The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Brave New World RPG

Introduction and Setting

Having recently gone on a shopping spree for Superhero games, I picked up Matt Forbecks Brave New World (BNW). This game is set around a present day, dystopian alternative reality, where superpowered humans called 'deltas' first appeared during WWI. In a manner reminiscent of White Wolfs Aberrant game, they gain their powers after suffering a near-death experience. Unlike Aberrant though, these deltas spend the 1920's and 30's dressed up as supervillians or crime-fighters, indulging in your typical caped campness. World War II sees their deployment by all nations as a weapon of war (and gets its own sourcebook 'Glory Days') before one American delta experiences another near-death experience at the hands of the Nazis and becomes a vastly more powerful type of hero called an alpha (on par with Superman). This first alpha, named 'Superior' personally ends the war by killing Adolph Hitler in 1943! After the war, things return to the same caped crusader malarkey and super-criminal caricatures, until 1963 when one evil alphas henchmen attack John F. Kennedy in Dallas and kill his wife. Allied with the top dog alpha 'Superior', JFK pushes through a Delta Registration Act (shades of the X-Men here) allowing the US government to unconstitutionally monitor Deltas. The presidency becomes increasingly dictatorial, culminating in a declaration of a state of emergency when Superior and most of the other alphas disappear along with a big chunk of Chicago in the 'Bicentennial Battle'. This allows JFK to suspend elections and rule by decree. Meanwhile the government-loyal superheroes are formed into 'Delta Prime' and set about arresting all the other outlaw deltas who oppose the now fascist US government or even merely refuse to register their powers. Naturally enough these 'Defiants' are the suggested role for the players as they struggle to uphold life, liberty and the American way!

Presentation

I personally don't worry too much about the layout and artwork of an RPG, but I realise that some people find value in the quality of the stuff surrounding the text. There are 224 pages, of which 64 are glossy full colour paper. The book starts with a short comic strip of a Defiant saving a new delta from the evil Delta Prime, and then proceeds with a background briefing in the style of a web page. The artwork is cartoonish and occasionally interferes with the text in the character templates section. The text is clear though the margins are somewhat wide, with a very low word per page count. Occasional editing errors show through, but there is an index.

Rules and Characters

BNW has attracted lots of criticism because it only allows players to generate the low powered deltas. These guys only have access to one sort of limited power package, such as being a flier, an energy blaster or a speedster. This means that whilst your character could fly, he couldn't turn to flame, or fire bolts of energy from his eyes, nor is there any way for him to ever learn! This is at odds with most other superhero genre games which allow players to generate anything they can imagine as long as its within their points cost. As superheroes go, deltas definitely draw the short straw. However, it does force players to use their abilities in concert, as none of them will have a power for every occasion. Personally, whilst I could see how people would enjoy playing a low-powered X-Men or Watchmen style game, I prefer Superman-type heroics myself. However, there are two power packages, (or character classes as I like to think of them) that don't fit with the others in terms of relative power. Firstly, the Gadgeteers are allowed to make only one piece of personal technology. However, this item can be anything from a jet-powered battle suit to a death-ray/personal teleporter/life scanner tricorder. Secondly, the Bargainer class, are deltas who use black magic and make Faustian deals with demons. They can bind demons to totems which then empower them with the abilities of another delta package and they can have up to 5 totems at character creation! Of course this means the Bargainers can whip out the perfect power for any occasion and can even maintain their own gadgeteer mega-items in their downtime! (The Bargainers also get their own sourcebook which I may even review soon.) Its hard to justify these guys from any game-balance point of view, at least with the rules and information in this rulebook.

Talking of the rules, BNW uses a horribly butchered version of Deadlands attributes and die rolling techniques. There are only 4 stats Strength, Speed, Smarts and Spirit and they are represented as multiples of d6. To succeed at something, you roll your dice, pick the highest single value (you reroll 6's and add 6 to the result) and see if it matches or exceeds the difficulty number. For example, to lift a great stone weight the GM would set a difficulty of 10. A character with a strength of 4 would roll 4d6, hoping that at least one of his dice would come up a 6 and then a 4 or better. If he had a crowbar or super strength, he might add anything from +1 to +5 to his highest roll.

Damage and combat is equally simplistic, though it does use a basic hit location system. However, the game rules maintain the specialised nature of the heroes. By this, I mean that if people invest the majority of their attribute points in Strength and Speed, they then gain lots of combat skills and abilities, but at the cost of intellect, charisma and courage. The alternative is a brain box, or political animal who'll crumple up like a wet paper bag when tapped on the shoulder. Anyone who divides their points equally, will be easily outclassed by anyone even slightly more specialised.

