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I'm changing my review format a little bit as I saw some things in other reviews that I liked. So that you have a better idea of where I'm coming from I'll mention the systems, games and settings that I like and dislike. I like D&D in all its incarnations, but there's things about each that I'm not happy about. I really like Big Eyes, Small Mouth, GURPS TransHuman Space, CyberPunk 2020, Ravenloft, Dark Sun, PlaneScape, Forgotton Realms, Birthright, SpellJammer, D20 Modern (I'm not too fond of the book, but the D20 Modern campaign I played in was the most fun I've ever had), PDQ, Hero System SideKick, Traveller, 50 Fathoms, Savage Worlds and Centauri Knights. I dislike GURPS (but like some of the supplements), Ars Magica, every WoD book I've tried to read, Fuzion, Action!, Greyhawk and Earthdawn (setting's fine, dice mechanics are a huge pain in the ass). Hopefully that gives you a frame of reference.
As far as style goes, UnderWorld is sub-par. The font used for the chapter headings is hard to read and I have to read part-way through the first couple paragraphs to figure out what the chapter is about. The table of contents has this weird font for their main headings as well, so it's not always even possible to flip back to the ToC to see what the topic is. I also didn't notice for a couple days that the text on the bottom of the cover said "Limited Edition" (speaking of which, I don't know what's special about this book that makes it limited edition or if the game itself is limited edition). The artwork ranges from pretty neat to stuff that looks like it's been drawn by a kid. Some of it is all right, some of it's pretty crappy. Everyone has different tastes, but I'm sure there's some art that someone won't like.
The layout is overall not too bad, but there are some gaffs that interrupt the flow of reading. Some lines end after one or two words. Sometimes the tables/sidebars (I can't really tell them appart) are misplaced. Once the text referred to the table below which was actually above the text. Worse was an instance where the table actually covered some of the main text. I wasn't able to guess what was under it and the table has an opaque background so no amount of deciphering skill will help in figuring out what was covered up.
It has a few pages of fiction at the beginning of each chapter, I as a rule don't like fiction in RPGs (which is why I don't like Ars Magica or WoD) so I just skipped over them. They fortunately didn't take up too much of the book and were also not essential to understanding the setting or system. I never felt that I was missing something by having skipped the fiction and I also didn't feel like it was wasting too much space.
I'm giving UnderWorld a 2 out of 5 on style because of the hard to read font and the layout problems. It's mostly just annoying but a step below average nonetheless.
What UnderWorld lacks in style it makes up for in substance. It seems solid for running a game on its own and it is also ripe for mining ideas for use in other games.
I skipped over the introduction thinking it was a continuation of the introductory fiction. I don't think I'm missing anything not having read it so I'm not going to read through it now that I've read the rest of the book. The first part I went over was explaining that UnderWorld is a "framework" and not a "game". The premise is that most groups drop rules, so the rules presented are the basics. They also say they understand that some people might prefer their own system to run with it and this is also fine. I like the realistic view they have of how it will be played as well as actually understanding gamers as a whole. Incidentally it does not appear to be targeted at new gamers. There's no "what is roleplaying?" section. That's a nice bonus as anyone who's reading this review already knows what roleplaying is.
The basic rules are covered twice, once at the beginning and once in the action section. This isn't an accident (they say they've duplicated it with reason). Considering the base rules of any RPG have to do with action it's nice that it's covered in that section as well. It is also good to be at the beginning so that you know what they're talking about in the following sections. It also seems to be written well for someone like me who doesn't always read the whole book. The basic rules are simple and fit on a single page. It uses a coin pool, or as they call it a "head count" system. Depending on your ability performing a certain action you get a certain number of coins to flip, the number of heads that turns up is the number of successes. Anyone familiar with dice pool systems will understand exactly how this works. They conveniently offer a probability table, and I like probabilities. One reason for the coin pool system is that coins are easily accessible - everyone (hopefully has them). I really like this reasoning, I'm very fond of systems that make use of the D6 as it's the most common die type. Using coins has the same benefit, and they're probably easier to find than dice. The second reason is that UnderWorld doubles as a LARPG as well as a TRPG. Flipping coins is perfectly viable in a LARP setting and I think it's pretty handy. Definitely beats rock-paper-scisors for task resolution.
