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I came to CORPS after a wearying search for the ultimate rules system that would be realistic, but not too much so. It would have the players be heroic—but generally human. They could impress the locals, but not tower over them like gods— But I digress. I am an old-school RPG gamer, and came up playing/judging games like Traveller, Universe, Morrow Project, Cyberpunk 2020, Mechwarrior, and 2300, where men were men, women were women, and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri – you got the idea. Generally, the concept of those early games was along the lines of ‘sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you.’ Modern games are generally a LOT more plot/judge driven, in which you are guaranteed not to go off the track until the climax, or not get wiped out early on. They frequently used the term ‘simulation’ in those early days—the RPG version of the ‘Kobayshi Maru’ test would occasionally occur to PC groups. Not so much now. Well, I was looking for a high-realism system that was not TOO encumbered with specificity, and was desperate to the point of beginning to design one, with a lotta fear and trepidation. And then, in a remainder bin in the regional gaming store, I found it: CORPS, the Complete Omniversal Role-Playing System, by Greg Porter. Perfect, but DEFINITELY a DIY situation: NO support for it except for an incredible pair of toolkit books—CORPS Vehicle Design System and Guns, Guns, Guns. So, to my spouse’s mild alarm (I was running Shadowrun, 2nd Edition at the time, chummer), I set to work. Five years (two graduate degrees, two children and two relocations) later I began to run my (semi) home-brew Space Opera game. I still was not fully ready, suns curse it: I recall one of my players telling me that I should ‘adapt some Traveller Adventures,’ so that we would have more to do. But I worked on it, hit the Internet, and found some of the stuff I needed for it; rules for cyberware, things to keep in mind about space travel and its effects on PCs, a listing of animals from Porter’s earlier game, TimeLords, and started working on homebrew rules about the rest of the unprovided useful material. Took a dammed long time, but I was slowly and surely tracking it down, like a burrowvarg through the Beta Canum Venaticorum forests. …whoops, Traveller 2300 flashback.
Now, CORPS as advertised does exactly what it says it wishes to do, which is present you with some rather crunchy, realistic, but rapidly playable rules, adaptable to most role playing genres—he even outlines which ones are not so good for the system—in a very streamlined, powerful package that contains everything you need as a judge to make a universe and start rolling up players. Of course, you have to do all of your homework first; read the very tight, minimally-worded rule set, design the skills tree, outline some societies in player-important terms, decide the technology level, etc. And there is no modern, off-the-shelf ready-to-run sourcebooks out there in the gaming stores. If you buy CORPS, you are willing to, in the words of our last president, “go it alone.” Perhaps you like it that way, perhaps you don’t, but you are willing to make your own universe, just so that you can use this excellently crunchy rule set on your universe. After a while, you get used to being alone out there; everybody else is using GURPS Space, or the flavors of Traveller, D20 Future, or,if they are willing to go with somebody else’s universe, Blue Planet or Fading Suns, or WH40K RPG. But you—you’re a lone wolf, totally homebrewed, short of designing your own RPG from scratch. Big sigh.
And then, along comes CORPS Rules Expansion by Ian Liddell, the guy who had cooked up the cyberware on the internet. It included all of the stuff I knew that I needed and didn’t have—a bestiary (and if I had to yell at Greg Porter about one thing, that would be it—ANIMALS SHOULD be in the original CORPS stuff!), a logical micro-ecology design sequence for animal encounters in the wilds, an extremely complete and Tech-Level Appropriate listing of cyberware, additional SF, horror, fantasy and space-based advantages and disadvantages, an extension of the wealth system into social status, rules to handle new special combat maneuvers, radiation damage, zero-gravity and high-gravity issues, modification and upgrades to the Paranormal/Magic sections, including some badly-needed rationales for joining in a coven or cult and new powers like Thermokinesis and Alter Probability. Most excellent, and a solid 3.5 out of 5 for content.
And then there was the material that I did NOT know that I needed, and didn’t have, which I will cover in some detail: First, there are rules for fear and panic. The Fear Rating of an individual character or creature is based on their aggression level (whether they are threatening toward you), their size, and their generally-known dangerousness. In addition, there is a modifier for the weapon a character is carrying that is dependent on societal view of the weapon—the computation of this Fear Rating is not that hard, but is detailed, and a function of the PC/NPC’s actions. That ALONE is worth the price of admission at RPG Now--$22.50. But wait—there’s more! The addition of rules for blowthrough and blowoff of body parts and limbs—essential in a game where the weaponry was designed to take down troops in Powered Armor. (Where I got those from, you may ask? The multi-supplemental Guns, Guns, Guns, from earlier. Props are well deserved, Mr. Porter.) The simply WONDERFUL cybernetics chapter, enabling one to make anybody from Luke Skywalker, to Steve Austin, to Neo and Trinity and beyond. Almost every concept you have ever seen in science fiction concerning cyberware and implantation, including such gems as the AI Companion—a buddy intelligence that you share your body with, a Brain Lock—that prohibits you from doing preset actions, and the Retinal Projector, which projects subliminal imagery from the user’s eyes to the target’s retinas, making him/her open to suggestion. An excellent list, showing that you have read extensively from the cyberpunk genre. (Anybody else remember Walter Jon Williams’ excellent Hardwired? Didn’t think so.) Anything that’s missing can be easily designed directly from the basic CORPS rules set, given the constraints restated in this supplement. Last, and out of the blue for me, there’s rules for Power Groups, from the 1st Edition CORPS game. Now THAT is an incredibly useful thing, esp. for us folks running Modern/Future/C’Punk Genre games!! Defining the group, you can work out the relative balance of power between groups in your universe, and from that, the conflict level, the interference/assistance level a given organization can muster, and exactly how visible one of these Power Groups is to the world in general. Priceless!! That kicks this supplement up into the stellar, must-have levels for me, and I give it a 5 out of 5 for substance. Warning, though: the Power Group rules were originally written by Greg Porter, who is noted for NOT wasting any words; read carefully and well.
Lastly, the art in the book: in a word, variable. There are some good examples; the pictures in the bestiary were very subject-evocative; in addition, there were some wonderful tech pieces (As an SF judge, I liked the tailless rotor vehicle on page 4 particularly) scattered through the text, but if you are getting this independently-published rules expansion to a strongly do-it-yourself game, you are probably not buying this book for the wonderful art. (Though I gotta say, I love the cover…!) So Mrs. Kimmins and Liddle, you did okay. I was not looking for massive art breakthroughs and did not get them, either. 3.5 out of 5 for appearance. That having been said, the layout of the book was much like its mother text, CORPS: smooth, concise, and precise, with no hassles or misplacements, and the Acrobat document had no weirdnesses either—you are veteran, skilled internet publishers at Applied Vectors, and it shows. So an overall 4 out of 5 for Style.
So, overall: 4 out of 5 for Style, 5 out of 5 for substance. Loved it, or at least liked it a lot. For us DIY old-school RPG judges, this was the bomb. Seeya, Space Cowboys!
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