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gagenda
Godsend Agenda
I first ran across Godsend agenda in a
game shop in Vancouver, their new arrivals
shelf had numerous things but the golden scarab on an otherwise
featureless cover caught my eye. I picked it up
and flipped through it then ran across things like "Angelos"
"Elohim" and put the game back down, especially since it
seemed to be a superhero game with very specific background. This was
true of course and at the time such a thing didn't interest me.
Now, things change, I heard more on
it later via the RPGnet forums, and the fact they were doing a D6
powered second edition. Since I wasn't familiar with the original
system, I asked some question here and there and
discovered it used its own. Then I asked Jerry D. Grayson about it
and asked about reviewing it in comparison to the new edition when
it came out. It was then a waiting game for the D6 version, and more
so, for the review in trying to get my players together.
It seems they're easier to get together for a game they know will be
a recurring game, but a bit harder for a one shot, the
campaigns they were in continued to take their interest preference
and to be fair, its hard to say no to a game thats running
successfully and the players are demanding.
However, at long last I managed to sit down with players make characters and go forward with playing the game. I
only play tested the D6 version, there is
really no reason the play test the earlier edition (since its no longer available)
for comparison suffice to say eyeballing will have to do.
One of the first things to point out is
METAPLOT METAPLOT METAPLOT, at least as Godsend Agenda uses the
term is a future series of events planned out which it has in abundance..
Unlike some games though they blessedly give us a rundown of that in
the core rulebook. While these metaplot elements change
the setting, they are not for the most part, epic realignments of
how things are--just a series of events that will happen, if
you use the official timeline. The metaplot of course can be ignored,
the game can be run historically (in the past) prior to
the metaplot of the game (but you still have to deal with history's
native metaplot of course.) or you can use it as a spring
board for adventure. I'm not a fan of metaplots, but it is well
handled here giving some room for players to interact, and
intervene.
Right now I want to skip to the back of
the book--there is a lot of advice in the book by various RPGnet, and
RPG world people (Sandy Antunes, Matt Forbeck, among
others.) this advice is often conflicting, poorly thought out within
the needs of a game.
For example one advises you trick your
players by carrying around another game, telling them you want to use
a new rules set but some setting bits from other games
and then slowly reveal the back story of Godsend Agenda. Ignore this.
Obviously there is no way someone can even touch the
character creation part of the game appropriatly if you do this
without so many flaming hoops to jump through that it becmes
pointless. Bait-and-switches only work rarely, and in some neck of
the woods will hurt your trust with your players at the least,
and get you punched in the nose at the worst. Player's need to know
their choices of species (its on the PC sheet.) and most
of the species besides humans have some foreknowledge of things going
on around them. Angelos, Elohim, Atlanteans, Chimeran,
Human, which your PC will be is important in the choices for making a
character. Yes I know there a ways to add those elements
later revealing that secretly your PC isn't
really a human who gained powers when struck by lightning but is instead a
hybrid son or daughter of an alien Elohim and a human and the
lightning just awoke their innate ability to tap the fundamental
force of superpowers in Godsend Agenda, that is Ka. Yet its better
done with players consent, rather than lying to your
players. I explained a lot of the background to my players and still
ended up with everyone being humans. (Although
I have a couple of cool things I may suggest he players twist around
later.)
Skip most of the advice in the back.
It's not all bad--Sandy Antunes actually had a better way of
introducing the setting through otherwise amnesiac superheroes who knew the secrets of the setting.
(which is one of my favorite ways to start games other than "You
are shipwrecked" is "You wake up in a hospital",
though admittedly the most fun was "You
wake up in the morgue." )
The difference between the two books
are numerous the Godsend Agenda 2E is a hardbound tome that looks about half
again as thick as the original 1E book. Fortunately
that while it has some comic book style pages illustrating some of
their fiction they are not slick color plates in an otherwise
plain paper book--mixed paper types always seem to make the books pages pull out
something terrible. The 1E Book is 224 pages long, the 2e book is 281 pages long. The art varies from some very nice peices,
to some pretty amateur bits here and there for both games, although
2E seems to have some improved peices for
the most part.
