The Inside Scoop on Gaming

On the surface, UNSanctioned seems a lot like Brave New World. Some of the themes are similar: fascist governments using registration acts to control superpowered beings. As near as I can tell, this is an episode of parallel development. The fact that UNSanctioned is being released nearly a year after BNW is, I think, evidence of Nightshift Games' lack of funding than anything else. I remember being told about this game nearly a year ago, and it just arrived on the shelf of my Friendly Local Game Store today.

The premise of UNSanctioned is that the detonation of the atomic bomb created the first superpowered beings. This was already an alternate universe; there were costumed crusaders in the late 1930's but these were normal (though athletic) humans. After the bomb dropped, a few people became more than human. Things seemed good at first, but the world slipped into fascism. Metahumans are required by law to register with the United Nations, now nothing more than a pawn of the United States, and without registration, being a metahuman is a crime. The Iron Fist of the United Nations is the Peacekeepers, both the blue-helmeted troops and the superhero group led by "Peacemaker"--a nasty piece of work who killed his own mentor, the Man in Black, when the MiB wouldn't allow him to kill people for not supporting the UN regime.

The existence of super-powered beings has resulted in a different technological timeline. Computer and communications technology has lagged about 10 years behind our own world, but the space program has advanced faster. There are established lunar colonies, a space station at L-5, and the beginnings of a Mars colony, but IBM has just unveiled the 486 chip.

For fans of the persecuted supers genre, this is a little more four-color than Brave New World, but less paranoid than Aberrant. Physically, the book is attractive, although the cover art is a little dark and combined with the digest size, it made it hard to spot on the new products shelf. The art is good for a small-press game, although some (no, make that all) of the females depicted tend to look like adolescent fantasies. Each chapter opens with a two-page spread of news stories from March of 2000 that are actually quite nice-looking.

The rules seem functional, if not outstanding. There are only three statistics--Body, Mind, and Agility--and all skills are based off of one of the stats or the average of two. There are enough superpowers to make most character concepts, although not as many as in Aberrant or Champions. Character creation is point-based, allowing a GM to determine the power level of his campaign. One other oddity is that a high Body score not only adds to damage in melee combat but also to your chance to hit. Agility, meanwhile, helps reduce the damage you take in combat. The assumption, I guess, is that in melee combat overpowering your opponent is the determing factor in hitting and being able to twist out of the way helps you avoid damage. This is a lot like one of the problems I have with melee combat in AD&D, actually, but that's been covered in another forum. There are also no benchmarks for what a certain level of a statistic means. In an example in the book, a player spends the majority of his available points to buy a Body of 40. Other than "that's high!" I have no idea what that means. How much can a Body 40 person lift? What's the human average? What would it take to punch through battleship armor? None of that is addressed, and that's a problem.

There are no rules for vehicles, either. Not only is it impossible to tell if your character is faster than a locomotive, a lot of possibilities for conflict are removed when there aren't vehicle rules. If the UN sends attack choppers against a hero, the GM will have to make up helicopter stats himself. Car chases, motorcycle stunts, some of the greatest parts of modern-day adventure games and movies--all have to be fudged by the GM.

Strangely, skill used is based off of a d20 roll, but combat is handled with 2d10. Why not one mechanic? The thing is, it took me a couple of readings to spot that. I knew that there was something odd, but I'm going to harp on something here that I harped on in Nightshift's last game, Vampire Hunter$: editing. There are typos aplenty in UNSanctioned. A timeline is published in the early parts of the book, and huge chunks of it, typos and all, are pasted into a more complete timeline later in the book. The reason it took me a while to find the quirkiness of the d20 or 2d10 system for skill use in and out of combat is because normal skill resolution rules are included in the chapter on character creation.

It's not as bad as the aforementioned Vampire Hunter$, though. The page numbers are intact throughout the book, and I can finally determine why there are so many editing problems in Nightshift Games. The final newspaper lists the credits of the game in a news item where the people who worked on the game are arrested by UN forces for sedition. No one gets credit as an editor. I can only assume that there wasn't one, and that's a problem. A good editor can give the finished product a professional feel, and even maybe catch oddities like the d20/2d10 thing. Without an editor, we get sentences like "Harry Truman wins barely wins election as President" (this exact sentence appears twice!), transposed letters, and awkward sentence constructions. Not to say that companies that use editors don't have problems like that, but they tend to be fewer.

