The Basics

Boomtown Planet uses a success-counting d6 dice pool system, with the minor twist that players must declare “odd” or “even” before every roll and only count success that come up odd or even. Die rolls are based on one of six Traits – Strength, Endurance, Fortitude, Perception, Essence, and Agility – with skills (a.k.a. “Tricks of the Trade”) being of the “have’em or don’t” variety. In other words, if a character has a skill, the player rolls a number of dice equal to the governing Trait; if he doesn’t, the player’s stuck rolling a single die, no matter what.

Note that Tricks of the Trade can be improved by one die, but only once per skill. Consequently, characters may only be experts through natural ability, not through training.

Playtest: The system’s serviceable enough. I don’t think it would work for me long-term, given the harsh limits on ability increases, but the relatively small dice pools didn’t bother this generally dice pool-averse reviewer. I do think the difficulty levels run a little too high, though. At first I didn’t think that was the case, but then I realized that I’d forgotten the “odd/even” rule. This, combined with the relative lack of pulpy dramatic editing, left the characters feeling rather helpless to me. Even if a given game session features no combat, blown investigative rolls are bound to slow the game to a crawl. And speaking of investigative rolls, I ran into a bit of a snag almost immediately regarding Tricks of the Trade. When two of the reporters attempted to talk their way past a guard to snoop around a factory, I discovered to my dismay that the game does not contain any Trick of the Trade resembling “Fast Talk.” That seems like an awfully big oversight for most games, let alone a game about nosy reporters.

Maybe you’re wondering about what defines an “average” Trait score? I’m not completely certain, and I’ll explain why in just a moment. However, I can say that the difficulty scale runs from 1-6, that lacking a Trick of the Trade means that the player can only roll one die regardless of the associated Trait, and that if an action is, for whatever reason, flat-out impossible, the player can still roll and hope for two 6s to come up.

Effectively, then, the game isn’t set up to mirror superhuman ability levels very well. Once you get past 6, everything is simply “impossible for a human,” but progressively more likely for beings with higher Trait scores to accomplish. Lifting a building is no more difficult than lifting a car.

Aside from anything being theoretically possible for almost anyone, the system shows its pulpy leanings in two more ways. First, once per session, players can call for a “retake” of a situation gone horribly wrong, allowing the entire event to be started over from scratch. And secondly, characters can spend ten experience points to purchase one Luck Point, which in turn can go to the purchase of a single automatic success and leave only the degree of the success to chance.

I love the “retake” idea in concept, although in practice I’m not entirely sure how far it’s fair to “rewind” before the “retake” begins. And while I’m not much of a fan of auto-success mechanics (as opposed to bonus-granting mechanics), I can deal with them. The only problem here is the fact that this one’s based on experience points – which characters earn by actually writing stories based upon their adventures – meaning that starting characters won’t be able to pull that particular pulpy trick.

Combat

Combat sticks with the basic mechanic for the most part, the only real exception being a 1d6 added to Agility – rather than a roll of the Agility dice pool itself – to determine initiative.

Characters with appropriate Tricks of the Trade roll a dice pool based on the related attribute against a base target number of 4 for ranged combat, and I’m assuming that same base target number holds true for hand-to-hand combat as well – the book doesn’t say. Sniping (based on Fortitude) reduces the base target number for all firearms attacks to 3, raising the question of why someone would take Fire Weapon (based on Perception), all things being equal.

The system applies modifiers for such things as cover, targeting multiple opponents, automatic fire, and aiming for specific body parts, although it does so with some inconsistencies between varying the target number and adjusting the dice pool. Ranged weapons do damage based on a flat dice pool, while melee attacks do damage based upon the attack’s Strength plus one or more d6s.

Accuracy has no direct affect on damage, but called shots to the head do double damage. The rules for using Dodge seem rather harsh, as the defender must divide both his dice for attack and for defense by two if he wants to attack and actively defend in the same round. Bear in mind that dice pools aren’t going to be that large in the first place and that many PCs have no combat abilities at all.

Characters can take up to their maximum Damage Sustenance Point (DSP) level in damage with no ill effects, may fall unconscious at zero DSP, will fall unconscious at less than zero DSP, may die without successful medical attention at -10 DSP, and will die at a negative DSP level equal to their maximum positive score.

Playtest: Combat has stubbornly refused to come up in my game sessions to date, so I decided to run one of my own, pitting staff photographers Paige Mercy and Pearl “Frankie” Hunter against one another in a no-holds-barred cat fight! Now, I expected Frankie, who has the Hand-to-Hand Trick of the Trade, to make short work of Paige, who does not. As it turns out, though, that 50/50 shot at getting in a hit was plenty high enough for Paige to put up a good fight, especially since Frankie’s extra successes did nothing for her regarding damage. Even with Frankie’s extra point of Strength over Paige, the two of them kept trading blows and inflicting damage every round. When I had Frankie try to get fancy with a head shot, she ended up just missing her chance to hit that round, allowing Paige to win this little war of attrition. Then I decided to see what would happen if Frankie split her dice pool and used Dodge (which is also used to parry). That changed the equation quite a bit, since Frankie, with two dice on Dodge and two on Hand-to-Hand, had a better than 50-50 shot at blocking Paige’s punches and still had a better chance to hit – a trick that Paige couldn’t duplicate with her one measly die. Played out that way, Frankie made short work of Paige – not because she was hitting more often so much as because she was blocking Paige’s blows. This is assuming that the number of dice rounds down, that is. The rules aren’t at all clear whether this is the case. If the dice round up, then there’s no reason for an unskilled combatant to decide against both attacking and dodging – she’ll have one die on both no matter what. So, clearly, Dodge plays a pivotal role in combat in the game. Unfortunately, none of the mandatory pregen characters have Dodge…

Magic

While the setting presumably includes all manner of strange supernatural abilities, the rulebook includes only two very specific varieties of magician: the Ghost Talker and the Seer.

In both cases, the magician in question starts out with a basic ability for free and gains new abilities in a predetermined order for 10 XP at each step. For the Ghost Talker, this means going from being able to converse with ghosts to being able to affect them directly to being able to assume a ghostly form himself. For the Seer, this means starting with a minor sixth sense and moving on through seeing the past and future up to remote viewing.

Obviously, no fireballs here. If you want to create an evil sorcerer to vex the PCs, this really isn’t much to go on.

Character Creation

There isn’t any.

No, seriously. There is no character creation system. PCs must be selected from among the sixteen pre-generated members of the Boomtown Planet’s staff: one editor, one managing editor, four lead reporters, four columnists, two inside sources (a P.I. and a Syndicate thug), two photographers, and two junior reporters. All of these are completely “grab and go,” although that may be small consolation to players who can’t find any PCs that suit them.

It’s also worth noting that only five of these characters have any sort of combat ability. Considering the fairly unforgiving nature of the system, then, character selection will have an enormous impact on the sorts of adventures the GM in question will be able to run without presiding over a slaughter.

Playtest: This resulted in some grumbling on the part of my players, and a least one outright decision not to play. On the other hand, as could be expected, the pregens got play started more quickly, avoided having players attempting to min-max reporters with unlikely skills, and (thanks to the personality descriptions) provided built-in relationships between the PCs.