Not an OSSR: Space Madness

[Usamimi]

Not an OSSR, but if someone will review Space Madness! I will do an OSSR of any game product of their choice. Even the ones I swore never to do, like Gehenna or World of Darkness: Gypsies.

Request accepted.

Usamimi:

Space Madness is an RPG written by Ancient History as a reward for reviewing the entirety of Farcast. The winner chose the keywords “atompunk”, “wands”, and “mythos”.

The document begins with an introduction to the setting: Earth is divided between the Federation and the Union-Republika. Reverse engineering of Elder Thing technology found on Earth has lead to the discovery of Azathoth radiation and similar powerful “cosmic forces which can bend space and time”. These forces are manipulated with superscience wands.

Through the usage of Azathoth engines, humanity has traveled to other planets in the Sol system, and discovered life inhabiting them.

Mostly primitive, their civilizations decadent and technologies lost to mysticism, their worlds are ripe with the raw materials so desperately needed on a crowded Earth. The Union-Republika struck first, planting a colony on the Moon.

Humanity placed colonies on the planets in the inner solar system to explore and mine.

The Yuggothian Empire is present in the outer solar system.

The player characters are Space Rangers, who wield wands to defend humanity from space pirates and exotic dangers, at the risk of the titular Space Madness.



The introduction is short and describes the basic elements of the setting, including the political landscape and core conceits. It has a pulp aesthetic combined with references to the Cthulhu mythos, with Cold War elements.

Next time: The Space Rangers.

[DrPraetor]

I think it has more in common with Lensman than with Buzz Lightyear.

[erik]

If you thought the review of a game that features space rangers wasn’t going to include any images of Buzz Lightyear...

[Usamimi]

The Space Rangers

Usamimi:

I am a Space Ranger
Knowing well the hazards
I take up this torch
The badge and weapon of my office
With its light, I will explore the uncharted reaches of space
With its force, I will police the star lanes
With its power, I will expand the borders of mankind’s knowledge
We will be a beacon in the endless night
No science is forbidden
No enemy of mankind too fearsome
To boldly strive while my wand burns bright
This I swear.
- The Space Rangers Oath

This chapter describes the Space Rangers in greater detail: They are a Federation-aligned force that explores and polices space.

Any device that manipulates cosmic forces is defined as a wand, regardless of appearance. Wands were reverse-engineered by studying the original wandtech of the Elder Things, a precursor race that inhabited Earth years ago.

A lesser form of wand known as a torch is used by non-Space Ranger entities. Torches are less powerful and less versatile than the Space Ranger wands.

A description of the development of wandtech follows:

The Proto-Ranger Mark I wands were rayguns, simple devices that emitted a specific exotic energy. They were designed after the pattern of firearms, and featured electrical or mechanical controls to adjust the size and intensity of the effect, but generally lack versatility. Despite being seen as “primitive,” Mk. I wands are still potentially dangerous, can be manufactured in quantity, and can be used by anyone—there are many rayguns prevalent in the Solar system, and cadets are still trained in their use.
The founding of the Space Ranger Corps coincided with the adoption of Mark II wands, known as torches. These resembled squat, hollow metal tubes with electrical or mechanical controls near the grip. Like the Mk. I, the Mk. II could only utilize a single type of cosmic force, but for a much wider variety of effects than simple rayguns. Torches equivalent to Mk. II are still used throughout the Solar system as tools and weapons by civilians.
The Mark III is the first wand that most modern Space Rangers would identify as such; resembling a squat mace or sturdy potato-masher, the Mk. III consists of a chunky, cylindrical emitter array mounted on a handle; the shape of the emitter differed for each Order, as the Mk. III, while capable of manipulating multiple forces, were specialized towards utilizing a single force. Gone are the manual controls, as the Mk. III is the first wand that was controlled by the individual Ranger’s thoughts. Possession of a wand equivalent to a Mk. III or higher is illegal in the Federation, but many blackwands are equivalent to a Mk. III.
The Mark IV wand was hailed as a “universal weapon,” with unprecedented access to all of the cosmic forces and exotic energies, and resembled something like a robust flute topped with a crystal emitter. While no longer specialized toward any particular order, the Mk. IV had several drawbacks in terms of insufficient shielding (leading to cases of “wand burn” and radiation poisoning, the scars of which can still be seen on older Rangers), and a flaw in the alignment procedure which could lead to mental isolation and, eventually, psychosis. Most Rangers prefer the raw power of the Mk. IV and continue to use them; they remain the standard issue.
The problems with the Mk. IV led to the development of the Mark V, the next-generation wand which will be issued to Space Rangers. In its standard configuration, the Mk. V is a metal rod topped with an emitter assembly, but Corps engineers designed the Mk. V for customization and modification, so many Rangers have chosen to personalize and tinker with their wands. Rumors persist of a Mark VI wand that will actually be implanted within the Space Ranger, but concerns over “wand burn” have so far kept it from appearing.
The Power Wands of the Elder Things, the Precursor race that seeded the Solar system of life, are rare and of a completely different order than Human wandtech. They generally resemble elongated rods of semi-translucent crystal, and Federation scientists still study the few extant examples to discern their secrets and capabilities.

