Power Grrrl is the officially licensed RPG of the Power Grrrl series from the 80s, much like Omlevex was the official RPG of the silver-age Omlevex Comics. As such, it has a lot of style. It stars Power and her friends -- or your PCs -- in a world in which all teenagers gain superpowers (not too unlike Magical World in that respect).

Power Grrrl requires the POW! system to play; the POW! system, which is available for free on RPGNow, seems like a combination of Unisystem and BESM 1e with quirky albeit workable additions.

This is listed as a comp copy, but it was an unusual 'complimentary' copy. Just before Christmas, I was chatting online, and the subject was things we'd like to get for Christmas. I mentioned Power Grrrl as being something I'd like to get. Unbeknownst to me, the author of Power Grrrl was there, and he just gave me a copy right there, on the spot.

As usual, I will be doing my review by chapter, ending each section with a quote from the book when possible.

Introduction, About Power Grrrl, The Game Moderator, Additional Game Mechanics

These four mini-sections (a page each) handle the prerequisite opening of the system.

In the Introduction, as well as the banal 'what is a RPG' and 'this game will rock your world' sections, the introduction gives the ideal 'setup' for a game of Power Grrrl (when to order pizza, when to create characters, when to watch a TV episode to get into the mood, when to game).

About Power Grrrl tells us the three roles the game sets out to meet: "Legendary Cartoon," "Worldbook," and "Teen Super Hero" (thanks for making us insert that space, DC).

The Game Moderator section is pretty sparse, mostly concering optional rules and acting as an 'advisor' to the PCs; most of the meat of the GM advice is left to later sections.

Finally, Additional Game Mechanics discuss modifications to the rules based on super-teen setting of Power Grrrl -- such as parental supervision and animé leaping abilities.

The Good: There's a lot of 'metagame advice'; hints about the actual setup of the play session, not just the game.

The Awesome: This line. Why limit your fun to just the game? Rent one of these DVDs and pop it in before, during, or after the game! Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Fantastic Four, Jem and the Holograms, Josie And The Pussycats, Kim Possible, Mystery Men, Powerpuff Girls, Sailor Moon, Teen Titans, The Tick, Voltron... Any game that reccomends the viewing of The Tick to get the players in the right mood is alright by me.

The "Pithy Wisecracks" optional rule in the GM section. If you deliver your action with a pun or catchphrase, you get a +1 bonus to your attack -- but if it's a real groaner, you must roll the 'Die O Fate', a mechanic for 'Party Fouls' in POW! that might cause effects such as having to apologize in pig-latin or drop to the floor and do 2d6 pushups. It can be fun, in the right group.

Creating A Character

In Power Grrrl, characters get 20 points to build their character. There are six attributes to divide these twenty points among: Agility, Brawn (strength), Cognition (mental abilities), Damage (toughness), Energy, and Fellowship (charisma). (ABCDEF. Get it?) 2 is average, and 5 is the normal max; a stat of 0 is possible, but not reccomended. Each attribute has a pool equal to that stat squared; the Damage pool is hit points, the Energy pool is endurance, the Fellowship pool is collection, and so on.

There is no skill purchase, save for the optional 'Best/Worst Subject' rules. Instead, the meat of character creation is in the specials the characters buy. These can be anything from mundane abilities like Improved Initiative (1 point, minimum Agilility 2) to exotic 'anime'-ish superpowers like Elemental Mastery (5 points, minimum Energy 5). Remember how fast and loose BESM 1e character creation was? You're about to live those days again. Most powers have an 'Upgraded' version that allow an even stronger effect.

The rest of character creation is 'Buying Stuff', which involves either taking cash, or rolling a random clique to determine income and starting gear. (Fun fact: 1 in 6 students in Power Grrrl are members of the militia, and cheerleaders are twice as dangerous as wannabe cowboys.) Armor is measured in Frame Rating, or how much damage it absorbs per round, and Damage Rating, how much damage the armor can take total. (Another fun fact: A shotgun cannot hurt you if you are wearing football pads, but a standard army uniform has a 1 in 3 chance of being penetrated. Talk about being in genre!)

The Good: By each section of powers, there is a sample character. For example, the character who exemplifies Fellowship is the most popular girl in school, as well as the webmistress of LiveWebJournal.

The Bad: Under each special, there is a line marked 'Minimum Score." For player convenience, this could have been changed to Minimum Agility for Agility specials, Minimum Brawn for Brawn specials, and so on... it's a bit confusing.

The specials need to be reviewed. For example, the Channel ability costs 5 points from your Damage pool, but you can buy it with a Damage stat of only 2. With Damage 2, you have a Damage pool of 4 -- thus, you might find yourself stuck purchasing a power you have no use for! This took a point from Style.

Power Grrrl is depicted in the rest of the book as frequently using military hardware; bazookas, flamethrowers, AK-47s, and the like. There are no stats for anything more dangerous than a .22 rifle. Boo!

