About my point of view
I am a Dream Pod 9 fanboy. I've yet to consider any of their products a miss, although I don't end up buying very many of them; mostly Heavy Gear and some Jovian Chronicles. I am a mecha fan, hopelessly adoring the Pod mecha designs.
I'm not a World War II enthusiast - in fact, I had to do a lot of digging to learn the basics of the war's stages before reading the game. (To better evaluate if it makes good use of the source material.) I know next to nothing of WWII weapons, troops, tactics and whatnot.
I wanted a game that could give me a blend of what I saw in Where Eagles Dare and Saving Private Ryan: adventure and the grim reality of war, all in one.
I had high hopes of Gear Krieg RPG, but considering the contradictory rumors I'd heard about it, was rather skeptical of the book when I finally got it. With that, on with the review.
World at war!
Gear Krieg is Dream Pod 9's alternate take on World War II. The events we know from our real-world history have not been altered much; at least so far they haven't - the book covers events up to 1941. Instead, the world gains its flavor from the use of super-science - walking tanks, death rays, rocket packs and jets all make their first steps onto the battlefields of Earth.
Gear Krieg is advertised as two-fisted pulp roleplaying. This means that the game takes on a face of escapist, heroic fantasy. To me, it captures the feel of lighter warmovies, such as Where Eagles Dare and the Commando-comics. Think the Rocketeer movie and the Rocket Ranger computer game (anyone remember that?). The player characters are supposed to be heroes, although not exactly larger than life. A bullet will stop them, but likely not kill them. In fact, the game states outright that heroes shouldn't die.
Regardless of the default pulp approach, the game is built to also support a gritty game, and a cartoon game. These modifications mainly affect character creation (as point totals) and the way the dice are read.
Silhouette system
As all Dream Pod 9 roleplaying games to date, Gear Krieg uses the Silhouette system. Silhouette has been the same since the first edition of Heavy Gear, but it has been subtly tweaked for better performance. Compared to Jovian Chronicles and Heavy Gear (I don't own Tribe 8), there are two major changes to the system.
First, there are no more simple and complex skills. This is good, because people getting a working knowledge of a "complex" field simply ran out of points very quickly, which wasn't much fun. Especially since the skills required to pilot the mecha in both games were complex. All skills now use the 1/4/9/16/32 range of skill point costs.
Second, Silhouette wasn't geared for the kind of fistfights common in pulp fiction. Gear Krieg adds the concept of non-lethal damage to unarmed combat, making it possible for gentlemen to trade some blows without risk of killing anyone.
Vehicle combat plays considerably differently from grand old Silhouette. The engine was first used in Heavy Gear, which was all about swift humanoid mecha duking it out. Fast moves and bright explosions have always been the staple of Silhouette vehicular combat. However, this doesn't quite fit World War II, super-science or not.
Gear Krieg doesn't use as detailed vehicle rules as Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles, and this shifts the scales radically. If the regular Silhouette vehicle rules would be used, I'm a little concerned that the allegedly resilient tanks and walkers would be blowing up left and right, due to their low maneuver ratings and speeds. Without the presence of the tactical rules, some modifiers are left out, making the armored units much more fearsome.
Still, read from the paper, it feels kind of like cheating - like DP9 had noticed there was a problem representing WWII combat with Silhouette, and abstracting out the problems. (I trust this was not the case, but that's what it feels like to me.) I've yet to see it in play, but I guess it will work in a roleplaying game.
There is a separate tactical game of Gear Krieg available, which apparently uses a partially different rules set. I am looking forward to seeing it in action.
Character creation comes with basic perks and flaws, which have been absent from the basic rulebooks of Heavy Gear and Jovian Chronicles. They are a welcome addition, and there seems to be a fitting amount of them. Some of the skills feel unnecessary to me: Earth Sciences, Electronics Design, Haggling, Law, Life Sciences, Literature (especially), Mechanical Design and Physical Sciences. Some of them have been noted as "rare for player characters", but I can't help but feel that they're useless in actual play. Aren't these things more story devices? Not that they'd take up a lot of space, but they do make the skill list seem rather heavy. We still get no actual rules or suggestions for using the Tactics skill, which is beginning to bug me. It'd be relatively easy to make up some system to use Tactics in the game. As it stands, it's really of no use, unless combat is abstracted away into the background.
Silhouette character creation is a little heavy. In play, however, the rules are fast, simple and fun. Silhouette is still one of my favorite roleplaying engines, along with Tri-Stat and Storyteller. I am surprised that the engine works this well and tastes just right, even when transferred from far-future mecha action to pulp WWII stories. (I didn't consider it working with the fantasy of Tribe 8.)
