I first saw this game book back at the 2000 GenCon. You remember, the one that debuted 3E. The game book’s cover held some interest for me, but I held off buying it, maybe because I’d already spent a lot of money on other things, maybe partially because I didn’t know much about it. Time passed and I had sort of forgotten about it because I don’t get to go to game stores too often, or at least when I do, I’m not the buy everything kind of guy.
Fast forward to this past x-mas. My friend and fellow gamer bought me this book for the holiday. A day or two later I poured into reading it. The next day I decided I’d be running it.
One of the things I like most about BPv2 is that it’s fast. When I started to run this game, we’d just come off of playing 3E for almost 4 months, and were all getting used to combats taking up the majority of our time. I decided I’d set the guys as law enforcement on Poseidon and the first introductory adventure I wrote was a test of the game system, so mainly combat. In my estimation the combat that took us about 15 minutes would have taken 3 times as long in 3E. It was quick. It was dirty. It was fun.
The Synergy System uses a zero average mechanic that allows characters to have both positive and negative attributes. Add the attribute to a skill and get a target number. Roll lower than that target number on a number of d10s equal to your aptitude (1 for normal, 2 for strong and 3 for superior) and you succeed. The system expects the GM to add a lot of modifiers to the rolls (which is the same as deciding on a difficulty target number I suppose) but it doesn’t take long to get used to it. Straight attribute checks add 5 to the attribute and provide a target number the character must roll below to succeed. Attribute checks always use 2 dice.
One issue that might come up is the list of skills provided and the aptitude groupings. At some points things are not as intuitively grouped as you’d like, so that an inexperienced player has to hunt his character sheet to find the skill he needs. The game doesn’t specifically have a search roll and there aren’t as many investigative skills as I’d appreciate while trying to run a law enforcement game. Sure, they have medical forensics, but that limits the non-medical for the purposes of, say, determining bullet paths and such at a crime scene. The search and spot rolls are all handled by awareness checks that sometimes get hazy if a character has made one if his senses better than another as to which is more appropriate. These are minor glitches, to be sure, but they were things that we noticed.
With regards to damage, characters don’t have hit points. The attacker rolls 3 dice trying to roll lower than the damage rating of his attack. 1 success is a minor wound. 2 successes is a serious wound. 3 successes is a critical wound. The system really makes killing, and dying, easy. Coming off of high hit point characters and the lengthy combat of 3E, this system is really different. One thing I did notice is that the save mechanism makes deadly weapons as likely to knock a character unconscious as it is to kill him. To me that’s a little off in the sense that I don’t expect an automatic rifle to just knock someone unconscious. Such a wound would usually kill (or send into shock) or wound a character. I consider shock a part of the death path, not unconsciousness. But that’s probably just me.
Character Generation was surprisingly fast and to the point as well. I had expected to put aside the whole of our first gaming session in Blue Planet for character generation, but was happy to see that it took only a couple of hours that also included preparing food and other non-gaming stuff (aside from the fact we only had 2 copies of the Player’s Guide for the whole group). Characters pick a genetic template (I’ll call it), which may include biomodifications, that give them starting attribute ratings. They then apply some extra points and pick a bunch of training packages. The training packages each give the characters different skills and are cumulative with each other. There are Origin, Background and Profession training packages. They then apply a few extra skill points to round out their character. Finally comes purchasing biomods and equipment.
One thing that’s nice about the training packages concept is that it gives a character a sense of background right from the start. In our instance a couple of the guys knew that they were natives, and they come at things a bit differently from the colonials because if it. My party had a lot of fun making their characters. They all came away from creation satisfied with what they got.
I didn’t particularly wish to use any of the three predetermined scales of character creation, so I modified one to my own wishes. One really important note is that BPv2 does not truly attempt to balance characters at all. If you are a GM that wishes to have an even playing field for all characters, then you will probably have to hawk over your players to make sure that they aren’t abusing anything. I myself put a limit on the amount of cash they could spend on extra biomods to not let things get too out of hand. Nonetheless, every player said they had a lot of fun making their characters.
The Player’s Guide does not provide a starter adventure (most likely because it’s a player’s guide) but it does provide all the play rules, including character advancement rules, and a very detailed setting for your group to play a game of Blue Planet. Certainly this makes more work for the would-be GM, but it still gives the ability to buy only the one book and make a decision as to whether you like the game or not.
Aside from 3E, the modern era of gaming had been focused more on setting than on game system and I think BPv2 falls into this category. The setting makes up the largest portion of the Player’s Guide and is richly detailed, from the introduction on what a person goes through to cross over to Poseidon on through to the surface history of Earth and Poseidon and the current situation of everything as it stands from a non-omniscient point of view. There is also a timeline and several maps provided. The writing is pleasant and the ideas are fun and refreshing.
The basics of the setting are that Earth discovers a wormhole at the edge of the Solar System. Going through the wormhole they find the planet of Poseidon, a world covered over by ocean with only some small islands for habitation. Some folks are sent across to try to colonize the planet, but a large crop destroying “Blight” makes the situation on Earth very bad and they have to ignore Poseidon for a while. The Earth creates a Global Ecology Organization which takes care of the Blight and then remains in control after it’s all over. The Earth recontacts Poseidon and the story really begins. Cap off a colonization effort of people getting away from their ravaged planet with the fact that a longevity drug is discovered on Poseidon and the ocean world has a major population boom. All this leaves an almost wild wild west setting rife with turmoil and yet it has an optimism that is not usually present in most games involving cyber tech. The brief descriptions you get of Earth have a very cyberpunk feel I think.
In short, I have found the game system to be refreshing, simple and fast. The world of Blue Planet has not left me struggling for adventure ideas either. It appears my players have had fun. I most definitely have had fun.
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