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The screen itself is quite good looking. It is a tri-fold screen on heavy cardstock, featuring a striking montage painting by Samuel Araya. There are five pictures in the montage, featuring flying Talents, telekinetic Talents, and dueling Goldberg Scientists. My only complaint with the appearance is that the painting covers two of the three screen panels, while the third panel repeats one of the sections surrounded by a border and titles that match the rest of the Godlike line. I would rather have seen new art on this panel, but this is minor—the screen looks great.
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The interior of the screen is filled with useful information as usual for this type of product. All the information on the screen is readable and cleanly laid out using the same font and table styles as the rest of the Godlike line. Each section provides a page reference to the Godlike rulebook for additional information. Godlike does not rely on a lot of table referencing during play, so the creators had to make some choices on what game rule information was most important. While I don’t agree with all of the choices, the space is filled with a few unconventional but interesting fundamentals.
On the left panel is a lot of information dealing with Talent powers. It contains the costs for Hyperstats and Hyperskills, as well as very quick-and-dirty tables of die costs and power properties for “gourmet” Miracle creation. The screen also includes the costs for most of the “cafeteria-style” Miracles from Godlike and Will to Power. The only Talent creation rules not on the screen are the Extras and Flaws. The rest of the space is filled with a summary of the rules for using Talents defensively. At first, I was not crazy about the Talents section, but the more I thought about it, the more I liked it. What this panel allows is the simple creation of NPC Talents on-the-fly, eliminating the need to flip though the book looking up rules. This will be a great time saver for a GM who needs to adapt to unexpected player situations.
The middle panel includes most of the combat rules. It contains the probability chart for a given dice pool size, the effects of the Body statistic on combat, a breakdown of the combat round, special attack and weapon qualities, hit locations, wound effects, and the rules for called shots and multiple actions. I find Godlike combat to be extremely simple and easy to play, so this section was the least helpful for me. I did like the special attacks section and the wound effects, but found the rest less useful. The turn sequence is basic, multiple actions and called shots are intuitive, and the hit location information is available on every character sheet. On the other hand, combat is the area where things get the most bogged down in an RPG, so nearly all screens include combat rules.
The right panel includes a listing of standard weapons (standard weapons are the generic stats for a weapon type—the difference between “pistol” and “Smith & Wesson .38 Special”), rules for range and aiming, and a large section on using, gaining, and losing Will. The weapon charts are quite useful for creating and keeping track of NPC armament, but I was a bit surprised by the inclusion of the Will rules. Will is a central game concept as the basis of Talent powers, but I found that concept came through in play well without much need for rules referencing.
How well do these choices of information work? Quite well. The screen is chock-full of good information. Are these choices the best pick for Godlike? Based on my game experience with Godlike, there are some rules that I have had to reference more than others. To ameliorate this, I would have liked to have seen at least some of the following included: rules for grenades, armor, basic vehicle properties, character movement, dodging, cooperation, and cover. All content choices are subjective, however, and my problems are not everyone’s problems. I understand why Arc Dream made the choices they did, and I respect their reasons. There are no problems with how the information is presented—it is clear, free of typos, easy to reference, and quite attractive.
Looking at the screen as a whole, it is clear what Arc Dream is trying to do. Godlike contains many elements that are different from other superhero games and other RPGs in general. This includes the One Roll Engine (ORE), which utilizes a somewhat unconventional resolution mechanic. Because of this, the game can take some getting used to for players who are used to turn-based games with different measures for success. In order to streamline the adaptation process, Arc Dream chose to include the core concepts of Godlike—the most central and different elements of the game—on the screen. Everything that makes Godlike be Godlike mechanically is represented here (if I had to tell someone what is cool and different about Godlike as opposed to other RPGs, I would tell them about one-roll combat, Talents with Hard Dice and Wiggle Dice, and Will as fuel). All of these elements are represented on the screen to help players over these hurdles—to minimize the impact of these unique mechanics with quick reference to these rules and tables.
While this organization does favor newcomers to the game over longtime players and GMs, that fact hardly makes it useless to veteran fans of the system. There is a lot of good information here for the longtime GM, even if he or she just wants to reduce the number of bookmarks in his or her rulebook. This is a fantastic looking GM screen. The excellent artwork makes it a nice centerpiece. The information on the screen, while it may not be tailored to anyone’s specific needs, will be useful in every Godlike session.