Skipping the Credit Page we get a page
1 right up front that dives into the games story, that is its
background, a mocked up government document (transcript) of a
conversation. It almost looks like an IRC log but has headers written
more like an e-mail, yet it is neither of these. This bit of
text is not, sadly the most wowing introduction to the the whole mad
world of the game.
Godsend Agenda however for a game with
a metaplot, that does have a lot of good ideas, is fairly utilitarian
in its 2E approach.
The next page is simple key terms, then
we move on to
Character Creation--3 pages into the book (mostly), and this is both
a good and bad thing. The key elements are presented Dice
Pools, power levels, whats in the chapter, but its not well
organized. For example: It gives us a way to make a normal human, then
a
way to make a superpower person--completely unrelated methods of
character generation, untied to one another. Now both could
be useful if the game had package powers, or gave us a tally of the
points the "normal" baseline human "spent" for attributes and
skills as a default, so we could
then just subtract that from the later point system we are
provided. I don't see it, hoever, and I've re-read the page many
times both now as I write this and in furthur PC generation. It looks
like
they took a bit of text from D6 Adventure (which is the
"engine" that powers this D6 game) carried it over to be
used and it got orphaned in the process. It's useful though for
quickly generating NPC's. (with some work could have made pc creation
faster as welll.)
Shortly after that we get the break
down of point cost for attributes, skills, specialties
then the specific amount of points per power level--this covers a wide
range of heroes the default being Power Level 3 (120 points total)
but with disadvantages, and specific power limits to keep
things a bit more sane than just a pool of points spend as you
please.
The game gives 6 power
level options with power level 6 offering 400
points to build a PC. After making characters with my groups and seeing
how effectivee power level 3 was, I don't
dare go near that end of the spectrum, simply because the 120
points for power level 3 went a LONG way in building some characters.
(I get a sense of near Avengers power level if your playing a tightly
focused hero here.)
From here the next
few
pages due give a fairly detailed break down of how to make a
character, with examples. The only confusion we had came from the
fact that there are some options (Body Points, Wounds, or optionally
using both)
that came up in the character generation process. Since I'd decided to
keep it simple we just went with Body Points (hence
forth though I'm using wounds, I much prefer a non-HP style system,
but for the playtest and the fact that I started with 3
players and ended with 6, I went for the ease of use, especially
since all of them were new to the game.) The option is a good thing,
but needed a bit more explanation I think before bringing it up in PC
creation.
The game covers a general broad
category of attributes and as my players discovered skimping on
any of them costs more than you expect. Wealth for example can be impacted by Presence and Knowledge, KA an important pool of
points in the game is based on Presence and
so on.
Attributes
- Reflexes
- Coordination
- Physique
- Knowledge
- Perception
- Presence
I'm not sure why it needs two 'agility'
scores, other than some sort of six attribute symmetry, but with
Physique and Knowledge being so tightly merged for things like
Strength and Endurance, and Intelligence and Wits respectively it
seems odd to have two there. The Attributes get 4 faces of 6.
Skills
With standard D6 skills are slotted
under attributes and typically a skill is noted as being the focused
or honed use of an attribute. In general you can default
back to the attribute in many cases meaning attributes are a steal for
most players, even though seemingly expensive compared to skills. .
