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In other ways, Wild Talents just doesn’t cut it. It’s a high trust game because of an almost complete lack of character balance, and the power build options don’t map very well to the lethality or effectiveness of a power. The text can be very confusing at first, and there is a steep learning curve here. However, if you’re willing to invest the time, don’t mind a power disparity, and lack players that tend to “optimize” their characters then you’ll find an enjoyable and interesting game at a bargain price.
The Good: Wild Talents shows off incredible character creation flexibility. If you can imagine it then the system can handle it. At $9.99 this is a heck of a bargain for a full game.
The Bad: The book is difficult to read at times, and not all of the mechanics are intuitive. The system doesn’t do a very good job of balancing character effectiveness with the build points. This is a high trust game, since there can be some disparity in character effectiveness, and GMs with players who like making the “best” character possible may have trouble with it.
The Physical Thing
For $9.99 Wild Talents Essential Edition just doesn’t have any competition. 176 digest sized pages, a black and white interior, and helpfully reprinted tables round out this bargain title. The artwork has a consistent appearance, but in my view doesn’t look particularly sharp in black and white. The fact of the matter, though, is that you’re not buying this book for its appearance. It’s sufficiently easy to navigate, and has sufficient support, that no one should have trouble using it for the utility product that it is.Note: This is the version released at Gen Con 2008. It is my understanding that the book has since been revised for clarity, but since I don’t have access to that version I can’t offer an opinion on it. As always, check the review thread and forum for more up to date information.
Under the Cover
The Essential Edition is nothing more or less than the rules system from Wild Talents Second Edition. I’m afraid I can’t make any comparisons. This is the only version of Wild Talents that I’ve owned, and the only one that I’ve played. I ran three 4 hour session of a mini-campaign with Wild Talents, and played in another at Gen Con. Let’s start with system discussion and then move on to how the product worked for me in play.The core resolution mechanic is the One Roll Engine, or ORE. For those unfamiliar, ORE works by rolling a pool of d10s and using that one roll per player to run the whole round of actions. Players can roll no more than 10 dice, though larger pools can be helpful to deal with penalties. Matching dice are important as they determine the Width of a die roll. The die value is also important because it determines the Height of the roll. In general, Width tends to determine how quickly something is performed while Height tends to determine how skillfully it is performed. Results are typically listed as WidthXHeight, so if I rolled 3 tens I might say I rolled a 3x10.
In addition to normal dice characters may also have access to Hard dice and Wiggle dice. Hard dice always roll the maximum value, 10, and so are well suited for some defensive powers (perhaps a suit of magical armor) but poorly suited for some offensive abilities (say, martial arts, since you’re always going for the kill). Wiggle dice can be set to any value. Because of this they’re very powerful and extremely desirable for powers where the character has a lot of control. A master martial artist specializing in joint locks, for example, would do very well with a bunch of Wiggle dice since that way he could easily target any hit location.
Hit locations? Yes! The Height of a roll (value rolled) will determine where the attack struck. A 10 is the head, and as you would expect the head is the most vulnerable part of the body. Lower values are limbs. This means that with Wiggle dice a character can much more easily attempt called shots, and the called shot mechanic simply involves dropping one die from the attack pool and setting another to any value.
In action scenes players take turns declaring actions based on their Sense Stat, and then everybody rolls dice. Actions occur in order of Width, which results in some characters having to choose whether they want to try for more Width or Height based on what they want from the action. Width is particularly important for defensive actions, since if an attack occurs before your defense you don’t gain the benefit of the defense. Successful attacks not stopped by armor or defensive abilities deal Stun or Kill damage directly to a hit location. In play I found the ORE system to be very easy to learn and teach, and I think it’s an excellent mechanic. The only problem I had was in how difficult it could be to set up a defense at times. In general, passive defenses that are always on seemed to be much more useful than actions held for defense.
That is the whole of the system in play. There are rules for action splitting, environmental influences, and a variety of other situations, but the above is all most folk need to know to dive right in. The only other thing of note, before we move on to character creation and powers, is that the game sports easily adaptable minion rules. Since minions are fairly easily taken out, but remain abstract, they can be adapted to environmental perils and other threats with ease. I found the minions to make running most situations on the fly very easy.
