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Hyper-Killer, available in PDF format at RPGnow.com, bills itself as a beer & pretzel game of dark urban science fiction.

THE SETTING

Hyper-Killer takes place at an unspecified point in the far future. Humanity owns a 30-planet empire, and from what little background is given, I get the impression that most of them look like they're straight out of Blade Runner by way of SLA Industries. Life is rough on the streets, the corps run things and crap on the environment, do unto others before they do unto you, flying cars, omnipresent smog, etc., etc. Only the fact that you can hop in a spaceship to fly from one urban dystopia to another and the presence of a thoroughly unpleasant race of reptilian a aliens keep it from being pure clichéd cyberpunk.

As near as I can tell, the default starting point for a Hyper-Killer campaign is a wheel-shaped city named Kimarik-3, which is built into the side of an apparently nameless planet. Why it needs to be specified that the city is "built into the side" of a planet, I'm not sure -- isn't every city constructed on a planet's surface built "into the planet's side"? I can only assume that the author was trying to say that the city's so big that it takes up one whole side of the planet.

As a quick aside, the rules elsewhere state that the planet is named Kimarik-3. So, I'm left wondering whether that name refers to the city, the planet, or both. At any rate, this wheel-shaped city is divided into five sectors, each separated by a "spoke" that I'm assuming is a wall of some sort: Corporate, residential, military, general public, and underworld. Nice of the city planners to designate a neighborhood for the criminals, huh?

The tech level of the setting seems to average somewhere around "cyberpunk," with some such notable forays into the realm of science fantasy as force swords, laser spray bombs ("Gee, I WONDER WHAT THIS IS?" reads the text) and disintegrator rays.

It's not a bad basis for a setting, but there's really not enough there to run without lots of work by the GM. Since this is supposed to be a quick-play game, that's a problem.

THE RULES

The Basics

Hyper-Killer uses an attribute skill "roll and add" system that utilizes d100s for task rolls and d6s for damage in combat. (Actually, the rules call the d100 "percentile dice", but since they aren't being used to generate percentile chances, I'm not sure that the name truly applies. But I could be wrong.)

Characters have four basic stats -- Brains, Cool, Dex(terity), and Power (i.e., strength) -- with scores ranging from 10 to 40 at character creation. (The actual range of human stats isn't given.) The basic target number for straight stat rolls is (90 - stat), while the formula for skill rolls is (100 - stat average - skill level), with "stat average" being the average of however many stats relate to that particular skill. Obviously, making a stat roll in this game isn't easy, so it's important to have skill points at anything at which you want to have a decent chance of accomplishing. Unfortunately, Hyper-Killer skills tend towards the highly specific, so odds are that PCs will be making quite a few stat rolls.

Rolls of 5 or less are fumbles, while rolls of 96 or more open-end. Making a roll by 100 more than the target number results in a either a superb success (for non-combat actions) or a critical hit (in combat -- see below). This is easy enough, I suppose, especially since there are spaces provided on the character sheet for stat and skill rolls so that they needn't be figured on the fly. Still, the thought of stopping to add double- or triple-digits on open-ended rolls doesn't really appeal to me and doesn't seem like the recipe for a fast-playing game.

Character Creation

Character creation is easy enough. Players allocate 90 points to the four stats -- again, 10 minimum, 40 maximum -- and 50 points to skills. Actually, the latter isn't really as easy as all that, since there are no descriptions to go along with the big list of skills. And since some of those skills beg for an explanation -- magic(??), for example -- this is a rather large problem.

On the bright side, characters can pick up extra points by taking Disadvantages. Sixteen appear in the book, although only one -- "Unlucky" -- actually has an associated game mechanic, leaving interpretation up to the GM. There are no corresponding Advantages.

All PCs have 50 Kill Points (hit points), while "normal" NPCs have only 25. Presumably, important NPCs would get 50 Kill Points, but this isn't explicitly stated.

Combat

Combat uses the skill roll mechanic detailed above with various circumstantial modifiers. Strangely, stat rolls for unskilled attacks get a -20 modifier. Why this extra penalty applies only to the unskilled use of combat skills isn't clear. A critical hit (see above) means a roll on one of several critical hit tables that offer little more than color text that will be amusing precisely once, if that. If the game's going to call for an extra roll, it should at least mean something.

The text states that the game is best played using miniatures, a hex map, and an abacus(!). That's an awful lot of gear for a "beer and pretzels" game.

Weapon damage is rated in d6s that are rolled and added. Armor is also rated in d6s, but in this case it is the number of dice taken away from the damage roll, starting at the highest rolls first. So, a 4d6 weapon with a damage roll of 6, 4, 3, 2 vs. 2d6 armor would do a total of 5 points of damage. This is an improvement over dice pool damage systems such as the one used in Deadlands that requires the dice pool to be reduced before the damage roll, thereby revealing the exact level of armor to the attacker's player. Of course, the GM will still have to monitor the damage rolls rather than relying on the players to add and reveal their rolls.