Comparing the experience and development point costs with the suggested XP awards, we can also see very slow progression in changing stats from their starting values. All of this conspires to make deltas quite static creatures in comparison to other games. To add insult to injury, whilst some NPC's evolved into the multi-talented uber-powered alphas, this option is forbidden to players, at least until AEG release a sourcebook telling us what really happened at the Bicentennial battle which saw the mysterious disappearance of the majority of alphas.

GM's Secrets

Players look away now.

As is usual for these alternative background games, there is a GM section on what's really going on. After all, having read the players section there are a number of obvious questions, such as 'where do deltas get their powers?', 'whats all this about magic and demons?', 'What happened to all the alphas and where do they get their powers from?','whats happening in the rest of the world?', 'Why did Superior turn America in the new Nazi Germany when he originally opposed Hitler?' and 'whats going to happen in the future timeline?'.

The GM's section answers none of these questions. In one of the most arrogant designer notes I've ever seen, Matt Forbeck refuses to tell GM's the central premises and secrets of the game they have just bought. Instead he claims that things will be revealed, drip by drip in a host of future supplements. In other words, I cant use the official game setting, unless, like an addict, I spend a fortune on Alderacs books. This is the worst example of brand-building that I've ever seen. I've always decried how some developers claim to have some vast metaplot that enriches their gameworld, but then refuse to spell it out unless you buy all their supplements. It smacks of profiteering and trying to establish a captive market, not on the strength of the material, but because the game is unusable without further investment. White Wolf were always bad for this (e.g. Aberrant or Trinity, but that gave big metaplot hints, a global overview and plenty of adventure ideas), but lately PEG and AEG have been the worst offenders. e.g. in both L5R and Deadlands there is an official timeline that gets updated with yearly releases, but at least they tell you the central secrets and motivations of the main NPC's and groups. They explain the cosmology and conspiracies within the gameworld, if not in detail, then at least in outline.

However BNW goes way over the line of acceptable information sharing. Limited information is given on JFK's motivations and secrets and the Defiance movement along with statistics for such bizarrities as vampires and zombies, though no information is given on how such creatures exist, or what their role is, or why they are even in an ostensibly superhero game. To quote Matt Forbeck 'Information in Brave New World is released on a need-to-know basis. We'll tell you when you need to know.' Well, I'm sorry, but if people are going to run a BNW campaign, then the GM needs to know now, so they can answer players questions as they occur in game, not when it suits AEG! Forbeck doesn't even have the decency to remind GM's that they can use their personal vision to explain all this, instead insisting that an 'official' setting will exist.

The GM's section also lacks any adventures or campaign ideas, let alone an introductory scenario. Not enough information is given on Americas society and condition and there is no info on the rest of the world. (Very annoying for Brits like me). Neither is it clear what style the game should take, if its supposed to be dark and mysterious like the Watchmen, then why is it filled with 4 colour silliness and a suggested prohibition against killing by accident?

Conclusions

Brave New World is a very flawed product. Initially it looks interesting, with colourful (though stereotypical) characters and a nice moody inversion of life in Kennedy's fascist America. Yet its all style over substance, no thought has gone into the political or economic ramifications of superheroes (which was Aberrants saving grace). If deltas refusal to sign up to the Delta Registration Act has wrecked America, denied the government the use of their own deltas (because their busy hunting down the unregistered) and imposed martial law, then why haven't people acted in the 37 years between 1963 and 2000?

The rules system is unoriginal and nothing to write home about, whilst characters remain annoyingly inflexible and constrained. The setting appears to be quite detailed and original, but because of Forbecks profiteering policy (that you can only get the full story when you pay extra for the dozen supplements you'll need) I cant really say if it is or not. In my opinion, he could have crammed in twice the text he has by using smaller margins and less colour inserts and explained his setting and campaign ideas fully. By not doing so, he has created a game where the GM knows little more than the players! It require the GM to either do lots of work to create a playable setting or wait months and pay a fortune for the supplements. I'm advocating a boycott of BNW and other such 'shelves of supplements required' games until game companies realise they cant get away with short-changing their customers.

The book is nicely presented and establishes a distinct atmosphere, so I award it a Style rating of 4.

