The first thing I noticed about Blue Planet was the cover. I know you can't judge a book by its cover, but this one was gorgeous; three slightly glowing sea creatures swimming past a shining sea bed. I talked for a while with the guy working the booth (this was at Origins '98) and picked up a copy of the game.
Information wise, I was not disappointed at all with the book. It is dense. Very little art decorates the pages; just enough to get a bit of the feel across, really, and to illustrate some of the critters. The art was good, if slightly uneven.
The background and setup for Blue Planet is what I cannot recommend enough. It provides a future history for Earth, mostly revolving the discovery of a wormhole to the Serpentis system, the single colony ship sent to Poseidon, then the Blight. The Blight was a bioengineered virus that shattered the Earth's food supplies, killing billions and cutting off contact with Poseidon.
The game is set in 2199. A few decades ago, Recontact was made; a few years ago, an extremely valuable ore - called Long John - was discovered. A xenosilicate, it can help provide longevity treatments to the rich. The UN and GEO - the Global Ecology Organization arm of the UN - run the Earth, for the most part, and Poseidon, though the natives don't like it. Aborigines have been found on Poseidon as well, and seem to be fighting back against the newcomers. Throw in a dash of uplifted ceteceans and human hybrids in the mostly lawless environment and you have a very dynamic setting for your game.
The game is well setup and well thought out. Obviously the writers put a lot of time into thinking it through and working on the science of the background.
In some parts, though, it's clear where the writer's political bias is. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but sometimes it feels like the pro-environmental message it sends is just barely on the good side away from preachy.
The part that disappointed me about BP was the mechanics. It's run off a percentile system and uneven character creation - not that I have anything against uneven character creation, but the system provided is rather clunky. Combat, particularly between humans and orca, I found to be very complicated, dealing with vast differences in strength and speed. If I were to run a full campaign of BP, or especially a single scenario, I would definitely recommend switching systems.
The support for the product has been good, even if there haven't been a lot of supplements (just one right now, actually). Biohazard has a mailing list for BP, which is fairly active, and a very active web site for both players and GMs. It's definitely very useful.
Blue Planet is definitely a good setting for the money, if not a good *game*, due to the rules setup.
Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 4 (Meaty)
