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Splicers is a post-apocalyptic / horror game from Palladium Books where a sentient computer has taken over the planet using an army of robots and humans fight back from hidden, underground bases. The basic premise may sound familiar, but Splicers manages to make itself unique by using some interesting twists in the setting material: the computer has multiple personalities (some of whom don’t want to kill all the humans), the computer has unleashed a sort of robotic plague that prevents humans from touching/using metal, and humans (called Splicers) use suits of bio-tech power armor made from mutated alien DNA to fight back.
Setting/Background
The setting of Splicers is clearly designed to be modular; the game leaves quite a lot of other information up to the GM. One of the biggest is what exact planet the game takes place on – is it Earth or a human colony world? The humans have long since forgotten, all records are destroyed, and the computer keeps re-shaping the planet with new cities built to resemble historical ones, and terraforming the ever-changing continents. Some people have a really hard time with suspension of disbelief over this part of the setting, but I quite liked the flexibility it offered.
Instead of a map with different geographical regions, the book simply discusses the different kinds of areas one may encounter on the surface. A wide variety of territories can be found – city ruins, android-filled copies of ancient civilizations, vast fields of human remains, nature preserves with alien creatures, and even simple towns of humans kept as zoo animals by the computer. The information gives the GM a lot to work with, without being tied down to a specific map of areas.
Human societies are not described in any great depth, either. Humans live in underground cities carved out of the rock, and belong to “houses”, groups controlled by a warlord (acting as president-for-life). The largest and most successful human house is described; any others are left up to the GM to create. Many possible non-robot related stories are hinted at in the section – wars between houses, civil unrest by the legions of the poor within a house, and hints that the developers of the bio-technology may have plans of their own (adding a nice aura of mystery to the bio-weapons). Also discussed is the robotic plague and its various effects. Unfortunately, this inventive aspect of the setting ultimately ends up feeling a little too forced. There are several strange exceptions to the general rule of “don’t touch metal” that seem arbitrary and contrived. It’s still usable, but some people may have problems sustaining their disbelief if they try to apply too much logic to the setting.
Characters
When you’re talking about characters in Splicers, you’re really talking about two different things – the bio-tech armor itself, and the human inside of it. Creating the human is pretty much standard Palladium – with the classes of characters based on the type of suit they use. Some characters specialize in stealthy suits, some in flying suits, some in assault suits, etc. There are also a couple of odder choices – such as classes where the characters ride a bio-engineered war mount, or humans who are immune to the plague and can touch metal without fear.
But the Splicer bio-armor itself gets the most treatment in the book. The system for developing the character’s armor weapons and other features is a points-based system (based on Palladium’s BIO-E system from its mutant animal-themed After the Bomb game). There are more than enough interesting options here for a whole group of characters to each develop their own niche.
Antagonists
The seven major personalities of the insane computer are all described in the book in detail that gives the GM an idea of what they do and how they act. The book also mentions the computer has any number of minor personalities that generate from time to time. This is a nice touch, leaving the GM free to form any number of minor personalities to plug into the game.
All kinds of models of robots are presented – androids, giant walkers, flying ships, tracked tanks, animal-shaped robots, and even giant robot cannon towers shaped like a chess rook piece. There are no rules for creating your own robot designs, but it wouldn’t be too difficult to put some stats together with all the examples presented here.
Unfortunately, there is one glaring omission in the rule book. Several chapters mention the alien creatures that roam the planet – even suggesting that the humans perform frequent hunting missions to get raw materials for their bio-technology. But no aliens are ever listed or even described in the book (though there is a feeble note that some monsters from Rifts or other books might be used). As no sourcebooks have yet materialized for Splicers, Palladium really should have added a few more pages or cut some extraneous information to add a couple of sample creatures – or at least some kind of random creature generator.
Rules
Splicers uses the familiar set of Palladium Megaversal rules common to all of their games. A lot has been said before about the Palladium rules so I won’t go into details. I will say that the Palladium rules seem to fit well with the game and I did not notice anything in the rules that interfered with the setting or mood.
Layout and Design
The weakest part of Splicers, by far, is the abysmally poor organization of the book itself. The book is not really broken up into chapters – merely different sections with large headings that appear in a random and disorganized order. Game terms are thrown into the text long before they are explained, rules are hidden inside passages of background text, and the rules for developing the Splicer bio-armor appear before the rest of the character creation rules (meaning a lot of page-flipping at chargen).
There are also a lot of assumptions of the reader’s knowledge being made here. Anyone who has played Palladium games before won’t have a problem. Anyone who’s played any role-playing game before will probably be able to figure things out. Anyone who’s never played a role-playing game before will have a very hard time of it, indeed, as there are no notes on how to play a role-playing game at all.
Art and Style
The interior black-and-white art was done by an entire team of artists (Drunken Style Studio) and it shows. Several different, distinctive styles of art are placed all over the book. The difference in appearance (and talent) between the different artists’ images is quite noticeable and distracting. But what’s worse is that several pieces of art are recycled in the book, despite the large team of artists and the book’s modest size.
Conclusion
If you can get past the amateurish layout and can accept the game’s premise, I definitely suggest picking this one up. It’s a fun, unique setting with a lot of potential.
Substance is a 4. Lots of cool ideas and toys for players. The book could have been a 5 if it had contained the missing creature stats and some adventure scenario ideas.
Style is a 2 (or perhaps a 1.5). Most high school yearbooks are put together better than this.
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