I was surprised to find an extremely high quality game system that maybe, just maybe, will replace GURPS as the system nearest and dearest to my heart when it comes to realistic gaming.
The .PDF edition will set you back ten bucks, and for that you get a 147 page (including "filler") file with some nice artwork and some exceptional content.
Character generation is a simple affair compared to GURPS, and reminiscent of Silhouette with it's square-based costs for skills and attributes. In a "real world" campaign, a character gets 100 attribute and 50 skill points, enough to have average attributes and know a trade skill or two with enough points left over to buy a few other skills at low levels. Skills and attributes are rated from 1 to 10, with the average character having attributes of 4 or 5 and maybe one or two skills of that level, with a whole mess of supporting skills.
You can also buy advantages and disadvantages for extra points, and older characters receive bonus points but are much closer to starting to suffer attribute loss. Overall, the age system was the only thing I had a problem with, because it encourages players in campaigns with high mortality rates (which CORPS will have) to create 30 year olds to get a few extra points while avoiding aging modifiers. However, in a long-term campaign, this problem is self-correcting, because attribute loss will be faster than attribute gain past 30 unless you spend your entire life in a gym.
The game mechanic itself seems complex at first, but is actually quite simple. Compare your skill to the Difficulty - if your skill is higher, you succeed, if it's a tie, you get a marginal success, and if it's lower, you have to roll. The strange part is where you must roll X or under, where X is 11 minus 2 for each point of Difficulty past your skill. Once you realize this just means roll 9 or under if it's one point higher, 7 or under if it's two points, 5 or under if it's three, and so on, this becomes second nature. There's even a chart AND a summary of the rule provided, so even the most oblivious reader is likely to get it on his first read-through.
The combat section is split into three parts. The first is a breakdown of the basics of combat - injury, initiative, and sequencing, ending with a section on combat tactics that all players should read. Combat is very tactical, requiring you to think ahead and to make damn sure you stay behind cover.
Melee combat is a simple and interesting affair - highly skilled characters can dominate in a fist fight, and planning your attacks and defense can mean the difference between life and death. A few blows to the stomach or face and you'll be out of the fight, unless you're tough as nails or have Pain Resistance, a highly useful advantage that is nowhere near as sickeningly overpowered as the GURPS equivalent (where a shotgun blast to the stomach and a half-severed arm causes almost no problem).
Ranged combat, on the other hand, is where things get messy. The to-hit rules are nice, and there is a large tactical element in combat with called shots, cover, and snap shots (basically the equivalent of GURPS pop-out attacks - come out of cover, fire, go back in). Highly skilled characters, like in melee combat, can put up an extremely good fight. However, once someone takes a hit, it can go Black Hawk Down on your ass in a hurry. Rules for autofire and shotguns are included, these things are nasty.
The damage rules are... well, icky. Let's say Bob gets shot with an M16. He's wearing a Level II vest (you really should wear more than this going up against guys with rifles, but armor is just so unstylish and Bob believes in leaving a good-looking corpse). This armor provides 5 soak and 5 blunt trauma. The rifle has a DV of 16. 5 of this is soaked, meaning the damage is reduced to 11. 5 of this is turned to blunt trauma, meaning Bob takes 5 non-lethal impairment to his torso. The remaining 6 becomes lethal damage. Fortunately for Bob, the maximum impairment he can take to the torso is 5 - the shot just blows through him after that. On a 6 or less on a D10, the attack will be eventually fatal. On a roll of 1, he dies instantly.
As you can see, damage can be quite lethal, especially if you roll badly. It's theoretically possible for a character to keep going after several hits, just unlikely, and because each hit causes penalties not only to the area hit but all adjacent areas, one or two shots will put you out of the fight completely.
The next section, Megaforce, deals with things that will slaughter TEAMS of player characters - air strikes, vehicles, grenades, explosives. If you think guns are dangerous, try reading the rules for frag grenades. In our Cyberpunk run-through, a single grenade hit a character with 8 fragments doing 4 DV each. Needless to say, he died. Messily. Incidentally, three other people were killed by the blast and one horribly wounded (he was further away and prone)
There's also a Paranormal Powers section, which details creating your own magic spells, psychic powers, superpowers, and cybernetics. The game encourages you to create your own powers rather than just buy books with them. I like this, some people won't. We had a few pages of cyberware before we realized there is a free (and expansive) cybernetics supplement for CORPS on their website.
The other chapters deal with running a campaign, covering everything from bribes and court cases to ideas for campaigns to dealing with problem players. These chapters are short but well-written, and are excellent advice for beginning gamemasters.
Overall, this book is an excellent entry into generic systems. IMHO, it's better than D20 by far, rivals GURPS (GURPS has more detail, CORPS is MUCH easier to use and better balanced), and probably is superior to Silhouette CORE rules, though I don't have enough experience to say for the latter. It's a great game for any type of "realistic" campaign - you can do Babylon 5 or even Star Wars, for example, but don't expect to run a four-color superhero campaign.
Which brings me to the games one weakness. It won't handle outrageously cinematic games. It doesn't pretend to, but it is still a weakness in an "Omniversal" role-playing system. Still, I'd say it's definately worth picking up even if you have no interest in reading it. So go to www.btrc.net right now, click on either Hyperbooks or RPGNow, and add this to your digital bookshelf. You can also pick up a hard copy for ten bucks more, but I prefer the .PDF, because it's excellent formatting makes it easy to navigate and it has all sorts of witty notes stuck in (move your cursors over the green notes to get the developers input on things).
