[OSSR]The Metabarons Roleplaying Game

[Ancient History]

This is an odd one, and demands a bit of introduction. The Metabarons is a series of graphic novels written by Alexandro Jodorowsky, as a spin-off of his very successful graphic novel series The Incal and parallel to his graphic novel series The Technopriests, Megalex, etc. The whole Metabarons series may generously be described as inspired by Dune, but instead of a focus on economics and ecology they are roaring space opera epics involving medieval European politics on a cosmic scale, superhuman space mercenaries paid in gold coins, and lots of vigorous sex between suitably epic characters, with a healthy dash of Jodowrosky's idiosyncratic mix of Western and Eastern occultism thrown in. This is generously known as the Jodoverse - which explains why this game was named The Metabarons.


Technically safe for work. And this does not prevent them from conceiving the next Metabaron. Because with Jodowrosky, a little thing like lack of genitals will not get in the way.


Jodowrosky was actually attached to the Dune film at one point.

Anyway. The RPG was obviously released because from 2000-2001, DC partnered with Humanoids to publish (censored) English-language versions of Metabarons, squatting out 17 issues and 5 trades before giving up on the project (Humanoids was latter to publish the uncensored hardbacks on their own years later). So this was an effort to strike while the iron was hot...and they turned to West End Games.



WEG was strictly in their D6 period, but what's sort of curious is that they (as D7 Legend Inc.) partnered up with Yeti Entertainment S.A. to publish this thing, and this book was actually published in Spain. Which explains...a few things. One, this is bigger than most other books of the period; it's 11.9 x 9.7 x 0.7 inches (by comparison, the D&D 3.5 player's guide is 11 x 8.4 x 0.8 inches), which is about right for European-style hardback graphic novel format, and it's full-color glossy paper and profusely illustrated throughout.

Two, if you go to the credits, holy fucking shit WEG and Yeti have their own separate teams that worked on this; and it boils down to Yeti basically designed the book, did all the art (which is mostly recycled from Jodoverse graphic novels), and proofread everything ("Continuity & Editing" was a four-man team), while the WEG team is basically credited for "Development and Editing," the introduction story "The Bet," and playtesting. No, seriously, the rest of the WEG team involves "Special Thanks" and "Very Special Thanks to Previous D6 System Designers."

It's probably worth mentioning that Humanoids owned WEG at this point; they bought the company when it went bankrupt in '99 or so, and was owned outright 2001-2003. So this was very much a house RPG, and probably an effort to see if there was a market for adaptations of creative European settings with great art that you'd normally only see in issues of Heavy Metal in the US.


Sadly(?), this means no Megalex RPG.

So it's a very weird mid-Atlantic production, apparently written primarily by loyal European fans and soulless WEG d6 experts, lovingly crafted and honed overseas and released in the United States...where it promptly sank. Well, they managed to squeeze out the Gamemaster Screen as the afterbirth, and one supplement (Metabarons Guidebook #1: The Path of the Warrior), but by 2002 DC/Humanoids had stopped printing Metabarons in English, and the game essentially ceased production after that.

So this is a kind of quirky licensed version of a weird European space opera comic, which failed to find an audience. It's kind of quirky and uses a variant D6 system, but in production values it was at least equal to anything else on the market in 2001, and was reasonably priced at $30.00, which was about the top end of what you could legitimately charge for a new non-boxed set RPG product at the turn of the millennium.

I wanted you all to know all that.

Next up: the actual book!

[OgreBattle]

I imagine the rules are "If you are not the Metabaron and a Metabaron is fighting you you lose"

Great artwork from the bande dessinee. One of them has a robot head.

[Hadanelith]

Like Dune, but more space opera? You have my attention. The art being gorgeous and bizarre doesn't hurt either.

[maglag]

Gorgeous art is indeed gorgeous.

Long story short, the metabarons seek to become the ultimate warriors by seeking the most badass woman in the galaxy to marry, then the son has to kill the father to prove they're more badass. And they're expected to do so while they're still a young teenager still not at their prime. And outgunned, like sharp stick vs dad's plasma blaster.

They work as mercenaries, working for whatever cause pays the best or just catches their fancy. To have an idea of their power, at one point, a whole alien race that had conquered another galaxy prefered to commit mass suicide rather than face a metabaron.

I suppose the RPG has you play several metabaron siblings competing to see who becomes the next clan head, because indeed everybody else are mooks at best.

[Blade]

IIRC it has you play heroes but not quite metabaron level heroes. That's what's weird about it, it's that it has you play stuff that you hardly see in the source.

So IIRC, the authors created a whole lot of stuff ex-nihilo to actually have a setting to play in.

[Longes]

Gorgeous art is indeed gorgeous.

Long story short, the metabarons seek to become the ultimate warriors by seeking the most badass woman in the galaxy to marry, then the son has to kill the father to prove they're more badass. And they're expected to do so while they're still a young teenager still not at their prime. And outgunned, like sharp stick vs dad's plasma blaster.

