The Inside Scoop on Gaming

BLUE PLANET

One upon a time - August of 1999, to be precise - Roger Taylor wrote an exemplary review of Blue Planet. This was shortly after the introduction of the first incarnation of the Review Forums, and a discussion regarding the politics of this game ensued - much of which was perpetuated by yours truly. (I am a fairly open-minded conservative/libertarian who loves a friendly debate, just so you know.) I suggested that, based upon what I'd read and heard about the game, it seemed to have a rather obvious and irritating liberal bias. My good friend John Fiala joined the fray by offering to loan me his copy of the Blue Planet if I would review it. I accepted.

Now, after an admittedly unacceptable delay resulting from a great deal of other RPG-related reading, here is that long-overdue review.

THE SETTING

Blue Planet is about as hard as hard sci-fi gets. There are no mecha, no blasters, no psionics. What there is is an incredibly intricate and detailed world.

To summarize the background:

In 2075, what later proves to be a wormhole to another solar system is discovered far beyond the orbit of Pluto. This solar system contains a predominately oceanic world with a remarkably Earthlike ecology: Poseidon. A colonization effort begins ten years later.

Five years after that, a virus genetically engineered by a megacorp to attack a parasitic fungus mutates and attacks a vast array of plant life. This disaster, called "The Blight", results in the near-extinction of the human race and the total abandonment of the Poseidon colony for almost a century. To combat the threat, the United Nation member states cede almost total authority to an organization that becomes, for all practical purposes, a one-world government: the Global Ecology Organization, or GEO.

Cut to the present day: 2199.

The Blight is over, and Earth has recontacted the Poseidon colony. The original colonists, bioengineered for survival in an aquatic environment, have long since adapted to a more primitive lifestyle and are very much divided on the merits of recontact. Meanwhile, with its original purpose fulfilled, the GEO faces challenges to its authority from a newly-reinstated United Nations, independent nations such as the United States and China, and the Incorporate States - megacorps that have become actual nations.

Adding to the potential and growing chaos are a Poseidon independence movement, rampant eco-terrorism, and, even more ominously, increasing violent encounters with Poseidon's indigenous sentient species, the mysterious and reclusive "Aborigines". It all hearkens back to the Old West, with rugged settlers, hostile natives, dangerous weather and wildlife, and even lone lawmen trying to keep the peace (in the form of the GEO Marshals).

That's what's going on. Just as fascinating, though, are the "who" and "where".

Although there are no alien races to play - the Aborigines being rightfully off-limits - that doesn't mean that players are limited to normal humans. First of all, dolphins and killer whales have been uplifted and are available as PC races. And second, a substance discovered on Poseidon called "Long John" has led to a revolution in genetic engineering. (Not to mention a futuristic gold rush.) The human form is now limited almost solely by the imagination. Combined with what cybernetics have not been rendered obsolete by biological equivalents, that offers players a dizzying array of possibilities: aquatic humans, "perfect" humans, ape-humans, cat-humans, and more. Indeed, some of them are so wild as to make the science of Blue Planet seem less "hard", even if it all of them are feasible in theory.

And now, on to the "where".

Oh, sweet, sweet "where".

A lesser book might have included nothing more than general information on Poseidon, some sample creatures, and maybe some details on the most important city.

Not Blue Planet.

This book is so packed with setting details that it boggles the mind. Naturally, the majority of this detail is devoted to Poseidon: the ecology, the weather, the natives, the regions, the cities, the Aborigines, you name it. The bestiary includes interesting examples of Poseidon flora and fauna, not just monsters that can "kick ass". Several environments unique to Poseidon are described in detail as well, such as floating islands formed by vast, thick mats of thick seaweed and oceanic bayous formed by massive mangroves sprouting from the sea floor.

A good roleplaying book might have stopped there.

Not Blue Planet.

The book also describes life on Earth, with its Road Warrior-esque wastelands between the recovering bastions of civilization… the lushly organic domed cities of Luna, with their political intrigues and fencing duels… semi-terraformed Mars, a harsh frontier with challenges quite different from those on Poseidon… the strange artificial worlds of the Asteroid Belt… and even the two remarkably different moons of Poseidon itself.

The Tree-Huggin' Hippie Crap

Okay, I'd better get this out of the way, since it's the main reason I'm reviewing Blue Planet in the first place. Is this game nothing more than "Liberal: The Tree Hugging"?