Characters are fairly simple to make, and are made by choosing Breed (Race), Guild (Class), traits and skills. As it uses a rules-lite system I imagine some people will be put off by the Breed/Guild system. However the breeds and classes are both very flexible. The 9 breeds are Ferals (animals - any real world animal, plus albino crocodiles), Freaks (unique monsters, minotaurs, Frankenstein's monster, anything you could think of), Homeless (the homeless people you see on the street), Junkmen (mechanical creatures, anything from the Tin Man to a model helicopter), Legendaries (characters and creatures of legend or stories, as well as collective ideas, Jack the Ripper, the Medusa, the Cheshire Cat), The Lost (people from another era), Mole People (they're alternatively called "fuzzies", that equals furries - yes this game has furries), Nomads (immortals, clearly if you try playing it with a system like GURPS you're going to have to forget about balanced characters) and Normals (people just like us). The Guilds are mostly political, although there is some game benefit to being part of a guild (it's all backed up by the setting however). The Guilds are Artificers (people who invent things and make stuff, including Junkmen), Bravos (people who are authorised to fight, legally), Librarians (people who know stuff), Mendicants (healers), Navigators (people authorised to take you places), Sappers (people who dig tunnels), Taggers (graffiti artists who double as guides), Traders (people authorised to do business trading), Outcasts (former guild members who have been expelled), and Guildless.
The Breeds and Guilds give a framework for traits and skills that the character might posess. Any character will have only a few of each, and the traits and skills have a broad range. An example was given where UnderWorld survival would include running from an oncomming train and therefore improved the chance of the character to outrun the train. Speaking of examples, there are examples throughout the book. There aren't any examples where I already had a clear idea of how the system worked, and there aren't any examples missing where I didn't have a clear idea of how it worked and would have needed an example. Very good! Back to traits and skills, traits are basically advantages/disadvantages/attributes/feats/etc. Skills are skills. The difference from other games is that traits and skills work the same way - they both add to the number of coins tossed to attempt an action. In light of that the distinction might be unnecessary, but conceptually they cover different things. Skills are what the character knows how to do, traits cover non-verb characteristics (such as wings, which would allow the character to fly).
Some basic equipment is covered. As it is set in the modern day they aptly say that everyone is pretty familiar with what's available to them. Weapons and armour are briefly covered, with a few staple examples given. Weapons and armour, like everything else in the game increase the number of coins tossed when performing an action that relies on them (combat).
The Action section, as previously mentioned, repeats the basic rules and goes into anything to do with action in more depth. It basically explains how headcount is used for the main RPG staples, interraction, fear, exhaustion and action. Combat is covered a bit later on. The Radiance is also explained (the background magical energy in the UnderWorld that makes all the weirdness possible).
Combat is presented in two manners, detailed and abstract. Abstract combat is intended for LARP so that there's no direct conflict between participants (a good idea, even though I enjoy sparring and personally wouldn't mind direct conflict). It is also usable in TRP for less significant fights (or everything if the players want). Detailed combat is pretty standard and is done turn by turn. Turn by turn follows the initiative, attacks/defense in order of initiative and then damage is dealt and tallied. UnderWorld uses wound levels of unharmed, lightly wounded, seriously wounded and dead. The abstract combat uses a 3 coin head toss based on attack, defense and goals. If all 3 are heads then the goal is achieved. Each group/participant gets a certain number of advantage points that allows them to flip their own coins from tails to head or their opponent's coins from head to tails. The abstract system allows for a situation where both parties can succeed, which could result in everyone dying. This could sometimes present some problems to adjudicate that wouldn't occur in the detailed system, but I guess you can't have a perfect abstract system anyway.
Magic is dependent on the Radiance, certain areas have higher radiance levels and certain magic requires these higher radiance levels to work. There are 3 types of magic (although the book has a typo saying there are 2, there really are 3), charms (spells), rites (really powerful spells) and relics (powerful magic items). Salvage Tech are "technological" magic items created by Artificers. An interesting thing with Artificers is that they are really "mad scientists" they have to be insane on some level - the more insane the more strange items they can create. The types of insanity and levels presented are really cool, and this is one of the sections I'd mine for any horror campaign. Examples of salvage tech are provided as well as rules for inventing new tech (again giving the difficulty required to create the tech that you attempt with a head count).
