CyborGladiators is a light miniatures game, built on the Action! RPG gaming engine (or, more precisely, upon David L. Pulver & Patrick Sweeney’s Monster Island gaming system, which is itself Action! based).
About the Background
The background of CyborGladiators is a slightly silly one. Aliens are abducting people from five planets (Earth, a reptile world, a bug world, and a cat world) and implanting them with cyberware (cyborware?) to fight in arena warfare.
I guffawed over it a little bit when I started reading the book, but much to my surprise discovered that the authors had imbued it with a lot of nice color. Each chapter opens with a page or two describing the ongoing story of a gladiator from Earth, and together they manage to provide a picture of an interesting setting (no matter how ludicrous it might be).
Of course, the story of aliens abducting warriors is really just an excuse to get those cybered up fighters into a fight. You could say the background in CyborGladiators is kind of like the plot in a porn movie. Nonetheless, it has enough depth to it that I could easily see roleplaying possibilities in the underlying world.
So, consider it a background well done.
Graphics & Layout
CyborGladiators is a 64-page perfect bound gaming book.
The overall design of the book is fairly simple. A techie font and some techie-looking boxes give the book its general look and feel, which is nice, though not amazing. There’s some pseudo-graphical sidebars too.
Interior art is by Bart Willard and Richard Cox. Most of it is black & white line art, which runs from so-so to average. The section on cybernetics, however, contains some very nice computerized art depicting the various cyberware that really fits the look and feel of the book. It’s a pity that only a fraction of the cyberware is so depicted.
The record sheets included with the book are all fairly plain, but contain most of the needed info for your gladiator. More info on a variety of combat stats would have been highly useful, as noted in "Ease of Use", below.
Additional sheets for an "Arena Record Sheet" and a "Tournament Bracket Sheet" are cool, and immediately show some of the potential of the game.
Bound into the back of the book is a sheet of medium weight cardstock which depicts eight characterers as stand-up figures. The color artwork here is nice, and the inclusion of the cardstock is another nice bonus.
Ease of Use
As a rulebook, the game reads well. It's divided into intuitive sections (creation, fighting, arenas, experience, gladiators) that was easy to reference during gameplay. Sadly, the organizations of some of the longer lists (such as the list of arena elements, from page 35-39, and some of the cyberware) seem to be in a semi-arbitrary order.
Some of the most important info in the book is helpfully laid out in charts (such as a list of skills, a list of random arena conditions, a list of racial attributes), but other charts that should be here are notably missing (a summary of character creation, a list of combat maneuvers).
Finally, I think the character sheet could have done with a thorough revision to better highlight all the combat possibilities which are the core of the game. I would have loved to see it include, for example, the hit location chart, with all the modifiers for different hit locations, and also spaces to note a gladiator's toughness by hit location (since it can vary based on cyberware). That aforementioned list of combat maneuvers would have been good here too.
Putting everything together to assess Cyber Gladiators' Style, I'd say it has: a colorful, well-described background; a fairly plain presentation with some minor attention to thematic look-and-feel; and an ease of use that's OK, but could have been improved. On whole I give it a "3" out of "5", an average rating.
The Game System
CyborGladiators uses a very simplified version of the Action! system (apparently the same cut-down system used for Monster Island and Escape from Monster Island, neither of which I've played). It has three main elements: character modelling; arena modelling; and combat.
Character Models
Modeling the Character: CyborGladiators uses a fairly simple character rmodel: race, attributes, derived attributes, skills, and cybernetics.
CyborGladiators provides four races to pick from: humans, reptile people, cat people, and bug people. This racial choice primarily modifies attributes and offer some special abilities (such as natural weapons, poison fangs, infavision, etc).
There are four attributes: strength, reflexes, health, and mind. Each is valued from 1-11, with each of the four species having one low stat (1-5 value) and one high stat (5-11 value).These attributes modify derived attributes and certain rolls.
The derived attributes (life, evade, toughness, maim, daze, and move) are various combat related numbers which are built from the sums or multipliers of various attributes (e.g., life is health x5, while evade is reflex + 10).
Cybernetics are the core of the game. Each one replaces a certain part of the body and gives various bonuses in combat. There's some nice variety here, from exo-arms (+4 strength, +4 toughness for that arm; may be used with a weapon socket) to bionix larynxes (+2 bonus to taunts and double range, +1 extra bonus if gladiator also has bionic lungs).
Skills come from a list of 17. There are no levels; you either have a skill or not. Most skills give proficiency in a weapon, though there are a couple of extras like acrobatics, ambidexterity, swimming, tactics, and throwing.
Character Creation: This is a pretty simple process. You: choose a species; then spend 16 points on your attributes; then calculate your derived attributes; then buy a number of skills based on your Mind attribute + 2; then spend a number of credits on cybernetics based on your budget (500 for lightweight, 1000 for middleweight; 1500 for heavyweight; and 2000 for ultraheavyweight).
