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It's been a while since I've reviewed an RPG, so I thought it was about time to dig out something new. Well, as chance would have it I recently discovered "Corporation" at my local gaming shop. It being made by a new British company, and since I live in the UK, I thought I'd give it a go. I like to support new start-up companies when I can, especially since this particular product showed so much promise from its web-based promotional material. I don't believe that this product is available in the Americas yet, so here's your chance to get first glimpse.
For those of you who haven’t seen the banner advert or the website, Corporation is a futuristic science fiction game much in the vein of Cyberpunk, but with the emphasis on five enormous corporate entities that effectively rule the world – a bit like Sony and Microsoft, but with genuine political power and personal armies.
First Impressions
When I first plucked the shrink-wrap off the product, I was struck with decidedly mixed feelings. The book is a sturdy hardback of a good size at 256 pages (a nice binary number if ever there was one) and a rather pretty shade of what I think is blue (I'm colour-blind). However the cover art itself is... well... frankly it's dull. We have a rather ugly, slightly cross-eyed old man who for some reason reminds me of a thinner version of Robert Llewellyn showing very faintly in the background... and that's it. Not very attractive, not very meaningful, and certainly not very evocative of the game's setting. In contrast, the two pictures on the back cover are very much in-theme and a lot more appealing.
Flicking through the pages produced an equal amount of hope and concern for the gaming future. Interior artwork is frequent and a good proportion of it is in full colour, but its quality differs considerably. A lot of it is undeniably excellent work, but there are also a fair few mediocre attempts amongst the gems as well. Worse still, there is nothing here that really tells a story. There are some lovely establishing shots of scenery and plenty of corporate types standing around looking foreboding, not to mention some very accomplished (and some less-accomplished) pictures of technology and equipment, but there are only three or four pictures that approach being action scenes, and even in those the principle characters aren’t doing much more than standing there. I finished admiring the art with the distinct impression that this was a beautiful technological world full of people who liked posing in armour and showing off their cyberware, but who didn’t actually do much.
There are also frequent advertisements for goods and services scattered through the book in place of artwork. I cannot decide whether I like this approach or not. On one side they give an interesting insight into daily life in the world of Corporation – something sadly lacking from the rest of the book’s artwork – but on the other hand the artwork of these adverts isn’t the best. Not actually ugly and they do have a certain amount of sterile style to them, but they certainly aren’t the kind of thing you’d look at for pleasure. It’s mostly just pretty patterns and text.
Finally the book contains a fair few brief pieces of fiction, mostly to illustrate specific points. These do their job in a competent manner and are reasonably well-written, but none of them really grabbed me so much that I just couldn’t stop reading, and all of them were very brief. Also, I just can’t take characters with names like ‘Kincaid’ or ‘Tex’ seriously for some reason.
Where the Hell Am I?
The individual page layout is quite attractive. It’s a double-column spread with artwork used to break up the flow of the text in an attractive manner, and intelligent use has been made of box-offs and sidebars. The border art is attractive but unobtrusive, and the pages are full colour with a nice gloss to them. However, the information inside the book is presented in a haphazard and unintuitive manner. The first thing you’re presented with is your character’s starting equipment, although the actual equipment chapter doesn’t come until after the character creation section some 20 pages later. Similarly we are given explicit examples for the use of each skill in the game long before we are told how to make a skill roll at all. The one that really amuses me though is that the first mention of the basic skill roll on page 138 references the reader to an alternative method for dealing with large numbers of dice… which is written on page 34, more than 100 pages earlier!
Opposed rolls are described in the combat chapter under the heading ‘Miscellaneous Actions’, as if the only time they might be necessary is during combat! This is the first inkling I received that the game was going to be mostly combat oriented.
This rather eclectic approach permeates the whole book to an extent. It doesn’t make the game unusable by any measure, and when you finally do get to the rules they are reasonably well described. However the fact that the rule section is placed so far into the book is very incongruous, and having to squirrel through the rest of the book to find all the additional little side rules is extremely annoying. The only chapter that comes after the rules is the GM’s section, which at least makes sense, but the game also involves complex subjects such as psychic abilities (Telepathics) which one really wouldn’t want to dip into without knowing the basics of the rules.