Well… overall, no, although it strays close in a few places.

The most egregious example hits you in the face right up front - page 1.2, to be precise:

"Powerful and benign, yet challenged on every front, the GEO struggles to protect human rights and ecological integrity in the face of Incorporate inhumanity and social desperation. The GEO remains the last, best hope throughout the solar system and the newly resettled colonies beyond."

Big problem. The above statement is not a quote from a GEO-supporting character in the setting - it is an objective statement of fact by the author. It colors everything that follows: no matter what else you learn about the GEO, you are told here to keep in mind that the GEO - a bureaucratic one-world government founded to combat a problem that no longer exists - are the good guys. Period. If the GEO is the "last, best hope," then by definition, anyone working against the GEO is working against the interests of humanity. This theme continues in the massive timeline that follows. Starting in the early days of space travel and moving on up to 2199, we're treated to example after example of environmental atrocities (committed by corporations, naturally) and massive extinctions (which giant leaps forward in genetics are somehow helpless to prevent). Why, an Incorporate spacecraft even crashes into - and sets fire to - THE AMAZON RAIN FOREST!!! (Oh, my God, nooooooo!!!)

Please.

Meanwhile, we're to believe that both real and future history are replete with examples of the successes of globalism, starting with the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to UN peacekeeping troops in 1988 and moving on to the seemingly flawless performance of the GEO. Somehow, any positive achievements by corporations or independent nations didn't make the cut, nor did the UN's various "nation building" fiascoes.

Things improve dramatically from there on out, however. It's almost as though the author realized he was in danger of creating a roleplaying game based upon a leftist manifesto and adjusted his writing accordingly. The rest of the book contains only the occasional nod to liberalism - the tired idea that dolphins are more inherently "spiritual" than humans, for example.

In his review, Roger Taylor suggested that the GEO's struggles against eco-terrorists - which frequently places the GEO squarely on the side of the Incorporate states - is evidence of a lack of a liberal bias in the setting. That's a straw man argument, suggesting as it does that if liberals don't advocate blowing up their opponents, they aren't really liberals.

The real balance is more difficult to find, but it's there. It takes the form of serious flaws in those behind the GEO, seasoned with some positive portrayals of certain Incorporates. By design, the GEO is just barely a republic: citizens of countries get to vote on who gets to vote on who gets to run the show with an almost free hand. That's a lot of power, and the game includes examples of people who let their agendas - unquestionably liberal agendas - lead them to abuse it terribly.

In fact, if I were to run a campaign of my own design for Blue Planet, one of the themes would be a Ben Franklin truism: those who sacrifice freedom (national sovereignty ceded to the GEO) for security (from the Blight) deserve neither freedom nor security. It's a testament to the strength of the setting that I'd feel comfortable doing this.

Well… except for that damn paragraph telling me that the GEO is the last, best hope…

THE SYSTEM

Blue Planet makes exclusive use of a percentile system. Attributes, skills, weapon damage, weather patterns: all are based on percentages. All levels of success are fixed numbers (e.g., less than 50) except for criticals, which are 10% of the ability level. I like the implication of this system: it means that someone of high skill has a broader range of outcomes and a higher probability for really excelling, while a no-talent schmuck will do a barely passable job, at best, unless he just gets damn lucky.

The system also features a nice scaling mechanic that resembles the one now used by Hero Wars: for every point above human scale for an attribute, the degree of success gets bumped up one.

The skills come in both general groups and specific skills, allowing for a nice range of specialization.

Character Creation

Character creation starts with the selection of the character's species. The choices are human (unmodified and therefore seriously disadvantaged), "modi" (a human with genetic and/or cybernetic enhancements), "genie" (a member of an artificially created human subspecies, such as the ape-human hybrid Silvas and the amphibious aquaforms), uplifted dolphin, or uplifted orca. (Uplifted sea lions are mentioned in the text but not detailed. I'm not sure why they, and the great apes I'd assume would also be candidates for uplifting, aren't offered as well.)

Each species has its own starting average for each attribute, of which there are many - 19, to be precise. The player may choose to increase this starting score by 1d10 or 2d10 in exchange for decreasing another attribute by a like amount.