Space Central Command

Space Rangers began as independent Proto-Rangers before forming Space Central Command and developing an organised infrastructure which allows greater efficiency and coordination.

Space Cadets are trainee Space Rangers who use torches. Their rank is equivalent to Corpsmen, who are unable to become Space Rangers due to physical or mental factors. Corpsmen are states to be honoured above civilians, which implies a form of military elitism among Space Rangers.

Space Ranger Captains can be elected to Guardian status. Guardians are members of the Central Committee, the political body of the Space Rangers.

Space Ranger Orders

The Orders originated from the independent organisations of Proto-Rangers.

The Ordo Ares began on Mars, as a peacekeeping force. They manipulate the Odic force, and are diplomats, medics, and explorers.

On Mars itself, the Aresians are both highly trusted and held to the highest standards by the local population; while all Space Rangers are expected to be incorruptible, steadfast, and competent, the tales of the Ordo Ares have entered into frontier legend and myth, such as the Hunt for Yoh-Vombis, and the Riot at Arkham Station.

The Belter Guild began by policing the Belt. They record space pirate kills with tattoos on their mostly-shaven heads. They are “scouts, scientists and security personnel...” “...interrogators and detectives...” who manipulate Azathothian flux.

The Comet Guard manipulate Cavoritic energy.

During the Rain of Stars, when the Yuggothian Empire launched a terrible barrage of missiles at Earth, each kinetic projectile a continent-killing iron spear, it was the Comet Guard that for months on end engaged with each terrible weapon, and the death toll of the Star Martyrs was measured in the terrible toll of Guardsmen needed to deflect each and every missile, for months on end.

The Ordo Dagon are an esoteric group that grew out of secret organisations that fought the Union-Republika, “arising as a result of concerns for the spread of the Union-Republika’s anti-religious ideology“. The Dagonites are rumoured to be the internal affairs arm of the Space Rangers, “or to operate secret tribunals separate from the Federation justice system“. Dagonites manipulate N-Rays, and serve as chaplains.

The Solar Patrol come from Venus, and regulated the exploration of the Old One ruins left there. Venus is rich in archeological finds. Some members of the original Solar Patrol were criminals sentenced to service, many of whom came to occupy leadership positions. They manipulate vril.

The Torchmen were originally an explorers’ club.

The reach of humanity extends from Venus to Saturn. Beyond that is the Outer Darkness, where the sun’s light fails to warm the cold worlds, and dominated by truly alien forms of life...including many things that defy terrestrial definitions of life. It is the dominion of the Yuggothian Empire, and the next great frontier. Into this cold and darkness go the Torchmen.