"Inevitably, someone is going to say "Hey, I want to make a character who has power over citrus fruit, and can spray jets of superheated Vitamin C at their enemies," and your group will realize that there's no Special to cover this power. Don't let that stop you. You can let reason, good judgement and threatening looks from your friends stop you, but don't let the lack of a Special slow you down."

Moderator Section

The single biggest section in the book, this section covers the world of Power Grrrl, but provides a lot of 'premade' characters to start with.

In Power Grrrl, the enemy is Canada. Canada, the despised, land of black-smoke-belching factories, kids who smoke and use their teenaged powers for evil. Obviously, this is not the Canada we know, but the prerequisite 'evil empire' that all good kid's shows need.

The enemies of the PCs are fleshed out, and ready to play. For each category of power, there are "Big Bads" like Madame Maple (who has a passing resemblance to the Baroness); "Dragons" who are episode-long terrors, such as "L.A.", a pop star with electric powers who uses subliminal messages to get teens to buy more of her CDs; and "Minions' like The Mean Girls, who are a dime a dozen but troublesome (and soul-destroying) in numbers.

After this come the stats for the 'iconic' characters, or the five that are mentioned in the FAQ later. Most of these are purchasable on the 20-point budget that PCs get; Power herself, the 'most powerful' superteen in the game, runs 25 points. Power is a general brick, with superspeed and 'burst of strength'; Jessie is an agile girl with no 'supernatural' specials, but five points of Agility. Sandra is a shy extrovert, who simultaneously wants attention and acceptance and wants to use her powers of intangiblity and invisibility to fade from notice; Kim is the brains of the group, who uses gadgets, intelligence, and wealth to help her problems; and Delia, the toughest character, as well as being able to absorb energy.

After that, comes a page of NPC stats, for such things as authority figures, pets, your annoying little brother, and forces of nature. Following that is another one-page section, showing random awards; anything from being on the cover of Time, to your parents buying you a car, to finding a mascot.

The Good: This section doesn't just make it easy to get into the Power Grrrl universe; it makes it easy to run it off-the-cuff, with many stats being usable for a wide variety of games with little or no change.

Frequenters to the RPGnet forums may recognize some in-jokes in this section. (Then again, with one of RPGnet's owners being listed as a playtester and editor, that is only to be expected.)

"Madame Maple. Powers: Being Canadian (none).

Dr. Fute. Powers: Being French-Canadian (none)."

The Official Power Grrrl FAQ

Although technically part of the preceeding section, this deserves special calling out for its depth. It gives extra attention to all the 'main characters', and gives an episode-by-episode rundown of the game. This reads like any FAQ should, with fannishness everywhere, and grammar and formatting nowhere -- and it makes it all work. Even the header for this section is a piece of ASCII art.

The episode guide can be used as a guideline to run a long campaign (40-60 sessions, depending on how many of the stories you want to use), or provide a number of plots for one-shots, in addition for being a good way to get the 'feel' of the game down.

Power: "I need a small controlled plague to solve my problems."

Introductory Adventure

Although "The Big Stink" is supposed to be a simple adventure, it's actually fairly complex.

The Bad: In the 'random encounter' table, one of the entries is coming across 1d6 students in a fight. So, it's possible to find someone in a fight with theirselves. (Well, if the Don't Let Me Get Me music video is correct, it's possible and in genre to have one person in a fight, I suppose...)

Fifty Plots To Steal

As the title says, this is fifty plots stolen from media like Captain Planet, Red Dawn, and Voltron, either for an entire campaign, a single story in a larger campaign, or a one-shot.

Miscellany

The biggest problem I had with this game was the editing. It seems like it was originally going to be a full RPG, but it was decided to make the core rules a generic RPG at the last moment. With references to content in the POW! core rulebook so frequent, that you have to wonder what came first: POW! or Power Grrrl. This is compounded by the fact that Power Grrl plus the POW Core rules would make up 96 pages and two covers, a frequent size for a printed RPG. In addition, there are a few mundane spelling errors (it took me a while to figure out what an 'oerson' was). This took a point from Substance.

The book is styled like a standard composition notebook, and as well as the 'anime' and 'manga' art, there are doodles in the book, of the same kind we drew in our notebooks in high school. Although a minor element, it helps the 'flavor' of the reading.

This game has its own website: http://www.powergrrrl.com

The Final Verdict

Although the formatting is notably MS Word, the illustrations are lavish, and the writing is solid gold. I mean, you could be roleplaying teenagers shopping at Rav-R Girl and Top Topic one moment, then having to fight Madame Maple in a running lacrosse battle from Bishou Gent to Ninja Burger the next. And you'd get to blow a lot of stuff up, and nobody would get hurt, but the bad guys would be defeated. Style: 4.

The book is also quite dense, with lots of meat to go with the dressing. I am reminded pleasantly of games like BESM 1e and Gamma World 4e while reading this book. However, a few inconsistencies and easily fixed errors break the tone. Substance: 4.

But even with these flaws, this game is excellent. You'll definately get your money's worth out of Power Grrrl.

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