Character Advancement: You can advance your character in two different ways: by winning purses and by gaining glory in the arena. Purses (and side bets) produce money which may be spent on more cybernetics. Glory gives players new points to spend on attributes (and eventually the opportunity to retire).
Arena Models
CyborGladiators correctly recognizes that the arenas where combats will be held are important characters all on their own--hence 8 pages on how to fill out arenas, and a pretty simple arena record sheet.
You can either design arenas by hand or randomly, by defining a number of different features, including: arena size, arena borders, light and darkness, gravity, hazards, available weapons, and general rules. This should allow for quite a bit of variety of play.
Combat
Being a cut-down RPG, there isn't a general task resolution system for CyborGladiators--just combat.
As already noted, combat for CyborGladiators takes place in an arena. This is usually a tabletop, possibly with some walls marked, possibly with some felt (or hexes or dice jars or whatever) laid down to mark water, lava, or other hazards. Like a traditional miniatures game, it's suggested that players use rulers to measure distances.
Combat has four main elements: roll initiative, move, act, take damage.
Initiative is a simple d6 roll, added to the Mind stat (plus some modifiers for specific cyberware and skills). In descending order of initiative characters may now move, then act; or else move twice.
Move is measured in inches on the tabletop. Each character can run based on his Move score (a derived stat) and can alternatively leap or (if possible) fly.
Act means take an action, and that's usually an attack. To attack players roll 3d6, adding their Reflex stat and taking a -2 penalty if they aren't trained in the weapon they're using. If they exceed their target's Evade (derived) stat, they hit.
There are also a few additional modifiers on attacks, as well as rules for a number of special attacks: disarm, chokehold, grab, ram, shove, throw, and trip. It would have been really nice if these modifiers and attacks were all on a chart somewhere, preferably the character sheet. However, overall the number of attacks and modifiers is a nice balance: not so many that they're overwhelming, but enough to give some nice variety for arena combat.
Players can also take non-attack actions, like bandaging, bracing weapons, changing weapons, dropping weapons, reloading, surrendering, and taunting.
Damage is in D6s, and is based on the Strength stat and weapon (if any). There's a simple D6 hit location chart which can multiply or divide damage, then the damage is compared to the toughness of the location (which can vary, especially for cybered locations). Besides death (or unconsciousness) from loss of Life (a derived stat), players can also be dazed or have a limb maimed. Some attacks can knock down too. Again, it's a nice yet not overwhelming level of detail.
Relationships to Other Games
As already noted, CyborGladiators is built on the Action! RPG system. it's actually a tremendously simplified version of Action!, but it'll be familiar to an Action RPGer, and it shares some of the elegance of the core system.
As a person-to-person combat game, CyborGladiators is a member of a gaming club including games such as the original Battletech and recent releases like Magical Arena. CyborGladiators is probably simpler than most of the others, with fewer underlying rules, but also features a stronger background and suggests more roleplaying as part of its gameplay.
The Game Design
CyborGladiators is, clearly, an arena-style combat game, with an underlying tinge of roleplaying thanks to the individualized and described characters.
The combat system itself is slightly more interesting than the normal fare of RPGs, but not utterly standout. The arena geographies can definitely add to the excitement of a match. Likewise, the different maneuvers are helpful. Rams, grabs, throws, and disarms are quite possible to come up during the duration of a combat, especially if players get into roleplaying their characters. However, in a more serious two-player face-to-face combat it's entirely possibly for these tactics to pretty quickly devolve into a back and forth of weapon attacks.
The system shines a little better with multiplayer play, and this is where I'd generally suggest its usage. Here you have a third level of tactics: besides the interactions with the arena geography and with the various combat maneuvers, you also have tactical interactions between the various fighters, with plenty of opportunities for sniping, team ups, and the other interactions that naturally derive from multiplayer conflict.
Beyond the simple combat, there are a lot of elements of CyborGladiators that are just fun, including the abilities to reuse arenas ("Oh No! Not the Lava Pits Death Trap again!"), to gain glory and new cybernetics as you advance your character, and to fight out arena tournaments. The adaptation of all of these elements to a combat-style RPG are top rate.
Content: The Rest of the Book
The majority of the rulebook is taken up with the rules already described. The only other section is "Gladiators" (page 47-57), which includes pregenerated gladiators in all the weight classes. They're nicely done, and each have a lot of character, which adds to the the general feel of the game.
On the whole, CyborGladiators is an enjoyable combat game. If I was rating it solely on the core combat System, I'd probably give it a "3" out of "5" for Substance, but adding in all the peripheral systems, particularly how the arenas and advancement and tournaments are described, and the strong incentive to roleplay out the combats I'd increase it to a "4" out of "5": there's some real fun in this Action! packed system.
Conclusion
CyborGladiators delivers pretty much what it promises: cybernetic gladiators in arena combat. The game system is fairly simple but still allows enough tactical choices to make the gameplay interesting, particularly for multiplayer contests. If you'd like to bulk up your warriors with cybernetics, then face off against your friends, this is a good game system to try out.