That's the only random element to character creation. From there, a series of questions about the character's nature, background, and profession determine possible bonuses to attributes, skill groups, and specific skills, with most all of the professions offering some unique perk or ability. These professions are not play balanced, mind you: players can play anything from penniless street trash to a magistrate with the resources of half the planet at his disposal. Kudos to Biohazard for leaving "play balance" up to the players.

And a second round of kudos for the game's freewheeling approach to starting equipment. With a very few restrictions, it's for the GM and the player to determine what equipment a starting character possesses. As previously mentioned, members of certain professions can get their hands on pretty much whatever they want anyway, so bean counting would be pointless.

Combat

Blue Planet combat is both brutally realistic and brutally complicated.

The initiative system is darned clever, no two ways about it. Initiative and Speed are two separate attributes. A successful roll of the former determines when a character realizes that something needs to be done, while the latter determines how many rounds it takes him to get around to doing it. Initiative is only rolled once for any given set of circumstances, after which point characters simply declare their actions and act when they can, with declarations of intent being made in reverse Initiative order to give high-Initiative characters the advantage of foreknowledge.

Fire combat is based on a simple roll with situational modifiers, including some tweaks for auto- and burst fire. Melee combat is an opposed roll, with combatants choosing between various maneuvers such as kick, punch, and grapple, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

So far, so good. Just pray that nobody ever actually gets hit.

Each weapon has a range of possible damage levels based upon a percentage roll. For example, handgun damage is 1/15, 2/35, 3/55, 4/75, 5/90, 6/100. So, if you roll a 45, the gun would do 3 points of damage. Strength bonuses to melee combat damage raise the roll instead of adding directly to damage, so there's no need to worry about really strong characters decapitating foes with pen knives.

Armor can work in two ways: by decreasing the damage roll, and by setting the minimum grade of weapon required to affect the wearer at all. (For example, a small caliber handgun has a weapon grade of 2, so it could penetrate an armor of grade 2 or below.) Naturally, with a system this realistic, you have to roll for the (very specific) hit location to see if there's any armor covering the body part hit.

Again, the mechanics factor scale into the equation, with the target's scale dividing the result of the damage roll to get the final level of damage. Irritatingly, while the human scale for attributes is 5, the human scale for damage is 1.

Okay, so you have the final damage level. Now what?

Well, you check to see if the character dies from shock or blood loss. You check for stun. You cross-reference the damage level and the hit location on a four-page table which tells you the various affects on the character, some of which are automatic and some of which have a percentage chance.

That's a lot of dice rolling - too much for my taste. In fact, my head hurt so much after reading this chapter that I couldn't bring myself to do anything more than skim the vehicle combat rules in the next one. Suffice it to say that they appear to be every bit as complex, if not more so.

Fortunately, I've read that the mechanics have been drastically revamped for the second edition.

THE BOOK

The cover art, a photo-realistic depiction of the mysterious ray-like Aborigines swimming through an undersea grotto, is among the most haunting that I've seen. The interior art is entirely black and white and ranges from above average to very good; however, the sketches of the creatures in the bestiary seem a bit like slightly unfocused photos. That works in the setting context, maybe, as it gives the pictures the feel of shots taken "in the field", but it I'd prefer greater clarity and functionality.

The artwork is also quite sparse, and considering the amount of information packed into this book, I don't mind that a bit. Despite the technical manual-like layout, the text outside of the rules section is an enjoyable read. The fiction is particularly good, worthy of publication outside of gaming. Typos are few and inconsequential.

This is one of those books that gives lie to the notion that roleplaying rulebooks "can't" contain everything you need to play. This one does. There's plenty of room left for supplements, mind you; it's simply that they'd be useful supplements, not vital ones.

Oh, yes… and the book contains an index.

SUMMARY

Yes, there is indeed a liberal slant that seeps through here and there in Blue Planet, but it's neither as fervent nor as pervasive as you might have heard. Yes, the mechanics get cumbersome - especially when it comes to combat - but it's a percentile system, and therefore easily converted. (And the system's been revamped in the second edition anyway.) Certainly, neither of these concerns should keep a fan of hard science fiction away from such a dazzling and fully realized setting.