They work as mercenaries, working for whatever cause pays the best or just catches their fancy. To have an idea of their power, at one point, a whole alien race that had conquered another galaxy prefered to commit mass suicide rather than face a metabaron.

I suppose the RPG has you play several metabaron siblings competing to see who becomes the next clan head, because indeed everybody else are mooks at best.

So basically it's a game about giant cherries?

[Judging__Eagle]

The origin of Jodorowsky's L'Incal, Technopriests, and L'Caste des Metabarons, are actually all directly traceable to the content that Jodorowsky developed for their Dune project (years before Star Wars in production). When their Dune project was eventually scrapped due to US studio mistrust of Jodorowsky himself (not the radically new concept of storyboarding a whole film that he and Jean Giraud pioneered; cutting edge technical effects (by Dan O'Bannon, the person who went on to write Alien); outlandish (and at times terrifying) costumes, sets, creatures, or space ship designs (courtesy of: Jean Giraud/Moebius, H.E. Giger's initial foray into film, and Chris Foss) or internationally famous cast members (from Orson Welles and John Carradine; to Salvador Dali and Mick Jagger).

With a vastly revamped, 12-hour long, reinterpretation of the Dune narrative eventually scrapped; Jodorowsky had literally hundred of pages of art, plot, characters, and setting that he had developed; and couldn't use as a film. From there came L'Incal (and the fact that people have been ripping off L'Incal's elements for decades shows how high quality it still is). Then came the other comic series. L'Incal was a Jodo/Moebius project; but after that other artists (like Juan Gimenez, of The Metabarons) were working with him.

The end result is that if something in the Jodoverse looks like something from Dune; it's likely that it's what survived into Jodo's Dune project, and was repurposed.

Link here for some actual information the public will ever get to see on Jodo's Dune. A documentary about the production of the film which was completed in 2013. I had known some amount of this from doing research into Star Wars, its influences from Dune, and the websites that have what little information about Jodo's Dune project was around back then.

I'd like to know how this game actually works. I saw some ads for it in the
L'Incal and Metabarons tradebooks and comics I picked up in the early 2000's. I think I might have looked at the rulebook at some time in my LGHS; but I was also heavily into [Tome] D&D, and was liking how the players in my games weren't being kicked in the groin for not dumpster-diving to optimize their characters.

The fact that you are people who live within the setting; but are not protagonist-grade characters is very much expected by me. The advertisements explained how you could be characters who were inspired by the Bushitaka code that the Metabarons ascribe to; but like an RPG set in "Forgettable Realms", "Wheel of the Endless Cycles", or "Buck Rogers of Dune: Space Wars" franchises, you'll never get protagonist-grade effects on the setting.

[Ancient History]

So, before we get to the official chapter one, we have eight pages of intro fiction ("The Bet"), the introduction proper, a solo adventure entitled "Scout for Hire", and a player handout.

The Bet

Taz-Trang had two good arms, but the left one was better than the right. Its skin was a silvery metal. It was packed with circuits and redundant circuits, with diagnostic gear and self-repair systems, with neural couplers and sensor leads. He could feel with it as though it were flesh but, as he liked to tell people, he could punch holes through reinforced metal doors.

That's quite literally the opening paragraph. The fiction follows the generic lines of any other piece of short space-opera fiction. The fiction clearly leans on certain themes they're looking to establish in the book, based loosely on the Jodoverse, but it doesn't provide many setting details.

One of the things it establishes, which I sort of noted with GURPS: Planet Krishna, is that you have to establish an aesthetic where hi-tech and lo-tech can coexist. In Dune, for example, you had lasguns and atomic weapons, but the fate of the Imperium was decided by a knife fight.



Dune establishes that this is useful because many types of advanced technology are outright forbidden, and as a consequence there's an increased focus on mental development and martial arts. In the Jodoverse, it's...just something you sort of roll with. In a universe where cluster-bombs and attack penises and things exist, some people still fight with melee weapons.


Granted, some of them are pretty cool.

In Metabarons the RPG, reliance on technology is not actively discouraged, but is never a replacement for skill, integrity, discipline, and the energies of the mind and spirit. Or something like that, I get confused because the next page has a man with a small antenna sticking out of his head.


I couldn't find a good picture of that.

Introduction

Then you know this epic spans the entire vast canvas of the universe, a place you'll soon explore on your own. It's dominated by the Human Empire, for those of us who realize its truly degenerated state from its past days of glory. The Empire encompasses many smaller yet equally powerful factions, from the Techno-Technos and their Supreme Technopope, th Ekonomat, and the insanely wealthy industrial Maganats, to the courageous Troglosocialiks and other peoples of the Union of Planets. Beyond the 22,000 major worlds controlled by members of the Empire one finds entire galaxies with alien civilizations of their own, like the Pthagures and other hideous, unscrupulous monstrosities.