Character Structure
The agents that players of Corporation portray are cast in a well-used mould indeed. There are seven statistics (Strength, Endurance, Agility, Reflexes, Perception, Intelligence and Presence) most of which seem fairly well balanced. I’m not over-sure about Reflexes, which is mostly used to determine Initiative and (I think) how fast you can run. The book presents two methods for deciding your starting attributes, but the two essentially boil down to the same thing: points distribution. Your character also has a number of skills to which you assign one of a number of preset values, so for instance you get one skill at level 8, one at level 7, three at level 5 and so on. Things like hit points and telepathic energy are based on mathematical formulae derived from your stats. There are also things called ‘Trainings’ which are more or less the same thing as D20’s Feats.
The most vaunted aspect of Corporation characters though is the selection of licenses that you have to choose from. A license basically gives you official permission to carry out certain activities that would otherwise be deemed illegal, such as taking combat drugs, fielding heavy ordnance and killing people. Yes, the game actually does have a license to kill. I did like the license mechanics, but I couldn’t help thinking that a little more could have been done with them. Still, they are a welcome addition and add considerably to the corporate atmosphere.
The character sheet is clear and attractive, although you may find that you have to write quite small in some of the fields. The ‘notes’ section is laughably small and there isn’t anywhere to write about the appearance or back story of your agent, but at least these are factors that can easily be recorded on a sheet of scrap paper and don’t require constant reference. One thing that I did like is that the publishers have kindly provided an NPC sheet with cut-down information. The only shame I can see is that it contains less information but is just as big as a standard PC sheet. Can’t help thinking it would have been more use if it had been smaller. Still, beggars can’t be choosers and it’s a bonus addition anyway so I’m giving that little detail a thumbs-up. An even bigger thumbs-up goes to the blank Mission Briefing sheet that you can photocopy and use to give your game a more authentic feel. It even has the word ‘Confidential’ written in large, unfriendly letters across the middle. Nice.
Basic Rules and Methodology
The rules themselves, when you finally reach them, are understandable enough although I can’t say that I’m enamoured of the author’s writing style, which feels a little awkward in places. Still, the important thing is that he gets his points across. The core mechanic of the system is a fairly bog-standard roll-under system. Roll 2D10 and add the results together, aiming to get a total that is less than the sum of your skill and an appropriate statistic. The difficulty of the task is adjusted by applying modifiers to the character’s skill/attribute total. It’s nothing special, we’ve seen it before, but it feels as if it ought to work well enough and that’s what you need in a dice mechanic. As ‘Weapons of the Gods’ proved, funky mechanics are interesting and amusing, but they can be hell to explain to a group of inexperienced players.
There are also nice, simple rules for critical success and failure – two 1’s on the dice constitutes the former, while two 10’s is the latter. This means that there’s always a 1/100 chance of either. Some might be a little irked that a highly skilled individual is no more likely to achieve a mighty success than a humble newbie, but with the chances of doing so being so small, this shouldn’t be a factor. Additionally there are other rules for degrees of success that DO reflect higher levels of skill, so that’s nothing more than a minor niggle.
One thing that worries me about the game is that it is possible to create a character that is extremely competent at certain tasks right from the word go. If you take into account that a statistic can begin at 10 (and be raised even higher with cybernetics) and that your highest skill begins at 8, then it is possible to have a skill with only a 3% chance of failure at an average task at character creation. And this is before you use the ‘sympathetic bonus’ rules and equipment bonuses to add even further to that. You can expect this game to be a trifle overpowered I think. Still, the standard modifiers for task difficulty seem steep enough to counteract this problem to some extent – the proof of the pudding will definitely be in how the game handles combat.
Combat Situations
Here we go… this is where the game will either fall to pieces or pull together… combat! There does not appear to be provision for Social Combat in Corporation, and the whole game is clearly geared towards fighting rather than social interaction. Although this would normally put me off, I am not marking it down as that would be a purely subjective reaction on my part, and the game as it stands will appeal greatly to the Gamists in the audience. Just because I don’t like that aspect of the game doesn’t mean you won’t either.