Whereas the other orders were designed primarily for defense, to serve and protect humanity and the Federation, the Torchmen began life as a loose-knit club for explorers--men and women that wished to push the limits of human knowledge and civilization, to go where no human had gone before, to dirty their boots with the soil of strange planets and look up at alien skies. In the first age of exploration and colonization, it was the Torchmen that led the way, their ships scouting ahead into the lonely darkness.

They found madness, and horror. The first Torchmen suffered horrific casualties; those that came back were broken creatures, both in body and mind, suffering from radiation sickness, malnutrition, terrible mutilations, and post traumatic stress. Some were simply catatonic; those that could speak described worlds shrouded in darkness, living machines, fungal hives where fear was harvested for psychic parasites, entire races enslaved and kept alive only to suffer and satiate intellivores from fractal dimensions, non-Euclidean geometries, strange wands that manipulated exotic matter. Some succumbed to their wounds, or retreated into their own minds, never to recover. The others began organizing the next expedition.

The Torchmen manipulate orgone.

There are several minor orders with a small number of members as opposed to the 3-5 thousand of the major orders. One of them, the Ordo Penares, operates a Ranger prison known as the Pit.

Next time: Standard equipment and a guest star.

[DrPraetor]

So is it good? Is it evocative? Do the presented options invite you to create a steely-eyed adventurer who can vanquish ne'er do wells with cunning and guts?

How do you like the production values of the physical book that doesn't exist?

If you're hoping to fend off an OSSR for RaHoWa, you'll need to step up your game.

[DrPraetor]

Not an OSSR, but if someone will review Space Madness! I will do an OSSR of any game product of their choice. Even the ones I swore never to do, like Gehenna or World of Darkness: Gypsies.

What do Romani traditionally drink?

There is a cocktail called a Gypsy - vodka, benedictine and bitters - but it has nothing to do with the Romani people. Still, neither does WoD: Gypsies, really. Let's make it a race. If I finish first, AH has to do WoD: Gypsies. I admit to being curious about the awful reputation of that text - but not curious enough to read it myself.

Anyway, here is a link to the google doc:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/184P ... 6y4cxvOEXg

DrPraetor

Space Madness opens with an in-universe fiction - essentially a lensman fanfic, which is on brand - steganographically encoded in the punctuation of each paragraph throughout the text. AH makes occasional punctuation errors in order to stick to the encoding, but I've seen worse in professional products that don't have this as an excuse.

I like the fiction - it's short, it sets the mood, it has wands, it has cats, it has three steely-nerved adventurers taking turns with some diplomacy, an assassination attempt while they're camping with the aliens, and a dog fight as they flee mars. In the 50s space opera on which this is based the homoerotic aspects would all be subtext, but this is also-sorta an example of play, so okay.

Now, back to the cover text.

The "and so it came to pass" opener is clear and efficient - it sets up the default theater of adventure (among primitive aliens, ala John Carter of Mars) and also identifies the primary antagonists (neo-Soviets who are trying to influence the same aliens.) By page 2 we've gotten to the meat of the matter, that you are troubleshootersSpace Rangers and the GM is going to give you missions.

The next section is on the special equipment that gives Space Rangers their superpowers - these are wands. This is the right decision: if you write a lensman RPG, do not wait until chapter 3 to introduce the lens! Minor quibble - we know that the wands can manipulate eldritch energies, but at this stage of the game I'm thinking, "what do I want my ranger to do?" so a few calls to wand functions would be well-placed here (azathoth 2 let's you become invisible, odic 3 let's you manipulate dreams, that sort of thing.) This is a game where your Rangers can have fun space opera adventures (I'm going to rate that as a success, spoiling the take away of the review), but you really want to know what kind of powers you can have ASAP, given how critical these are to your character conception.