The Technopope eschews silly hats by having a large black egg floating over his egg. You can tell he's the technopope because his black egg is bigger than those of others.

I own and have read many of Humanoids' collections of the Jodoverse works, and even I can barely parse some of this, but here's the gist: you do not play a Metabaron in the Metabarons RPG. You play...someone else. Almost anyone, as near as I can judge.

You choose your own character from among several kinds of people inhabiting the Metabarons galaxy: warriors, Merchants Guild toadies, defused mentreks, explorers, outcast nobles, mercenary soldiers, contract pilots, private investigators, headhunters, and many more.

Add a small dog and it sounds a bit like WFRP. But I digress. Like many licensed RPGs, you're not playing the main characters from the movie/book/whatever, you're playing somebody else in that universe. Which needn't be so bad; a player can have quite a bit of fun playing a twisted mentat defused mentrek or Tleixaxu Techno-Techno priest or any other kind of adventurer.

Perhaps the best way to learn how all this works is to try it yourself--right now. In a moment I'll introduce you to a friend of mine, a rather quiet explorer named Martius. He's a character in a story called "Scout for Hire"...and you'll be paying his role in this tale, using the basic rules forming the foundation of this game. Find a pencil, some scrap paper, and a handful of six-sided dice (you can scavenge those from various board games).

Turn the page...
...and continue reading to begin your adventures in the Metabarons universe.

Scout for Hire
I'm a little sad at all this "entry to roleplaying" stuff, since the book was patently geared towards people that had never picked up an RPG before. But I'm not against the idea of a solo-adventure starting out the book, especially since it promises to give an overview of the ruleset, which I know people want to hear about, and if there's any interest we can do a Let's Play of this Choose-Your-Own-Adventure over in the Trenches.

Seven attributes (Agility, Knowledge, Mechanical, Perception, Strength, Technical, and Psionics), each of which is linked to different skills which use the basic attribute value; skills which the sample character are particularly skilled in (dodge, astrography, persuasion, and exeoskeleton repair, etc.) have higher values.

Every attribute and skill has a die code. This represents the number of six-sided dice you roll when using the attribute or skill--one die is 1D, two dice is 2D, three dice is 3D, and so on.

If you look at Martius' Agility, you'll see it's only 2D+2. That die code means you roll two dice, add them together, and then add two to the total.

It's a variant of WEG's D6 legend system, which means it's a d6-based roll-over system. Difficulty numbers vary from "Very Easy" (1-5) to "Heroic" (31+); typical difficulties are Easy (10) or Difficult (20). Considering that Maritus is rolling 2-4 dice, 20 seems a bit excessive.

If you make an especially low roll, or if you want to improve a roll you just made, you can use a Character Point to roll an additional die and add it to that skill roll. Using Character Points represents someone pushing themselves, drawing on their determination and inner strength to succeed. Character Points offer a chance to improve your character's rolls when your character needs it most. Martius starts "Scout for Hire" with five Character Points--just like most beginning characters in the Metabarons Roleplaying Game.

Pretty simple and straightforward so far. The dice-to-difficulty ratio is still pretty low - lots of chances for failure - but at least in this early solo intro adventure they don't introduce any really bizarre dice mechanics like botches or exploding dice.



This section ends with "An Example of Play" - basically an old-school script of people playing through a section of the game - and then there are a couple pages of "Metabarons Player Handout" which basically crunches the essential mechanics of the game down to four pages which can be copied and handed out to the players. Handy. Usually these appear in the back of the book, but I'm not complaining. They also have some good advice:

Everyone's A Winner Nobody wins or loses in a roleplaying gmae. You're not competing against the other players or the gamemaster. The characters must work together as a team to accomplish their goals, using their various strengths and expertise to everyone's benefit. The players work with the gamemaster to create an entertaining story.

Next up, Chapter 1: Characters! Actually, I'll probably try to get through the entire "Player's Section, which is four chapters and about sixty pages, and is conveniently color-coded thanks to the luscious page art.

[hyzmarca]

So, I take it there'll be a lot of baby decapitations in this game?

[Ancient History]

Well, at least one.

[OgreBattle]

So, I take it there'll be a lot of baby decapitations in this game?

That's a Metabaron doing it and you're not playing as "THE" Metabaron, so maybe not.

[hyzmarca]

I hope the prostitute-witch-nuns are playable, at least.

[Judging__Eagle]

Amputation, and replacing them with cybernetics; as well as ritualistic coming of age amputations, and replacing them with cybernetics... is more of a Clan Castaka (aka the Metabarons clan) deal that wasn't initially intended; but became a formal part of how one generation would raise the next as each generation of parents set up, or forcibly caused, situations that would involve the crippling, maiming, and often amputation of body parts. They also get a lot of cybernetics over the course of their stories; and one in particular replaces all[ of their flesh and blood for mechanical cybernetics.

