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The Book Itself
The Encountered is a 285 paged full color landscaped hard cover. It has the same production values as the core book did, which is to say some of the best, if not the best production qualities in the TTRPG industry. The landscaped format allows the book to lay open easily for game play. The art in the core book was amazing, and the Encountered is no different. Each and every creature write-up has its own piece of art that takes up at least three quarters of the page, making this book an even better “coffee table” art book than the core.
The Content
An Introduction
The Encountered begins with an introduction that explains the purpose of the book such as quick summaries of the folio page numbering and the layout of a creature write-up, which I will go into some more depth on later. The introduction also warns of possible meta-gaming misuse from players who read the Encountered and know creatures’ abilities and weaknesses. Any GM worth his salt already knows this, but for a new GM it’s an important item to be aware of.
The introduction concludes by talking of the New World Science & Engineering Commission or the NWSEC. The NWSEC is actually two different things to a GM and player. The first is an in-game association that’s mission is to explore, research and discover the new and remarkable flora and fauna of the AO setting. The Encountered is written as if it were a manual or database of the creatures “encountered” by the NWSEC. The second side to the NWSEC is an actual database wiki that GMs and players can post their own creations for AO, whether this is creatures, characters, equipment, or adventures.
The Anatomy of a Creature Write-Up
After the introduction we get a chapter explaining the layout of a creature write-up. The top of each page has three main sections. The first is the “Creature Category” number. The creature category is actually three different numbers separated by periods, exactly like the folio numbering in the core book. These numbers represent the type of creature it is, the category level or “challenge rating” of the creature, and a simple ordering number in that respective order. Each write-up has two columns to the side of the artwork. The first column provides the Qualities, or stats, of the creature its movement scores, and it’s Armor Thresholds for each type of damage. The second column is all of the fluff describing what the creature is and its natural behaviors in normal environments. Along the bottom of the artwork is a chart that contains all the basic attacks of the creature, which includes their rolls, ranges, damage amounts, and also includes their ranks in skills they possess. Laid over top of part of the artwork is a section which contains any special abilities or attacks the creature may have.
I currently run an AO game twice a month and have used the Encountered Preview and now the actual book in play. The layout works extremely well making everything easy to find, speeding up play for me. The category number helps me to know exactly how tough a creature I am using. I really like that the unique special attacks and abilities are separate from the normal, it allows ease of play and reminds me to use them as a GM to make each combatant flesh out in description. I did notice that one thing they dropped in the official release that was in the preview was the Roll Bonus. In the preview the Roll Bonus was a number added to virtually all rolls by the creature and was suppose to emulate the level of power of the creature. It was a nice idea, but the execution was poor. It wasn’t the best indicator of actual power in play and it was left up to GM fiat what skills the creature could use it with. The category level is a much better solution to me for judging power levels and so this is one GM who doesn’t mind them dropping Roll Bonus at all.
This section concludes with a glossary type section explaining the short hand used for certain sections of the write-up, especially the Special Abilities/Attacks section. It has a few abbreviations that can take a game or two to get use to, similar to most creature manuals out there.
The Creatures Themselves
The creatures of Alpha Omega have been categorized by the NWSEC into one of five different groups. These five groups are:
- Freaks of Nature-Freaks of Nature include natural organisms that have been unintentionally genetically manipulated such as through mutations from radiation, disease or chemical and biological agents.
- Tech Fiends-This category covers all creatures of machine or partially made of machine such as robots, cyborgs, Artificial Intelligences and other mechanical automatons.
- Abominations-Abominations are creatures that have been intentionally created through experimentation. This experimentation could be from perverse genetic engineering to necromantic wielding effects.
- Spiritual Creatures-Spiritual Creatures are those beings comprised predominantly of Alpha or Omega energy. Often they can only be affected by those same energies, though some have the capability to interact with the physical world.
- Demons-The NWSEC has often debated what demons are, the consensus for now is that they are physical beings that have been heavily corrupted by the dark Omega energies.
Each of the different categories of creatures has their own chapter filled creature write-ups. Each category level, 1-10, has multiple creatures. Some of the creatures are downright scary, this creature manual does not play around and is a much more adult setting than say Dungeons and Dragons. There are not any cute Gnomes or Elves in this world. Instead we have robot assassins that are designed to look like toddlers just playing in the park, or Giants imposed entirely of corpses clinging to each other to form one collective monstrosity.
