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The premise of the game takes elements of transhumanist SF and infuses them with a more post apocalyptic milieu, in which an entity (disembodied consciousness that can take many forms) that calls itself Ghede has told you that you were once something more than human; you were a god, a post-human, one of the Loa.
The Loa inhabit a world was called the Understar – a paradise beyond this reality. Separated from the material realm, your kind found delight in watching and manipulating the lesser beings (i.e. regular humans) trapped in a material existence on the Flame Worlds (the material world), playthings created for your pleasure. You called it Dreaming, an endless source of entertainment and intrigue.
But times change. You committed a crime. A terrible crime, one that stood against all that your peers believed in. And for that you were thrown out, ejected, cast down to the lower worlds, named an Exile. Now the Understar seems little more than a vague memory that slips through your fingers. And, now you have been cast out of paradise. You might redeem yourself on the Flame Worlds by fighting fellow Loa who have gone bad – called Barons or join them. Needless to say, you are now very mortal although your host is the one who will die and your consciousness will cease.
This is where you are – the Flame Worlds, a hazily remembered place of death and intrigue, among billions of souls trapped in this mundane existence. You and your fellow Exiles must accept Ghede’s offer, and meet others of your kind to do his bidding. What will you discover among the Flame Worlds? Who knows, but if it ends your exile, it is worth it.
So all this unveiled in a nice digest sized book. Which is nicely bound and easy to hold and has great binding, I comment on this as I am a A4 (8.5x11) kind of guy and the nice presentation of this might cause me to reconsider…or maybe not.
The Good
This book clearly is a labour of love and is well written with very few typos. The art contained within is phenomenal and I wish some pieces could have easily found their way into other RPGs, for it does uniquely capture that sense of wonder – so needed in SFRPGs.
It presents very much a sandbox for Game Masters to create a game collaboratively with their players. As it presents a number of options for the course of play and keeps everything loosely structured, so that the adventures unfold as a matter of what the players and the Game Master want. It could be strictly space fantasy or it could be Hard SF or a Space Opera. Of all the styles, it would seem that Space Opera does exist as the default in the designer’s head for the game.
It does use a rather easy mechanic for resolving actions the D6 Open License in which few dice are needed and emphasis is upon action not dice rolling, similarly a limited characteristics and skills are used as modifiers. This is in the good category as it allows players to creatively think their way through a problem – what abilities they possess to attain a goal. Furthermore, as players assign their dice pool modifiers they are able to create a customized character that can accomplish their tasks. However, the game is balanced by ever diminishing dice modifiers thus preventing the creation of uber characters.
I also liked that Loa while godlike only enter rarely into the game as a type of luck or manifestation when exceptional heroic action is needed. The mechanic has two interesting “Scales” that every Exile has: Guilt and Dislocation. Guilt is a meter that shows just how close a character is to their eventual forgiveness, where Ghede will allow the character back to the Understar. Dislocation on the other hand, is a measure of the Exile’s connectedness to his host body. These meters are an interesting way to track a character’s status, and how far along they are to their redemption.
The Bad
If you are not familiar at all with the d6 system then you are in trouble, as the game pays very little time in really explaining the mechanic and when it does, it passes over the rules rather quickly. There are examples but things are not broken down. Furthermore, it refers to other d6 products for individuals wanting more. When I picked up the game, it gave the impression that it was self-contained but especially in areas of chargen and extra rules like starships, I was left confused. I understand that this is an economy measure and that many people who know the d6 rules don’t want to see them repeated but then the alternative is really to dumb down the rules and make it as easy as a flowchart to create a character. And, do not direct the reader to another product for greater depth.
The game background is also confusing, as it does not explain itself in the introduction leaving the reader confused until they have read further (for me 1/3 of way in before I got a real sense of the backdrop). And, the fact that it is a sandbox sort of leaves the reader stranded with many choices without really knowing how to actually start playing this game. For when I was reading, I got the sense this whole milieu is akin the Matrix movies – where reality is an illusion created by one big virtual reality setting and players may have ascended from being mere batteries to the next step in the grand program’s design. At the end of reading it, my opinion had not changed. So, while that is one way of playing the game – the absence of things like a time line for the Flame Worlds or why everything is confined within this particular system leaves much to be desired.
The text makes mention of Uplifts and Robots (puppets) but until much later does it really provide any rules for them. I understand a supplement is coming to deal with uplifts specifically but when one reads all these captions underneath one should have this information front and centre. Also, the Loa are purposefully left as the McGruffin in the milieu but still it is odd that even the Game Master is left with very vague notions. I am not sure how many newbie Game Masters would want to take on the task of basically describing the whole of game reality.
The art while excellent as noted above really does have a common theme running through it nor is it consistent…sometimes, it is excellent line drawings other times it would seem like paintings made black & white. This lack of a uniform feel is partially due to the sandbox nature of the game but it creates dis-junctures in the mood of what they are trying to describe – furthermore, the art is not always aligned with the section that it is supposed to be describing – so you get a caption and cool image without figuring out what it actually is until much later in the text.
The Ugly
The ugliest part of the game is that as it purports to a standalone game, its layout does not help the reader understand the d6 rules quickly. These may be free on the Net but still then the author should break down the rules in very simple terms so that if one needs complexity then they could refer the source rules on the Internet. So, while rules are written and somewhat explained, it took several readings of the rules to get it. When I buy a core rulebook, I want the rules to be explained as easy as possible. When I had to re-read the chargen several times, I found the exercise due to a poor choice of explaining or laying out the rules. Also, I am not sure, it this is a standalone or going to be part of a new game line. As such, hopefully future supplements will contain an adventure or more direction in terms of the rules and milieu. I am left feeling that this is a less than complete work-in-progress.
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