The baby decapitation is unique in the Jodoverse; and is part of Jodorowsky's preference for the unusual ideas. The "Steelhead" character (with the metal slat face) earlier in the thread is what the baby grows up to be. It's definitely one of the more extreme things that happen in the Jodoverse; however the Techno-Techno invasion of the Troglosocialiks home planet to acquire access to the planet's minerals in order to produce artificial Epiphyte (an anti-grav substance that was the basis of the Metabarons fortune) is also pretty brutal; and the story is always trying to trump some previous challenges with ever greater ones.

Othan von Castaka (the Original Metabaron's (think Duke Leto) enemies were:

-An army of a thousand of Post-Nuclear Imperial "Black Endogaurd" (power armour); climbing up through a sewer to fight them in the middle with only a knife; while 100 of his house guard in ancient armour, melee weapons, and Ephiphye-lifted marble 'tanks'/shells occupies the flanks

-The Imperial Planet's entire security network, and garrison; landing at the front of the Imperial Palace to the shock of the Purple Endoguard stationed there (the Black Endoguard; all having been killed for being traitors to the Empire)[This gets to be a theme among Metabarons. They're always "flying to the imperial planet, sneaking past the latest security systems and expanded garrisons put in place, to detect and confront the last Metabaron who did this exact same thing"

-A planet-carrier that had stolen the Imperial Embryo

-A squad of energy-weapon and gun using humanoid mercenaries; with a knife, spear, bow & arrows in a swamp, at night, in the middle of peasoup fog. [Also kills his son, who had been successful in finding his stolen horse Shazam]

-A Shabda-Oud (much more twisted, and Evil, Bene Jesuit expies) Cetacybrog (space whale, spaceship) planet-destroyer. By acting like a "virus"

Anghar (2nd Metabaron ((?)Paul Atreidies)) deals with:

Age ~3(?)
-Killing his pet furtoad, before that age of 5 [and being whipped for every tear they had afterwards]

Age 7
-Learning enough Shabda-Oud martial arts to be able to take down their mother/sensei

-Fighting a "test" assault-bot, that only has 1 destruction method (button on top of head); and unlocks more melee-arms as time passes ["cheats" according to his father, by removing his leg weights, floating due to having Ephyphite infused into their bones as a fetus]

-Waiting for the foot-crushing mechanism his father uses to test his willpower to totally crush them; amputating them, instead of merely testing his endurance to pain

-Fighting two Shabda-Oud bodyguard/assassins on zero-G combat; slaying a S-O Reverend Mother in psychic duel (the 2nd w/ help from his mother; also a Shabda-Oud; Dune references should be evident here); again, at age 7

-Watching his mother blow up in a nuclear bomb (b/c their heart was a bomb; and they had a son; instead of a hermaphrodite the Shabda-Oud could place on the Imperial throne); then killing his plasmagun using father with a lance/Psychic powers

Age 20-something(?)

-Spends a decade in hiding, to avenge their dead mother; waiting for their spy drones to find the S-O's crystal asteroid planetoid-ship

-Feeding Jejho (mutant, unkillable, 'god' of the Shabda-Oud) his arm; full of Oku-minibombs (the earlier image of a white haired protagonist about to cauterize his arm-stump with a plasmagun, follows this)

-Killing the S-O Reverand Mothers in a pitched psychic battle

-Blasting their infant son's head off (when they realized their wife's mind died; and their mom Souljarred herself into his spouses body in order to fulfill her husband's wish to establish a lineage of unbeatable warriors)

-Declaring themselves mercenary for decades; planning on suicide; being asked by rival marsupialoids to defeat the human empire

-Facing their son; Steelhead; in a space ship duel across dimensions & space; deciding on oku-minibomb suicide over watching their mother/wife get amputated even more by Steelhead

Steelhead [God-Emperor Leto? Not really, but both are pretty inhuman]

-Defeating their father by cutting off his mother/grandmother's fingers, and getting them to surrender [Steelhead being a dick gets to be a theme]

-Fighting brain-eating space-jellys that had killed the Imperial Couple and Court who were celebrating the defeat of the marsupialoids. Ends up killing the mind/seed of the galaxy the jellys come from

[my memory becomes more sketchy b/c I started reading "LCdL'M" in its first two tradebooks; and then tried to get the rest in comic format as it was being released]

-Deciding to learn how to love; learning how to think in non-literal terms [a bigger deal; since Steelhead is undefeated in combat, but has no concept of emotion, except contempt and entitlement] (Of course, since this is space opera, they fall in love w/ the person who accused them of being incapable of such; whose father they also assassinated)

-Rescuing the only other (known) tree that said father meditated in daily from thousands of tyranids

-Defeating a Techno-Techno aerospace ship (at least) the size of manhattan island

Aghora [brain of the boy twin, in the body of the girl twin; Steelhead was willing to give up the lineage of unbeatable warriors for his wife, and the girl twin was anacephalic]