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

Blue Planet
Author: Jeffrey Barber Category: game Company/Publisher: Biohazard Games Line: Blue Planet Cost: $27.95 Page count: 345 SKU: BZG3000 Capsule Review by Dan Davenport on 07/24/00. Genre tags: Science fiction Horror Space Espionage Conspiracy Post-apocalypse Old West Superhero	BLUE PLANET One upon a time - August of 1999, to be precise - Roger Taylor wrote an exemplary review of Blue Planet. This was shortly after the introduction of the first incarnation of the Review Forums, and a discussion regarding the politics of this game ensued - much of which was perpetuated by yours truly. (I am a fairly open-minded conservative/libertarian who loves a friendly debate, just so you know.) I suggested that, based upon what I'd read and heard about the game, it seemed to have a rather obvious and irritating liberal bias. My good friend John Fiala joined the fray by offering to loan me his copy of the Blue Planet if I would review it. I accepted. Now, after an admittedly unacceptable delay resulting from a great deal of other RPG-related reading, here is that long-overdue review. THE SETTING Blue Planet is about as hard as hard sci-fi gets. There are no mecha, no blasters, no psionics. What there is is an incredibly intricate and detailed world. To summarize the background: In 2075, what later proves to be a wormhole to another solar system is discovered far beyond the orbit of Pluto. This solar system contains a predominately oceanic world with a remarkably Earthlike ecology: Poseidon. A colonization effort begins ten years later. Five years after that, a virus genetically engineered by a megacorp to attack a parasitic fungus mutates and attacks a vast array of plant life. This disaster, called "The Blight", results in the near-extinction of the human race and the total abandonment of the Poseidon colony for almost a century. To combat the threat, the United Nation member states cede almost total authority to an organization that becomes, for all practical purposes, a one-world government: the Global Ecology Organization, or GEO. Cut to the present day: 2199. The Blight is over, and Earth has recontacted the Poseidon colony. The original colonists, bioengineered for survival in an aquatic environment, have long since adapted to a more primitive lifestyle and are very much divided on the merits of recontact. Meanwhile, with its original purpose fulfilled, the GEO faces challenges to its authority from a newly-reinstated United Nations, independent nations such as the United States and China, and the Incorporate States - megacorps that have become actual nations. Adding to the potential and growing chaos are a Poseidon independence movement, rampant eco-terrorism, and, even more ominously, increasing violent encounters with Poseidon's indigenous sentient species, the mysterious and reclusive "Aborigines". It all hearkens back to the Old West, with rugged settlers, hostile natives, dangerous weather and wildlife, and even lone lawmen trying to keep the peace (in the form of the GEO Marshals). That's what's going on. Just as fascinating, though, are the "who" and "where". Although there are no alien races to play - the Aborigines being rightfully off-limits - that doesn't mean that players are limited to normal humans. First of all, dolphins and killer whales have been uplifted and are available as PC races. And second, a substance discovered on Poseidon called "Long John" has led to a revolution in genetic engineering. (Not to mention a futuristic gold rush.) The human form is now limited almost solely by the imagination. Combined with what cybernetics have not been rendered obsolete by biological equivalents, that offers players a dizzying array of possibilities: aquatic humans, "perfect" humans, ape-humans, cat-humans, and more. Indeed, some of them are so wild as to make the science of Blue Planet seem less "hard", even if it all of them are feasible in theory. And now, on to the "where". Oh, sweet, sweet "where". A lesser book might have included nothing more than general information on Poseidon, some sample creatures, and maybe some details on the most important city. Not Blue Planet. This book is so packed with setting details that it boggles the mind. Naturally, the majority of this detail is devoted to Poseidon: the ecology, the weather, the natives, the regions, the cities, the Aborigines, you name it. The bestiary includes interesting examples of Poseidon flora and fauna, not just monsters that can "kick ass". Several environments unique to Poseidon are described in detail as well, such as floating islands formed by vast, thick mats of thick seaweed and oceanic bayous formed by massive mangroves sprouting from the sea floor. A good roleplaying book might have stopped there. Not Blue Planet. The book also describes life on Earth, with its Road Warrior-esque wastelands between the recovering bastions of civilization… the lushly organic domed cities of Luna, with their political intrigues and fencing duels… semi-terraformed Mars, a harsh frontier with challenges quite different from those on Poseidon… the strange artificial worlds of the Asteroid Belt… and even the two remarkably different moons of Poseidon itself. *The Tree-Huggin' Hippie Crap* Okay, I'd better get this out of the