The auto-fire mechanic isn't nearly as elegant, unfortunately. Autofire and Gatling weapons require two rolls per attack, with a successful roll on either attack resulting in 1-3 hits for autofire and 1-6 hits for Gatlings. Damage for each attack is resolve separately. Since high-tech automatic weapons in the setting seem to average at around 7d6 damage, you're looking a lot of dice flying around.

If the autofire mechanic is awkward, the actual damage mechanic is simply broken. Unarmed punch damage is Power/10 and unarmed kick damage is Power/5, while the damage bonus to armed hand-to-hand combat is Power/20. Most hand weapons do up to 3d6 damage. This means that all but the weakest characters will be better off kicking an opponent than using all but the highest-tech melee weapons.

THE BOOK

The art is good. Very good, in fact - better than a lot of art I've seen in hard copy products.

The layout starts out very clean and legible but deteriorates rapidly about half way through. Tables and explanations for table contents dominate the second half, with eyesore fonts and endless acronyms. There's even a table for acronyms. Except that in several places in the tables, part of the acronym is written out after the acronym - e.g., the acronym for "Warm Weather Clothing" is "WWC", and the entry on the table reads "WWC (warm)".

Pete Hernandez does a great job with the opening fiction, perfectly setting the gritty, violent mood that the game so clearly seeks to convey. The remainder of the writing, however, tries to maintain that mood largely by literally insulting the reader's intelligence -- repeatedly -- and by the use of the occasional four-letter word. The former grows especially tiresome.

Equally tiresome are the writer's repeated claims that he doesn't have time to provide various rules. It's meant to be funny, I suppose, but adding insult to the injury of missing rules really isn't very endearing.

CONCLUSION

Hyper-Killer sets out to be a rules-light, quick-play game with attitude. It has attitude, certainly, but "rules-light" does not mean "missing rules". And the rules that are provided seem too math- and dice-intensive to be considered "light" and in some places are simply broken. All this being the case, I can't recommend this game in its current form. There are too many other sci-fi RPGs out there with similar themes and complete mechanics of comparable complexity.