-Gets their hand sliced with an ancient machine meant to cut the extinct pig; and replaced with a cyber one

-Trains by killing "unkillable" galactic criminals in a prison planet (form-splitters; sea monsters)

-Defeats Steelhead's unkillable golem body by attacking the crystal casket their mother is inside of; and enveloping a grieving Steelhead in freezing-coolant; before spacing them

-Confronts a "mirror universe" that is destroying everything the galactic empire can throw at it. Thinks like a mirror (???) to cross the threshold; kills mirror universe's version of Azathoth

-Cuts open own skull to get XY genetic material in order to procrate

-Fights an "infinite" assassin (while about to go into labour); until they are standing on top of a mountain of corpses of this assassin (I can't say I recall how they win though)

No Name [Aside from "The Metabaron"; this character was unnamed, even by their parent; making him even more perfect as a warrior]

-Not actually in the told histories (the comic is a recounting of what happened by Tonto, the Castak butler-droid, to Lothar, a bored robot); as they are the current Metabaron.

-Fights Steelhead [I can't recall if they kill him though], earns their only battle scar (across their eyebrow)

-Eventually it gets revealed that they live in an other universe, and have to destroy all of their past. Destroys the Metabunker, Tonto & Lothar [Tonto has, however; an illegally implanted teleportation device; and he and Lothar build a new metabunker while continuing the story]

Their creations with psychic powers are interesting as well. Up until Aghora, the previous Metabarons were able to prove their psychic mastery by conjuring roses made of pure psychic energy (i.e. "a blue rose"); or reshaping solid matter (e.g. the imperial throneroom) into a flower (while also conjuring up a space jet). Aghora gave birth (which is about as creative as anything gets). While No Name tries to use their psychic powers to create a fly out of pure psychic energy; and become a creator after being a destroyer from a lineage of such. However, they fail; and instead resolve to be a defender of life (and are in The Incal, as such; eventually becoming nursemaid to some magical baby everyone wants to kill; and later their guardian/parent).

I guess this is a fairly good synopsis of the plot

[Judging__Eagle]

Also, I can't help but feel that the illustration of the Metabaron here is probably one of the better ones, since he doesn't look so much like a generic lantern-jawed comicbook protagonist; and more like a bemused (if severe looking) Frenchman.

[maglag]

-The Imperial Planet's entire security network, and garrison; landing at the front of the Imperial Palace to the shock of the Purple Endoguard stationed there (the Black Endoguard; all having been killed for being traitors to the Empire)[This gets to be a theme among Metabarons. They're always "flying to the imperial planet, sneaking past the latest security systems and expanded garrisons put in place, to detect and confront the last Metabaron who did this exact same thing"

Later metabarons just waltz in/blow up a hole in the imperial palace while murderizing everybody who stands on their way.

Being the imperial bodyguards royally sucks. You just know a metabaron is gonna come some day and kill you in some new way to show the galactic court how much they have improved.

-A planet-carrier that had stolen the Imperial Embryo

Minor quibble, the Imperial Embryo was never stolen, but the ship carrying it was under siege by the fleet from the planet-carrier. That's why the metabaron could just blow up said planet-carrier.

-A squad of energy-weapon and gun using humanoid mercenaries; with a knife, spear, bow & arrows in a swamp, at night, in the middle of peasoup fog. [Also kills his son, who had been successful in finding his stolen horse Shazam]

While grieving, the metabaron gets his balls and dick blown off by a energy shot from one of the mercenaries that wasn't quite dead yet. One of the rare moments when a metabaron did not succeed to kill someone right away. Also the swamp was just near the castle where the metabaron lived, so he had the home advantage. The night/fog still cost him since it meant he couldn't tell his son from the mercenaries.

Space nun-whore then got impregnated with his blood.

-A Shabda-Oud (much more twisted, and Evil, Bene Jesuit expies) Cetacybrog (space whale, spaceship) planet-destroyer. By acting like a "virus"

Suicide mission since the Cetacybrog's own immune system poisons the metabaron back.

-Fights an "infinite" assassin (while about to go into labour); until they are standing on top of a mountain of corpses of this assassin (I can't say I recall how they win though)

Pretty simple:
1-Call personal gunship from orbit.
2-Get inside and fly into space away from "infinite" assassin.
3-Blow up the planet where they were fighting on along with "infinite" assassin.
4-?
5-Profit!

[Ancient History]

1: Characters

Character creation starts with "selecting a template." This is slightly confusing, as the character templates actually begin on page 267, and there's no reference pointing to the page; I had to go to the index to find it. The templates...aren't what you might expect. They're a bit like Shadowrun sample characters/archetypes, in that you have groups of skills and equipment and stuff with names attached like "Corsair," "Hot-Headed Mercenary," "Defused Mentrek," "Bored Aristo," "Reclusive Mystic," "Neo Shabda-Oud," and "Class-S Investigator."