With personal reactions to one side, I’ll get on with the review. Any frequent Role-Player will be familiar with the combat system used by Corporation. Initiative roll is Reflexes, plus the result of a D10, and the highest acts first. The number of attacks you can make during one round is determined by the weapon you are using, with small light weapons such as pistols yielding more attacks than larger ones like rifles. Interestingly, machine guns have a very low number of possible attacks but a high damage. The effects of spraying an area are dealt with using separate rules (which I might add appear in the Equipment chapter, again more than 100 pages earlier than combat is actually explained – I don’t like to go on so about one problem, but the book really IS awkward to navigate).
Attacks are made in the usual manner by rolling under skill+attribute. Unusually but understandably, Perception is used for making ranged attacks. There are some nice touches when it comes to dodging. For instance, one option is to take a negative penalty to all your actions for the current round, with the advantage that everyone firing at you suffers the same penalty. This is only effective against ranged attacks. In close combat you always get to apply your Close Combat skill as a negative penalty to your attacker’s roll, but if you’re fighting against more than one person in close combat you have to share that penalty between them. Though the many options given do add something in complexity to the system, they are so straightforward that they are not difficult to remember. Nevertheless I think making some ‘cheat sheets’ to help new players remember the rules would be a worthwhile investment.
Incidentally, the average starting HP for a new agent is around 34. Most advanced weapons do about 2D10 damage, so average out at 10 damage per hit. This places Corporation in the middle ground between instant death territory and superhuman resistance to injury. Using the most deadly weapons, it’s just about possible to kill the average unarmed starting character with a single blow without requiring a critical hit. I think this is just about right for the style of the game.
Combat Nuances
As was mentioned previously, Corporation’s system also features ‘Trainings’ which, in case you hadn’t guessed, are the Corporation equivalent of D20’s Feats. Suffice to say that these seem to be pretty well balanced, and mostly offer extra utility to the combat system (such as not needing to split your defensive bonus between your attackers in close combat) or added bonuses to certain types of roll. To be honest I am not very fond of some of the non-combat trainings and would particularly take issue with ‘Interrogation’ which seems to infer that ONLY agents with this training are capable of twisting information out of an enemy. Personally I don’t see why it shouldn’t be possible to achieve the same result with an appropriate skill such as Psychology or Presence. Needing to buy a particular Training as well negates half of the utility of the skill while bringing nothing extra to the game. I would be inclined to remove this and other Trainings like it from the game and say they are simply not necessary. On the whole though they seem to work as advertised.
The rest of the combat system is pretty standard and can be taken as read, but it’s nice to know that all the rules you might possibly need are included. There’s means of handling called shots, two-weapon fighting (showing some distinct D20 influences), healing, fire damage, falling and so on, and although the rules on explosives and automatic weapons are mysteriously located in the equipment chapter adjacent to the weapons they apply to, they are there if you know where to look.
Health is in the form of Hit Points, the character loses consciousness at zero and thereafter loses one point of Intelligence per round ‘as their brain dies’. Naturally they are totally dead when Intelligence reaches zero. This only applies to ‘Agents’ though, as most normal humans just continue to lose HP until they hit a negative score equal to their Endurance, then die. The thing that troubles me about this is that there is no buffer zone between ‘unconscious’ and ‘dying’. If you’re out cold, then you’re going to croak pretty soon if you don’t get medical attention. It also means that a stupid agent dies faster than a physically weak one, while a strong human lasts longer than a clever human. This seems to be somewhat anomalous.
Toys, Toys, Toys!
The real strength of Corporation comes in the range and diversity of the equipment it provides. There are enough toys and gizmos here to keep even the most avid technophile grinning away for hours. You’ll have seen a lot of it before, but there are plenty of nice little twists and quite a few genuinely innovative ideas in amongst the regulars. It has to be said that a lot of the weaponry seems to have been inspired by Quake and Unreal Tournament, in particular the Flak Launcher, the Blade Launcher and the Rail Gun (yes, it can shoot through walls and comes with an X-ray scope to assist you in doing so – remember how fun that was in UT?). Also there’s the nigh-obligatory lightsaber rip-off, which in this case is the Plasma Sword and the Ion Katana. Still, originality can be overrated and people would only complain if there weren’t any powered weapons available. At least these are physical blades that have been enhanced with energy fields, rather than blades made entirely of inexplicably sharp light.
