"A rewarding roleplaying experience should have a theme in the same way a good book does. (Killing bad guys is not a theme, just in case you had any doubts on that). A good story challenges our way of thinking. Gaming is a social activity as well, so a good gaming session gets players discussing moral dilemmas and, we hope, learning something about each other and themselves in the process. War is full of moral dilemmas and the best stories of war highlight these."
From Chapter 1: Introduction
There's a reason this game is timely. There's a reason this game was released now, while we're still in Afghanistan, rather than a few years from now when everyone's out, the wounds have begun to heal, and the conflict has "historical perspective". It's because we need to be thinking about these moral dilemmas right now, to address these issues right now, not after they've gone by and nothing can be done about them.
This is a roleplaying product with a social conscience. Some have labelled it as exploitative of current events, but after reading it, I truly believe the authors had nothing but good intentions in creating this game.
The introduction actually starts off with a decent fiction piece about a soldier stationed at the Afghan conflict, dreaming about getting home to his family, torn because he's helped blow up a building with 14 people in it... four of them definitely al Quaeda, the other ten possibly enemies, but with an equal chance of them being innocent bystanders. When this soldier gets home, how is he going to explain this to his three year old son?
This is not "kill the ragheads" propeganda. In fact, it's nearly the opposite.
Chapter 2: A Brief History of Afghanistan
If you're looking for background, consider this section to be GURPS Afghanistan Lite. A history of the region, from ancient time through the repsent, is presented with much detail and many sidebars, including a glossary of terms, a timeline of terror, and the relationship between Afghanistan and the drug trade. The People of Note pages provide information on the major players of the present day. Osama bin Laden gets better than a full page, others get anywhere from a couple of lines to a paragraph, but no historical personages are included to give perspective on who is responsible for shaping the nation into what it is today.
Chapter 3: Character Creation
In lieu of races, here we have backgrounds: Urban, Rural/Nomad, and Upper Class/Royalty. Note that these are not U.S. military specific; you can in fact play Afghan tribesmen, Northern Alliance soliders, or anything else you could envision. The classes include Clergy (of any religion), Combat Medic, Officer, Scout, Soldier, Smuggler, and Technician. Two NPC classes, Grunt and Observer, are also included.
Alignment is wisely addressed - the game doesn't use it, due to the moral ambiguity of the setting.
While the game suggests a variey of character types, including SAS, CIA agents and Afghan natives, I would have liked to have seen more roleplaying tips on playing these types of characters, including British and Turkish troops (who comprise the bulk of the Peacekeeping force), Pakistani intelligence agents, and Northern Alliance. I also wish they would have rounded out Observer into a PC class. I can envision a number of "moral dilemma" scenarios where players take the roles of journalists, Red Cross workers, missionaries, and other non-combatants.
Chapter 4: Skills
There are some interesting, although not earth-shattering, modern variations on D20 skills presented here. The most interesting variations are on skill use (forgery, for example, can be used to fake documents on a computer, but only if you have at least 1 rank in Computer Use; Perform can be used to do mic and lighting checks in lieu of a technical skill). This information is easily portable into Spycraft or Call of Cthulhu D20, for those interested in using this as a sourcebook for those games.
Chapter 5: Feats
The back cover states there are 40 new feats; I count 39, but let's not pick nits. And surprise, they're not all weapons and demolition oriented. Fourteen are General Feats, 24 are Social Feats (encompassing religious abilities and military pecking order), and one is a Tech Item Creation Feat. Nifty stuff. Again, this information is easily portable into Spycraft or Call of Cthulhu D20.
Chapter 6: Equipment
The equipment listings are meaty, with nearly everything anyone on any side might possess. The only downside, as stated in other reviews, is that there are no illustrations of the equipment.
Chapter 7: Combat
Afghanistan D20 uses the hit point system, rather than adapting more cinematic the Vitality/Wound system from Star Wars and Spycraft. However, to introduce more realism, this game introduces the concept of Shock. Whenever a character is hit by firearms or explosives, they must make a Fortitude save with a DC equal to the damage taken. Someone shoots you for 7 points, you make a save at DC 7; you step on a mine for 15 points, you save at DC 15. Failing the save means the character falls prone, and can do nothing other than crawl to safety or talk.
Additionally, until a character recieves some sort of medical attention, the wounds bleed. You lose one hit point from blood loss per round, per wound. This means that, if you were shot three times, you're losing three points per round. Messy, but more realistic than the default hit point system.
Chapter 8: Prestige Classes
There are six prestige classes: Combat Engineer, Covert Agent, Dervish, Sniper, Special Ops and Terrorist Cell Leader. They're all fairly well balanced in terms of game play, and don't lead to munchkinism. The Dervish, however, should only be used in cinemetic type campaigns (and the book clearly states this), as it's based on the mythical depictions of the martial-artist type dervish, rather than the peaceful modern-day sufis.
Chapter 9: Vehicles
Again, there are descriptions and statistics for modern military vehicles that might be used on any side, but no illustrations. Vehicles are so powerful, however, that the book suggests using them only as transportation. Picture it: the characters are humping through the hills towards their destination. A tank comes over the next rise. Boom. Splat. Roll new characters.
Chapter 10: Introductory Mission
The introductory mission is a fairly straight foreward military op - the players must pull an extraction from an occupied village. As sample adventures go, it's not bad. My only beef is that it's designed for 7th-level characters; were it not the only adventure in the book, that wouldn't be an issue, but if you're only going to include one, my preference is for something closer to starting-level.
Chapter 11: Campaigns and Plots
This section contains ideas on various types of campaigns. These aren't limited to U.S. Military intervention scenarios; the authors suggest campaigns based on creating a new government to fill the vaccum left by the Taliban, squabbles between trival factions, and even using Afghanistan as a base of operations for an espionage-type campaign involving Middle East turmoil, the potential for nuclear conflict Pakistan/India, and relatively close Russian and Chinese powers.
Appendix: Alternate Campaigns
The final section of the book gives further ideas on using the Afghan source material for other campaigns, from repelling the Mongol hordes in 100 B.C. to Victorian-era British colonization to the Soviet invasion of the 70s and 80s.
Final Summary
There are pull quotes peppered throughout, several from Osama bin Laden, many from the Koran, that illustrate not only the tragedy that's befallen this nation, but how evil men have twisted Islam to further their own agendas. The message reinforced throughout is that a great religion has been hijacked, things are royally screwed, and despite the best intention of other world powers like the U.S. and Britain, big helicopters and guys with big guns aren't going to be able to provide any sort of long-term solution to Afghanistan's deep-seated, long-festering woes.
This is, in reality, two books, doing two different things. It does them both well, in my opinion, but the controversy stems from their combination. Had this been a more generic Afghanistan sourcebook, with equally-distributed information on using the nation as a location in various time periods for assorted campaign types, rather than focussing on the current conflict as the default setting, I don't think most folks would have even blinked. If this had been titled Special Forces D20, with information on modern U.S. Military capabilities with a small section on current conflicts, including Afghanistan, I don't think anyone would have batted an eye either.
But in the end, I feel the material was well balanced and handled respectfully, to those currently serving in the military, to their families, to the Afghan people, and to the deadly seriousness of the entire situation. That this is a game does not mean by default that the material has been treated lightly, or that it is propeganda. Instead, this book is a tool, to encourage thought, discussion, and intelligent debate about both modern warfare and and global politics.
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