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I admit it. I'm old. I saw Tron in the movie theatre when I was a kid and loved it. Ever since then I've been enchanted by the concepts of ghosts in the machine, be they humans or programs. Yes, I know its not realistic, but it can be fun. And I think Virtual accomplishes that.
Appearance
As a .pdf, its a glossy four color cover with black and white interior with matrix like characters as the background of the page. As a physical product, the cover is glossy and that's about it.
Setting
The short version is that its a updated D20 version of Tron.
The longer version is that the predations of AI viruses have ravaged computer systems - and in the process created AIs from some programs they effect, which are the characters. There are programs there that can pass for sentient but aren't (sleepers) and obviously are not.
The worlds of the setting are the computers that the player characters live and interact in, collectively called Program Space. They range from huge sprawling worlds of massive servers to small PC's. The basic building blocks are energy, code, programs and subroutines, and while the book doesn't say it at least superficially resembles the world of Tron, it is implied with some of the descriptive bits.
The two ample settings in Virtual are New York Hub and CalNet, two huge settings with different tones and aspects. However, for all the computer overtones, the world is more medieval than 21st century. Weapons and vehicles are fairly simple, as are the governments and organizations.
System
It starts as D&D 3.5, with substantial modifications. Character creation starts with the determination of heritage and form (which stands in for race from D&D 3.5). What sort of virus created your character (heritage) determines some character trait modifiers, as well as special abilties and some skill points. The heritages are: Absorber, Controller, Destroyer, Hider, Infector and Resister.
Then there is form - what does the PC roughly look like? The forms are: Userclone, Bantam, Titan, Primal and Prototype. Again, this phase of character creation determines some traits and capabilities, like speed, bonus feats, size and so on. Finally, there is class, which differs dramatically from the standard D&D with Antiviral (a monkish fighter type that can heal viral damage), Battle AI (fighter), Messenger (thief), Programmer (wizard), Thinker (sort of bard) and Webcrawler (ranger/ private investigator).
Magic is present in the system, with spells known as "Rewrites." The list of available spells is that from the Player's Hand Book, renamed to better fit the setting.
Skills are tweaked to fit the setting with modifications to Appraise, Bluff, Craft, Diplomacy, Disable Device, Disguise, Heal, Knowledge, Sense Motive and Speak Language. There are 22 new feats for the setting - Altered Form, Darkvision, Energy Natural Weapon, Extra Limbs, Extra Flight, Extra Subroutine, Flight, Homing Attack, Improved Flight, Improved Natural, Weapon, Install Personal Subroutine, Multiattack, Multiweapon Fighting, Natural Weapon, Quadruped, Ranged Natural Weapon, Rapid Processing, Rapid Reload, Reprogram, Swim, Weapon Interface, Resistant. These are pretty neat, but unfortunately many of them (like Extra Limbs) require 6th level characters, putting them out of reach from standard starting characters.
The systems (computers and networks that the PC's live in) are defined by the resources they have available (and the more they have, the higher the rewrite level that can be executed), firewalls, data access ports, anti-hacking scanners, anti-virus scanners and data regions.
Comments
Virtual comes across as a lot of fun and not too serious. It does have a sample campaign, and its one with high stakes - the fate of User space and Program Space. I also think this is a good example of how far the D20 system can be tweaked - even with the D&D 3.5 rules set. That being said, this setting would probably work a lot better with a more free flowing system, such as True 20, PDQ or FATE (and I may revisit the Virtual FATE rules set I tinkered with long ago).
Also, I'd have loved to have seen some code tanks and barely disguised recognizers from Tron, but you can't have everything.
Verdict
Horizon: Virtual is a neat little book that does what it sets out to do: pay homage to Tron and its successors, using the D20 system.