One thing you'll notice we don't have is a "what is an RPG" type section, and the core mechanic (essentially the same engine as After Sundown) doesn't make an appearance until page 51. No-one is reading this who hasn't seen an RPG before, but it isn't something you can give to a non-gamer friend as an introduction to the hobby.

I'll try and get through the entire balance of the gazetteer in one post. Some of the setting elements are stronger than others, but they're all usable. One oddity, the art looks awesome but I can't see how any of it relates to the game. I guess that is supposed to be Mars in the background?

I suppose it might be wiser not to depict the HPL aliens, which are always more frightening in your imagination than they are in drawings.

[virgil]

One oddity, the art looks awesome but I can't see how any of it relates to the game. I guess that is supposed to be Mars in the background?

I'm kind of confused here. Where are you seeing this art?

[DrPraetor]

One oddity, the art looks awesome but I can't see how any of it relates to the game. I guess that is supposed to be Mars in the background?

I'm kind of confused here. Where are you seeing this art?

You can see in the background of this example of play video that AH posted to youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

[Zaranthan]

gXcQ. Never again.

[DrPraetor]

gXcQ. Never again.

You know, I considered masking the URL, but I've used up my trolling quota at least until I finish the introductory material.

DrPraetor

On pages 4-16 we have a summary of the Space Rangers as an organization. This is good stuff, but the emphasis isn't always where you'd want it. I'm being picky because I think the basic substance is solid - this section covers who you'll be playing, who the supporting staff will be back at starfleet headquarters, and what your objectives will be.

Extra points for the following snippet:

As they advance toward the rank of Space Ranger, space cadets of different orders are assigned projects and tasks with members of other orders in small cadres to encourage teamwork, and engage in cross-training with different wand forces to avoid any gaps in their education.

Why is this ++good? Because if Frank and I want our characters to A) have completely non-overlapping background picks, but B) have gone to starfleet academy together, this is not only acceptable it is expected.

The playable types are:
[*] Sensitive martian sheriff (Ordo Ares)
[*] Kung fu asteroid miner (Belter Guild)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWk-VpK4hJo
[*] Pilot or navigator but not jazz musicians? (Comet Guard)
[*] Chaplain-psyker-spies - this reads like a 40K expy to me (Ordo Dagon)
[*] Ex-convict scientist monster hunters (Solar Patrol)
[*] Fighter / deep space scouts (Torchmen)
[*] Miscellaneous (prison guards are given as an example, I think.)
There are some example spellswand functions given here, but they're not stars of the respective shows in my opinion. I may skip ahead to the wand functions section and review it out of order.

Anyway, I like some of these six better than others, but that's pretty subjective. Some of them are better differentiated than others - between the Torchmen and the Comet Guard, you really care about whether you get anti-grav beams or destruction beams, right?

Such quibbling aside, I think AH has mostly landed in the desirable range, where each playable type has enough meat to start playing one of each quickly-if-desired without being so restrictive that you can't customize a character.

Next we get Standard Equipment.

I think the Standard Equipment is a bit out of place here. There are aspects of equipment that would fit in this section (which is essentially devoted to filling out the character concepts) - but it doesn't communicate the way that the equipment system in this game interacts with your choice of character. I would've at least teased the limited availability of personal equipment, and I probably would've said something like, "due to freight limitations, Rangers carry only very limited quantities of non-standard gear, and the gear each Ranger chooses will be a careful reflection of her operational goals and philosophy."

Also, I don't think Standard Equipment is written as clearly as the previous section - it's a series of hedged clauses where each paragraph hedges the first sentence?

I'm out of steam: the Duties part is important and needs to be reviewed in depth, while the longer setting description is good to have but not as critical.

[Chamomile]

Guys, you don't have to do the big name title thing when there's only one person speaking in a post. The forum provides attribution to single-author posts automatically. The cargo culting does not reflect well on the reviews.

[DrPraetor]

Guys, you don't have to do the big name title thing when there's only one person speaking in a post. The forum provides attribution to single-author posts automatically. The cargo culting does not reflect well on the reviews.