Canned background for a Neo Shabda-Oud:

You were discovered on your backwater planet by an extremely ugly and old mid-wife. As she helped your mother bring your fourth brother into existence, here eyes caught yours for a fleeting moment. The next day she proposed to your family to take you on as an assistant in her mid-wiving profession. To this day you have never truly helped deliver a child. The following years of your life were spent developing your Psionic powers under the tutelage of a witch. It was during your initiations that you met for the first time others of the secret order. They were ten in all, but you only remember on other face, that of the middle aged woman that drove the roots of Psionic enhancement into your skull. Though you felt your powers grow immediately, the pain took several months to disappear. Your tutor continued to train you until the day she left on a long trip, saying that she would return within the month. She never returned. You ere forced to take to the stars, because gossip was causing you strife, and you never left your home with your head uncovered. You adopted Fuga in order to survive.

There's also a section a little later on in chapter 1 about creating your own template - y'know, in case you want to play a four-armed red alien chick or something.



Anyway, after you select your template you're supposed to fuss over the details of your character's appearance and background - and select your Honor Code. The HC is a bit like Nature and Demeanor in World of Darkness Games, in that it's a fairly pithy description of how your character believes they should behave, and you get rewarded (sort of) for paying lip service to that. Honor Codes include Bushitaka, which is the whole Metabaron's way of the warrior, and some others include:

Fuga: The act of fleeing is the highest expression of the art of dodging. There is no more glory to face your enemy than to deceive him and to avoid aggression. The infamy lies in the objective of the action, never in the means you use.

Paleo-Noblis: A resurgence of the antique honor code of the paleo-knight, Paleo-Noblis is a harsh and constrained path which requires its followers to respect the rules and principles of lyalty, humility, and sacrifice.

Skatawah: The Neo-Red Prophecy claims that the harmony of nature is a perfection that we must attain again. In everything the Skatawah followers look for the secret rhythm of life and do their best to find harmony with it.

A word on things like "paleo-knight" - this is a Jodowrosky-ism for anything "old" or "antique." His characters actually shout things like "Paleo-Christ!" It's bizarre, and a little stupid.

Anyway, after you're done deciding how your character dresses and tweaking any of the intangibles, you spend 7D on skills. (That basically means you can add 1 or 2D to any of the skills listed on the template.) There's a handy chart that explains how good you are, relative to how many dice you're rolling; rolling 6D is about the limit for a starting character, and makes you the best in "a city of geographic area. About 1 in 100,00 people will have training to this skill level." 6D is also the minimum level where you can pretty much punt an Easy(6) challenge, so there's that. 7D makes you best on the continent (or 1 in 10,000,000); 8D makes you best on the planet (or 1 in 100,000,000); etc. with 12D making you one of the best in the universe.

You can also spend 1D to buy three specializations - a specialization adds 1D to the skill, but only applies to the specialization. In all other respects, specializations are pretty close to Shadowrun skill specializations in the range of material they cover and which ones are available: Firearms (defense pistol) for example, or survival (mountains).

Some skills are labeled as "advanced skills" because they require years of training. The two specifically called out are engineering and medicine, which I find gratifying, but it also means that they always start out at 0D at character creation and if you want them you have to buy them up - no defaulting to attributes - and they have prerequisite skills you have to buy up to 5D before you can take them, a bit like GURPS skills. The good part is, you add the advanced skill to the the prerequisites.

So for example, to buy any points in Medicine (adv.), you need First Aid 5D. But if you have First Aid 5D and Medicine (adv.) 2D, you actually roll 7D when rolling First Aid - more if you have specializations, so I suppose you might actually be able to start out rolling 9D on certain types of First Aid at chargen, if you have First Aid 4D on your template.

Final part of character gen is to spend kublars on equipment. The kublar is a gold coin/trade bar that is the basic economic unit of the Human Empire. Not because Jodowrosky is a particular gold bug, but because if Conan is in space, fighting space wizards and making time with green-skinned women, he's going to look for a bag of gold to go spend at the nearest inn.



There's a section on making your own template - which is bizarre, because it says that the max die code for Psionics is 6D where everything else tops out at 4D - and customizing your template, y'know just in case you wanted to play an Honored Maitre instead of a Benegessirit Reverend Mother.

Experience comes in the way of "Character Points," and you improve things by spending them. Each "pip" costs a certain number of CP relative to your current score - so for example, if you have First Aid 2D, you need to spend 2 CP to improve it one "pip" - which gives you First Aid 2D+1. Three pips equals a die improvement, so it looks like:

At 1D, you pay 1 CP and raise your skill to 1D+1.

At 1D+1, you pay 1 CP and raise your skill to 1D+2.

At 1D+2, you pay 1 CP and raise your skill to 2D.

At 2D, you pay 2 CP and raise your skill to 2D+1.

&c.