The setting
Gear Krieg presents the events across the globe leading to the fateful events of 1939 and on through to 1941. The game is set to "begin" after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when USA joins the war. Supposedly, later supplements will detail later events of the war.
The super-powers (USA, Japan, the Soviet Union and Great Britain) get fairly thorough treatments, with most of the corners of the world touched briefly upon. Some of the history feels a bit dry and it sort of bothers me to not know where real-world history ends and fiction begins. I don't see any other way of treating the game's setting, however, as real-world politics are way too complicated to be satisfactorily glanced over in any abridged fashion. Also, clearly marking the fictional bits would maybe take off some of the feel of the game.
I knew I wanted to make a story set during the invasion of Norway. The book supports this, but not too well. You're likely to be wanting to do some digging in the library on your own, regardless of what you want to do, supposing that historical accuracy means anything to you.
World War II is an excellent setting for a roleplaying game, and Gear Krieg makes good use of it. Perhaps focusing on fewer arenas would've allowed for more in-depth coverage, but then many more players would've been disappointed because of their favorite stages of the war being left out.
The game
Gear Krieg gives out plenty of advice on constructing roleplaying game sessions, and pulp ones at that. The heroes are actually awarded bonus points for, for example, falling in love with the Wrong Woman, or ending a session in a cliffhanger. There is also advice on making and using villains - the best villain workshop I've seen, in fact.
The crowning achievement of Gear Krieg is the pulp plot generator. This 10-page, well-thought out package of ideas makes actually useful (action) plots, straight from the book. While geared for pulp plots, I can imagine turning to it whenever short on ideas, regardless of the game I'm running. I wasn't at all interested in the story generator to begin with, having seen all sorts of crappy ones before, but this really grabbed my imagination. Check it out.
Also, I bought Gear Krieg for Saving Private Ryan-ish warstories, spiced with mecha. Suffice to say that the book's atmosphere is so good that I ended up crafting pulp plots, enjoying myself and forgot all about the gritty, bloody stories I had in mind earlier.
Gear Krieg is the first game I've come across in quite a while to feature an example campaign outline. I really don't understand why these are missing from so many games these days. It's just the sort of thing to fire up your imagination, if any of the earlierly provided information wasn't enough to kickstart you.
The book
Gear Krieg is very well laid out, which comes as no surprise, this being a Pod product after all. Covers (which are hard) are stylish, with a powerful black and red-orange -motif. The illustrations differ significantly from DP9's trademark anime style, painting a picture of high adventure and war. Most of the illustrations are very good, with very few mediocre and no bad ones present. Still, there is clearly too little art in the book. One illustration per spread would've been nice. Being a visual kind of guy, I'm frustrated with DP9 productions: I love the art, but there's nowhere enough of it, apart from the first edition of Heavy Gear. I guess it's better this way, than with loads of lower quality work.
There are typos and occurances of "see page XX". There aren't enough to distract from reading, but it's plain sloppy or rushed. If it weren't for the superior, very light layout, I would get pretty worked up on this.
Weapon illustrations get a major thumbs up. Each and every normal weapon is illustrated well. It would've been nice to note which weapon falls to which category. As it stands, I have to guess whether weapon A is a heavy or a medium carbine, which does frustrate me. This is the second biggest disappointment with the book. And while I understand that the super-science weapons, such as death ray carbines, are prototypes which probably look unique, it would've been nice to see some illustrations of them, too.
The biggest problem I see is the choice of depicted vehicles. There are several automobiles, all illustrated, which is absolutely fantastic. I've always hated using regular cars in games, because most companies never bothered to illustrate them. ("See, they're driving this car. What does it look like? I don't know… but it costs this much, consumes this much per mile, goes this fast and can take this much damage.") There is one walker per super-power, which is kind of lame, but barely sufficient.
However, why in God's name is there just one lousy tank in the book? And to make that a Panzer I? If they had to include just one tank, why not make it a really common one? This reminds me of how the Pod botched with the mecha selection in Jovian Chronicles; they detailed a one-of-a-kind super-battleship instead of a common, useful model.
While I hate doing research on the guns to work out which belongs to which class and I dislike doing research on tanks to come up with images and approximate stats, I'm willing to forgive these design flaws for the fact that each and every (normal) gun and (any) vehicle is actually illustrated. Grand.
Conclusion
Gear Krieg is a really good roleplaying game. It's not perfect, but I'm anxious to see what supplements are coming out later.
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