Skills listed on the pc sheet (but with
room to add your own are)
- Climbing
- Brawling
- Dodge
- Flying
- Jumping
- Melee Combat
- Piloting
- Riding
- Sneak
- Lifting
- running
- Stamina
- Swimming
- Marksmanship
- Lock Picking
- Missile Weapon
- Sleight of Hand
- Throwing
- Business
- Demolition
- Forgery
- Gadgetry
- Languages
- Medicine
- Navigation
- Scholar
- Security
- Tech
- Artist
- Hide
- Gambling
- Know How
- Investigation
- Repair
- Search
- Streetwise
- Survival
- Tracking
- Animal Handling
- Command
- Con Charm
- Disguise
- Intimidation
- Persuasion
- Willpower
Some of the skills are oddly slotted
under attributes--Know How under Perception rather than Knowledge
(both are about knowing things, one tends to be a bit about
cobbling/tinkering mechanically a bit to: How to do X, but still
that's more knowledge to me at least) but the creators didn't seem
to agree. The skills aren't anything new or wonderful but they are
serviceable and solid, dependable if you
will I give them a 4 of 6 faces on the D6.
After the above things are done (and
secondary stats, Body Points, Ka, etc, are determined) heroes also
get to choose a heroic archetype--this is important and cool thing,
sort of a motivation for your hero as well as a personality hook, it
helps give them a skill/attribute or other bonuses
as well as helps them earn back KA when they are brought up in play.
Archtypes
- Adventurer
- Bravo
- Comedian
- Icon
- Outsider
- Protector
- Rogue
- Scientist
- Warrior
We also get a list of villainous ones
which I guess are useful for GM's or if the game is taking a
different bend.
Villain Archetypes
- Megalomaniac
- Nihilist
- Crony
- Anarchist
These archetypes also receive
a bonus to the character design process for the choice specific to
the archetype chosen.
I like this aspect as it helps hone and
shape some parts of a characters personality in a mechanical way,
without being a straitjacket. It is also far more of a
carrot than a stick. I give these ideas 5 of 6 faces. I'd have liked
motivations been more impactive (but I'm
picky that way.)
Now I am not going
to list everything
of the game. I'd likely be abusing the review database that way. There
are disadvantages and advantages of varying ranks possible from
Rank 1 to 4+ determining their degree of severity. You can also
create your own using the same logic as went into the basic design
process of the pre-made ones, which is always a huge feature. Meaning
you are not limited to just what is written.
POWERS!
Powers are part and parcel of the
super-heroic experience, now sure, they are often a trapping to aid
create vivid elements of action against dramatic back
stories, but let's face it, powers are cool. Godsend Agenda
does not shirk its duty, although its not breaking new ground here, in fact
its treading mostly the same ground as other supers games. Powers
cost a certain amount per level, and certain
modifiers can be added to each one (or some modifiers can be added to
any power.) The increase its cost and provide more utility, or decrease it as the
case may be.
Now for all the things it covers it is the glaring
omissions that I must note. No web-slinging. No Slinging style power.
Nothing to simulating shooting a line and swinging from building to
building as a power, or even something as a close
approximation. It might have been missed completely
if not for the fact that the very first PC we created was
envisioned by the player as having said power. He could turn
invisible, was a tough martial artist, and could swing on
a line.
The Phantom Monk, was of course this
heroes name. We managed to cobble together said power using flight
(which isn't particularly apt in this case, its
speeds a bit excessive and it lacks some advantages of
stability/grappling that the swing line may have.) but it worked as a quick and dirty solution for this
situation.
The character creation was fairly simple affair of
assigning points though it would have
been nice to have the old template idea from Star Wars D6 carried on
in spirit with classic supers filled out but for names. The point system is nice but
created a few odd quirks. Like the fact that our Phantom Monk, and our long lived razor
clawed feral private investigator, whose name I forget but
suspect it was infringing on some popular IP or another, were SYMBIOTICALLY linked.
We never explained this but I thought it it a fun twist to get points
and made the Phantom Monk a bit of a sidekick to our
feral persona. The other pc's took a bit longer we ended up with
beyond the symbiotic ally
linked duo, a sonic blaster heroine, a teenage playboy stunt
bicyclist with electrical powers, a former
criminal who had done his time and was now
reformed elastic, multiple limb person who
was also chameleon like--our own little
Octupoidal friend, and a person capable of
transforming to steel (and who was mostly resistant to
electricity--note my standard invulnerability rant will follow.)
