A BRIEF INTRODUCTION: Blake’s 7 is regarded by many people the world over as a Science-Fiction Television series classic. The show was comprised of 52 episodes and ran from the late 70’s to the early 80’s. For those unfamiliar to the show, it is now available on DVD in its entirety. For those who have never seen the show before, don’t expect to be treated with an amazing array of special effects and CGI because you will be sorely disappointed. Blake’s 7 has achieved greatness and longevity through its excellent story line and character delivery. In addition to this, many great models including The Liberator spacecraft which is regarded by many as the greatest Science Fiction spacecraft ever thought up, have kept Blake’s 7 alive in the hearts and memory banks of many people. It continues to this day in the form of radio adventures, fan produced plays, books, stories, conventions and just maybe a return to the screen should the powers that be learn to work together towards that goal.
Now for those who know and enjoy Blake’s 7 along with those who are interested (or those who read the first review and wanted to jump out the nearest airlock without an EVA suit) here is my follow up review to the Blake’s 7 RPG, featuring a slightly less tired author and greater clarity.
LAYOUT: The book is divided into 14 sections, covering: Characters, Skills, Careers, Tasks And Skill Use, Personal Combat, Wounds And Injuries, Stress, Psionics, Space Combat, Worlds, Non-Player Characters, Refereeing, Equipment and Scenarios in addition to the introduction material. The book is 104 pages plus character sheets, the table of contents and is spiral bound with a soft card cover.
ARTWORK: The drawings and illustrations throughout are largely fan donated works and range from great to sub-standard and even hard to see. To its credit this is actually not as bad as it sounds, with may of the illustrations looking very sharp and accurate. In particular the weapons and ship drawings are among the best of the works with a handful of character drawings. Most of the less attractive artwork is fan based character portraits.
GAME MECHANICS: The game system requires D6 (Six Sided Dice), D10 (Ten Sided Dice) and D20 (Twenty Sided Dice).
Characters in the Blake’s 7 RPG have 10 main attributes measured from 1 to 20, where 20 is the best. These are divided into physical Attributes: Strength, Size, Endurance, Initiative, Dexterity and mental Attributes: Perception, Will power, Reason, Charisma, Empathy. These are all designated on character sheets by the first three letters of the attribute in upper case (for example Initiative (INI)). Attributes like Empathy (How emotionally stable a character is and how well he/she/it copes with stress) and Initiative (The speed of the character’s reflexes/ability to act under pressure) are welcome additions and should encourage aspects of play such as considering another characters feelings in addition to the played character. Will power (The character’s determination and ability to resist pressure and coercion) should also be an interesting factor for Referee’s to strip away control from those players that insist on being monopolizing or power hungry control freaks with there characters.
There is a printing error on page 10 which indicates that the procedure for generating a character’s attributes is detailed on page 6. This is incorrect and the best method is to use the Character Generation Worksheet which is located before the blank character sheet at the back of the book. The Example of Character Generation on Page 14 provides additional detail. The generation worksheet is simple and straight forward and it would be nice to see something like this in many other RPG’s.
The measure of a characters injury points, is given by the classic Hit Points system. This can be played with either a single figure (which initially equals: STR + SIZ +END) / 3 + 10) or by using the advanced hit points option, that uses fractions of the total hit points allocation to work out individual hit points for Head, Chest, Abdomen, Left arm, Right arm, Left leg and Right leg.
Character’s also have an overall wound status. This can have one of 5 levels, from Uninjured through to Dead. For those who use the advanced hit points style of play, there is also crippling injuries which can result in the character loosing an appendage or eye etc based on the affected region. This should create another interesting aspect to game play and food for thought to prevent the gung-ho players from charging in all guns blazing.
There is a Hand-to-Hand damage bonus (or handicap), depending on what a character’s STR + SIZ is equal to. This is established via a table during character creation. This is also used as the character develops through gamming.
Throw Range points determined by 2 * STR are used to assess how far a character can throw an object of 1Kg or less.
Load points equal to a character’s STR + END, measured in Kg, declare how much an individual can carry.
PSI Points, are an optional point system used if and only if character’s with Psionic abilities are allowed by the referee. All character’s who are non-psionic have PSI points of zero.
Another excellent optional points system is Stress points. This is worked out via a shaded box method which is somewhat like a simplified sanity points system as used in the Call Of Cthulhu RPG, however for those unfamiliar with this game, it’s based on a set of 65 boxes. The maximum stress is determined by the characters will power. The remaining boxes are shaded out. The system of determining stress points is also straight forward and if a character’s stress exceeds 5*WIL, the character also suffers a Mental Breakdown (determined by the referee). This should go hand in hand with the Empathy attribute to allow both players and referee’s a more thought provoking game in terms of character interaction and development.
The final phase of character generation is selecting skills. During creation each character’s attributes provides (5 * attribute level) skill points that are spent on purchasing skills. Each skill can have a maximum level of 100%.
OVERALL CONTENT: For it’s size, the Blake’s 7 RPG core book, is adequate in delivering enough material to deliver a great game for the fans. For less initiated gamers, it will prove to be somewhat lacking. For instance, the chapter on Worlds does not deliver any detail on any of the fantastic places encountered in the TV series. Instead you are presented with a list of tables and options for generating your own worlds. This alone will not satisfy many gamers. Then there is the proliferation of equipment, weapons and drug descriptions which combined with all the brief tables give the reader the impression that this game is mostly centered around the conflict amongst the players and with other possible NPC’s. This is backed up by the other more lengthy chapters such as Personal Combat, Wounds and Injuries, Space Combat and Stress, which are given much more attention to detail than chapters like Psionics and Worlds for example.
CONCLUSION: The Blake’s 7 RPG is clearly a work in progress that will hopefully be expanded upon as fans become aware of it’s existence. For the Blake’s 7 fan, this game will prove to be most acceptable and enjoyable. The more seasoned gamers may enjoy the challenge of filling in the blanks that the book leaves, however it is not a book that can be recommended to gamers not familiar with Blake’s 7.
While many gamers will want more, this game presents a great starting point and is far beyond other brief attempts such as this one: http://www.geocities.com/simonwashbourne/blakes7.html
A final point to be made is that Blake’s 7 was largely about the conflict between people and ourselves, so it’s no surprise that the writers of this game paid more attention to areas that deal with combat etc, however with imagination and the entire Blake’s 7 TV series to work with, there is an endless number of scenarios and campaigns that could be played and to start you off the book provides a handful of these.
OBTAINABILITY: To try the game out for yourself, contact Horizon from this site: www.horizon.org.uk