All characters have Stats and Skills. Stats include Body, Coordination, Sense, Mind, Charm, and Command. The Skill list covers about twenty Skills, some of which require specializations in a specific area (like Mind Skills). For those so interested, I think you could dump the Skill system and use exclusively custom Skills like “Navy Officer” and “Stunt Pilot” to provide a more character focused feel. Many dice pools are formed by simply adding a Stat and Skill together.
One important derivative Stat is Base Will. While the game makes use of Willpower, which can be spent to add dice to rolls, overcome mental domination, and for other benefits, Base Will is really the core of the character’s mental strength. It is sometimes spent on extremely potent abilities, such as those that can alter history or radically change reality. It can also be converted into Willpower, which is important because when a character runs out of Willpower their powers notably degrade. Willpower is gained and lost by upholding or failing to uphold the things that are important to a character, and because of this whole sessions can easily be sculpted around what a character cares about most. Base Will can be replenished by spending experience points.
Stats, Skills, and Powers are purchased with points, typically from 100 to 500 depending on the power level of the game. Stats normally range from 1 to 5 for human beings, but some will go up to 10 for super humans. Stats, Skills, and Powers can all have normal, Hard, or Wiggle dice. Hard and Wiggle dice cost 2x and 4x more points, respectively. It’s easy to handle abilities like super strength by simply assigning a few Wiggle dice to Body and moving on.
The super powers creation system is where things can become confusing. Depending on your play preference, you’re likely to either love or hate this system. A variety of pregenerated powers are present, and they do a good job of covering all the basics. Telepathy, Invulnerability, Flight, and similar abilities are all included. This is very important because it provides a base reference point for the reader to start modifying and tweaking powers.
Powers are built on the assumption that they can Attack, Defend, and/or perform a Utility function. A simple fire blast might be Attack and nothing else. A player who really likes getting clever with abilities might take Fire Blast with Attack, Defense, and Utility. Defense means the power can be used to defend against attacks, in this case flinging bolts of flame to intercept them. Utility could reflect the character’s ability to produce flame for light, set fires, or even keep people warm by heating the air.
The dice chosen for this simple ability matter, too. If the player dumps 5 normal dice in then these are going to be relatively weak fire blasts, and the power won’t be very reliable. If the player goes for 10hd (ten Hard dice) then the blasts will always be at full strength. The big downside here is that called shots or taking in a bad guy for questioning simply aren’t options – it’s all or nothing. 5d + 3wd (five dice plus three Wiggle dice) might reflect both power and a very strong degree of control, allowing the player to easily get whatever height and width desired.
Of course, a fire blast will have other modifiers as well. First of all, the Attack is probably going to hit fairly hard. Damage is normally determined by the Width of a roll, modified by any weapon. We could increase the Attack quality to +2 so that a fire blast now deals Width+2 damage to Height hit location. We can also add a whole host of Extras and Flaws to the power. Area will make this an exploding fireball. Mass will make it hit with force, knocking enemies and objects away. Burn allows it to set targets on fire, while Disintegrate could easily represent flames so hot they burn everything instantly to ash. There are as many ways to approach this power as there are characters in fiction with different forms of fire blasts.
Ultimately what may force us to really make a decision on fire blast is how many points we have to spend. Attack +2 is 4 per dice, Defend is 2, and Width is 2, for a base power cost of 8 per die. Let’s add Burn, which costs +2, for a total of 10 per die. A respectable 3d + 2wd will cost 110 build points. To demonstrate how robust powers can be, we can build a general Teleport power in much the same way. ADU will give us teleport attacks, defenses, and the incredibly useful ability to teleport. Adding Mass allows teleport to carry other people and objects. Throw in the Range Booster at +5, and now you have an ability for 13 points per die that can allow the character to teleport across the United States, fight, defend, and encourage imaginative uses.
Balance is not the goal of the system, and I can show you why with a quick example. See our fire blast above? Let’s add Engulf and Endless, for a total of 5 points, and drop the Wiggle dice. Instead we’re going to have 5hd for a total cost of 15 x 5 x 2 or 150 points. Now the power sets all hit locations of the target on fire forever. The book does an excellent job of showcasing this by providing an example of a power to turn off the sun, Suppress Nuclear Fusion. Even a low powered super could buy it. Note that I’m not being critical of the system for this. This is a design feature. For me, this is a blessing when I want to play with some of my friends and a curse when I want to play with some others. For groups that want to make exactly the character they imagine then Wild Talents is going to shine through, but be warned before you set this in front of a group of character optimizers and have them go to town.
