What UNTIL is is actually something different. It is the good twin of the recently released VIPER sourcebook from Hero Games. It even duplicates (but in a very up front, non-Palladium-esque way) the ‘Using Agents in Combat” hints and tips from VIPER.
The format of the two books is nearly identical, with a historical section and a description of UNTIL’s structure, a run-down of UNTIL’s agents and equipment, and tips for using UNTIL in Champions games.
One of this book’s hightlights is an interesting section on the United Nations and international law. It’s surprisingly interesting, and will be of great use to anyone running a globe-trotting supers game. What can a group of world-spanning adventurers do before it’s considered an act of war? And how would they be punished for it? And where does UNICEF fit into all this?
Come on. Don’t tell ME you were never suspicious of those guys, with their creepy little boxes and subverting the true meaning of Halloween (which is candy. Candy for ME).
Just as in the VIPER book, UNTIL outlines the organization for use in Champions games; if you want background and rules and stats for UNTIL, it’s perfect. Whether you need this amount of depth for what will be an ally group depends on individual GMs,
There are a plethora of package deals, panoply of vehicles and weapons, and an abundance of agent motivations. There’s some neat information about UNTIL’s special projects, which are dedicated to giving them advantages against VIPER, psychics and magicians, as well as project Shiva, which is dedicated to fouling the plans of Dr. Destroyer. With a very big hovership that swims and shoots lasers.
The character kits cover a variety of UNTIL agents, from grunts fresh from basic training to characters trained to survive hostile environments, engage in espionage, fly jet-cycles, investigate crimes, or fight in powered armour. There are 21 package deals in all, including the basic training every agent gets.
There are backgrounds and personalities for UNTIL agents, but the majority of the time you’re going to be looking at them as cannon fodder/grunts/ nemeses, so the detail, while good for building characters, is un-necessary. Admittedly, when you do build UNTIL agents that are designed to be more than “Agents moving on 4, 8, & 12”, it will be very useful.
Gear is the standard array of weapons, equipment and vehicles. Lasers and blaster pistols of a bewildering number, with a convenient quick reference table at the end of the chapter, vehicles for overt and covert activity, and (significant) details on the computer systems UNTIL uses. Hero’s ways of outlining computers is kinda silly, if you ask me. Too detailed. A few more general intelligence/espionage gadgets might have been nice, too, but that is once again my bias speaking.
There are stats for various bigwigs within UNTIL, including UNTIL’s in house super-hero team, Unity. The various hierarchical NPCs are nice, but Unity just strikes me as a bunch of NPCs, rather than a coherent team. The book’s appendix has a selection of pre-built UNTIL agents ready to be dropped into Champions action.
There’s enough here for GMs to build their own UNTIL groups to use as PC backup or enemies. But the book lacks info on running a PC group of UNTIL agents. There are basic details for building them, but not the sort of detail I’d like to see. The vague ‘Commando Hero’ rules are still there, but I’ll admit I’m hoping for a genuine Super Agents rules-set, rather than a half hearted GI Joe adaptation for Champions.
Artwise, the book ranges from acceptable to not quite so. Many of the vehicle illustrations failed to impress me; the ones rendered by computer were rather ugly, and the UNTIL logo on some of the hand rendered vehicles looks like it was photo shopped onto them.
There are also some consistency issues; for example, the Sky Cycles in the Light Horse package look different from the Sky Cycles in the Sky Cycle vehicle illustration. The Grav Sled, which is supposed to be the signature vehicle of UNTIL, is not illustrated at all.
Overall, though, UNTIL is a good sourcebook for the international agency. It’ll give you lots of background on the history of the organization, and hints and tips for using it, and oodles of hard crunch for the agents and equipment of UNITL. I’d have rated it higher on style if the leader had been a grizzled WW II vet with an eye-patch, but I’m just grumpy.