This is reverse psychology to get me to keep doing it. It's totally working, eye of the tiger, bro.

DrPraetor

PP 13-16 describe Ranger missions, from an in-universe perspective.

There are some example villains you might hunt down - they're fine. You also have police missions, espionage missions, escort missions (which means space combat), exploration missions (both beyond Jovian orbit and in the untracked wilderness of Mars and Venus), combat missions, and other. This seems like a reasonable division and doubles as, if not exactly adventure seeds, a good description of the generic scope of play.

Each mission has a tidbit of world building. There are automated probes in the setting, but not computers? I'll get back to that later.

So this part is good to have, because when you conceive your space ranger you'll want him to have favorite missions and so forth.

**********

Then, between 16 and 50 you have a more general description of the setting. It's long, it's fun to read. That's important, kudos for not being boring.

As I said earlier, John Carter of Mars is the clearest influence on the various aliens, who have made up pollysyllabic names and are mostly technologically backward. There's at least one adventure seed in each of the thirty or so sub-headings.

The entire solar system is inhabited, including the gas giants (except maybe Jupiter) and larger moons. Most bodies get their own aliens, Saturn gets several. I'll mention a few favorites later on.

The "Union" is a Soviet Union run by a hive mind. It comes across as a dour caricature, which can be viewed either as a weakness in the setting, or as AH adhering to his mission document. Either way, the aliens including the outer-alien-empire strike me as a more interesting menace, but the Union provides a perfectly respectable option for mixing things up.

At the adventure seed level, the Cold War theme doesn't seem well-developed oddly enough. SM does a good job of hitting the notes for Cold-War-era science fiction (there are elements from Lensmen, Dune and Foundation peppered throughout the text; thematically, these come through as strong as Lovecraft.) But, at the same time, the cold war conflict plots seem much more Raiders of the Lost Ark than Post-War Vietnam.

A few favorites among the many aliens - one of the moons of Jupiter has (this is a spoiler), Shan on it, and the humans of the setting don't know what's going on. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insect_from_Shaggai (spoiler warning, I suppose). The description of the Shan-MiGo relationship is suitably eery; the insect aliens give the fungus aliens unknown offerings from their obsidian ziggurats. This is Lovecraft's "style" done particularly well, although actually an invention of Ramsey Campbell, who does the best simulated HPL.

The asteroid belt has mindless swarms of matter-eating rocks that are attracted to warp drives ("asteroid eaters"). I find this particular menace oddly satisfying.

Tool-using pseudo-reptilian hexapods that walk alternately on two stubby limbs marked with suction-cups, and using their four ropey tentacles as fine manipulators, the average Native Venusian stands about two meters tall, with two protuberant forward-facing eyes, flat foreheads, and green, frog-like skin often covered by a protective mucus. Originally called “man-lizards,” it was later determined that the Native Venusians are actually an all-female race which reproduces through a form of parthogenesis; the Venusian mating act causes epigenetic changes in the offspring, but each lineage is still essentially genetically identical, despite a widely-varying outward appearance.

That's suitably weird. I want the special effects budget to have these aliens in my movie.

Overall summary of the section - the planets and locations which are described are suitable places to have adventures (good!), there are enough aliens to keep things fresh without every alien being a Steve (good!), so I regard the setting itself as a success.

[Thaluikhain]

So...are you going to tell us you've been driven to drink by bizarre demographics, strange economic systems or racial stereotypes? Aren't there even any gratuitous insertions of the author's fetishes? Overwhelming nostalgia for a time not overwhelmed by nostalgia?

I know this isn't exactly an OSSR, but still...

[DrPraetor]

So...are you going to tell us you've been driven to drink by bizarre demographics, strange economic systems or racial stereotypes? Aren't there even any gratuitous insertions of the author's fetishes? Overwhelming nostalgia for a time not overwhelmed by nostalgia?

