I'm a generic gamer at heart. I love any system that can be used universally, or at least, multiversally. I'm also a big fan of crunchy games -- it's easy to chuck out parts of the system that won't apply to Adventure X, but it's hard to create new rules that keep with the feeling of the game. So you'd think that a large, detailed, cruncy, generic system would instantly grab my heart and make me sing with joy.
Well, in this case, you'd be dead wrong.
I'll be honest: my initial reaction to a system that measures advantage and skill values to two decimal places was to keel over with fear and shock. ("Hulk not like itty bitty numbers! Hulk SMASH!") I could have just stopped there, but I didn't. However, as I kept reading the book, I found it to be quite enjoyable.
This is the second in a series of reviews of free and homebrew RPGs. The first review was Steal. Do note that I was talking with the creator of the game while writing this review, so I do have a biased view.
JAGS comes in five 'books'. I will be reviewing the books by book, then by topic. Then I will include the miscellany and the final verdict.
Book One: Character Creation
Character creation is point based; the point levels are about on the level of Hero. However, no matter how many points you have, you may only gain 10 points from defects.
There are three primary statistics -- Physique, Reflex, and Intellect -- and each of these statistics has three related secondary statistics, for a total of twelve. If you like Storyteller or Fuzion, this system won't be too alien to you. Secondary stats may be then be bought up independantly. Unfortunately, stats are overpowerful. Like almost everything in this system, stats average at 10. However, although each point of a negative primary stat only nets you -5 points, increasing a stat goes up at a triangle-number rate -- ergo, +4 to a stat means dumping every point the average character has into it.
Then there are the tertiary statistics, and each of these is a rule of its own; the breakpoints between a subminor wound, minor wound, major wound, and critical wound; the Condition level, which measures damage as a whole instead of individual wounds; Ground Speed, which measures to two decimal places how many yards per second you move; and Perception, which is the exact same as Intellect (so why bother making it a seperate statistic?). And this is the simple math.
Advantages (called "enhancements" in this game) are, like most everything about characters, expensive. There are four types of enhancement -- Physique, Reflexes, Intellect, and Weird. The Weird catagory includes such advantages as Luck, Malace (you're so mean you strike harder in combat), Modern Strength Training (which is basically a points break for Physique), Nature Friend (think Animal Empathy on steroids), See Inner Person, Shadow Friend (the choice of wannabe goths everywhere), Storm Friend (you always have lightning striking dramatically), and Twisted Genius (a major point break on Intellect attributes, but your scientific skills are... well... twisted).
Defects are divided into Physique, Reflexes, Intellect, Background, and Personality. Again, there's a touch of the humorous, such as the Slick disadvantage: "The character thinks he is smooth. Others are not convinced."
My favorite rule in Character creation is the Frankenstein rule: any character the other players find offensive may be voted out by a GM veto or a majority vote of the other players. ("No, you may not bring a sheep-pimp into the campaign!")
Book Two: Skills
Although it seems like it should be part of character creation, Skills is listed as its own book. The way JAGS handles skills is really something out there. Skill points increase by one-sixth or one-quarter (for normal and difficult skills) until they exceed the related stat plus 1, after which the costs start doubling very quickly -- another case of statistics being too powerful. In real terms, the difference between difficult and normal skills means that you have to reference two huge charts to determine how much a skill costs, for only about a slight difference.
Also, skills in JAGS come in two parts -- the level of expertise, and the chance to succeed. Although your change to succeed is self-explanitory, levels of expertise are basically feats. You start off with 'average' expertise and a certain special ability, but you can give that ability away and become a beginner for a 1 point break, buy a new special ability for 4 points, or buy a potentially-game-breaking ability and become a master for 16 points. Why these two weren't directly linked (a la Alternity) wasn't explained.
And that's not where it ends, either. You can buy a specialization, in which you roll twice; if the specialization roll is successful, you gain bonuses to the base roll. Some generic skills require you to buy a concentration, meaning you have a base ability but have to buy a specialization (such as Law), while other generic skills have 'alternates', for which you have no base ability (such as Vehicle Operation). Skills which are unimportant are labled Trivial skills, and these require their own skill chart, with a new price listing for levels of expertise which apply only to Trivial skills -- why they weren't labeled 'easy', to be in line with 'normal' and 'difficult', is beyond me. There are special rules for low levels of skill, low skill costs, and more.
