In a way, this game is an object lesson in just how easy it is to fail in the RPG field: The Power came out in 1997 and got a favorable review in Dragon Magazine, but just three years later the publisher's website is down and the only place I can find a copy is on ebay.

Well, Nexus TransMedia may be MIA, but copies of their game are out there somewhere. I'm the first to admit that the modern-occult-conspiracy genre has become a cliche, but The Power has a more modernist spin than most of its relatives and an interesting philosophy underlying its special powers. The basic idea is that enigmatic beings dubbed Mentors contact people in dreams, and as a side effect evolve them one step past human. I've heard this called "the Scanners RPG", but that doesn't do the game justice at all; it incorporates psi theory and mystic tradition in more or less equal measure, with a dash of proto-cyberpunk and conspiracy theory for spice. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then read on.

Art and Layout: The cover art is distinctive; three-quarters is taken up by a strange picture of a face with glowing eyes which I think is meant to evoke Kirlian photography. It's also the most striking piece of art in the book; most of the interiors are rather amateurish, although a few pieces are nice in a minimalist kind of way. There's also a color plate section (some of which is reminescent of John Bolton, and some of which is... not so good) and and two 20-page black-and-white (and very unpolished) comics as bookends. There's a variety of visual styles, I'll give them that.

Those comics irritated me a fair bit, though; any time I wanted to see the table of contents or the indices (one general, and one listing just the tables and charts), I had to flip through umpteen comics pages instead of just turning a cover. It's not a huge thing, but it did get annoying fast, and it only made me more irked when I finally reached an index and tried to decipher its peculiar organization. The Table of Contents was good about pointing me to general topics like character creation or dice mechanics, but finding anything specific within a section generally required some page-flipping, especially for some of the more obscure rules.

One thing they did right was not referring to something without explaining it (if only in passing); too many games make references to Rule X or NPC Y at the beginning that make sense on a reread but are totally opaque to the first-time reader.

The Rules: On the rules-light scale, this is generally heavier than, say, Storyteller (much finer breakdown of skills), but it has a lot less rules than AD&D. Characters have eight basic attributes (half physical, half mental), three more derived from the above (Body, Will, and Power), and have their skill in general areas of knowledge represented by the aptitudes of Vocation (craftsmanship and job skills), Social (personal interaction and the arts), Theory (pure knowledge skills), Cognition (knowledge skills that require direct experience/observation) , and Athletea (physical skills). On top of that, characters have ratings in specific skills that fall within the aptitudes, like Writing or Martial Arts. Attributes range from 1-10 (5 as average), aptitudes and skills 1-5. There's also a list of advantages and disadvantages to choose from, although players are encouraged to make up their own based on the examples provided.

All actions are resolved as a roll of a 20-sided die vs the sum of attribute+aptitude+skill, trying to roll as high as possible without exceeding that score. There are essentially four wound stages (not counting death); every time your character loses 25% of its original Body to wounds, penalties accrue. Given the damage ratings of various weapons, combat will tend to be quick and deadly. Will is treated similarly, only losing all of that earns the character an insanity (which is handled interestingly; each particular derangement has an intensity rating, and when the stimulus that triggers it comes up in play, you roll against the rating+how intense the experience was to see if the PC loses his grip). Power serves as a fuel reservoir for the special powers.

The Rest: And it's the special powers that people buy games for, so let's talk about them. The most basic use of Power is Boosting; spend Power on a one-for-one basis to increase your effective attribute rating for any purpose (referred to as Agility Boosting, Logic Boosting, etc). The more refined application is 'Bending, defined as the use of any attribute at range; Telekinesis is the application of the body's Strength at a distance, while Telesthesia (clairvoyance) is the equivalent for Perception. This analogy breaks down at times (like Pyrokinesis being based on Stamina), but overall it's a neat idea.

Mechanically, 'Bending uses the standard task roll, but its limits are only loosely defined, and the GM has to decide the difficulty of any given feat (much like special powers in Mage: the Ascension and Everway). Every attribute has a related power skill (though TK is associated with both Strength and Agility, depending on whether you want brute force or fine manipulation), and all starting characters can use every power (though they may not be aware of it, or might have disadvantages limiting the range of their Power). You can Boost 'Bending rolls as well, allowing for car-flipping, mind-frying fun.

There are disadvantages to being flashy, of course. The first is that, like In Nomine, using Power creates "noise" other 'Benders can detect. And not all other 'Benders are friendly; some work for their governments as special agents, and some have used their edge to gain wealth and power in the private sector and don't want any potential competition.

Downside number two has to do with the Mentors. Every 'Bender has one, and spending too much Power on any one roll brings you more in tune with it, which raises your effective Power but warps your body and mind.

In fact, the Mentors are a pretty big disadvantage in general, or at least they can be. Each one has its own desires and reason for contacting you, and depending on what it wants and how you feel about it you could have an invisible friend or a demon who haunts your dreams nightly. Players get to choose one of eight general types of Mentor (the Wizard, the Jester, and the Fiend are three such) and the GM's section has examples of ten specific Mentors and the cults some of their more devoted followers have created to curry their favor (which mostly have roots in occult tradition or fringe science, like the Assassins of i-Sabbah or the A.A. which serves Aiwass; my favorite is the Copenhagen Society, which uses the language of quantum physics to express shamanic ideas and worships Niels Bohr as an Ascended Master). Depending on the player's choice of Mentor and in-character terminology, Boosting and 'Bending can be defined as "spellcasting", "superpowers", "psychic phenomena", "superior kung fu", or whatever, again similar to how Mage handles the issue.

I should mention that The Power doesn't provide a lot of setting detail; there's a fair amount of advice about basic assumptions and themes, as well as example NPCs and organizations (psychic-run corporations, Mentor cults, etc), but the task of worldbuilding is basically left to the GM. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on how much spare time you have.

Still, what is there is pretty interesting; multiple options on what the Mentors are, rules for how to get around in the dream world, the Book of Babbel (which yields a different text every time its cipher is broken), how to force contact with a Mentor, and details on how some people can 'Bend without being Contacted. A sample adventure is present, but it doesn't really lend itself to setting up a long-term campaign.

Overall: The Power isn't a great game (ugly art, poor organization and index, and the rules are vague in spots), but I do think it's a good one that deserves a shot; the concepts are interesting and flexible enough to support posthumans-on-the-run, Heirs to Ancient Wisdom, and a lot of other stuff besides. If you can find it, I recommend giving it a look.

Style: 2 (Needs Work)
Substance: 3 (Average)