The setting and rules I find lacking in the extreme, so it gets a Substance rating of 1.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)

Brave New World
Author: Matt Forbeck Category: game Company/Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group Line: Brave New World Cost: £15-£20 Page count: 224 Capsule Review by Stephen Joseph Ellis on 09/26/00. Genre tags: Modern day Conspiracy Superhero	Brave New World RPG Introduction and Setting Having recently gone on a shopping spree for Superhero games, I picked up Matt Forbecks Brave New World (BNW). This game is set around a present day, dystopian alternative reality, where superpowered humans called 'deltas' first appeared during WWI. In a manner reminiscent of White Wolfs Aberrant game, they gain their powers after suffering a near-death experience. Unlike Aberrant though, these deltas spend the 1920's and 30's dressed up as supervillians or crime-fighters, indulging in your typical caped campness. World War II sees their deployment by all nations as a weapon of war (and gets its own sourcebook 'Glory Days') before one American delta experiences another near-death experience at the hands of the Nazis and becomes a vastly more powerful type of hero called an alpha (on par with Superman). This first alpha, named 'Superior' personally ends the war by killing Adolph Hitler in 1943! After the war, things return to the same caped crusader malarkey and super-criminal caricatures, until 1963 when one evil alphas henchmen attack John F. Kennedy in Dallas and kill his wife. Allied with the top dog alpha 'Superior', JFK pushes through a Delta Registration Act (shades of the X-Men here) allowing the US government to unconstitutionally monitor Deltas. The presidency becomes increasingly dictatorial, culminating in a declaration of a state of emergency when Superior and most of the other alphas disappear along with a big chunk of Chicago in the 'Bicentennial Battle'. This allows JFK to suspend elections and rule by decree. Meanwhile the government-loyal superheroes are formed into 'Delta Prime' and set about arresting all the other outlaw deltas who oppose the now fascist US government or even merely refuse to register their powers. Naturally enough these 'Defiants' are the suggested role for the players as they struggle to uphold life, liberty and the American way! Presentation I personally don't worry too much about the layout and artwork of an RPG, but I realise that some people find value in the quality of the stuff surrounding the text. There are 224 pages, of which 64 are glossy full colour paper. The book starts with a short comic strip of a Defiant saving a new delta from the evil Delta Prime, and then proceeds with a background briefing in the style of a web page. The artwork is cartoonish and occasionally interferes with the text in the character templates section. The text is clear though the margins are somewhat wide, with a very low word per page count. Occasional editing errors show through, but there is an index. Rules and Characters BNW has attracted lots of criticism because it only allows players to generate the low powered deltas. These guys only have access to one sort of limited power package, such as being a flier, an energy blaster or a speedster. This means that whilst your character could fly, he couldn't turn to flame, or fire bolts of energy from his eyes, nor is there any way for him to ever learn! This is at odds with most other superhero genre games which allow players to generate anything they can imagine as long as its within their points cost. As superheroes go, deltas definitely draw the short straw. However, it does force players to use their abilities in concert, as none of them will have a power for every occasion. Personally, whilst I could see how people would enjoy playing a low-powered X-Men or Watchmen style game, I prefer Superman-type heroics myself. However, there are two power packages, (or character classes as I like to think of them) that don't fit with the others in terms of relative power. Firstly, the Gadgeteers are allowed to make only one piece of personal technology. However, this item can be anything from a jet-powered battle suit to a death-ray/personal teleporter/life scanner tricorder. Secondly, the Bargainer class, are deltas who use black magic and make Faustian deals with demons. They can bind demons to totems which then empower them with the abilities of another delta package and they can have up to 5 totems at character creation! Of course this means the Bargainers can whip out the perfect power for any occasion and can even maintain their own gadgeteer mega-items in their downtime! (The Bargainers also get their own sourcebook which I may even review soon.) Its hard to justify these guys from any game-balance point of view, at least with the rules and information in this rulebook. Talking of the rules, BNW uses a horribly butchered version of Deadlands attributes and die rolling techniques. There are only 4 stats Strength, Speed, Smarts and Spirit and they are represented as multiples of d6. To succeed at something, you roll your dice, pick the highest single value (you reroll 6's and add 6 to the result) and see if it matches or exceeds the difficulty number. For example, to lift a great stone weight the GM would set a difficulty of 10. A character with a strength of 4 would roll 4d6, hoping that at least one of his dice would come up a 6 and then a 4 or better. If he had a crowbar or super strength, he might add anything from +1 to +5 to his highest roll. Damage and combat is equally simplistic, though it does use a basic hit location system. However, the game rules maintain the specialised nature of the heroes. By this, I mean that if people invest the majority of their attribute points in Strength and Speed, they then gain lots of