I know this isn't exactly an OSSR, but still...

The drink tonight is nyquil, because I have a cold.

I'm going to include some of that racist, sexist, Ayn Rand goodness in this review - but it will all be lies. This product is meant to be retro, so it has some dribs and drabs of squick that AH either glossed over or didn't think about. I'll mention those without focusing on them, and instead, I will tell horrible, deliberately hurtful lies, motivated by a callous indifference that is worse than hatred. Anyway...

DrPraetor

There are two pages describing the engine. It's okay. AH forgot to say in the main text that dice pools are typically attribute + skill, but uses it in the examples? A real novice would find this confusing; I'm an old hand, and I'm not sure from this how group challenges are supposed to work. This is a hack on After Sundown, AH might've been better off with a function call to Frank's intro.
More structural whinging - this is a bit out of order; it's throwing attributes and skills and tags and stuff without explaining them concurrently; a single-sentence explanation with a ping to the fuller explanation would work fine.

Okay, on substance. Space Ranger characters are made by a series of palette selections that both define their background (Lunar, Martian, Earthling, etc) and also include jobs as well as which flavor ("order") of space ranger you are.
It's fast and it works at all, which is better than most such systems shake out, but it also has problems.
For example, if I want to play a Martian Scientist with a lot of Azathoth functions:
https://www.absoluteanime.com/nadesico/inez
this is a bit of a problem, because Martians don't get engineering or medicine, and are only +1 Intellect.
This isn't insurmountable, but it will sometimes place game-mechanical penalties on you because of your character conception, which I dislike.

The other issue is that they don't really substitute for character classes. If you sit down and say you are a Belter, the other players need to triangulate a bunch to see if you are the best pilot in the group or etc.. As a general principle, if you have a list of choices that don't convey useful information to the other players about what role you can fill in the party, those choices should be scrapped in favor of some kind of points buy.

Other quibbles - in step four, when you customize, I think if you don't pick "+1 to two attributes" you will feel robbed in short order.

On balance, though, you get a reasonable character, reasonably quickly.

Also, I think AH has done a reasonable job of dividing the character's competency into roughly equal pie-slices for the Skills. I think it's fair to say that Combatives and Deception will come up in more adventures than will Intimidation and Therapy, but you want characters who are competent in all of these. Not all of the names are obvious (the "Screen" skill is particularly non-obvious from the name; you use it to resist torture and such) but the descriptions are reasonably clear. My biggest complaint about the skills: there is a "Visualize" skill that ends up working a lot like Sorcery. Not all of the wand functions seem to use it (in particular, the various mind control spells use Law or Deception typically), but I'm not a fan of the "use your superpowers" skill.

There are also Certs, which are a grab-bag of special abilities. Several of these are cool, some of them are just "you are more focused on (pick a skill)". I regard this as a mostly-successful implementation because it opens up new character concepts that would be hard to access otherwise (especially the ones that let you swap attribute+skill combos around; more on those later). But, thematically, there is a bit of an over-emphasis on Certs that are basically, "you are hardcore": Commando, Pain Focus and Unfazeable don't strike me as certs that a different character concept would take. Nonetheless, you can differentiate characters with them, so that's good.

There are also "tags" which are a combination of languages and background skills, also shadowrun. They don't generally bother to have ratings.

Something to keep in mind when I math-hammer later - do you want to uber-specialize in one skill+attribute combo (my instinct is: yes), or do you want to be spread out? If you have a "big enough dice pool to succeed", more dice can be diminishing returns (Frank makes sample After Sundown characters who spread their dice pools out a bit for exactly this reason); but, depending on the downside if you do fail, that can also be a case of diminishing returns. If you make a pilot test and fail to get 3 hits, does the entire party die? I assume not, but similarly bad outcomes would mean that swinging 15 pilot dice instead of 12 would be worth reducing the already-small risk of only getting 2 hits.

