Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Brave New World, 2006

So...I got back on a Brave New World kick. This would be the superhero RPG by Matt Forbeck, not Aldous Huxley's novel.

In the new year I should be receiving (from eBay, Amazon, and a friend):
-BNW: Covenant
-BNW: Delta Prime
-BNW: Defiant: The Defiance Sourcebook
-BNW: Crescent City

Yes. Four books. I'll now only be missing "Evil Unlimited".

For those that aren't familiar with it, BNW is the superhero game infamous for having "power packages". Basically, instead of buying different powers to make a unique hero you tack a "power package" onto your PC. A package is a static set of powers that does not change. Your Speedster with his Pace of +100 (meaning he moves an extra 300 yards per round, or roughly 100 yards per second)? He's not getting any faster.

Now...that's kind of annoying. But the setting itself models a few things well. First, it models...well...the setting. Which is pretty amusing. Its the only dystopian superhero game on the market (I do not count Aberrant as a dystopia). Or at least it was (nothing's been printed in the last 5 years). It also models things like X-Men and "Sky High" VERY well (Sky High models so well with BNW that its kind of scary).

What this also meant was that every book had between 6 and 10 new power packages in it. In total, between the 9 books there were about 56 packages in total. Two of those, "Covenant" and "Bargainers", didn't have any packages. "Bargainers" was basically the BNW magic sourcebook, and my copy of Covenant is in the mail.

Still, its a nifty game, and every book had loads of setting material in it. The Bargainers were one of the coolest parts of the setting, though. Bargainers heard voices. Yes, their power was super-schizophrenia. The voices, however, answered back, and turned out to be demons. Bargainers have a direct telepathic phone line to Hell. This basically turns Bargainers into either John Constantine, Dr. Strange, or Dr. Fate. Which is nifty, becuase it provides a LOT of leeway for how you want to play your PCs.

...unfortunatly the Bargainers really only were cool in the sourcebook. As written by the corebook you were basically stuck with a PC who had a variety of magic items on him (no more than 4 or 5) that could basically fill in for whatever power package-areas your group was missing. The sourcebook, however, let you play John Constantine, hounded by demons, bartering for spells and favors to keep the balance between Heaven and Hell. Nifty stuff.

ANyway, I'll probably write more in the new year when all my books arrive.

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