If
you write a superhero game with a power called "Invulnerability". Make it
make sense please. A person should be invulnerable to the named item,
element or effect, or some major aspect of it. In this case it was
optimal armor that could make one ALMOST completely resistant, unless
you didn't spend enough points on it to get it high enough to do so. It
won't break a game for a hero to be immune to a limited effect.
Electricity, Fire, Bullets (say a vampire.)
Please. Please, remember
this game writers. Its ok for heroes to not be vulnerable to all the
same human things we are, especially super-heroes.
Pardon the digression.
Powers are broken up into categories
Physical, Defensive, Mental, and Movement.-
Physical Powers
- Accelerate Healing
- Ambidexterity
- Amphibious
- Chameleon
- combats Sense
- Darkness Projection
- Drain
- Duplication
- Elemental Sheath
- Endurance
- Enhancement
- Entangle
- Extra Limb
- Fast Reactions
- Flash Attack
- Healing
- Immortality
- Infrared Vision
- Intangible
- Invisibility
- Life Support Longevity
- Luck (Good)
- Luck (Great)
- Mimicry Molecular Mimic
- Natural Weaponry
- Omnivorous
- Paralyze Body
- Poison
Secretion
- Ranged Power Attack
- Regeneration
- Shapeshift
- Sonar
- Stretching
- Super Attribute
- Super Senses
- Super Tracking
- Sustenance
- Transfer Attribute
- Vampiring
- X-ray Vision
That is just a basic idea of some of the
things you'll find. I'm a bit surprised that while say Ranged Power
Attack is your energy blast modified for flavor to do lightning, etc,
the same logic isn't used to turn X-ray
vision, or Infrared Vision into a modified Super-senses element.
Again this is just a minor hiccup really not a flaw, just a
perceptual thing to me when examining a game from the outside, their
may be sound reasons for the separation.
For example Super Attributes provide some specialized benefits OTHER
than just having a higher than normal attribute, so its worth taking
a note that most attributes don't get short shifted when enhanced
like they sometimes do in other supers games (Strength being the one
usually most versatile in super-hero games.)
The enhancement system is pretty basic
its simple +/-X per rank where X is a number cost based on how
valuable the advantage is or how limiting the disadvantage is to that
power.
- Area Effect
- Armor Piercing
- Double Range
- Extra Knock back
- Misc. Enhancement (Do it yourself YAY!)
- Multiple Targets
- Persistent
Effect
- Range
- Selective Area
- Transferable to Others
These are general non-power specific
ones, and most powers have a few of their own, Flight for example
having Glide as an option for a limitation.
Powers when needed are controlled by an
attribute/managing skill combination in many cases, where you roll
that basic ability to perform some action with the power. This makes
the whole skill costs being so cheap thing pretty attractive if you
want a character good with their powers and not just powerful.
Powers section as a whole get a 4 of 6 faces.
Nothing wrong that makes them nightmarishly difficult, but nothing
too brilliant. Yet at the same time, the game does what it does in an
earnest well set forward and crisp manner.
The basic system is always with D6
games of this sort: Attribute (or power)+Skill dice, as a pool rolled and
added together to beat target number, there is always a wild
die--a die of a different color but still part of the basic pool. It
is used in a couple of ways. If a 6 is rolled on the wild die, it is
rolled again, added back into the pool, each time it rolls a six it
again is rerolled so it can explode to quite significant numbers. If
a 1 is rolled however, bad things can happen, the nice thing is this
is a wild die that works. Not a broken fumbly
mess, in this case if a 1 is rolled the GM can choose to do one of
two things: have the 1 cancel out the highest other d6 roll in the
pool, and add all other dice to see if they succeed or fail. Or have
them add the dice as normal including the wild die but have a
complication occur. This to me is much cleaner and smoother way of
handling it especially for superheroes, complications are fun, but
not always needed, and a 1 in six chance of "succeeded
but with complication" is much preferable to "1 in six
chance of being completely critically failure hosed" to me.
