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Ravaged Planet
[1-889546-63-1]
$15.00
Publisher: Full Moon Enterprises
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by Megan R. [Featured Reviewer] Date Added: 10/28/2014 09:15:04

This, the Player's Guide for Brave New World, opens with in-character material from the 'DeltaTimes' underground website, setting the scene for the alternate now in which the characters live. It starts where the comic strip that opened the core rulebook left off: the capture of a delta called Patriot who'd been a leading light in Defiance, the dissident organisation opposed to the current state of affairs in America and especially the policies concerning deltas, as superpowered individuals are known in this game. This is followed by Patriot's autobiography which gives a good flavour of the recent history that leads up to the present day. It's a good tale, well told, and ought to give players enough of a feel to know which side - government, Defiance, the Mob, independent operator - they'd like their characters to be on. The clear implication, though, is that all right-thinking deltas will join Defiance.

Next, and still as pages from an in-character website, Crescent City is described. This is the base setting for the game, a city that arose on the ruins of what was Chicago. It covers the city layout, government, police and other things anyone living there needs to know about... notable buildings, public transportation, even a few locals. A city plan would have helped, though.

If you'd rather go further afield, the next section looks at the United States of America as a whole. This section (and we're still reading web pages!) is very city-oriented, but gives a run-down on the current state of affairs in the major cities that even non-Americans can probably name. It ends with an overview of the general state of the union and the sort of people you'll find there.

Next, we stray - still on that website, DeltaTimes - even further afield into A World of Hurt. Everything's been about America so far, here we can read about how the rest of the world is faring. It's a motley summary of various parts of the world in roughly alphabetical order and again biased towards cities in each country described. Deltas are urban animals it appears.

This flavour text, informative and enjoyable, fills over half the book - so it's a bit of a surprise to find Chapter 1: New Power Packages on page 109 of a 160-page book. A pleasant surprise, however, especially if you are finding yourself a bit limited by the selection of packages provided in the core rulebook. It also introduces the Covenant, a delta organisation run by the Roman Catholic Church, and the Schism - renegade Catholics and others, Christian and non-Christian alike - who have shied away from Church teaching regarding deltas and the world as it is today. This of course gives plenty more options for what sort of character you want to play and the adventures he might become embroiled in. There's plenty of detail if fighting the good fight takes your fancy and you want to involve Covenant characters in your game. They have some interesting powers exclusively available to them, based on 'faith' and with interesting names that mean more if you know a little about Christian heritage. If religion's not your thing, though, there are quite a few more general power packages available to any delta. This section ends with some archetypes for the new power packages, and a selection of dramatic artwork illustrating various events and concepts touched upon earlier.

Next, we come to the Guide's Handbook and Chapter 2: The Truth of the Matter. This lifts the curtain on all that has come before, presenting the 'truth' for the game master's eyes only. It is a bit dogmatic about what really happened, but whilst it is open to individual Guides to decide what's true and what's not in their game, it may make the following supplements less easy to incorporate. And there's enough comments about not being ready to reveal certain bits of information just yet to make you - if you like consistent game worlds - want to get hold of them.

Finally there's a Author's Afterword. This talks about the underlying concepts and inspirations for the game, and is again quite interesting especially if you are interested in how a game designer's mind works.

Overall, this is a good 'setting' book that will help everyone in a group get to grips with what the alternate reality that they'll be inhabiting is like.



Rating:
[4 of 5 Stars!]
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Ravaged Planet
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