That's right folks! He's back. Judge Dredd has come, yet again, to the RPG world. I believe it's been 15 years since the original printing of this game hit the shelves, and now the world of Mega-City One has been updated and refined by the fine writers at Mongoose Publishing.
For the uninitiated, the world of Judge Dredd can be describe as a chaotic mix of Gama World, Paranoia, and Blade Runner. It's a strange mix with massive amounts of humorous social commentary thrown in for good measure. Mega-City One is home to some 400 million overcrowded, frustrated, some-what-unstable, extremely bored and unemployed citizens (well not all are unemployed, just about 87% are). As you can guess this is a rather volatile mixture which erupts on a consistent basis within Mega-City One, and in response, humanities grand plan to keep the thin strands of reality from completely snapping is to insert a bunch of heavily armed, armored, equipped, trained, and some-what-unstable individuals called Judges who patrol the city dispensing justice to law breakers (which is just about everyone since anything deemed unhealthy to a citizen has been outlawed. Which I think covers just about everything).
The Judge Dredd RPG is an expansion to the D20 system, and is released in a 256 page, hard bound, campaign book. The cover leaves something to be desired, but the interior of the book is attractive and well-laid out with numerous clips of the comic book for artwork. It also has a number of full page color art showing some of the comic book's main characters as well as computer generated technical drawings of the equipment that Judges use. The $39.95 price tag is a bit hefty, but is offset by some very funny and entertaining writing.
Chapters 1-4 and 7 detail character types, abilities, and equipment. As player characters you are currently confined to playing a human character as a Street Judge, Psi-Judge, or Citizen. The Street Judge and Psi-Judge are straight forward and very little distinguishes one Judge from another (which is the point). One the other hand the citizen class has a large number of options which barely scratches the surface of what is possible within the game. All the classes fit nicely within the game genre, and though perhaps limited on choices the Judge classes are as they should be in my opinion. The options within the Citizen class encompass such things as Citi-Def Soldier, Jetball Player, Jugger Driver, Neo-Luddite, Rogue Psyker, and Vigilante. Truly something for the whole family is available within this class, and I was impressed by the way these options were all boiled down into a single class instead of becoming a class of their own. Very well done (or should I say done much better than some other D20 sci-fi systems).
Chapters 5 and 6 cover combat and vehicles. A few things were done away with (like armor class making you harder to hit), and both the combat and vehicle systems seem like they were designed for fast-play and simplicity (Disclaimer: I'm still going over these chapters myself though, so no promises here).
Chapters 8 and 9 cover special rules for dispensing law as a Judge or partaking in criminal activities as a Perp. The Judge chapter has rules for intimidating criminals, making arrests, laws, organization of the Justice Department, etc. The Perp chapter goes over forming and running gangs as well as citizen prestige classes.
Chapter 10 is the real beauty of this book, and it gives a ton of background information about Mega-City One and it's citizens. Things like where people live, what they eat, and what they do for fun is all detailed in this chapter. It also covers the other Megaplexes in the world, and the political friends and enemies each one has. This chapter sets the whole stage nicely, and can give the GM tons of great campaign and plot ideas. I found this chapter very entertaining, and I chuckled the whole time while I was reading it.
Chapter 11 has rules for making all sorts of nasties, muties, aliens, and monsters to toss at your players. In addition to giving you rules for making your own this chapter has a number of creeps everyone has come to know and love in the Judge Dredd world - Walking, talking Apes, Dinosaurs, Futsies, Gila-Munja, Mutants and Werewolves to name a few.
And finally chapter 12 covers suggestions and campaign ideas for running a in Mega-City One. It also comes with a very handy timeline for Mega-City One which gives a great deal of background on the exploits of Judge Dredd (from the comic I'm assuming). This is another great place to get story ideas or villians for your game.
Well that covers everything. I think this version is a huge improvement over the first game, and I was really impressed with the fact that you could play (or run) any type of game you wanted within the genre. My big concern before buying Judge Dredd was that I would be stuck in a predetermined role, and I'm glad to announce that's not the case. The setting information provided is general enough so you don't feel locked in, but the way in which the information is presented gives you a very solid understanding of how life in Mega-City One is lived. It also leaves a lot of really nice holes for the GM to do some fun and interesting stuff (like the undercity, and certain landmarks). As far as games based on a specific genre source (movies, books, etc) this one is very open-ended and flexible. Hats off to the guys at Mongoose Publishing for doing such an excellent job on resurrecting this old game.
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