One thing that strikes me is D6 is a
relatively simple at its heart game, yet they took time and effort
with Godsend Agenda making sure every T was crossed and every I was
dotted showing modifiers for this, that, and the other thing. This is
a bit bothersome to me because it encourages more by the book play
and rules lawyering rather than the more relaxed handling of Classic
D6 in Star Wars (1E at least). On the other hand it gives guidelines
and structure to those who really might not have a clue where to go
and what to do and when to modify rolls. So I'm giving the general
aspect of its completeness as rules a bit of a neutral 3 of 6 dice
here.
Skipping ahead through modifiers,
encumbrance and other things we get to!
Gadgets
Now many superhero games have
overlooked gadgets, making them powers is an easy way to do it, and
logically works for some systems. Others have had their own gadget
based subsystems. Godsend Agenda has a few subsystems tied back into
the same framework as powers but with a bit of its own basic concepts
(ammo as a limitation for example). The chapter is not exactly
balanced, and seems a bit hurried, unlike powers where a bit more
care seems to have been taken. I like what it does but for a game
that is aiming at points and balances (like so many do.) its easy to
abuse the gadget system. So use it carefully and with GM input.
Gadgets process works like so
1) Buy it any Attributes it needs
2) Buy it any Skills, Powers,
Advantages etc.
Then we get to specifics for Vehicles
(if a Vehicle) deciding on its movement rate, crew total, passengers
carried.
Or if a weapon we get d6's of damage,
area of effect, ammunition, burst modifiers, and so on.
In general its a quick process to stat
up any mechanical whatsits you may want. None of the heroes I ran
built a gadget but I did in set up building a high tech bow as a
weapon for a Seraphim, it shot flaming explosive arrows. It was very
deadly and cheap.
The heroes once created by assigning
points to attributes, powers, then derived figures for ka, luck
(character points) and calculating body points among the give
and take of advantages and disadvantages and deciding to get or not get gadgets, went off on their first
adventure. In order to get into the die-rolling monster
bashing goodness, I just arbitrarily used the good old giant monster
they team up to fight, utilizing a giant eel like kaiju
creature in the bay. The battle resulted in us testing quite a few
rules bits, combat primarily but we also had to deal with
swimming, thrown cars (and lifting weights--seams our feral guy could
manage to launch a compact car as a missile weapon, quite handily, not as good as claws but
it was out in the bay, and he wasn't willing to swim out after it.)
The Eel didn't take long to deter and
provide the first clue (fizzing out into static), though the players
were determined to split back up to do their own
investigating. One expected his advantages to do it for him. Needless
to say all of them drew up quick blank one of the disadvantages of
not actually trying to do real legwork. Being it a one-shot none of
them (except the PI) focused much on any long term
investigative skills, or useful contacts (which is ok, its not a
games job to "define" the specifics of a pc more finely than the
campaign and since this was a one shot well we didn't think over hard
on the idiosyncrasies
of it.)
The rest of the adventure went smoothly
with them fighting a giant moth (unrelated, a different plot if I
wanted to run this as a campaign), and then finally getting
together to try and track down both the power blackouts and other
"minor" clues to lead them to an abandoned oil refinery and
secret lair of Dr. August, Elohim Mad Scientist, who I decided was
our villain, and his son who he'd taught to use ka
(channeled through a funky weird
science device) to magnify his power to allow him to unleash his imagination as reality. In the form
of giant kaiju inspired monsters. Dr. August actually hadn't intended
to actually utilize the device yet, he'd gotten
caught on shore when the first one attacked and simply didn't connect
its appearance to his son and his son's power (he didn't
realize the giant monsters were created by his son, nor that he'd
left the device on, he is a mad and a bit erratic scientist
leaving his child home alone with powerful dangerous devices but he
did leave the high tech assassin bots as nannies.)