Hyper-Killer
Hyper-Killer Capsule Review by Dan Davenport on 20/12/01 Style: 3 (Average) Substance: 1 (I Wasted My Money) A "beer & pretzels" game of gritty sci-fi action... if "beer & pretzels" means "unwritten rules and combat requiring an abacus," that is. Product: Hyper-Killer Author: James Mathe Category: RPG Company/Publisher: Minion Games Line: Hyper-Killer Cost: $5.95 Page count: 59 Year published: 2001 ISBN: SKU: Comp copy?: yes Capsule Review by Dan Davenport on 20/12/01 Genre tags: Science Fiction Far Future Space	Hyper-Killer, available in PDF format at RPGnow.com, bills itself as a beer & pretzel game of dark urban science fiction. THE SETTING Hyper-Killer takes place at an unspecified point in the far future. Humanity owns a 30-planet empire, and from what little background is given, I get the impression that most of them look like they're straight out of Blade Runner by way of SLA Industries. Life is rough on the streets, the corps run things and crap on the environment, do unto others before they do unto you, flying cars, omnipresent smog, etc., etc. Only the fact that you can hop in a spaceship to fly from one urban dystopia to another and the presence of a thoroughly unpleasant race of reptilian a aliens keep it from being pure clichéd cyberpunk. As near as I can tell, the default starting point for a Hyper-Killer campaign is a wheel-shaped city named Kimarik-3, which is built into the side of an apparently nameless planet. Why it needs to be specified that the city is "built into the side" of a planet, I'm not sure -- isn't every city constructed on a planet's surface built "into the planet's side"? I can only assume that the author was trying to say that the city's so big that it takes up one whole side of the planet. As a quick aside, the rules elsewhere state that the planet is named Kimarik-3. So, I'm left wondering whether that name refers to the city, the planet, or both. At any rate, this wheel-shaped city is divided into five sectors, each separated by a "spoke" that I'm assuming is a wall of some sort: Corporate, residential, military, general public, and underworld. Nice of the city planners to designate a neighborhood for the criminals, huh? The tech level of the setting seems to average somewhere around "cyberpunk," with some such notable forays into the realm of science fantasy as force swords, laser spray bombs ("Gee, I WONDER WHAT THIS IS?" reads the text) and disintegrator rays. It's not a bad basis for a setting, but there's really not enough there to run without lots of work by the GM. Since this is supposed to be a quick-play game, that's a problem. THE RULES The Basics Hyper-Killer uses an attribute skill "roll and add" system that utilizes d100s for task rolls and d6s for damage in combat. (Actually, the rules call the d100 "percentile dice", but since they aren't being used to generate percentile chances, I'm not sure that the name truly applies. But I could be wrong.) Characters have four basic stats -- Brains, Cool, Dex(terity), and Power (i.e., strength) -- with scores ranging from 10 to 40 at character creation. (The actual range of human stats isn't given.) The basic target number for straight stat rolls is (90 - stat), while the formula for skill rolls is (100 - stat average - skill level), with "stat average" being the average of however many stats relate to that particular skill. Obviously, making a stat roll in this game isn't easy, so it's important to have skill points at anything at which you want to have a decent chance of accomplishing. Unfortunately, Hyper-Killer skills tend towards the highly specific, so odds are that PCs will be making quite a few stat rolls. Rolls of 5 or less are fumbles, while rolls of 96 or more open-end. Making a roll by 100 more than the target number results in a either a superb success (for non-combat actions) or a critical hit (in combat -- see below). This is easy enough, I suppose, especially since there are spaces provided on the character sheet for stat and skill rolls so that they needn't be figured on the fly. Still, the thought of stopping to add double- or triple-digits on open-ended rolls doesn't really appeal to me and doesn't seem like the recipe for a fast-playing game. Character Creation Character creation is easy enough. Players allocate 90 points to the four stats -- again, 10 minimum, 40 maximum -- and 50 points to skills. Actually, the latter isn't really as easy as all that, since there are no descriptions to go along with the big list of skills. And since some of those skills beg for an explanation -- magic(??), for example -- this is a rather large problem. On the bright side, characters can pick up extra points by taking Disadvantages. Sixteen appear in the book, although only one -- "Unlucky" -- actually has an associated game mechanic, leaving interpretation up to the GM. There are no corresponding Advantages. All PCs have 50 Kill Points (hit points), while "normal" NPCs have only 25. Presumably, important NPCs would get 50 Kill Points, but this isn't explicitly stated. Combat Combat uses the skill roll mechanic detailed above with various circumstantial modifiers. Strangely, stat rolls for unskilled attacks get a -20 modifier. Why this extra penalty applies only to the unskilled use of combat skills isn't clear. A critical hit (see above) means a roll on one of several critical hit tables that offer little more than color text that will be amusing precisely once, if that. If the game's going to call for an extra roll, it should at least mean something. The text states that the game is best played using miniatures, a hex map, and an abacus(!). That's an awful lot of gear for a "beer and pretzels" game. Weapon damage is rated in d6s that are rolled and added. Armor is also rated in d6s, but in this case it is the number of dice taken away from the damage roll, starting at the highest rolls first. So, a 4d6 weapon with a damage roll of 6, 4, 3, 2 vs. 2d6 armor would do a total of 5 points of damage. This is an improvement over dice pool damage systems such as the one used in Deadlands that requires the dice pool to be reduced before the damage roll, thereby revealing the exact level of armor to the attacker's player. Of course, the GM will still have to monitor the damage rolls rather than relying on the players to add and reveal their rolls. The auto-fire mechanic isn't nearly as elegant, unfortunately. Autofire and Gatling weapons require two rolls per attack, with a successful roll on either attack resulting in 1-3 hits for autofire and 1-6 hits for Gatlings. Damage for each attack is resolve separately. Since high-tech automatic weapons in the setting seem to average at around 7d6 damage, you're looking a lot of dice flying around. If the autofire mechanic is awkward, the actual damage mechanic is simply broken. Unarmed punch damage is Power/10 and unarmed kick damage is Power/5, while the damage bonus to armed hand-to-hand combat is Power/20. Most hand weapons do up to 3d6 damage. This means that all but the weakest characters will be better off kicking an opponent than using all but the highest-tech melee weapons. THE BOOK The art is good. Very good, in fact - better than a lot of art I've seen in hard copy products. The layout starts out very clean and legible but deteriorates rapidly about half way through. Tables and explanations for table contents dominate the second half, with eyesore fonts and endless acronyms. There's even a table for acronyms. Except that in several places in the tables, part of the acronym is written out after the acronym - e.g., the acronym for "Warm Weather Clothing" is "WWC", and the entry on the table reads "WWC (warm)". Pete Hernandez does a great job with the opening fiction, perfectly setting the gritty, violent mood that the game so clearly seeks to convey. The remainder of the writing, however, tries to maintain that mood largely by literally insulting the reader's intelligence -- repeatedly -- and by the use of the occasional four-letter word. The former grows especially tiresome. Equally tiresome are the writer's repeated claims that he doesn't have time to provide various rules. It's meant to be funny, I suppose, but adding insult to the injury of missing rules really isn't very endearing. CONCLUSION Hyper-Killer sets out to be a rules-light, quick-play game with attitude. It has attitude, certainly, but "rules-light" does not mean "missing rules". And the rules that are provided seem too math- and dice-intensive to be considered "light" and in some places are simply broken. All this being the case, I can't recommend this game in its current form. There are too many other sci-fi RPGs out there with similar themes and complete mechanics of comparable complexity.