Being a Cyberpunk-esque game, the cybernetics side of the equipment list is also pretty meaty and has some funky options which I don’t remember seeing before. That said, I was never a Cyberpunk fan, so I may be wrong, but a lot of these body mods are new to me at least. I particularly like the ‘flat hands’ mod. Basically, you can make your hands collapse into useless floppy lumps which, while no good at all for holding or operating things, are easily pulled out of tight restraints such as handcuffs. Classic. All the usual bases have also been covered, from concealed weaponry to total limb replacement, so you shouldn’t go wanting for anything here.
Telepathics
I don’t know… I really don’t like that name. Oh well, it’s just one word. I suppose the motivation was to avoid similar words that had already been used like psionics, but I just find the word Telepathics strangely cumbersome. Still, a minor matter. Moving on. Corporation allows for player characters with telepathic powers. These run on Telepathic Energy, which depletes as powers are used. A skill roll is also required, with various penalties based upon circumstances and a whole bunch of extra rules that can be used to fiddle with the powers. It’s pretty darn crunchy. The short version is that you can pump extra energy into a power to make it easier, but the actual rules are a bit more involved than that simple statement might lead you to believe.
The telepathic powers provided in the core book are individually quite limited, and there’s only a modest range to choose from. The powers on offer are rather odd in that they comprise a mix of some of the more traditional psychic abilities and some of the more exotic ones, but there are several regulars missing from the line-up. For instance we have telekinesis and prescience which are pretty common in psychic systems, but there’s no telepathy or mind-reading abilities. On the other hand there is Jump (allowing you to leap large distances), Psi Blade (allowing you to create a close-combat weapon) and Assault (which functions rather like a personalised magic missile) which are far less common. This was, quite frankly, a bit of a let down although some hints are made within the book about a future Telepathics supplement to explore and expand upon the areas of psychic power that have not been exploited in the core rulebook. I think this is definitely an area that needs to be expanded upon, since as it stands there really isn’t enough here to make Telepath-heavy games worthwhile.
Again with the Telepathics we see that a heavy bias towards combat-related effects. Take prescience for instance. There are some (admittedly useful) tips that allow you to make use of this ability in combat, but no guidelines whatsoever as to how you might use it in non-combat activities. What do I do if I want my character to have a prophetic dream? No idea. No rules or even vague suggestions are made on the topic.
Background and Setting
The background that the game provides is interesting and varied, but don’t expect the same level of detail that you’d find in, say, Vampire: the Requiem. World history for example is maddeningly vague and mainly seems to consist of stories about the discovery of the Archons. The Archons are nine computer AI intelligences that were discovered in ancient ruins on Venus and returned to Earth, where they advanced human science considerably. Three of them have gone AWOL in the Internet since then, but don’t seem to have done anything drastic. It’s a nice little adventure seed with potential for some interesting gaming, but it practically dwarfs the rest of the setting’s history about the rise of the corporations. There are thankfully some smaller excerpts from history regarding each individual corporation later in the book which fill in some of the details, but the history section didn’t really do a lot for me.
The next segment of background is spent describing the five main corporations whose rivalry forms the backdrop to everyday life. Each has its own products, mindset and organisational structure, and fit into certain themes. The corporations are Ai-Jinn (organised crime with a heavy Mecha bias), Comoros (honourable teachers and telepaths), Eurasian Incorporated (enthusiastic capitalist militants), Shi Yukoro (technophile martial arts fanatics) and the Western Federation (expansionist idealist control freaks). In all fairness there is a decent amount of detail about the philosophies and jurisdictions of these corporations, although I would have liked to see more explicit detail as to how they interact with one another. For example, while Ai-Jinn seem to make most of the Cyberlins (mecha), the other corporations clearly make use of them. I assume they buy them from the Ai-Jinn, or from one of the minor corporations who also specialise in their construction, but I can’t be certain. Maybe they make their own.
