deadEarth, Second Edition by JT Smith and Chris Hagness
deadEarth is a free roleplaying game attainable from deadEarth.com in PDF format, released under the GNU Free Documentation license, version 1.1.
deadEarth is the roleplaying game of gritty radioactive action. Set on your average post-nuclear Earth, complete with derelect technology, scavenger neo-tribal societies, mutants, and libertarians, the world of deadEarth did not immediately grab my attention as anything particularly innovative. Still, deadEarth at least has the decency to present its post-apocalyptic world cleanly and concisely, instead of trying to trick the reader into believing that they haven’t seen this anywhere else before.
What does set deadEarth apart from pretty much every other game out there may not even be contained in the rulebook: the online community. The rules of deadEarth integrate with the official website, theoretically tying all the assorted deadEarth games together into a cohesive game world, a bit like the RPGA's "Living" campaigns. Characters who attain enough Renown points become official legends, and can be posted on a special forum on the website. Sadly, the exact method by which Renown is acquired is left woefully vague in the main rulebook, but is more explicitly described in another free download from the website. I could see potential problems resulting from certain GMs being slightly more liberal with the Renown points than others, but I haven’t seen any real signs of controvercy over this on the deadEarth site, perhaps because the deadEarth community is relatively small.
Of course, the problem with a game that involves this kind of community involvement is that rule systems become much more important. deadEarth is one of those games where you determine just about everything randomly, and in these days of point-based character creation, that may not sit well with every gaming group. Still, if you want your characters to become legends in their own time, then you should probably preserve your honesty and roll to see how tall you are.
Compounding this potential clash of roleplaying ideologies is the fact that deadEarth, being gritty and post-apocalyptic, is a rather easy game in which to die; the warning to players says, "If it seems to easy to die in deadEarth, that’s because it is." It is, in fact, quite possible to die during character creation, or simply as the result of making a particularly unlucky roll. If the gaming group is willing to accept these conventions of play, then deadEarth can be a unique chance to really feel something when your character gains prestige. If not, then the GM can either modify the rules to suit the group's taste at the expense of participating fully in the living campaign world, or just pass on the game; it’s free so there’s no real reason to complain.
Central to the game is the 100-odd pages that make of the d1000 radiation table. As your characters become exposed to bizarre radiation throughout the game, they, like everyone else, are mutated. Mutations can be subtle or immediately obvious to bystanders, and they can be beneficial, detrimental, neutral, or some combination of elements. Some radiations are marked as once only, but others can be taken cumulatively, and still others supercede certain radiations that may be currently inflicted upon the character.
Although generally good, I take issue with a few of these "radiations," which sometimes feel more like just bizarre random game effects. Some radiations affect a person's personality in an unusual way. I could understand radioactive "mind twisting," that would somehow make you more violent, or something, but radiation 024: "Civilized" suggests that somehow the radiation of the wastes has made my character more genteel. Not only does this not follow any real logic, it doesn’t even make sense in a radioactive post-apocalyptic setting. Of course, we also have fun radiations like the obligatory "you are now a bird/fish/ape/other animal-man hybrid" mutations, but the wild variations between the relative power levels of the 1000 radiations on the table make the idea of allowing rerolls on the radiation table (except where permitted by the rules) feel like a bad idea. The great discrepencies in the power levels of the radiations, combined with the high levels of randomness in character creation means that deadEarth lends itself very easily to wildly unbalanced power levels within the party, perhaps only off-set by potential for weaker characters to suddenly gain large amounts of power very quickly, or for powerful characters to suddenly get slapped with some huge detriment.
deadEarth has an interesting skill system that essentially doubles as an experience system. Basically every single time you use any skill, you gain one (1) skill point. Skill points can be spent at any time to learn new skills. 10 points for the first level, 20 for the second, 40 for the third, and so on, doubling each time. This cost can be reduced by finding a teacher. Each level in a skill buys you one more d6 to try and make your skill checks with. In addition, there are a few mutations that require skill points in order to use. Starting skill points are based on your starting age roll. Combat is basically a subset of the skill system, modified by situation and weapons, which are somewhat evocative of Second edition AD&D. Combat is, as could be expected, quick and deadly.
Combat rounds, however, are slightly more detailed than most settings. Basically, each character has a "moves" statistic, and every round they can use any combination of techniques that sum up to that many moves. This reminded me of the computer game Fallout. Players can choose to abandon offense in favor of defense, so long as they have remaining moves. Actions that require the fewest moves are used first. Armor is damage-reducing, and, because this game is about scavenging, falls apart after taking so much damage and not being maintained, forcing players to contantly be on the watch for replacement parts. Damage is location-based, so armor is described piece-meal (also contributing to the scavenger theme), so if you want, your character can run around in a kevlar vest, leather boots, and rubber codpiece, and you can know the exact amount of protection this combination grants.
The book includes a short comic to provide a short example of the feel of the game, and an adventure/mini-campaign called "Out of the Fire…" to introduce new players to the game.
Finally, since the primary distribution for deadEarth is as a PDF, I should point out that it, like far too many online books, doesn't provide bookmarks. Considering that this is a 178 page PDF, this can get quite frustrating.
The text layout is decent, in a two column format with a fairly large font that is quite readable, even on a laptop. The art is grayscale, and average-to-good in quality. Some of it is the fairly comic-book style of post-apocalyptic sci-fi that runs pretty standard these days, and some of it is digitally manipulated photography, which generally looks pretty good, but in a few isolated images is kind of hokey.
Although I feel that deadEarth is probably not for everyone, and don't plan on using it except for occasions when the group is hankering for "a little something different," the game is solid and entertaining. It is a game unlike most games I play regularly, and it’s free. Even the remotely interested should probably at least download the main rulebook for a once-over. This product is probably has the highest production quality I've seen for a free game.
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