The General Break-Down:

PDF file (from DTRPG - watermarked). 411 pages!

Pages 1 - 17 are the introduction to the game and basic concepts.
Pages 18 - 210 is pure setting detail including regional maps and several city maps. This is a remarkable section in both size and detail. It's Huge-a-normous!!
Pages 211 - 277 is character creation, race and culture, skills, talents, and callings; with plenty of options to keep everyone entertained.
Page 278 - 288 is combat.
Pages 290 - 346 is magic in all its glory.
347 - 362 is Equipment.
363 - 374 is Religion.
375 - 406 is the GMs section including advice on using the OMNI table™, environmental rules, diseases, and the bestiary.
407 - 408 Index.
410 - 411 character sheet.

Artwork

Overall I liked the illustrations in the book. They range from almost campy to alluring without overbearing the text. The maps are useful, easy to read, and pretty.

PDF complaints

Clicking on a bookmark should NOT change the view percentage. Let me do that. I'm smart. Seriously. Freedom people.

Layout

Gorgeous, easy to read, nice fonts, overall good looking. I would not suggest printing this one out folks. Just use it for desk reference and wait for the real deal hardcover. Your printer will love you. Besides, I don't really print out many of my PDFs so that is not a showstopper for me. You on the other hand may already be scrounging for a pitchfork or torch or something. Different strokes I guess.

The Quick Start:

OMNI system™ is a rules light system using that ever so recently famous 20 sided orb of plastic we all love (or love to hate) based on a touched-over-the-generations traditional pre-curser; the Talislanta fantasy RPG. A system that obviously pioneered some interesting ideas like 'one die to rule them all' and 'Talents (read: feats)'. Oh, and there are still no Elves. The irony of The Worlds Most Popular Roleplaying Game™ garnering any inspiration from a game that has no Elves is a fantastic bit of irony in my book. But I digress.

This game looks fast, simple, and fun. The detail of the setting alone is remarkable and the fact that the rules seem to drift into the background is all the better. There are enough rules here to give structure but light enough to get out of the way. One die for the whole system. One d20. These days that is going to be easier to find than those d6's you lost ten years ago from your Monopoly™ game.

The Whole Nine Yards ®:

The System -

Note that this applies to the universal OMNI system™ released separately by Morrigan Press™ as well.

Attributes are 0 rated and range from -5 to +5 for human norm (similar to but not exactly like Ars Magica). Skills are rated in positive numbers from +1 to +20 or higher; with a +5 rating being competent, +10 rating being professional and a expert rating at +15. Talents are like feats from that Worlds Most Popular Roleplaying Game®. There is magic and powers as well.

The simple elegance of the OMNI system is the OMNI table or more to the point, the resolution system. Basically you roll a d20 and consult the OMNI table taking into account some modifiers (like your attribute, skill and/or the difficulty of the attempted action).

One thing I really like about this - you state your intent and then roll to determine the outcome. That is a great feature and eliminates the "I stab him with my sword"; the roll misses; and you saying; "but a hole opened up in his torso and the sword passed through" over and over. "I want to stab him" and then letting the OMNI table outcome help you narrate the results makes more sense to me.

Here is the OMNI Table for your general perusal.

ROLL	RESULT
0 or Less	Mishap
1 - 5	Failure
6 - 10	Partial Success
11 - 19	Full Success
20 +	Critical Success

It looks to be a fast system. Combat is straight forward - you make an OMNI roll and your opponent chooses a defense (if they acted already in the round the multiple action penalty of -5 per additional action applies). If they make the dodge or parry then the attack misses, otherwise the attackers OMNI result is king.

Damage is static for attacks with a partial success doing half damage, a full success doing full damage, and a critical success doing full damage plus a critical. A critical can give you a nice penalty until it is healed or simply put you down for the count for that combat.

The system uses basic hit points with OMNI™ rolls to determine if you can keep going after being reduced to 0.

Magic and Powers of the Mind are a standardized system. You add your own color, description, etc. The modes are the building blocks of spells/powers while the orders are basically the "in setting" descriptive differences for "magic systems or traditions". It is a skill based system that has a natural depleting resource in a penalty that accumulates the more spells you cast. You invent your own spells but the system is structured (memorized spells, books, etc.); they don't consider the generic construction of spells to be "spontaneous" although there is some potential there for inventing a quick system that would do just that.

The GM section and the descriptive combat sections are chalk full of great advice on running a game with some verve.

