Review of The Most Dangerous Game

I generally like anthologies of short adventures, and it seems like a particularly appropriate format for Trauma where the concept of a campaign beyond a short one-shot adventure is virtually meaningless. The format of this book is similar to that of Trauma, simple graphics, black and white cover and interior art, and 72 pages of fairly spare text. There are nine scenarios, all fairly short, all very violent.

'Last Train Home' gets characters mixed up with a heavily armed, drug-dealing gang. 'The Masked Marauder' involves a very strange youth gang and a vigelante out to expose police corruption. 'The Fugitives' involves the characters with a rogue terrorist on the run from his former associates. 'Helping Hands' involves the characters with police corruption and a big-time drug dealer. 'Fallen Prey' is the most substantial adventure in the book and gets characters involved in an attempted coup in a small African country. 'Our Family' gives characters the opportunity to join a family of violent drug runners, or be killed instead. 'Rusper' centers around the investigation of toxic dumping and is pretty substantial. 'Instrument of Precision' is a collection of encounters of scenes to use in other adventues. And finally 'The Most Dangerous Game' is a scenario based on the classic story of the same name about man hunting man.

All told, these scenarios are mostly well worked out and sufficiently detailed. They aren't plagued with the recent trend of stuffing scenarios with superfluous window dressing and endless useless narrative. However, they are unrelentingly depressing and present such a negative view of the world that they're not an awful lot of fun to read or play. If you find you like the grim realism of Trauma these adventures will fit right in. They're also easily adaptable to other game systems. I wouldn't recommend running them as a group unless your players are particularly masochistic, but slipped into a broader campaign they could offer some interesting situations.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 3 (Average)