd habits in many beloved comic characters. A nova can gain it by pushing his powers too much, using Tainted powers, or possessing a large M-R Node (the source of all Nova power). Too much Taint mutates body and mind beyond human ken, turning a heroic Nova into a monstrous Aberrant. This is the key behind the theme of power and responsibility. As written, the game is quite lethal. This is not four-color hero gaming, but it's not quite "Watchmen" either. Those familiar with recent-vintage superhero comics will know where to turn for proper inspiration (and I hope that they tell the rest of us where to look). If your character is one who gets into combat often, be certain to get a damned good Soak total or a damned high defense pool. You will need it, early and often, to survive. So yes, go get a copy of this game as soon as you can. Everyone must have and play this RPG. It's the sliced bread of superhero gaming, and bully to White Wolf for finally nailing down this slippery little bugger of a genre. May this game produce a thousand rock-solid games and suppliments for generations to come. Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)