The beginning of the setting chapter shows a map of the New York subway system. The places in the setting are given in relation to the locations on the subway map. This is an easy way for working other cities with subways into the game as settings. Just take the subway route map and either transfer parts of the setting from this book to it or make your own. That's not a bad way of doing things, it gives a lot of flexibility to Conductors (Game Masters). Flexibility is actually a requirement for Conductors as the setting descriptions are very general, so the Conductor will have to do a lot of fleshing out himself. Incidentally there's a number of mysteries which the Conducter will have to come up with explanations for themselves. This is an instance of information that's secret to GMs that some people really don't like. I can go either way with it.
A number of monsters and personas are provided as examples. It's a long enough list to not be pointless, but Conductors will definitely have to come up with their own to keep them from getting too boring. The personas are nice as example characters, not so much in the relevant NPC way though, as there really isn't enough of them to cover all the relevant NPCs.
The section on Conducting is actually quite good. The advice has been repeated a number of times in various games, but it's well presented here. It encourages Conductors to be flexible and not to railroad the players (they chose different words, but I find the though of railroading players in a game set around a subway rather ironic). It also covers live action play. I'm not familiar with it, but the advice seems good. They have a clear warning that despite being set in the UnderWorld, players shouldn't try to LARP in sewers or subways.
They give a sample adventure which I don't think is well designed. It offers some flexibility in the middle and end, but the beginning plot hook expects the characters to do a certain thing. This is right after in the conductors section they say that the players might do something completely unexpected. That's not too great planning as far as I'm concerned. It's possible to recover and keep the adventure going, but it's still possible for the characters to just go off on a different path on a number of occasions. There's options for if it's left to result in an overarching campaign effect but it's still going to require some preperation on the part of the Conductor to account for unexpected actions by the players.
The Random Adventure Seed generator rocks, and is another thing that I'll mine for other games. The format they provide is [DO] [SOMETHING] at [LOCATION], but have to contend with [COMPLICATIONS] while being confronted by [OPPOSITION]. There are 64 options for each giving a total of 1,073,741,824 different adventure seeds. Tables are given for each that are determined by cross-referenced 3 coin tosses. Very cool! Some examples of the random adventure seed generator being used are provided, which should give a good head start for figuring out how to interpert the results.
The last part is the inspirational sources chapter. I'm always fond of these as if I like the book it gives me some ideas of other things to look for. It suggests Books, Movies, TV series and Comics to check out for more ideas.
The back has 2 character sheets, each taking up half the page. They obviously know that their font is hard or impossible to read, as they offer one version that has the nigh unreadable font and another that has a very clear and easy to read font. The latter might be a bit harder to write in though as the lines are quite narrow. I'd suggest taking the second sheet, turning it sideways and blowing it up to A4 size from A5. Ads follow and a few completely blank pages are at the end of the book.
One thing I look for in a book is if it achieves it's stated goal. UnderWorld is presented as a "framework", and it is exactly that. There isn't too much in the way of detail, it's very easy to add or subtract from it as well as transfer it to another setting. A lot is left up to the GM to do, but the framework is quite solid and while I was reading through it I found myself thinking of quite a few things that I could do with the seeds I was presented. The very nature of the setting is also that it can take almost anything from any literary or other such source you can think of an integrate it into the setting in some fashion. For people who like a lot of flexibility UnderWorld is quite good, for people who like a lot of structure, it's not so good. I couldn't really find anything wrong with it substance wise, other than it being a bit sparse, but there wasn't anything that truly knocked me off my feet. It has a "jack of all trades, master of none" feeling to it. The book on a number of occasions alludes to upcomming supplements that cover more things in detail. That indicates some incompleteness in the book which makes it lose a point in substance. 4 out of 5 on substance.
I also have to note that while the MSRP is $20, I got it on sale for $5CDN, so I'm much more likely to be happy with it than if I'd paid more. On the other hand it's a type of book I normally wouldn't have looked at based on it being part-LARP, having a genre I don't focus much on (urban-fantasy) and being rules-light. If you like any of those things (or you ride the subway a lot) you'll probably be happy with it at full price. If not, then you'll probably want to pick it up on sale. I imagine considering the price I got it for that it's not that hard to do.
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