They fit all that into eight pages.
And then come the skills. 46 pages of special cases... after reading through all of it, I was ready to headbutt a pickaxe just to make the pain go away.
Also, as a caveat, the art in this particular book is horrid; instead of drawings and illustrations, clip-art was used.
Book Three: Basic Combat System
Every one-second round, you roll for initiative, and rank everyone in combat by how well they rolled. This seems fine and dandy, but remember, there is little variance in the 4d6 spread; simply ranking everyone by REA or rolling once at the start of combat would have been simpler and a lot less time consuming.
Then, characters buy actions by spending 'action points'. Short actions cost 3 points, medium actions cost 5 points, and long actions 8 points; most characters have 10. Defenses are short actions while attacks are medium or long actions. This part isn't too hard to keep up with.
Attacking is made by rolling under your skill, but you are at -1 for every point of agility the defender has above 10 (another way stats are too powerful); your defender can also roll to block, subtracting his margin of success from yours, but this costs action points... and the various modifiers you have to remember to block or dodge versus another person's attack is usually not worth it.
If you hit, you roll 4d6-4+your final margin of success and compare it to a table (which one depends on what kind of damage is being done); reading a value on this table, you then multiply or add to the damage on the table to see your final damage done. If you're wearing armor, you subtract from damage your damage reduction if it's impact damage, or check versus the weapon's penetration if it's penetration damage. When you do take damage, you have to do a check to see just how severe the wound is as well as subtracting the damage rolled from your DP. A wound may worsen your Condition Level; after which, you roll versus constitution to see your Damage Effects, and make a seperate roll for Wound Effects.
Book Four: Advanced Combat System
This book is the largest book in the set. I'm flat-out refusing to read this book. You couldn't bribe me with every GURPS book ever published.
Book Five: General Game Mechanics
This section, which describes the effects of the environment and other tasks which character may make, is fairly simple; no lists of modifiers, no particularly damning exceptions (with one possible exception; I couldn't make heads or tails out of the interaction rules).
Miscellany
Resolution is 4d6-4 (from 0 to 20, with 10 the average roll) -- as neat a system as you're ever likely to see. The results are a very tight bell curve, with 10 being a 55% chance of success, a 9 a 44% chance of success, an 11 a 66% chance of success, and with any differences dropping sharply from there.
The best part of this game is its fanbase. The players of JAGS whom I have met are all mature, well-spoken individuals -- better than that of any other gaming group I know of. They did more to sell me on the system than any one part of the system itself.
The game, although not a professional piece of work, puts the muscle of the .pdf form to good use. The font is large and legible; when you're working with electronic documents, you don't have to worry much about the pagecount.) Sidebars give examples from the playtest sessions, rule commentaries, notes on special cases of rules of that page, hints to using the system, and when there's spare white space, amusing stories and anecdotes. ("You've got a reprogrammer virus in you that should be turning your world upside down in about thirty minutes.") Icons are used to mark important passages and references to the charts in the back of the book.
There are illustrations in appropriate places, which are all about a 5 on a 1-10 scale; they're nothing that'll rock your world, but they do give your eyes a break from the text.
One of the bonuses of the system is that it has absolutely refused to take itself too seriously; the writing is enjoyable and well laced with emotion, and even the game system itself has a bit of self-satire. (The 'Stupid' disadvantage, worth -16 points, means that 1d6 times per game session the GM makes your character do something 'catastrophically idiotic'. When's the last time you saw anything like that?) This makes up for the myriad points lost in complexity.
The other bonus is the wealth of support available. Action movies, cyberpunk, fantasy, science fiction, superheroes... the list goes on and on. There aren't any 'killer apps' for the system yet, but the support is worth a readthrough.
Where do I get it?
JAGS can be found at http://jagsgame.dyndns.org/jags/index.jsp
The Final Verdict
The system itself is only so-so -- two steps forwards, one point eight five steps back, to use JAGS terminology -- but the quality, broad support available to it helps the system overcome its flaws. Chuck out books two through four and you've got a usable game system. Substance: 3.
What you can't deny is the game's style. Everything about the book is a pleasure to read. Read the book and pretend your favorite system from Palladium Books, Wizards Of The Coast, or White Wolf had hired the writers here instead. The game's complex, it's convulted, it probably will eat your firstborn, it's more enjoyable than you would think. Style: 4.