Apart from the five corporations, there are also the UIG (United International Government) who seem to fulfil a similar role to the United Nations and also act as a kind of universal police force, and the Order of the True Faith, who as far as I can see are a kind of inter-faith religious organisation made up of all the religions in the world who are fighting against injustice and poverty and suchlike. It doesn’t appear to be a religion in its own right, and its members adhere to the tenets of their previous religions, but… well, I’m not quite sure. There are hints that there might be more to these guys than that. I would have liked to see more information on what religious beliefs and practices the Order of the True Faith have that are unique to itself, since it is mentioned in the text that some members joined the Order as a religion rather than being of a particular religion to begin with. Anyway, both provide valid launching points for non-corporate characters, but are clearly designed to be expanded upon in future supplements.
And Yet More Background and Setting
Well, Core Games certainly haven’t stinted on the amount of background information available, and to prove it there is another section of background detail covering everything from important places to other organisations that have yet to be touched upon, such as the Cult Machina (yep, it’s one of those pseudo-religious cybernetics worshipping cults) and a little more about the off world colonies that were mentioned in the main history. Most of the stuff seems to be setup for future supplements, but the information you get is meaty enough to base an adventure on and absorbing enough to read more than once. I particularly like the spire cities (with accompanying illustrations) which are rather pretty if a tad far-fetched, but then where would science fiction be if we couldn’t willingly suspend our disbelief a little?
GM Assistance
There is an expansive chapter right in the back of the book to assist the Games Master in creating an adventure. The information provided is useful, and although it’s not going to win any prizes for innovation it does what it sets out to do in a crisp, efficient manner and covers all of the bases to a small extent. You won’t learn how to make a better adventure here, but with the information contained you will at least be able to produce an adventure that works. There are also a number of adventure seeds, one for each corporation, presented in the style of mission briefings. I liked this idea, although being designed specifically for corporation agents they do all have a similar atmosphere to them. There are also several rather minimalist but nevertheless useful floor plans of various buildings, and some pretty solid hints and tips for designing your own. There is also an excellent and extensive selection of example NPC’s, robots and critters in the back that will help any game get off the ground with the minimum of fuss. Bravo for that, this is probably the best chapter in the book and I reckon might rank in the top twenty best GM guides ever, at least in games that are primarily based around conflict and military action. If only it had also addressed the non-combat side of things on equal terms with blowing stuff up it would have been perfect.
Final Synopsis
Corporation offers a new and interesting vision of the future that will mostly appeal to gamist players. This is obvious from the large amount of tactical crunch that can be inserted into combat and the relatively small amount of space that is dedicated to talking about social interaction. It is even more obvious from the fact that the GM’s section of the manual contains 100 mission ideas, nearly all of which boil down (more or less) to corporate rivalry and military action.
However the system provided is nonetheless not as intimidating as some out there, due to the fact that it operates around a solid kernel with numerous plug-in options; you don’t need to know ALL the tactics on offer so long as you know your own. This means that, while more narrativist play is not openly supported in the product, it can readily be adapted to such by any halfway-decent GM and the setting has plenty of ideas to support more cerebral campaigns.
Unfortunately it is somewhat impeded, though not totally crippled, by the haphazard order in which information is presented. If it didn’t have such a comprehensive index it would be a very trying experience to play the game.
Why Might You Like It?
Because it’s a new angle on Cyberpunk that more closely approaches a dystopian setting. It reminds me very strongly of both the Deus Ex and Syndicate Wars computer games, and would adapt well to replicate both. It also provides a detailed combat system with plenty of options, and the equipment section is replete with neat options and tasty ideas.
Why Might You Hate It?
The poor layout of the book makes it quite tricky to navigate until you get used to it. Information is introduced in a rather haphazard order that doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. The game is clearly almost totally combat-centric, doesn’t openly support social interaction between players, and nor does it go out of its way to explain non-combat resolutions to a problem.