AH came up with a cool conceit for equipment - your equipment list is very short, because you are being schlepped around space with very limited kit in the spaceship. This is solid design and I approve: it means that people will pick their equipment carefully and remember they have it and use it when it comes up. I see a lot of benefits to this in terms of play.

There's a big section on cats which I will also return to later.

Right after character generation we have character advancement. I don't like these advancement rules (Continuous Learning Points) - character generation is linear while advancement is quadratic. That's bad, for all the reasons we know it to be bad. I would use some variant of After Sundown's advancement system instead of Continuous Learning Points, which work more or less like Karma in Shadowrun.

The Nyquil is really kicking in, so I'll resume wherever it is I left off. Some of the material in character generation (cats, cybernetics, the wand function stuff) makes more sense to call back to later in the text.

Should I edit this to include sarcastic images? That's hard to do when I'm sleepy.

[Ancient History]

Fair dues to Frank Trollman, the limit of three pieces of equipment was originally his idea.

[virgil]

I keep running into RL restrictions for running it with my friends, but they've been straining on the equipment restrictions - despite my appreciation. Stuff like the personal headcannon weirdness of a dataport taking up as much space as a cat, the ease of switching out augmentations, and most importantly, the loss of CLP whenever they change gear (and question of whether they lose the CLP when their modded Mk IVs are lost).

I can tell you that a tentative house rule we're using is for excess starting equipment isn't so much tossed aside as it is Batcaved for switching whenever they have a chance to return to HQ.

[Ancient History]

Hmm, Batcaving is a good option, really.

[Dogbert]

And here I thought I had finally found a Ren and Stimpy RPG...

[Usamimi]

The "guest star" consistently refuses to commit to an appearance. I apologise for the delay.

[DrPraetor]

The drink today is red wine ( https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/mats ... leon+spain - it's good ), because I had brunch at a wine bar.

AH has responded to my criticism of linear -> quadratic costs here:
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=57282

I don't find the argument persuasive but I'll let it live in that thread.

DrPraetor

We've got Health and Healing, which begins at page 87.


Insanity uses the same subsystem so this block goes from 87-93, and then we get combat. In a game about a future where people speak Esperanto, I'd like to see this same subsystem used for all cumulative success-type tests, instead of reserved for just injury, damage and insanity. Injury and insanity are pretty big parts of the game, so if something does get a special subsystem, it would be this.

Barring exceptions I don't care for, you have 8x2 hit points: 8 ⊙→⊘ then 8 ⊘→⊗. You lose your first 8 hit points and go unconscious, then further damage causes ⊗, and you are at penalties until ⊗ heal. At first glance, there are not a lot of ways to suffer ⊗ without going unconscious first: I actually like this, I think it's a feature. Maybe Shadowrun gave me the bad touch but crippling damage penalties always bothered me.
Inanimate hit boxes (⊡→⊟→⊞) are represented by squares and healed by Engineering instead of Medicine, but again it doesn't say how long this takes. Inanimate objects have vastly varying number of hits but otherwise they work like damage circles.
Mental damage boxes (⊚→⊖→⊕) are represented with differently styled circles which is confusing to read. I would've gone with triangles or something? Anyway, mental damage is basically the same as physical damage, but is healed with Therapy instead of Medicine (and it not accumulative). I like the parallelism here - you have a break with reality at 8 mental damage and then further mental damage causes long term penalties until slowly healed.


Cyberware causes you to trade ⊙ for ⊡, which are damaged first and don't heal naturally? This is a bad deal except in so far as you can (presumably) get both medical attention and repairs at the same time, but this is iffy because it's not explained. I don't like varying the number of boxes, and I find the swapping between ⊙ and ⊡ for cyberware to be fiddly.

Minor structural snafu: these various skill uses require the corresponding kit or you are at -2, and this is not explained in this section. Furthermore, if there is equipment more significant than a medical kit in the setting (I mean obviously there is), it isn't mentioned.

No?