In play I ran 425 build point characters in a medieval fantasy setting, sort of a super heroes in the high medieval era sort of a game. The biggest problem I had was that the characters with heavy armor or Invulnerability were very difficult to deal with at times. Mental magic could harm them, and NPCs in the know could attack other things that were important to them, but an awful lot of enemies simply had no chance of penetrating their defenses. Now, to an extent that’s exactly how it should be. This is a group of Justice League level characters after all. Still, though, were I to run another campaign using the system I think I’d be careful about characters with too much defense.
The other issue that came up in play is that it could be difficult to run several important villains at once. This is true of many other games, of course, but I found that ORE was having me roll about 40 dice for my 5 named bad guys every round. Minion rules just weren’t appropriate, because sometimes you just don’t want to have one big bad guy with a bunch of minions. Sometimes a bounty hunter team, Injustice League, or whatever else is the way to go. So, for handling a bunch of name adversaries be aware that a lot of dice setup could be involved. The easiest way out might be to rely heavily on Hard and Wiggle dice, on the GM’s end, to cut down on rolling.
One of the most enjoyable things I got to do was design powers with my players, and I was astonished at how precise I could easily make these abilities once I got a handle on the system. Here’s one of my favorite examples, to showcase the sort of stuff the game can do.
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Example: Naming 5hd. You have read the Book of Names, a sacred tome kept in the Ruins of Heaven that lists the names of all things that were, are, and will be. To know a name is to have power over a being. In addition to knowing the True Name of every person, creature, and object you encounter you may also invoke a True Name in order to aid or harm a being. This is an extremely powerful effect, but the power of words diminishes with their use. A being may only be Named once every new moon.
Harm: Deal 5hd Shock or Kill damage to all hit locations, resisted by Command + Stability. Aid: Heal 5 points of damage to all hit locations and cure all diseases and poisons. (In play I asked the player to name all the non-major NPCs) |
The book also provides some simple support in the form of a full example team of super heroes and stats for common animals.
Vs. Mutants & Masterminds
While I normally say little about how a game holds up compared to other games, I consider Mutants & Masterminds 2nd Edition to be one of the very best traditional super hero games out there. So, why would you want Wild Talents when M&M already has tons of support? Pick M&M if you have players that tend towards character optimization, or if game balance is important to you. Toughness and other Save caps based on Power Level, along with damage caps, result in a game where no one character is going to notably rock the boat. It's also easier to run fights with multiple detailed villains in M&M.
Pick Wild Talents if you’re less interested in game balance and more interested in injecting some realism into your game. If you like hit locations or gritty play then it’s an especially good choice.
My Take
This is a frustrating review for me. I really like the game Wild Talents. I think it has a few flaws, namely in power balance, but I like it so much that I intend to make more use of it in the future. The Essential Edition, however, is a poor introduction to the game. Considering that the game is even now in rewrite, and that I value the game in play more than the book (especially considering the cost), I’m scoring this product based solely on the game play I got from it. The fact that it’s easy to find people online to help out any problem or bit of confusion is a plus as well. Since I simply can’t review what the text you’re buying will look like, since my copy is a Gen Con release, this seems like the fairest and most useful way to approach this review.So, with some hesitation, I’m awarding the game a 4/4. I had a very enjoyable time with it in play, everyone had unique and imaginative abilities, and I found myself really enjoying the brutality of the system at times. The fact is that the Essential Edition is priced to give you the raw tools to play, and nothing more, and while its current incarnation does an imperfect job of it I anticipate the forthcoming rewrites for clarity will result in exactly the sort of toolkit I want.
To conclude, though this game has a high score make sure it’s the game for you. It’s gritty, lethal, requires a lot of GM trust or a lot of GM control, and ultimately is a fairly loose system. For me it works splendidly for certain types of games, and I’m already looking forward to my next opportunity to run it.