You can also buy up specalizations (0.5 x skill D), advanced skills (3 x skill D), learning new skills (attribute D), or improve attributes (10 x attribute D); there's some bullshit about training times because the writers were using a system based on shit from the 80s that was an idealized form of game engines from the 70s. Psionics costs a flat 20 CP to gain if you don't have it at chargen, and oddly you can buy up your Move rate by spending its current rating in CP - this may, in fact, be the first mention of Move, and it won't make you the Flash, but if that's what you want to pour your CP into, it's an option.



So! That's...uh...chargen. Mostly. Next chapter is Skills. I know I was going to try an get the whole Player's Section done tonight, but I'm tired and want to go to bed.

[OgreBattle]

The metabaron comic artist (the first one? I guess they did more later on) is Juan Giminez, argentinian man:
http://www.juangimenez.com/

He's great at delivering the contrast between cold metal hands and soft warm titties.

[Dr_Noface]

MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY

[Ancient History]

I guess I should point out that the effect of the whole 1D, 1D+1, 1D+2, 2D... advancement scheme is, effectively, to draw out character advancement. Like a lot of games which focus on a narrow narrative of play, while the Metabarons RPG provides a system for character improvement, it doesn't actually want you to improve drastically in any area. You can sort of contrast this with Shadowrun, which while it has geometric costs to improve attributes and skills and such, is generally fairly generous in both its guidelines of awarding Karma and usually offers multiple paths to improve any given aspect of a character (Karma, cyberware, magic, etc.).

[Longes]

Character creation starts with "selecting a template." This is slightly confusing, as the character templates actually begin on page 267, and there's no reference pointing to the page; I had to go to the index to find it. The templates...aren't what you might expect. They're a bit like Shadowrun sample characters/archetypes, in that you have groups of skills and equipment and stuff with names attached like "Corsair," "Hot-Headed Mercenary," "Defused Mentrek," "Bored Aristo," "Reclusive Mystic," "Neo Shabda-Oud," and "Class-S Investigator."

So we are literally dealing with Star Wars D6 hack.

[hyzmarca]

I guess I should point out that the effect of the whole 1D, 1D+1, 1D+2, 2D... advancement scheme is, effectively, to draw out character advancement. Like a lot of games which focus on a narrow narrative of play, while the Metabarons RPG provides a system for character improvement, it doesn't actually want you to improve drastically in any area. You can sort of contrast this with Shadowrun, which while it has geometric costs to improve attributes and skills and such, is generally fairly generous in both its guidelines of awarding Karma and usually offers multiple paths to improve any given aspect of a character (Karma, cyberware, magic, etc.).

Which is odd, since this is a setting with giant vampire lice queens that eat entire galaxies.

[Longes]

I guess I should point out that the effect of the whole 1D, 1D+1, 1D+2, 2D... advancement scheme is, effectively, to draw out character advancement. Like a lot of games which focus on a narrow narrative of play, while the Metabarons RPG provides a system for character improvement, it doesn't actually want you to improve drastically in any area. You can sort of contrast this with Shadowrun, which while it has geometric costs to improve attributes and skills and such, is generally fairly generous in both its guidelines of awarding Karma and usually offers multiple paths to improve any given aspect of a character (Karma, cyberware, magic, etc.).

Which is odd, since this is a setting with giant vampire lice queens that eat entire galaxies.

It's a Star Wars D6 hack and there you play people who are worse than Porkins, so...

[hyzmarca]

I guess I should point out that the effect of the whole 1D, 1D+1, 1D+2, 2D... advancement scheme is, effectively, to draw out character advancement. Like a lot of games which focus on a narrow narrative of play, while the Metabarons RPG provides a system for character improvement, it doesn't actually want you to improve drastically in any area. You can sort of contrast this with Shadowrun, which while it has geometric costs to improve attributes and skills and such, is generally fairly generous in both its guidelines of awarding Karma and usually offers multiple paths to improve any given aspect of a character (Karma, cyberware, magic, etc.).

Which is odd, since this is a setting with giant vampire lice queens that eat entire galaxies.

It's a Star Wars D6 hack and there you play people who are worse than Porkins, so...

Hey, Porkins was one of the Rebel Alliance's best pilots.

[Ancient History]

Attributes & Skills
I haven't read WEG's d6 Star Wars or Indiana Jones or Species or Tankgirl in a while, so I don't remember if these skills are exactly the same, but generally speaking this is pretty generic skills-stuff. Most of your combat skills are covered under the Agility attribute, including Archaic Weapons, Firearms, Throwing, Brawling, Martial Arts, and Melee Combat. If it sounds like there's a bit of overlap there - and if you don't know what the difference is between Firearms and Archaic Weapons in a setting that includes directed-energy weapons and laser swords...yeah, I don't know if I can help you. Specific weapons covered by "Archaic Weapons" include swords, bows, axes, muskets, and crossbows, while "Melee Weapons" covers modern bullshit weapons like the "combat shock-knife" and "quiver-shiv."


