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So why the spug would anyone want to run a Judge Dredd campaign anyway? I mean seriously I picked up that game in the 80s, and it was nothing to crow about. And now it’s using d20, oh come on man everyone knows d20 sucks! This is pretty much a decent paraphrasing of what my players did when I suggested trying out Mongoose Publishing’s new Judge Dredd RPG, Now granted I have been a Dreddhead since living in Aberdeen in the early 80s, and have always thought the idea of roleplaying in the Dredd universe could be cool, however after picking up the old games workshop edition, I was sorely disappointed. It’s pretty weak forcing players to play one type of character: the judge. Yeah you could play a psi judge (if you roll high enough) and you could probably run an SJS or Wally Squad campaign, but the game is geared primarily to street judges. That being said how does the New Judge Dredd hold up?

Quite well actually, now to be fair, I’m not a d20 fan. In my humble opinion, Deadlands d20 will simply does not work, d20 Rokugan, and 7th sea are some kind of sick jokes, and then there is d20 B.E.S.M. WHAT? Honestly a d20 variation of a Generic system what’s next d20 GURPS? How stupid is this? D20 is far from being some kind of Übersystem that can do anything effectively despite how many d20 fanboys say it can, or throw huge tantrums when they hear the words, “I don’t like d20.” That aside, this game does actually work very well using the d20 system.

Allowing people to play two types of campaigns either a judge based campaign, or a citizen based campaign, the game starts with 3 main classes (Street Judge, Psi judge, and Citizen,) and then adds a plethora of prestige classes meant to make your characters more defined (this is especially true in the case of citizens, which have the lion’s share of new prestige classes from Assassin, to Superhero.) Systemically there is a lot of nice changes, in an effort to make armor more realistic, your AC (now called defenses) is based off of 10+ your reflexes save, and any class modifiers while armor is really only rated in DR (damage reduction) Meaning that the armor does not make you harder to hit, unlike the classic d20 mainstays. There are plenty of vehicle rules, which are quite workable, however I think the Spycraft chase rules might make better sense for the whole chase sequence thing, however without access to those rules these work pretty decently. Psi rules are also included (no need to pick up the Psionincs hand book here) which work well as being d20 style psionics and working within the genre set forth, the new feats such as Nark, Drive by boot, and luck of grud all work really well.

Then there is the source material, there is quite a bit from full write-ups on many of the major pieces of equipment, alien races and locals that are part of the Judge Dredd universe. Major NPCs are not included (I.E. Stats for characters such as Dredd, Death, Macgruder, Giant, The Angel Gang, Anderson, Otto Sump etc,) I’m guessing that they are planned in a future supplement. Also included are some beautiful CG rendered diagrams for many important pieces of the technology of Mega City 1. One of the shining points of the book is a very well defined selection of legal codes.

The art and layout of this hardback rule book is very nice color plates crammed with original art from the likes of Brian Bolland, Carlos Ezquerra and many other well known Dredd artists (although missing one of my personal favorites Simon Bisley!) most of these are of course ripped directly from the pages of 2000 AD with very little “new art” other than the CG stuff which I had never seen before anyway. The book sports a very nice wrap around color cover,

Now for the bad points, firstly it’s expensive. If I hadn’t got it for 50% off at my local game shop I would have been really hard for me to justify paying for this book, it’s nice but $40 is a bit much and considering you have to use the D&D3e players guide ($20) its gonna run you about $60 just to run one game. Which leads to my other complaint I still find it silly to call what is essentially a world book for D&D a separate role playing game. It’s a minor complaint but honestly if you have to reference another game book it’s not a full game, despite what the cover says.

In short I would recommend this game to any Dredd fans as long as the high cost doesn’t put them off (I believe part of the high cost comes from them being a British company,) It’s well done and has a lot of good info for anyone looking to run a dark future game in the vein of Judge Dredd.

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