Having never played Blue planet first edition, or really knowing too much about it, I took the plunge and picked up Blue planet V.2 from my local game store. The game comes in two hard cover books (GM and players guides natch!) And for close to $60 it is an interesting read. I am attempting to review both the GM and Player’s guide in one review so stay with me, and if I seem to leave anything out let me know.
The games premise is one of the most fascinating I have read in a long time. Set in the year 2199, the Earth is an ecological nightmare and only recently was able to pull out of the Blight (an bioplague that wiped out most of the Earth’s grain and caused massive starvation.) but even before the blight we found a stable wormhole next to Pluto that leads to Lambda Serpentis II, a beautiful and thriving world, with some 90% of the surface covered in water. Before the blight we sent a colony, which never got resupplied or the like due to the blight. Once the Blight was over the Global Environment Organization and others were ready to send a second colonizing attempt. To our surprise the original colonists survived and flourished, as a new wave of settlers begin to take over. The setting is both realistic and full of excellent tension 9making for some great story ideas) also nothing about the game’s world is particularly Dark, or fantastic. Giving it a very real feeling. The main themes of exploration and discovery are as easy to avoid, as they are to embrace.
The system is the only real trouble I had with this book. In many ways the system reminds me of a cross between Deadlands and Pokethulu! (Not that this is entirely bad) In this game the average human is rated as having a 0 stat and can go into positive and negative levels of a stat. Skills have attunements (which equals how many ten sided dice you roll) and the Skill Plus Stat is the difficulty number (or less) that you must score. My only real problem with all of this is it has a very “all or nothing” feel characters either need a heavy modifier to do anything or a serious penalty not to be able to do something every time! While I haven’t seen it happen in play yet, I could see some min maxer really taking advantage of this! Again the key here is finding mature players who can deal with this system’s quirks, or throwing modifiers around like confetti! Combat and damage is also very lethal, which is cool because it should deter your players from rushing into fire combat, but at the same time, with only 3 wound levels, it’s a bit too lethal if you ask me.
Players also have the choice of playing several species in this game, most of which are genetically modified humans (which again were handled very realistically and don’t have any over balanced abilities and most importantly make some kind of sense!) players also can play genetically modified dolphins and Killer whales (which is kind of cool but at the same time can seriously limit a campaign (if you have an urban campaign for example the dolphin player is going to what hang out at the docks all the time!) Don’t get me wrong, it’s cool that they threw these in; I just doubt that anyone would want to play one long term. (Now an all dolphin module might be cool!)
The Books are both hardbacks with plenty of well-designed art (all but the covers are black and white) the art is typical of most of Fantasy Flights work and the covers really remind me of Disk wars (again not a complaint just an observation!) The player’s guide gives you every thing you need to get started, from character creation, to combat and tasks, to basic gear, the whole works as well as a pretty decent amount of background. The Game Moderator’s book is actually more or less a Sourcebook for the planet more than an actual GM’s guide. Focusing on giving you an in depth view of Lambda Sepentis II (Poseidon) for the level of detail you get on the planet it’s well worth the money, but with only 4 pages of “how to GM” I wouldn’t give this to any new gamers as their first foray into the hobby.
So to sum up despite a somewhat quirky system, Blue planet has one of the most well defined game worlds I have seen for a long time. It is a very well done and realistic science fiction universe witch doesn’t try to push the “hard-edged cyberpunk darkness” any more than it tries to push the “age of discovery humanity is finally evolved” bit. The game also totally lacks notions like “Splats” or other such things meant to put you in a stereotyped world, which makes the game one where the GM really sets the theme! I would not recommend this game to new GMS or players simply because they might want/need more direction than this game offers, and the system is such a radically different one! However if you think you can handle it, and you want a game that is more science fiction than angst and fluff, Blue planet may be just what you have been looking for!
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