The heroes infiltrated the oil-platform
and found it booby trapped and nearly lost a party member when he met
monomolecular net at flying blithely down a corridor.
Caution was thrown to the wind of course but they finally realized
their mistake as the Nanny-Assassins began trying to take
them down with a railgun. Eventually they made short work of the
defenses, cut through the main door, and made it to the young
boy--who had no idea he'd done anything at all wrong as he was
sitting there readingcomics. Whereupon they Dr August showed
up and started questioning them about their breaking and entering
into his home.
Onwards to the World.
After the rules which take up about 100
pages (stats, skills, power descriptions remember take some space!) we get a nice timeline that goes from
AE-5 (whatever year that is.) to 4000BC (I note with fun that its not
BCE, the more modern and lame time usage.) then onward to June, 19th
2011. The timeline gives historic events notable to the aliens which
make up the Godsend Agenda universe, as well as a few human
noteworthy human ones as well. The later eras begin filling in the
metaplot elements. Now I'm not fond of metaplots, but here they at
least give us an idea of what's happening, and why, in the core book.
We then get about 20 pages expanding
this timeline and getting into the history and backstory of the game,
leading right into the first (alphabetically) alien species the
Angelos.
Angelos
Cloned Supersoldier Aliens who can't
manipulate Ka, instead bleeding it off in fiery wings and halos, who
serve El-the Emperor God of the Angelos and
Elohim (aliens). They use technology. Now this is where I most wanted
to point out that the first edition had a slight bit of superiority.
We get basic stats for Angelos, templates for using them and a
mention of playing the human-Angelos hybrid Nephiliam, but no
template or even disadvantage representing their Ka problems (the
first edition did have this disadvantage) apparently
Nephiliam are not required to take it to a severe degree but it is
mentioned but not provided as a disadvantage. That is the only point
really in the first editions favor one, tiny disadvantage. Other than
introducing us for the first time to this weird
wonderful world. The Angelos entries also discusses real world
religious elements and figures, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammed, none of
it is really blasphemous that I can tell to those involved in such
beliefs. Jesus is the real guy, as is Muhammed, and Moses. They get
historical mentions. The closest to blasphemy is that the Angelos
commandments are the same as Moses commandments given to him on the
mount modified apparently to
humans--suggesting that the Emperor Alien
inspired Moses through the Angelos, but its a subtle nudge and not a
huge slam. (and we don't know where El got the rules to begin with
either.)
Angelos don't get superpowers without a
good backstory and GM involvement, instead they get technology, alien
tech, up to including a brick sized nuke used to take out Sodom and
Gomorrah.
Beyond their history, religious impact,
and tech we get a look into the life of these near identical clone
people, and somewhat a concept of why they stray into human arms
occasionally and have children perhaps.
Atlanteans
For some reason Atlanteans were
smarter, better, ka-using, humans who ruled an enlightened golden
land at the pre-dawn of human consciousness. Atlanteans in short were
what they are made out to be in a lot of fictions, better still when
the Elohim and Angelos arrived, the Atlanteans had seers who knew bad
things would come (the Chimerans/Angelos/Elohim) and so they started
working to protect humanity and thwart such things--beginning back
then to engineer humans into potential superhumans. The fallout of
this isn't seen until present day of course. What I like is that
Atlanteans for once are in many ways the good guys, destroyed
eventually like all civilizations, due to internal strife, and
excessive success. Yet the Atlaneans aren't perfect, one of the main
villains of the setting is a Atlantean, and he's ruthless, smart,
immortal, and both technically and psychically/magically
(it's all ka baby!) proficient. Plus the Atlaneans had mecha.
"Colossi" what's cooler than that?
Black October
After Atlanteans we finally get to
humans, human, mutants, doomed to die before they turn thirty because
of the mutation taking a dark turn. They've got powers that will burn
through them and kill them dead. Inspired by Strikeforce Morituri but
with less urgency (and really its not much a disadvantage since comic
book superheroes don't tend to age once introduced.) The ideas are
sound for playing tragic, heroic, finally
gasp heroes who are also struggling to live as young men and women
with strange powers they didn't ask for. A rather unique twist on an
old cliche. I like Black October, I don't think I'd ever use them.