Still, UNSanctioned is a pretty solid game, and might be worth investigating for fans of supers games, especially those who liked the setting of Brave New World but were turned off by the limited nature of character creation. There are problems with the editing and the system that will require a GM to make up rules to patch. The game has promise, but it needed editing and it needed more complete rules.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 3 (Average)

UNSanctioned: The Dream Corrupted
Author: Paul Arden Lidberg Category: game Company/Publisher: Nightshift Games Line: UNSanctioned Cost: $19.95 USD Page count: 164 ISBN: 1-929332-21-1 SKU: CFE2000 Capsule Review by Kevin Mowery on 05/10/00. Genre tags: Modern_day Conspiracy Superhero	On the surface, UNSanctioned seems a lot like Brave New World. Some of the themes are similar: fascist governments using registration acts to control superpowered beings. As near as I can tell, this is an episode of parallel development. The fact that UNSanctioned is being released nearly a year after BNW is, I think, evidence of Nightshift Games' lack of funding than anything else. I remember being told about this game nearly a year ago, and it just arrived on the shelf of my Friendly Local Game Store today. The premise of UNSanctioned is that the detonation of the atomic bomb created the first superpowered beings. This was already an alternate universe; there were costumed crusaders in the late 1930's but these were normal (though athletic) humans. After the bomb dropped, a few people became more than human. Things seemed good at first, but the world slipped into fascism. Metahumans are required by law to register with the United Nations, now nothing more than a pawn of the United States, and without registration, being a metahuman is a crime. The Iron Fist of the United Nations is the Peacekeepers, both the blue-helmeted troops and the superhero group led by "Peacemaker"--a nasty piece of work who killed his own mentor, the Man in Black, when the MiB wouldn't allow him to kill people for not supporting the UN regime. The existence of super-powered beings has resulted in a different technological timeline. Computer and communications technology has lagged about 10 years behind our own world, but the space program has advanced faster. There are established lunar colonies, a space station at L-5, and the beginnings of a Mars colony, but IBM has just unveiled the 486 chip. For fans of the persecuted supers genre, this is a little more four-color than Brave New World, but less paranoid than Aberrant. Physically, the book is attractive, although the cover art is a little dark and combined with the digest size, it made it hard to spot on the new products shelf. The art is good for a small-press game, although some (no, make that all) of the females depicted tend to look like adolescent fantasies. Each chapter opens with a two-page spread of news stories from March of 2000 that are actually quite nice-looking. The rules seem functional, if not outstanding. There are only three statistics--Body, Mind, and Agility--and all skills are based off of one of the stats or the average of two. There are enough superpowers to make most character concepts, although not as many as in Aberrant or Champions. Character creation is point-based, allowing a GM to determine the power level of his campaign. One other oddity is that a high Body score not only adds to damage in melee combat but also to your chance to hit. Agility, meanwhile, helps reduce the damage you take in combat. The assumption, I guess, is that in melee combat overpowering your opponent is the determing factor in hitting and being able to twist out of the way helps you avoid damage. This is a lot like one of the problems I have with melee combat in AD&D, actually, but that's been covered in another forum. There are also no benchmarks for what a certain level of a statistic means. In an example in the book, a player spends the majority of his available points to buy a Body of 40. Other than "that's high!" I have no idea what that means. How much can a Body 40 person lift? What's the human average? What would it take to punch through battleship armor? None of that is addressed, and that's a problem. There are no rules for vehicles, either. Not only is it impossible to tell if your character is faster than a locomotive, a lot of possibilities for conflict are removed when there aren't vehicle rules. If the UN sends attack choppers against a hero, the GM will have to make up helicopter stats himself. Car chases, motorcycle stunts, some of the greatest parts of modern-day adventure games and movies--all have to be fudged by the GM. Strangely, skill used is based off of a d20 roll, but combat is handled with 2d10. Why not one mechanic? The thing is, it took me a couple of readings to spot that. I knew that there was something odd, but I'm going to harp on something here that I harped on in Nightshift's last game, Vampire Hunter$: editing. There are typos aplenty in UNSanctioned. A timeline is published in the early parts of the book, and huge chunks of it, typos and all, are pasted into a more complete timeline later in the book. The reason it took me a while to find the quirkiness of the d20 or 2d10 system for skill use in and out of combat is because normal skill resolution rules are included in the chapter on character creation. It's not as bad as the aforementioned Vampire Hunter$, though. The page numbers are intact throughout the book, and I can finally determine why there are so many editing problems in Nightshift Games. The final newspaper lists the credits of the game in a news item where the people who worked on the game are arrested by UN forces for sedition. No one gets credit as an editor. I can only assume that there wasn't one, and that's a problem. A good editor can give the finished product a professional feel, and even maybe catch oddities like the d20/2d10 thing. Without an editor, we get sentences like "Harry Truman wins barely wins election as President" (this exact sentence appears twice!), transposed letters, and awkward sentence constructions. Not to say that companies that use editors don't have problems like that, but they tend to be fewer. Still, UNSanctioned is a pretty solid game, and might be worth investigating for fans of supers games, especially those who liked the setting of Brave New World but were turned off by the limited nature of character creation. There are problems with the editing and the system that will require a GM to make up rules to patch. The game has promise, but it needed editing and it needed more complete rules. Style: 2 (Needs Work) Substance: 3 (Average)

UNSanctioned: The Dream Corrupted