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Well, what can we say about Palladium's most recent roleplaying game? Probably not much (the game is simple enough and dumb enough to speak for itself), but we'll give it a burl anyway.

First up, a brief synopsis. The premise of the game, relying as it does on the Millenium Bug (and what a crippling thing THAT turned out not to be), means that in a way Systems Failure was dated almost before it was released. But the plot itself is timeless. Big giant bugs taking over the world is an idea that just never goes out of style. Violent hillbillies who drive around in pickup trucks shooting anything that moves is another classic. Put em together and you've got a post-Apocalyptic American wasteland where rednecks and survivalists battle uncannily Starship Troopersesque bugs in a battle for truth, justice, and the American way.

Anyhow, there's your brief synopsis, now on to the nitty gritty. The system is Palladium's usual fare (which even I, a dedicated Palladium fan from way back, will admit is a fairly clunky system, and not the best for a less-than-serious game like Failure). Some will cry that it's yet another power-gamers paradise, but I say "so what?". At the end of the day, it's ordinary human beings up against big armour-plated energy-shooting monsters, and just this once an over-powered rules system is a good thing to have. Besides which, the use of skill packages in character generation means that the painfully slow proces of picking skills in Palladium's games has been streamlined a bit. Then we move on to character classes, and we see that Palladium's system is finally good for something. In a game like Systems Failure, your average gamer is going to be looking for simple, stereotyped, easy-to-pigeonhole characters, and the Palladium system can deliver just that. Each of the character classes has it's own feel, a couple of special abilities to set it apart from the rest, and a little Pros and Cons bit at the end of the description to give some advice on playing the stereotype to the max.

Anyhow, what haven't we covered so far? Art, that's probably an important one. I'll be honest and say that it ain't all good. Ramon Perez (arguably the second best artist to work with Palladium EVER) did a little art for this book, and it's at his usual level. Scott Johnson (definitely nowhere near one of their better artists) did a bit of art for it as well, and the fairest thing I can say is at least he tried. The majority of the rest of the art is by some guy called Micheal Wilson, who I've never heard of before, but he does good solid work. Not much of it is eye-poppingly good or anything, but it's got a consistent feel to it, and he obviously did the hard yards when it came to establishing the look of the Systems Failure artwork. Then you wrap things up with a fairly average Zeleznik piece on the cover (is it just me, or Zeleznik fast becoming the stock cover artist for Palladium?), and you've got the art.

Anyhow, that seems to be about it, so I may as well recap. Really really great idea (not original, but I'm a sucker for clichéd pulp), reasonably good execution of that idea, and a fairly solid book. By Palladium's standards I'd go so far as to say that it's excellent. By the standards of snobbish RPG.net types like you or me, it's still a reasonably good book. It's not a serious game, but it doesn't strain for laughs or comedy (and thank god, since there's nothing more unfunny than a "funny" RPG from a company that doesn't know how to be funny), and all round it's a good six-beer-afternoon game.

Rallan

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 3 (Average)

Systems Failure main book
Author: Bill Coffin Category: game Company/Publisher: Palladium Line: Systems Failure (yeah, there's only one book, what a line) Cost: $12.95 Page count: 144 ISBN: 1-57457-038-2 Capsule Review by Robert "Rallan" Allan on 05/28/00. Genre tags: Science_fiction Modern_day Comedy Post-apocalypse	Well, what can we say about Palladium's most recent roleplaying game? Probably not much (the game is simple enough and dumb enough to speak for itself), but we'll give it a burl anyway. First up, a brief synopsis. The premise of the game, relying as it does on the Millenium Bug (and what a crippling thing THAT turned out not to be), means that in a way Systems Failure was dated almost before it was released. But the plot itself is timeless. Big giant bugs taking over the world is an idea that just never goes out of style. Violent hillbillies who drive around in pickup trucks shooting anything that moves is another classic. Put em together and you've got a post-Apocalyptic American wasteland where rednecks and survivalists battle uncannily Starship Troopersesque bugs in a battle for truth, justice, and the American way. Anyhow, there's your brief synopsis, now on to the nitty gritty. The system is Palladium's usual fare (which even I, a dedicated Palladium fan from way back, will admit is a fairly clunky system, and not the best for a less-than-serious game like Failure). Some will cry that it's yet another power-gamers paradise, but I say "so what?". At the end of the day, it's ordinary human beings up against big armour-plated energy-shooting monsters, and just this once an over-powered rules system is a good thing to have. Besides which, the use of skill packages in character generation means that the painfully slow proces of picking skills in Palladium's games has been streamlined a bit. Then we move on to character classes, and we see that Palladium's system is finally good for something. In a game like Systems Failure, your average gamer is going to be looking for simple, stereotyped, easy-to-pigeonhole characters, and the Palladium system can deliver just that. Each of the character classes has it's own feel, a couple of special abilities to set it apart from the rest, and a little Pros and Cons bit at the end of the description to give some advice on playing the stereotype to the max. Anyhow, what haven't we covered so far? Art, that's probably an important one. I'll be honest and say that it ain't all good. Ramon Perez (arguably the second best artist to work with Palladium EVER) did a little art for this book, and it's at his usual level. Scott Johnson (definitely nowhere near one of their better artists) did a bit of art for it as well, and the fairest thing I can say is at least he tried. The majority of the rest of the art is by some guy called Micheal Wilson, who I've never heard of before, but he does good solid work. Not much of it is eye-poppingly good or anything, but it's got a consistent feel to it, and he obviously did the hard yards when it came to establishing the look of the Systems Failure artwork. Then you wrap things up with a fairly average Zeleznik piece on the cover (is it just me, or Zeleznik fast becoming the stock cover artist for Palladium?), and you've got the art. Anyhow, that seems to be about it, so I may as well recap. Really really great idea (not original, but I'm a sucker for clichéd pulp), reasonably good execution of that idea, and a fairly solid book. By Palladium's standards I'd go so far as to say that it's excellent. By the standards of snobbish RPG.net types like you or me, it's still a reasonably good book. It's not a serious game, but it doesn't strain for laughs or comedy (and thank god, since there's nothing more unfunny than a "funny" RPG from a company that doesn't know how to be funny), and all round it's a good six-beer-afternoon game. Rallan Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 3 (Average)

Systems Failure main book