Not when there is so much more to explore, if the entire setting were
just Black October then I think it be much more interesting an
option. I am fond of the idea, but in a traditional supers world it
stands out as really needing to be its own thing.
Chimerans
Alien genetically unstable protoplasmic
mate with anything critters. These are the end all be all of uber
hive minded lifeforms, the fact that they in the setting are
responsible for many of our classic
monsters (from Dragons, to Manticores, to whatever.) as well as
members being able to be human looking makes for an interesting
concept. Cut off from the greater hive mind they tend more towards
individualness on Earth, and are supposedly the threat that
Atlanteans are afraid of, but they seem for all their dangers less
scary than the threat El and his armadas would be. Chimerans have
some weird things too, for example they can mate with anything, but
they impregnate their partner, never the other way around no matter
their apparent parts or gender, the
Chimeran DNA is rather, aggressive that
way. This can produce Empusa, hybrid Chimera-Humans that are always
female without genetic manipulation (another fun character option).
Sometimes I wonder of the writer was aiming for a high super squick
factor with some of this--religion issues, alien impregnation, etc.
Elohim
Finally we get to the biggest movers
and shakers the Elohim, mostly rebels and criminals transported
aboard a prison ship that crashed to earth, and their descendants the
Elohim took up the roles of ancient gods and goddesses,
Egyptian, Greek, Babylonian, Sumerian,
Greek (contrarily I think Zeus was Chimeran, he impregnated someone
with a touch!). These are powerful ka-wielding beings who are near
immortal too (like Atlanteans). We get their history the birth if El
(and its a strange origin story that interestingly enough may tie
into the metaplot if I read the clues right.) Very well presented and
thought out aliens again duly impressed. Though less impressed with
the research for example under the Elohim we get the magical
artifacts list--in them the Spear of Destiny/Longinus, its said the
"Spear that Killed Christ" sorry BUZZ! Wrong. In the actual
story, whether you believe in Christianity or not, the spear was used
to puncture his side--which caused him to bleed water, showing indeed
he was already dead on the cross. It takes very little research to
turn this up. It makes me suspect the other weapons as well. (I can't
remember Excaliber/Caliburn bursting into flames but admittedly with
the numerous Arthurian variations I'll admit its possible I missed
some.)
U.S.E.R
United States Eugenics Research
Basically the MIB/CIA of science and
superpowers in the game they create, vanish, and otherwise cause
dangerous things to happen in and around supers, as well as clean up
after them, ostensibly to to protect people
from the danger of super-powered beings. I like them in that they are
like most organizations of that type completely clueless on one hand
to being responsible for a large part of
the danger they fear, but many members earnestly trying not to cause
harm.
The score for the major players in
Godsend Agenda is 4 face of 6 faces on the old D6.
The last section is basically pages
261-275 is the GM section. It includes the variable quality advice by
other (and notable RPGnet denizens and
writers), that I again honestly suggest you ignore most of it and do
your own thing with the great background and wonderful rules you've
been given.
We get a villainous
organization (an evil band oh no!) set up to be used as an opponents,
as well as some independent heroes and
other sorts and finally we get some basic ways to simplify large dice
pools, handle toughness and weight of object,
and a one page list of generic people and animals.
It's a large book with a lot packed
into it. If your looking for a "D6 Supers" game you might
want to look into this one. Though a lot of the book is setting the
rule-set is decent and solid, and handles supers reasonably well for
a classic points and balances system, and its fairly flexible and
fast using the D6 system. The setting is also worth reading if not
stealing from, and defiantly usable
as is for those who want something other than "stereotypical"
super-hero gaming.
In general I give it a 4 of 6 faces, above average in most ways, not stellar, but damn fine D6 supers game.
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