Good Points -

— Skill improvement is done based on the number of weeks of training listed under each skill. Great concept. It ties into the pick up of the skill via time to learn it with training or just buying it with experience points. Gives you a ballpark on the nature of the skill's complexity too. A quick nifty way of doing it.

— Rules light, one roll across the whole system OMNI™ table simplicity. Nifty.

— Damage for NPC's. They advise in the book to skip rolls when HP are reduced to 0 and just let the little guys expire. Same suggestion in the critical wound section. Just another example of sound advice and keeping things moving.

— Modes. Magic is a fast, simple, yet thorough system that keeps things fun and straight forward. I see much potential here for enhancements and creativity.

Bad Points -

— The monster section is light but a bestiary is sold separately, so not a huge foul.

— I would prefer a strictly point based creation system. Attributes are roll to generate. Not a big fan of that.

— I am not too thrilled about threat ratings for rewarding experience. I think the elegance of the system would allow for any number of experience systems rewarding interaction, involvement, story contribution, etc. Rewards are important encouragements for the focus you want for your game. I think an alternative reward system should be devised.

— If you don't like rules light games then the system may not be for you (although you should consider trying it out sometime and seeing how rules light feels on ya…). Some people want hit locations, blood loss, movement speed scale ratios, and stuff. That is awesome. You might get a case of frustration inspired violent rage playing this however. For those concerned with allergic reactions to light systems; read the warning label and try it out on a patch of skin first.

The Setting -

The Atlantis setting of the Antediluvian world of before is quite frankly genius. The internal consistency combined with the breadth of the setting will fuel imaginations for many a fantasy game of almost any flavor.

You have everything from gritty dark fantasy to high fantasy to sword and sorcery to techno magic retro fantasy to pirates to amazons to Egyptian priests. This could be considered a lack of focus for some; however the recommendation in the book is to discard the elements you don't want in your game. After perusing this section for several hours I could see how you could easily remove something and not dramatically impact the setting. I was inspired more often than not. This setting is all kinds of tingling my fantasy buttons.

One thing that always makes fantasy a bit weird for me is portraying monsters. So how do monsters behave? With Atlantis - No problem. These ones were changed from humans during the first age. They are just twisted and messed up now. Not all of them of course. But they were human at one point. Easy breezy beautiful. Human motivations are easier to portray and we are capable of so much evil anyway that you should never run out of monstrous villains. Ever. Of course you have your animalistic monsters as well which you can portray like rabid hyenas. Or hamsters or whatever.

The standard fantasy races are there but you also get Druas, Satyrs, Goblins, animal-human hybrids, flying people, Ogres, monster-men hybrids and the list goes on. Lots and lots of choices. Don't forget the exhaustive list of human cultures you can pick from to customize the character. Coolest thing, the races and cultures have a nice feel to them. Not campy and trite. You want to play them.

The various nations, countries, and kingdoms have vaguely familiar names that inspire the ancient tales of yore from the dusty tombs of our universities. The backgrounds of these places are steeped with information about laws, religion, marriage customs, resources. The whole earth of ancient times is shown map wise. Each area is then broken down and detailed.

You could however just plain get lost in the whole setting section of 166 pages. There is enough detail here to be inspired, awed, and overwhelmed. I love the detail however and think it is a major asset of this work. This amount of information might intimidate some people. I would suggest starting in one place and moving out from there.

Summary and Verdict

This is a great rules light game, great writing, good focus, and all around a solid RPG offering.

Innovative? Maybe. It is in fact an updated version from a stalwart predecessor of yesteryear (remember when WOTC was a small publisher with that nifty tower logo…) and bears some semblance to that larger merged company's flagship product. More to the point, their flagship bears a semblance to OMNI System™, since it was around before d20™ became a trademark versus a dice notation.

The big fish for me is how it is put together and the focus the text places on details over rules. This stuff is top notch.

One more thing about quality. This is a super high quality book for the price. Even at retail a hardcover 411 page book for $34.95 is a steal. I am very impressed with Morrigan Press™'s commitment to this game line and the time they are taking to make it a superb one.

Links Please: Morrigan Press

Thanks for reading my Review!

Trentin C. Bergeron

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Post Title	Author	Date
Re: [RPG]: Atlantis The Second Age, reviewed by trechriron (5/5)	trechriron	April 18, 2006 [ 10:53 am ]
Re: [RPG]: Atlantis The Second Age, reviewed by trechriron (5/5)	Wyvern76	April 18, 2006 [ 09:57 am ]