way, since it's the main reason I'm reviewing Blue Planet in the first place. Is this game nothing more than "Liberal: The Tree Hugging"? Well… overall, no, although it strays close in a few places. The most egregious example hits you in the face right up front - page 1.2, to be precise: "Powerful and benign, yet challenged on every front, the GEO struggles to protect human rights and ecological integrity in the face of Incorporate inhumanity and social desperation. The GEO remains the last, best hope throughout the solar system and the newly resettled colonies beyond." Big problem. The above statement is not a quote from a GEO-supporting character in the setting - it is an objective statement of fact by the author. It colors everything that follows: no matter what else you learn about the GEO, you are told here to keep in mind that the GEO - a bureaucratic one-world government founded to combat a problem that no longer exists - are the good guys. Period. If the GEO is the "last, best hope," then by definition, anyone working against the GEO is working against the interests of humanity. This theme continues in the massive timeline that follows. Starting in the early days of space travel and moving on up to 2199, we're treated to example after example of environmental atrocities (committed by corporations, naturally) and massive extinctions (which giant leaps forward in genetics are somehow helpless to prevent). Why, an Incorporate spacecraft even crashes into - and sets fire to - THE AMAZON RAIN FOREST!!! (Oh, my God, nooooooo!!!) Please. Meanwhile, we're to believe that both real and future history are replete with examples of the successes of globalism, starting with the Nobel Peace Prize awarded to UN peacekeeping troops in 1988 and moving on to the seemingly flawless performance of the GEO. Somehow, any positive achievements by corporations or independent nations didn't make the cut, nor did the UN's various "nation building" fiascoes. Things improve dramatically from there on out, however. It's almost as though the author realized he was in danger of creating a roleplaying game based upon a leftist manifesto and adjusted his writing accordingly. The rest of the book contains only the occasional nod to liberalism - the tired idea that dolphins are more inherently "spiritual" than humans, for example. In his review, Roger Taylor suggested that the GEO's struggles against eco-terrorists - which frequently places the GEO squarely on the side of the Incorporate states - is evidence of a lack of a liberal bias in the setting. That's a straw man argument, suggesting as it does that if liberals don't advocate blowing up their opponents, they aren't really liberals. The real balance is more difficult to find, but it's there. It takes the form of serious flaws in those behind the GEO, seasoned with some positive portrayals of certain Incorporates. By design, the GEO is just barely a republic: citizens of countries get to vote on who gets to vote on who gets to run the show with an almost free hand. That's a lot of power, and the game includes examples of people who let their agendas - unquestionably liberal agendas - lead them to abuse it terribly. In fact, if I were to run a campaign of my own design for Blue Planet, one of the themes would be a Ben Franklin truism: those who sacrifice freedom (national sovereignty ceded to the GEO) for security (from the Blight) deserve neither freedom nor security. It's a testament to the strength of the setting that I'd feel comfortable doing this. Well… except for that damn paragraph telling me that the GEO is the last, best hope… THE SYSTEM Blue Planet makes exclusive use of a percentile system. Attributes, skills, weapon damage, weather patterns: all are based on percentages. All levels of success are fixed numbers (e.g., less than 50) except for criticals, which are 10% of the ability level. I like the implication of this system: it means that someone of high skill has a broader range of outcomes and a higher probability for really excelling, while a no-talent schmuck will do a barely passable job, at best, unless he just gets damn lucky. The system also features a nice scaling mechanic that resembles the one now used by Hero Wars: for every point above human scale for an attribute, the degree of success gets bumped up one. The skills come in both general groups and specific skills, allowing for a nice range of specialization. *Character Creation* Character creation starts with the selection of the character's species. The choices are human (unmodified and therefore seriously disadvantaged), "modi" (a human with genetic and/or cybernetic enhancements), "genie" (a member of an artificially created human subspecies, such as the ape-human hybrid Silvas and the amphibious aquaforms), uplifted dolphin, or uplifted orca. (Uplifted sea lions are mentioned in the text but not detailed. I'm not sure why they, and the great apes I'd assume would also be candidates for uplifting, aren't offered as well.) Each species has its own starting average for each attribute, of which there are many - 19, to be precise. The player may choose to increase this starting score by 1d10 or 2d10 in exchange for decreasing another attribute by a like amount. That's the only random element to character creation. From there, a series