combat skills and abilities, but at the cost of intellect, charisma and courage. The alternative is a brain box, or political animal who'll crumple up like a wet paper bag when tapped on the shoulder. Anyone who divides their points equally, will be easily outclassed by anyone even slightly more specialised. Comparing the experience and development point costs with the suggested XP awards, we can also see very slow progression in changing stats from their starting values. All of this conspires to make deltas quite static creatures in comparison to other games. To add insult to injury, whilst some NPC's evolved into the multi-talented uber-powered alphas, this option is forbidden to players, at least until AEG release a sourcebook telling us what really happened at the Bicentennial battle which saw the mysterious disappearance of the majority of alphas. GM's Secrets Players look away now. As is usual for these alternative background games, there is a GM section on what's really going on. After all, having read the players section there are a number of obvious questions, such as 'where do deltas get their powers?', 'whats all this about magic and demons?', 'What happened to all the alphas and where do they get their powers from?','whats happening in the rest of the world?', 'Why did Superior turn America in the new Nazi Germany when he originally opposed Hitler?' and 'whats going to happen in the future timeline?'. The GM's section answers none of these questions. In one of the most arrogant designer notes I've ever seen, Matt Forbeck refuses to tell GM's the central premises and secrets of the game they have just bought. Instead he claims that things will be revealed, drip by drip in a host of future supplements. In other words, I cant use the official game setting, unless, like an addict, I spend a fortune on Alderacs books. This is the worst example of brand-building that I've ever seen. I've always decried how some developers claim to have some vast metaplot that enriches their gameworld, but then refuse to spell it out unless you buy all their supplements. It smacks of profiteering and trying to establish a captive market, not on the strength of the material, but because the game is unusable without further investment. White Wolf were always bad for this (e.g. Aberrant or Trinity, but that gave big metaplot hints, a global overview and plenty of adventure ideas), but lately PEG and AEG have been the worst offenders. e.g. in both L5R and Deadlands there is an official timeline that gets updated with yearly releases, but at least they tell you the central secrets and motivations of the main NPC's and groups. They explain the cosmology and conspiracies within the gameworld, if not in detail, then at least in outline. However BNW goes way over the line of acceptable information sharing. Limited information is given on JFK's motivations and secrets and the Defiance movement along with statistics for such bizarrities as vampires and zombies, though no information is given on how such creatures exist, or what their role is, or why they are even in an ostensibly superhero game. To quote Matt Forbeck 'Information in Brave New World is released on a need-to-know basis. We'll tell you when you need to know.' Well, I'm sorry, but if people are going to run a BNW campaign, then the GM needs to know now, so they can answer players questions as they occur in game, not when it suits AEG! Forbeck doesn't even have the decency to remind GM's that they can use their personal vision to explain all this, instead insisting that an 'official' setting will exist. The GM's section also lacks any adventures or campaign ideas, let alone an introductory scenario. Not enough information is given on Americas society and condition and there is no info on the rest of the world. (Very annoying for Brits like me). Neither is it clear what style the game should take, if its supposed to be dark and mysterious like the Watchmen, then why is it filled with 4 colour silliness and a suggested prohibition against killing by accident? Conclusions Brave New World is a very flawed product. Initially it looks interesting, with colourful (though stereotypical) characters and a nice moody inversion of life in Kennedy's fascist America. Yet its all style over substance, no thought has gone into the political or economic ramifications of superheroes (which was Aberrants saving grace). If deltas refusal to sign up to the Delta Registration Act has wrecked America, denied the government the use of their own deltas (because their busy hunting down the unregistered) and imposed martial law, then why haven't people acted in the 37 years between 1963 and 2000? The rules system is unoriginal and nothing to write home about, whilst characters remain annoyingly inflexible and constrained. The setting appears to be quite detailed and original, but because of Forbecks profiteering policy (that you can only get the full story when you pay extra for the dozen supplements you'll need) I cant really say if it is or not. In my opinion, he could have crammed in twice the text he has by using smaller margins and less colour inserts and explained his setting and campaign ideas fully. By not doing so, he has created a game where the GM knows little more than the players! It require the GM to either do lots of work to create a playable setting or wait months and pay a fortune for the supplements. I'm advocating a boycott of BNW and other such 'shelves of supplements required' games until game companies realise they cant get away with short-changing their customers. The book is nicely presented and establishes a distinct atmosphere, so I award it a Style rating of 4. The setting and rules I find lacking in the extreme, so it gets a Substance rating of 1. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money)