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Just so that everyone knows where I am starting from, here is a bit of history. I am not only enjoy playing superhero games (mostly favoring HERO and V&V), but I also am a bit of a historical nut about WW2 and the Korean War. So, I was really looking forward to Godlike - which munged two of my pastimes in something other than 4-colors. I was so looking forward to playing in this world/system.
My first character was code-named Sapper and I designed him up as a slow brick-like character. I put 2 stat points into Body, 2 into Coord, 1 into Sense, 1 into Cool. My skill points were primarly divided to take advantage of my Body, but also brough in Mental Stability, a decent Rifle skill, passable Pistol, Grenade and other Engineering-type weapons, Explosives, Drive Heavy Machinery, etc. Finally my 25 Talent points when into 2d Hyperstat Body and 3 levels Heavy Armor. Sapper's background was that he was a member of the Royal Engineers serving in North Africa attached to the 1st British Army. My primary job is driving the heavy equipment to build embankments, placing and removing mines, and in general heavy-back labor. Well, while building a new defensive position my unit is overrun by a fast moving German Recon Mechanized Infantry unit that was flanking the main axes of attack. Using the only weapon we had I turned the dozer on their armored cars while everyone else dived for the trenches. Needless to say my talent kicked in my invulnerablity shook the German's confidence enough that along with the hail of gunfire from my squaddies we drove the attackers off.
The Good
Background
The Godlike background has been covered in countless other reviews on this site, so I will keep my fluff to a minimum. It was interesting to see the writers weave in superheroes to an existing timeline and still have the major events follow the normal course of history. This is not laziness on their part, but instead works perfectly with there system where superheroes can be taken down by simply throwing more normals at them. Supers (called Talents in Godlike terms) may be able to do amazing things, but they are not impossible to stop.
Fast Resolution
The single die roll is fast and in general works rather well, but as you get more dice to roll, things get out of hand. Thus the game system caps you at 10 dice - no matter what your true potential. This gamism is purely a patch of a very minor hole. I don't consider the hole worth jettisoning the entire system, but its still artifical. Overall, the dice-pool variant works well in the majority of cases.
The Bad
Will as Experience
Not only do I list this under the Bad section, but it also has a sub-component that is just plain ugly. Here I will discuss the bad aspect of it. This is the ability to spend Will to increase or gain new powers. In fact, you can only gain new powers from the expenditure of Will. During game time you can only bump up one thing, but during down time the sky's the limit.
One player brought in a starting character with 25 Base Will. In the first game he bought up his one allowed purchase - then played a game of sniping. It was meant to be a small test so nobody thought much of his character. We then had a two week downtime until the next mission. By then his character had morphed into something closer to the rest of us. Again we didn't think much of it, but were glad he took a more active part in the mission. We then had 8 days of downtime before the next mission and he again morphed, but this time into something better than the rest of us. By the time we were on our sixth mission he was carrying us around. By the sixth mission he became a major talent with nearly 60 points in Miracles/Hypers/etc - the rest of us were just baggage to keep him alive. Sure, there are plenty of ways that the GM could have stopped his character - the GM-fiat sniper attack, mobs of normals - but in each case it would have been nothing more than a fiat call or it would have wiped the rest of the team out as well.
This can be fixed with the application of one simple rule. Disallow all advances of talents using Will outside of combat. Allow the player to advance 1 talent in combat with the application of their Will. Also allow the purchase of new talents through Will (but only 1 level). All other advancements come from Experience Points.
Stats
The starting character gets 1 in every stat, then 6 points to spend on their stats (and there are 6 stats). The numbers range from 1 to 5. In their system a 1 Brains is the Village Idiot and 5 in Einstein. So, that means that Joe Average is just one step away from the Village Idiot. In fact, most people will be sub-average in at least 1 or 2 places in order to be better than average in others. This is normally not a big deal, but because of the compressed lower scale, be prepared to play the idiot in many cases.
A better system would have started the stats at 2 - then given the player 6 points to spend (or start at 1 with 12 points to spend). This would have made the players average in everything - or slightly below average in one place to be slightly above average in another. If you really wanted to shine in one area (say Charles Atlas) - you would have to reduce other areas to barely running levels (ala The Village Idiot).
Hard Dice
Hard dice are a good concept that was butchered in the implementation. Simply put all hard dice always become 10s. So, if you want to be sniper guy - you will always hit in the head. You may be the best sharpshooter in the world, but for some reason your bullets always fly toward the opponent's head - it is impossible for you to shoot anywhere else. This is nothing more than gamism at its worst. A more sensible system would have been to say that all hard dice must be placed on a number before other regular dice are rolled. Thus you could be an expert marksman - say with 3 hard dice - and actually aim for their legs.
The Ugly
Will System redux
The basic book not only has major inconsistencies, but takes those warts to extremes in the application of the Will system. The book flat out contradicts itself in many places in regards to when and how Will constests can start. This is a shame because the Will constest system can be a very interesting way to balance things. The Will as experience system is bad the Will as a constest skill is good, but flawed.
Layout
The Layout of the book is both a plus and a big minus. Building a character is made more difficult by placing all of the needed information far from where you actually need it. The master skill list is about a dozen pages back from where you actually purchase skills. The combat rules are spread both before and after the character rules. Finally the ideas of using Will and its affects come after you already set your Will during character creation. The entire book appears to have been laid out while they were thinking of it. This work seriously needs a decent editing job by someone that knows how to do it. The entire book is a jumbled mess - very unprofessional.
Timeline
The timeline in the back of the book is a rather large waste of space. Most of it wasn't changed with the application of talents. In fact, much of it appears to be copied straight from a HS history book. However, that didn't stop them from simply republishing the same material you can find in other places. Instead, they should have simply referenced good material and only wrote about those historical events that were changed in their timeline. This was nothing more than page padding at its worst.
Final Call
My final verdict is that the game is a series of good things marred by poor editing, terrible layout of the main book, and Mac-Truck sized hole of the Will system. The system is a v1.0 in desperate need of a v1.5. However, with the application of a few simple house rules it actually plays very well. Thus I give it a 3/3 call - the real high-points are reduced by the low-points to make the overall produce just average.
My advice for new character is to ignore hard and wiggle dice in favor of more flexible regular dice. In most cases you will get more bang from your buck. Plus if you survive you can upgrade them over time.
On the plus side this game system is great for conventions where the GM makes up the characters and lays out the mission for those characters. The mechanics are easy to learn and the speed lets you get through more combat scenes than many other systems. If the players are free to make up their own characters - and even remotely know the system - the warts begin to show.
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