I had seen the ads for
Kromosome back in some old
Dragon magazine quite a while ago (about 5 years by the book's print date - wow) and it had always been buzzing around the back of my mind that it was something I wanted to check out. The ad proclaimed a new kind of dystopic future where it was genetic manipulation, and not cyberware that was prevalent in a world gone bad. I managed to find it one day in the used section of my local gaming store and I picked it up with my usual load of RPG books. Sadly, the book looked terrible, the interesting art from the ad was absent, and the layout and colors was just
bad, so I kind of slid it down my pile of "game to read" and went on to other books. I finally came back to it later, however, and after reading the entire book, I found out that my initial fears were
true, sadly enough.
Kromosome is another game that gets added to that list of "Great ideas, poor execution."
The Amazing Engine Role-Playing System
The first 19 pages of the book are dedicated to the Amazing Engine system, which is yet another generic role-playing system that simply makes me begin to wonder why I find those systems designed to be generic to be bland and poorly suited for such use. The system itself is rather bizarre in many ways, and the thick and obtuse writing used for it further put me off. On top of that, it is obvious that this is a standard and generic template placed at the beginning of every Amazing Engine book, with no alterations at all.
The system begins by creating a player core from which a player character is created. For some reason that I cannot fathom, the system designer thought that the player core would be a good and useful idea. Basically, the core is a very generalized version of the character and it is used to create the character in the beginning of the game. Experience spent on the character does not change the core, but experience can be spent on the core instead of changing the character. Why bother changing the core at all? Because it is apparently supposed to be used to create other characters for other Amazing Engine games or a replacement character for a dead on in the game game. What I can't understand, however, is why this player core exists in the first place. It complicated both character creation and development and adds nothing.
Characters themselves have 4 attribute "categories;" Physique, Intellect, Spirit, and Influence. These are further subdivided into (in order) Fitness, Reflexes, Learning, Intuition, Psyche, Willpower, Charm and Position. They are all pretty self-explanatory except for Psyche and Position, which reflect a character's psychic/magical will and his social position, respectively. I find that having an attribute for social position is more than a bit silly, myself, but no where near the level of the player core. Attributes run from 3 to 50, with 25 being the average, apparently.
Skills are assembled in groups, and unlike most games where specialties give bonuses to a skill rating, Amazing Engine gives penalties unless you have the required specialty. An odd rule, but I think that it is one of the more interesting aspects of the system. The check against a skill, you roll a percentile die. If the result is below your attribute, it is a success. Unfortunately, there is no chart for sample skill modifiers, so the GM has to make it up on his own. For those tests that are simply pass/fail, the lower roll is better. For those that need a degree of success, the lower the ones digit of the roll, the better, it must be below the success margin of the attempt. This is another interesting element of the system, but it is, unfortunately, buried and explained very poorly.
The rest of the system is determined off of the attributes, hit points and whatnot are derived from Fitness. The only other really interesting and noteworthy aspect of the system is in weapon damage. Each weapon has a lethality rating works just like the success rating for skill checks. If the ones digit of the strike roll is below the lethality rating, then the damage is "body damage" instead of "stamina damage." Body tracks serious injury while stamina tracks cuts, bruises and the like. That is nice, quick, and seems like it would work pretty well.
Overall, the system is worthless, I have to say. It offers nothing that something better, like Unknown Armies doesn't and it is so obtusely written that I don't have a complete handle on it, only the general feeling. That is an Officially Bad Thing in my book. I can see stealing the success and lethality ratings for use in another game, but the rest can be abandoned with no loss.
The Setting
I'm going to skip my usual format of chapter-by-chapter looks at the book because it is so abysmally planned out that much of the information hops back and forth. Instead, I will simply provide an overview and mention a few of the noteworthy elements.
The basic premise of Kromosome is that the world in the future is a polluted cesspool inhabited by a writhing sea of humanity bringing the planet down. Unlike other such game though, Kromosome turns to genetic modification instead of cyberware for its neat edge. Man has spread to Luna, Mars and the Asteroid Belt, truly making his mark on the solar system with the start of terraforming Mars. This is the age ruled by microcorporations, tiny businesses of only a few people who had the mobility to avoid the death of the gigantic multinational corporations during the Data Panic. The net itself has been rebuilt and redesigned (with the help of various AIs), almost resembling a living being now.
Unfortunately, the setting also has many holes. Primarily, there is the glaring omission of any sort of date for this game. There is no real feeling for just how far in the future it is. There is very little information at all on the Belt or on Mars, including just how far along the terraforming is. There is less world-information than I would like (although I find it odd that this is another game, beyond Trinity that places China and Brazil as the new world powers), such as the information of life in Earth orbit or the details of the skyhook orbital elevator. The largest and most infuriating problem, though, is the net itself. Said to be alive and actually capable of reprogramming hackers into net zombies that perform its bidding, it is also said to be non-sentient and guided by the AIs, whose agenda is ill-defined. Even though by this point I found myself ignoring mentions of systems, I could not believe that the only option for players presented in the game is that they run their own microcorporation, making it, in many ways, Shadowrun without the magic.
The genemods (genetic modifications) vary between really neat and intelligent (Hibernation, Melaskin, Photoskin) to pedestrian or strange (hormone locks). I was also amazed by the complete lack of germ line therapy, genetic modifications that can be passed on to offspring. This is mentioned only as "not done," nothing more. I bought the book hoping for a list of bioware as comprehensive as Shadowrun or Cyberpunk's list of cyberware, but I didn't quite get it. This is definitely something worth looking at if you are planning on running a game with lots of genetic manipulation in it, but don't take it as the definitive source.
After that quick summary
I have to say that Kromosome looks like crap. It is laid-out poorly (and organized just as poorly, if not more so). The only colors throughout the book are black, white, and a sickening green that recalls ancient school textbooks more than a lively game. The art varies from crap to some neat work, but none of it is really good, an odd thing since Robh Ruppel is listed doing it all, and I seem to remember him doing very nice work indeed. The cover art is attributed to Brom, but doesn't look like his style and seemed to be signed "ROBH," making me wonder. The writing, overall, is rather poor, and in the rules sections in the beginning, almost indecipherable. The only really neat things about this game were the quotes pulled from a variety of sources on each left-hand page and the rip-out map of the net in the back of the book. The map was certainly very neat indeed, but it is something that is, in the end, frivolous, and I would prefer more setting material to frills.
Kromosome is a neat idea and almost a neat game, but needs another rules set and a GM willing to put a lot of work into writing much of the setting.
Style: 1 (Unintelligible)
Substance: 3 (Average)