With a quick glance it would appear over half of the creatures are linked to one of the new factions, and sometimes core factions such as Loth. To me personally, the new factions are what really start to flesh out the setting of AO, especially in tandem with the creatures’ fluff. It also is quite a nice thing that I apparently was thinking along some of the same waves as the Mind Storm guys so that when I started to read the new factions, several things “clicked” with my current story arc and the ideas started brewing. The new factions introduced are:
- Augmented Sentience-This faction is composed entirely of AI that took over an Arcology in the Canadian Rockies and believes that it is in their best interests to eradicate all biological life from the world.
- Colonials-The Colonials are a group of expansionist mutated insects. They very much remind me of the Xiticix of Rifts. They follow a similar hive structure with a Queen leading the warriors and workers.
- Garra Zenteer-An extremely militant faction that now controls almost all of what is now Columbia. It is led by a secret group known as The Creators and the faction is almost completely comprised of cybernetic creatures. Most the members of Garra Zenteer are “turned off” unless their services are needed, social situations are not common.
- Legion-The Legion were once Ophanum that have been corrupted by the Omega Convergence known as the Dark One. The Legion have left behind their lives as Ophanum to be the many of the Dark One.
- Scag-The Scag, or Scientific Agnostics, were once scientists and researchers who once secluded themselves away from the capitalistic world to work on their genetic research. Eventually their genetic manipulations became their way of life and they became a society where failure was rewarded with devolving genetics and success was rewarded with more powerful genetic alterations. Most of a Scags technology is biological in nature grown in a vat. The governments and media of the arcologies and mega-cities portray the Scag as cannibalistic savages, bent on destruction.
- Technocratic Coalition-Tech-Coa is a community that finds it roots in a military force of a Switzerland arcology, when the commanding officer realized his government was using him to poison or destroy thousands of innocent lives, the officer and his unit instead turned on their government and protected the innocents. Now the Tech-Coa is the most powerful organization in Germany and is comprised of nearly 3 million people. Tech-Coa soldiers are all cyborgs and to them is a natural way of life.
- The Damned-The Damned are creatures that have been taken over by parasites that have been corrupted by the dark forces of Omega. If the Legion are the Baatezu of AO, the Damned are the Tanar’ri, which is to say the Legion were once Ophanum and are still strategic thinkers, the Damned other than their high ups and Queen are more chaotic in nature.
Creature Discovery
This section goes into more detail in how to use the book. It explains what the boundaries are for each category level and what creatures fit into those categories. It also goes into further detail on how to use the stat write-ups. All of the rules here are to help you to create your own creatures for your AO game.
Managing Your Encounters
This next section tries to help explain how to gauge your encounters to be balanced with your party of PCs. It does a good job of explaining what stats are important and what stats can be deceiving in their importance. I find it a breath of fresh air that they realize encounters can still go awry and no matter what the mathematical formulae or system could end up unbalanced. The section also gives several “templates” to modify the creatures given. These templates allow you to make creatures faster, slower, alter their size or gain special abilities outside their species norm. This changes any one write-up into hundreds of possibilities.
Appendices & Extras
The book finishes with a glossary and indexes. The glossary comes in handy a lot in play if you are having trouble remembering any short-hand notations in the write-ups. The index does not list all the creatures as the folio number works good enough to find what you need quickly, instead it worries more about actual listings for rules in the book, however turning the page there is an alphabetical creature index listing all the creatures and their folio number. After the indexes are blank forms for writing out your own creature write-ups.
Overall
Mind Storm Labs’ The Encountered is by far the best looking creature manual I have owned for any game. It is loaded full of top-notch artwork and is full of creative ideas for factions and adversaries to use in an AO campaign. I still say Alpha Omega and MSL have the best production qualities of the entire industry.
The factions in the book really help to bring out the setting of AO for me. And really has my adventure ideas pumping and ready to use. The Technocratic Coalition being a personal favorite, reminding me of the Coalition in Palladium’s Rifts had it been based on strong morals, instead of Nazi-like oppression. The write-ups make using the book quick and easy. Each and every write-up had me ooing and ahhing not just because of the artwork, but the brilliant ideas for the creatures. A few of these creatures are downright freaky. If you thought the core book looked nice, the Encountered will blow you away. Matthew Bradbury has definitely become one of my favorite artists. The only issue I would have is like most creature manuals some GMs, like me, would want their players to stay away so they have more surprises for their game.
