Introduction
First off the cover, which is uninspired to say the least. It is simply a large scale version of the FUZION symbol (A jagged broken X on top of a sun). It doesn't really grab your attention at all, or give you an idea of what the book is about (A picture of all different types of genre heros fighting would have been nice). Right down the bottom is "Multigenre Roleplaying Tool".
And this is what the tome is meant to be, however it is slightly skewed (mainly in combat and skill use) towards "heroic" (at least TV show style) games. There is not much art and it is all low quality line drawings (it is only eight dollars after all). Most of the art is multi-genre (Sci-fi/fantasy mostly), with a few specific genre pictures thrown in (Vampire, Historical, Magic etc).
FUZION is a combination of different parts of the Interlock (Cyperpunk 2020) and HERO systems. It is meant to support any campaign genre and genre changing (eg your space marines get sucked through a worm hole and end up in Middle Earth). This means that guns, magic, psionics and superpowers are balanced with each other.
Character creation
Out of 56 pages 28 are on character creation. It is a point buy system (It has suggestions on how many points for the campaign style, from 20 for relestic campaigns to 90 for superheros) with character points for the 10 characteristics and option points for skills, perks, talents and equipment.
Characteristics
The ten characteristics are divide into four groups. However they pretty much mean nothing (They dont even use them on the character sheet). Characteristics in FUZION (and nearly everything else) is on a scale of 1 to 10. 1 is ordinary (fat, slow, ugly people) and 10 is super heroic. Ordinary humans can not surpass 7.
Mental
Intelligence
Willpower
Presence(Charisma)
Combat
Technique(Tool use)
Reflexes(hand-eye coordination)
Dexterity(full body coordination)
Physical
Constitution(Mainly used for resistnace to stunning damage)
Strength
Body(Mainly determines your hit points)
Movement
Movement
Derived characteristics
Then there are derived characteristics (computed from some combination of base characteristics), which are mainly used to allow new ones to be added and removed for specific genres. They non-optional ones are as follows.
Stun[Body x 5](How much non-lethal damage the character cna take before fainting)
Hits[Body x 5](How much lethal dmage the character can take)
Stun defense[Con x 2](Resistance to non-lethal damage)
Recovery[Str Con](How fast the character recovers)
And various move derived ones.
There are also a handful of suggested (ie can be used in nearly all campaigns) optional derived characteristics.
Options(ie the fun stuff)
Options are all those extra goodies that you can use to make a unique character. There is a chart of how many option players should get per campaign style. You can also get more points with complications.
Complications
There is a generic complication generator (rated by frequency, intensity and importance), and list of pre-generated complications (psycholigical, personality, physiological, social, enemies, reponsibilities and compulsions) each of which has at least four sub-types.
Skills
Skills use the same 1-10 system as characteristics. There are around 80 given and it is easy to create your own (However the ones given cover most possibilites). Also each character get one level in the "Everyman" skills. Some skills have to be specialised and some skills are actually groups of specialisations (confusing no?). However two or three reads through clears up most confusion. The skill groups are as follows.
Fighting
Ranged Weapons
Awareness
Control
Body
Social
Technique
Performance
Education
Talents
Talents are innate abilities (light sleeper, Immunity etc) and cost three times as much as skills and characteristics. There are roughly 20 all up, and more would have been nice.
Perks
Perks are useful items, priveleges or contacts. There are 6 given with multipliers for campaign effect (being the head of major corporations has more effect in a Cyberpunk game than a Supers game).
They are.
Memebership
License(Like a 00 prefix)
Contacts
Favor(One shot contact)
Renown
Wealth
Gear
Fuzion uses a tech level system to provide gear costings (ie a oil lantern costs as much as a electric torch). This is again on the 1-10 scale. However this scale is geared more towards campaign type than actual tech type, and is shown below.
1-2: Pre-industrial
3: Victorian or Historical
4: Early 20th century
5: Late 20th cnetury
6-7: Near future
8-9: Interstellar Far Future
There are five (very packed) pages if equipment by tech level (However divided differently from the tech level chart). And there are some strange things in there (Like the 2 meg laptop, and WWI one fighters in modern). However nearly anything a character could want is covered including a basic selection of cyberwear.
Magic
There are four pages of magic spells of a wide variety. Any character who has the appropriate skill (Clericy or Sorcery) can use some type of magic. Individual magic spells are not bought, they have a difficulty value that must be equalled or surpassed to cast that spell. The spells are divided into a number of different areas as follows.
Summoning
Conjuration
Neromantic
Illusion
Offensive
Defensive
Knowledge
Movement
Psionics
There is only one page of psionic powers and it uses the same system as magic.
Superpowers
There are two pages of superpowers, which cover pretty much every concievable super power. Super powers are bought like talents and gear and are "always on". The differnet areas are as follows.
Movement
Defensive
Offensive (actually a generalized system)
Internal
Area effect
Strength and Power
Combat
Combat in FUZION is based on the concept of actions performed in 3 second rounds. There is a list of general and advanced action covering most genres.
Skill resolution
Skill resolution is based on CHAR SKILL DIE (This means skills and characteristics have about equal effect). However you can either roll a D10 (Interlock style) or 3D6 (Hero style). For combat you must beat your opponents roll (He is dodging, fighting back etc). There is also a Difficulty value table for non-combat skill resolution.
There is a really nice Strength feat system that works for ordinary people and super heros. There is a difficulty to lift an item (or throw a baseball a distance, or break some material), which avoids enforcing any measurement system. It goes from heavy bag of groceries to a mountain.
A selection of die modifiers ar given for common actions (from target distance to drunk). They also discuss how to determine what the CHAR SKILL should be (You can use the same skill with different CHARS depending on circumstances). There is also a nice driving/dog fighting system that is very easy and cinematic.
One of the most interesting rules is the autofire rule. Depending on the campaign you can make it so that players can run through hails of bullets and nail all the bad guys.
Damage and Dying
In FUZION blunt objects (fist, feet etc) do stun damage. Guns generally do hits (lethal damage). However really big guns do "kill" damage. Non-kill damage weapons have a damage class (DC) which equals the number of D6's of damage the weapon does (in stun damage or hits).
However Kills are numeric with non-dice rolled (simply because the attack is so powerful rolling dice would get annoying). Armour and certain characteristics reduce the amount of stun and kills you take. There is also a system for scaling damage between kills and hits which seems possibly broken (eg You can hurt tanks with machine gunes).
Misc
The final sections are mainly miscellaneous rules for different gneres, enviromental hazards and experience.
Rounding Up
Over all FUZION has great character creation but a combat system that doesn't excite (mainly because most weapons are very similar). If you want to run a multigenre campaign or change genres regularly than FUZION is for you. You can run nearly any type of genre "out-of-the-box" however there a vast variety of online plugins for various genre types (including an improved combat system I havent read yet). Overall pretty damn good for eight bucks.
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(Due to spamming, old forum discussions are no linked.)