Gear Krieg's finally out of the vaporware stage (for roleplayers; wargamers have had the game for a year and a bit now). It's in my hands, a nice black hardcover, with white text and a photo for a cover.
And my reaction? I would have been willing to wait a little longer, if the book would have been more complete for it..
It's the art that's the biggest letdown. There have been some truly awesome shots of Nazi walkers in Dream Pod 9's catalogue for the GK wargame. And, in fact, the visuals of Gear Krieg's wargame portion are stupendous. The gamebook, on the other hand, is not as impressive.
The art seems to be mostly rough sketches. The intro and the two chapter breaks each have stupendous two page photo spreads. but the rest of the book, with the exception of the needlessly oversized cliche illustrations, is mostly smaller rough sketches. This worked fairly well in Tribe 8, with it's primitive post-apocalyptic feel, but I would have liked more illustrations, and better ones, in this book. DP9 folks have said that the art is supposed to invoke illustrations from the trenchs, but for me WWII has always been a photographed conflict, whether with actual combat photography and film or just war movies. I don't think that DP9 should have made the entire book photo-illustrated, but the direction they did go with in the art left me cold.
The game world, as well, does not escape unscathed. I felt a lack of connection with Gear Krieg. There was no sense of 'now' with it. It wasn't until I re-read an introdctory segment (the timeline, which I'll admit should have given me a good sense of the game's When) that I clued in that the game was set in late '41. Now, I'm not going to say I'm the most observant fellow strolling God's green Earth, but that should have been a bit more obvious. Hell, how about a blurb on the back cover, "the year is 1941"?
The greatest sin of the game is that it doesn't feel very alternate. It feels like a normal pulp game; the effect of Walkers, for example, is not terribly pronounced. Was the blitzkrieg even blitzier? Did jet power make Britain's defense during the Battle of Britain even more decisive? Hell, Tesla coils are even relegated to the Maginot line, which must be a slap in the face for all of Nicola's fanboys out there. It may be just a lack of concrete knowledge on my part, but perhaps a sidebar on 'where things went different' might have been in order.
The main engine of the game is the Silhouette System, and like Tribe 8 & Jovian Chronicles before it, I found it to work very well for the gameworld presented here. The default setting for the Silhouette System for GK is on 'adventurous' (or rather, frappe). The skills seem to indicate a few things that are missing from the rest of the rules.
For example, there's a 'Computator' skill. This allows you to, unsurprisingly enough, use computators. But nowhere in the book was I able to find any reference to what Computators DID. Are they just normal WWII era computers, taking up small city blocks for the processing power of a modern rectal thermometre? Are they the powerful calculating machines of the Modern Age, vaccuum tubed brains of mighty walkers? What do they do?
The index leaves some to be desired, as well. There are duplicate entries (Superscience gets two), and some subjects are omitted entirely.
There's some issues with editing, too. The first page XX is the first page reference.
Gear Krieg is set in the WWII of an alternate Earth, and I don't get a good sense of the alternateness of the game. It felt almost subliminal. It reads like a good historical sourcebook, which is a strength in an alternate history RPG, but its alternateness (alternity?) is more of a cut & paste version (Find: Tank Replace: Walker).
This is not to say the game doesn't have strong points. The storytelling advice in the back of the book is sublime, and works well for any genre, not just superscience type pulp. The important stuff is stated very well for new GMs & old hands alike ("the PCs are the most important people in the world" should be tattoed onto every GM's eyelids; this will help to remind them, and keep the players from seeing it so they don't go all nutsoid).
The Pulp Adventure Generator is great,and probably one of the best GM's aids (and overall cool ideas) I've seen in a gaming book for quite some time.
And there are elements of the setting that are very satisfying; the World Crime League makes an appearance, which is sure to warm the heart of most any geek, and a great campaign seed is presented in the League of Nations Plenipotentiary teams.
Overall, Gear Krieg has very strong points, but fails as a game setting. It may require nothing more than a single supplement to fill out the world enough to make it a great game. But you'll probably want to wait until that supplement gets released before you buy the main book.
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