of questions about the character's nature, background, and profession determine possible bonuses to attributes, skill groups, and specific skills, with most all of the professions offering some unique perk or ability. These professions are not play balanced, mind you: players can play anything from penniless street trash to a magistrate with the resources of half the planet at his disposal. Kudos to Biohazard for leaving "play balance" up to the players. And a second round of kudos for the game's freewheeling approach to starting equipment. With a very few restrictions, it's for the GM and the player to determine what equipment a starting character possesses. As previously mentioned, members of certain professions can get their hands on pretty much whatever they want anyway, so bean counting would be pointless. *Combat* Blue Planet combat is both brutally realistic and brutally complicated. The initiative system is darned clever, no two ways about it. Initiative and Speed are two separate attributes. A successful roll of the former determines when a character realizes that something needs to be done, while the latter determines how many rounds it takes him to get around to doing it. Initiative is only rolled once for any given set of circumstances, after which point characters simply declare their actions and act when they can, with declarations of intent being made in reverse Initiative order to give high-Initiative characters the advantage of foreknowledge. Fire combat is based on a simple roll with situational modifiers, including some tweaks for auto- and burst fire. Melee combat is an opposed roll, with combatants choosing between various maneuvers such as kick, punch, and grapple, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. So far, so good. Just pray that nobody ever actually gets hit. Each weapon has a range of possible damage levels based upon a percentage roll. For example, handgun damage is 1/15, 2/35, 3/55, 4/75, 5/90, 6/100. So, if you roll a 45, the gun would do 3 points of damage. Strength bonuses to melee combat damage raise the roll instead of adding directly to damage, so there's no need to worry about really strong characters decapitating foes with pen knives. Armor can work in two ways: by decreasing the damage roll, and by setting the minimum grade of weapon required to affect the wearer at all. (For example, a small caliber handgun has a weapon grade of 2, so it could penetrate an armor of grade 2 or below.) Naturally, with a system this realistic, you have to roll for the (very specific) hit location to see if there's any armor covering the body part hit. Again, the mechanics factor scale into the equation, with the target's scale dividing the result of the damage roll to get the final level of damage. Irritatingly, while the human scale for attributes is 5, the human scale for damage is 1. Okay, so you have the final damage level. Now what? Well, you check to see if the character dies from shock or blood loss. You check for stun. You cross-reference the damage level and the hit location on a four-page table which tells you the various affects on the character, some of which are automatic and some of which have a percentage chance. That's a lot of dice rolling - too much for my taste. In fact, my head hurt so much after reading this chapter that I couldn't bring myself to do anything more than skim the vehicle combat rules in the next one. Suffice it to say that they appear to be every bit as complex, if not more so. Fortunately, I've read that the mechanics have been drastically revamped for the second edition. THE BOOK The cover art, a photo-realistic depiction of the mysterious ray-like Aborigines swimming through an undersea grotto, is among the most haunting that I've seen. The interior art is entirely black and white and ranges from above average to very good; however, the sketches of the creatures in the bestiary seem a bit like slightly unfocused photos. That works in the setting context, maybe, as it gives the pictures the feel of shots taken "in the field", but it I'd prefer greater clarity and functionality. The artwork is also quite sparse, and considering the amount of information packed into this book, I don't mind that a bit. Despite the technical manual-like layout, the text outside of the rules section is an enjoyable read. The fiction is particularly good, worthy of publication outside of gaming. Typos are few and inconsequential. This is one of those books that gives lie to the notion that roleplaying rulebooks "can't" contain everything you need to play. This one does. There's plenty of room left for supplements, mind you; it's simply that they'd be useful supplements, not vital ones. Oh, yes… and the book contains an index. SUMMARY Yes, there is indeed a liberal slant that seeps through here and there in Blue Planet, but it's neither as fervent nor as pervasive as you might have heard. Yes, the mechanics get cumbersome - especially when it comes to combat - but it's a percentile system, and therefore easily converted. (And the system's been revamped in the second edition anyway.) Certainly, neither of these concerns should keep a fan of hard science fiction away from such a dazzling and fully realized setting. Style: 5 (Excellent!) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)