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Greg Saunders
"A roleplaying game of desolation and redemption within the Sea of Leaves".
Although short, coming in at a mere 105 pages, Saunders have packed in a rich setting in "Summerland", even more so than his previous SF RPG, "Ruby". There is good to excellent artwork throughout featuring English middle-upper class landscapes with a 1940-50s feel with a faded-photo realism style (although according to the text it is set in the near future) with leafy borders. The sans-serif bold and decorated headings with single column sans-serif bold text throughout is easy on the eyes, especially for PDF distribution. The game comes with a fairly comprehensive two page table of contents, but no index. There are few, if any, spelling or similar errors.
The setting is based around "The Event"; the sudden appearance of a vast forest that was "destructively superimposed" upon human civilisation, destroying most infrastructure. It also came with a paranormal power, the Call, which seduced eighty percent of humanity into its depths never to return. The small remaining communities of humanity discovered that they could only resist the Call through strong human connection. A handful of individuals are able to resist the Call and travel through the Sea of Leaves; the Drifters, invariably people so traumatised in past experience that they resist the siren-song of the Sea of Leaves. The game has a strong setting; it expresses its themes as "survival, hope and redemption" along with horror and magic. Style is stated as action/adventure, investigation/discovery, and survival. The Drifters in seeking acceptance in communities must somehow overcome past traumas - but then be subject to the Call. As a whole, the setting reminded me a lot of J.G. Ballard's "natural psychodramas" such as The Wind from Nowhere, The Drowned World, The Drought, Vermilion Sands etc.
Walk Beneath The Green, Bark and Leaf
Characters are defined by Qualities (Body, Finesse, Mind, Empathy) and Tags. Twenty points are available to the Qualities with a rating of 1 to 9. Tags are descriptive of Qualities, negative, related to the character's past or job, hobbies or sports, or specialist skills. Every character must have at least one negative tag relating to a Quality and the highest rating Quality has two tages. Descriptive tags have a value of half the Quality, rounded down. Drifters also start with a specified Trauma value of 5, which can vary during play. The stated objective of the game is to reduce this value to 0, when the character has overcome their past issues and can reintegrate into society. Characters may invoke their Trauma during actions and conflicts in an attempt to reduce the Trauma scale; it reduces the difficulty and has a one in six chance of reducing the Trauma value; however it also has the chance of increasing Stress, causing the character to "Crack". Characters also start with outdoor clothes, camping gear and one or two specialist or sentimental items.
Events in the game are governed by scenes; action (individual vs the objective world) and conflict (individuals against each other) scenes are when a resolution mechanic comes into play - "when dice are rolled it represents a split in the story", one path equalling success, the other failure. In "linking scenes" no dice are rolled. Action and conflict is determined initially by statements of intent, the narrator explaining the consequences of failure, and the calculation of a score based on an appropriate quality, up to two tags, plus an additional assistance by others in the form of other tags. The difficulty of the action determines the target number that the score must succeed for success; from two dice for routine tests, to five dice for nearly impossible tests. Failure in conflict may cause levels of distress, based on the value of the loser subtracted from the winner (in a similar way to Over The Edge). Distress affects appropriate Qualities, so that Distress against Body represents physical damage, Distress against Empathy affects leadership and respect etc. Recovery of Body Distress is significantly slower than that of other Qualities.
Whilst the resolution system does have counter-intuitive elements (the difficulty varies where the score of the actors remains static), it is largely consistent and has some nice narrative elements. I am a little unsure with the suggestion that Body Distress recovers slower than that of other Qualities, and it does jarr a sense of balance and equality. A greater criticism that can be levelled is one common to a number of rules-light systems - they lack sufficient examples of difficulty levels to guide the narrator to play in a consistent fashion. Worse still, it doesn't have to be this way - it is certainly possible to develop a consistent and simple game system which provides many examples of common actions and variations and the difficulty levels they deserve. Summerland doesn't even given variation examples of conflicts based on weapons.
Beneath the Canopy and Under The Deeps
Setting information follows, based on what the average Drifter would know. Whilst an interesting and often evocative read in its own right, actual substance was largely lacking; it is is mostly an descriptive elaboration of the material provided in the introductory pages. This said, there a few nice new features, such as the extremity of seasonal changes which are orientated towards archetypal forms of forested spring, summer, autumn and winter. The presentation of human community members that have suffered the effects of The Call, and have become Lost or then Wild, the latter showing some of the characteristics of 'feral children', except with a desire to hunt humans who are not afflicted by The Call and the formation of communual living. Another interesting addition is the presence of 'unnatural animals', those creatures which, apparently due to the effects of The Call and the forest, have developed an ability to understand and plan. Finally, some Drifters speak of ghosts and spirits that inhabit the woods.
A second section of setting material is for Narrators. It is quite useful insofar it discusses generating the feel for Summerland and how to introduce and ambience of the setting and styles of play. It does not however, provide example maps, encounter and distribution tables, ecological advice etc. Thematically it struck me very odd that there is no information about, well, plants, which really should be a feature of the setting. There is a large selection of recommended source material is also provided, including such films ranging from Deliverance, The Blair Witch Project and Princess Mononoke to the comic series Swamp Thing (but very strangely, not The Day of the Triffids, along with a large number of scenario seeds. What is notable, and somewhat surprising, is that no specific
A Green And Pleasant Land
Overall, I quite liked Summerland for a number of reasons. The setting is truly excellent, the game system is simple and consistent and the presentation is very good as well. What it does lack is development, both in setting and system. The author has done a good job at choosing an evocative environment and has carefully selected identifiable core features and character archetypes which will enhance play and mood a great deal. However ultimately one is provided with the bare bones (but what bones!) and a GM will have to do a lot of work to make this into a usable game and setting.
Style: 1 + .7 (layout) + .7 (art) + .8 (coolness) + .7 (readability) + .6 (product) = 4.7
Substance: 1 + .2 (content) + .6 (text) + .7 (fun) + .5 (workmanship) + .5 (system) = 3.5
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