The system is obviously missing some material. If you are heavily beaten up, it takes you 8 days to heal but you can heal on the spot with a... series of Medicine tests? I'm assuming you can't repeat those for credit, but the rules don't explicitly say (whether you can repeat tests for credit is, in general, up to the GM.) Long-term wounds always take medicine tests to heal but it doesn't say how long this takes! There's a regeneration power that heals one ⊗ per week, and I have no idea how good that is because I don't know how long regular healing takes.

There are rules for poison and disease, which are pretty similar to After Sundown. Possible math failure - there are intelligent diseases (one example is given, that explodes you and a flying polyp comes out of you) which are treated with contested challenges. But a contested challenge against Medicine vs. 7 is actually easier than a regular Medicine (7) test? So I'm not sure if that was the intent.

Anyway, then we continue with the mental damage rules, which I rather like.

it's right in the title

We're a little vague on what breaks with reality do, or on what NPC-level insane characters do; if the GM wants to do something stupid at that point I suppose there's no stopping her.

Cracks do not “heal” on their own, but the character may offset the penalty caused by a crack by assuming a coping mechanism, such as a focus on eating, exercise, sleep, meditation, hobbies, socialization, sex, or drugs and alcohol; for every hour a day devoted to these activities, the penalty from cracks is reduced by 1

I like this rule.

Then you have cumulative stress rules, where you take bigger and bigger hits to your Courage + Screen as long as you stay on duty. This is a core mechanic, but I think it can ramp up awfully fast in some cases, so these numbers might need fiddling in play? Even a totally bad-ass space ranger would only swing like 15 dice here, averaging 5 hits, and would thus expect to start going insane after only like 0.45 minutes * 8 = 6 hours of being actively stalked?

Anyway, as you might expect, telepathic entities and trauma and such also do you mental damage.

Environmental hazards are largely missing. Radiation exposure (always?) gives you cancer, because that's on the disease list, but I don't see rules for suffocation, exposure to the cold martian wind (there is a survival skill and a survival kit, both of which can be used in this situation, but the consequences for failure aren't spelled out), and so on. There are rules for what happens to you in the void of space, but they are with the Zero Seal augmentation, and don't involve die rolls.

I'm not moving through this as fast as I would like, but I'll save Combat for another post.

[Ancient History]

AH has responded to my criticism of linear -> quadratic costs here:
http://tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=57282

I don't find the argument persuasive but I'll let it live in that thread.

Not actually directed at you specifically; and I regret making that thread because I knew I didn't have the energy to actually argue it at length and that's basically what threads on the Den are for. There's a whole homo economicus argument there which...well, it isn't important.

Mental damage boxes (⊚→⊖→⊕) are represented with differently styled circles which is confusing to read. I would've gone with triangles or something?

Complete honesty here: I was going off the strike/double strike ( &#8594;/&#8594;X) style of damage system and was cribbing off of the available mathematical symbols to make it work. Didn't see any triangles that fit the bill, so... <shrug>

[DrPraetor]

&#9708;? &#10177;? &#10809;&#10810;&#10811;?

&#42606;!

Usamimi, if you send me notes as a private message, I will do the back-and-forth thing (which is usually how Frank/whoever co-review something)...

[Iduno]

Mental damage boxes (&#8858;&#8594;&#8854;&#8594;&#8853;) are represented with differently styled circles which is confusing to read. I would've gone with triangles or something?

Complete honesty here: I was going off the strike/double strike ( &#8594;/&#8594;X) style of damage system and was cribbing off of the available mathematical symbols to make it work. Didn't see any triangles that fit the bill, so... <shrug>

Use diamonds (squares rotated 45 degrees)?

[Ancient History]

I was working off unicode. I could have gone &#9671; &#9672; &#9670;, but I thought the slashes were easier.

[JigokuBosatsu]

I don't mind the strash/slike thing but why do the first circles have a dot instead of just being empty?