Weirdly, all successful Archaic Weapons rolls deal damage relative to your Strength.

The difference between Brawling and Martial Arts is that you can both use them for unarmed combat, but Martial Arts is better and you double your bonus for spending Character Points for extra dice. On the downside, if you hit somebody so hard with your martial arts that their head explodes, that's a ding against your honor and you lose an Amarax point. Also, it lets the Gamemaster fuck with you if they decide you're not using your martial arts enough.


I'm getting mixed messages from this RPG.

Really, there's too fucking many skills. I think there's honestly more skills than in D20, and some of those are very marginal like "0-g maneuver" and "Exoskeleton Operation." Plus, the skills are in no-wise balanced between the attributes - all the combat skills are under Agility, Strength has a grand total of four skills (Climb/jump, Lift, Stamina, and Swim), Psionics has three (Energy, Influence, Self-Control), and I don't understand the difference between Technical attribute skills and Mechanical attribute skills.

LANGUAGES
Time Taken: One round.
Specializations: Specific language.

Most people throughout human space understand Universal, the basic language used to communicate among pirates, spacers, and mercenaries as it is among politicians, traders, and the nobility. Even aliens speak Universal, though often with accents or awkward grammatical formulations.

The languages skill represents a character's familiarity with and ability to use various forms of foreign communication, including written, spoken, and non-verbal. Like the aliens skill, assume a character knows her own language and other common tongues like Universal. Use this skill to understand a language or dialect unfamiliar to the character in a setting where a translator (living or computerized) is not available.

Characters must make languages skill rolls when they want to understand something in an unfamiliar tongue, or communicate with alien words and gestures.

There's sadly more of this, but I like to call this the "Talk Slowly And Loudly" school of language assimilation. The problem is that most games are not going to take long enough for your character to meaningfully pick up an unfamiliar language, and while most folks understand that different levels of fluency in languages exist, it sucks to actually roll to see if you remember enough Paleo-French from highschool to impress the Neo Shabda-Oud novitiate into dropping her space-panties. On to of which, tey don't even give a list of different languages you might encounter, so this whole thing is bullshit.



Ironically, and I think almost by accident, the d6 system in Metabarons RPG actually makes you want to have a full bridge crew. This is because every single fucking skill you need to plausibly run a ship - particularly through combat - is a separate skill that benefits from having a specialist. Piloting, Sensors, Gunnery, Shields, Comm, and Astro-Nav are all separate skills which you'd plausibly need if you wanted to engage in even basic space ship combat.


Alternately, Kirk might be the only PC and using the Command skill to control the NPCs. That would make a lot of sense.

The Repair skills goes on for fucking pages, and I'm not going to try and parse it all. I think a lot of it might have been borrowed from Star Wars anyway. It basically represents a mini-game where a hot-shit engineer can pimp your spaceship as well as repair it.



Psionics

Psionics gets its own chapter.

You've read a few chapters, played a little solitaire adventure, and learned something about your character's mundane skills. So, you think that makes you ready to venture out into this cold, harsh universe? I wouldn't bet on it.

The game had the habit of in-universe characters addressing the reader directly. Aside from breaking the fourth wall, this has all the subtlety of Superman reminding you to floss, and I don't like it. I'm going to pretend this was written by some French people that thought it was acceptable, then translated into English by a Spanish company that didn't know any better, and the WEG guys just decided to roll with it because they were getting paid anyway.

Anyway, Psionics aren't a direct riff on the Force. They's supposed to be your untapped spiritual resources and capabilities. Jodowrosky himself likes to use the Rule of Cool when it comes to this kind of thing, but whoever wrote the game felt that anyone developing awesome powers should come up with a bunch of roleplaying hang-ups that go along with it, like people being freaked out or seeing you as the messiah or some shit. Seriously, there's the better part of a page devoted to that. It also says that characters with psionics are inherently competitive, like kids in Pokemon, and will demand random duels with you to see who has the mightier brain and spirit.


I don't know why this is happening either.

Psionics are divided into three skills: Energy, Influence, and Self-Control, which characters roll for a wide variety of effects. In keeping with the idea that you shouldn't have nice things, the target number for any given effect is variable like you're building a spell in Shadowrun, except without all the nice details that make it easy to determine what you need to roll to set shit on fire - instead, you're basically expected as Gamemaster to pull numbers out of your ass, with a few guidelines to help you along your way.

Energy represents the character's ability to sense and manipulate energy - the three effects tied to it are "Detect Energy," "Mental Blast," and "Shield", which are pretty self-explanatory.



Influence is explicitly the Jedi mind trick. 'nuff said.

Self-Control is pain-control and physical enhancement. The latter gives you bonuses to your other attributes, which also boosts the associated skills...not a bad way to go.


Litany against fear, check.


Mak'tar chant of strength, check.

There's some noise about creating new powers, but it's all mindcaulk. Moving on!

Honor, Amarax, & the Necro-Dream

This review needed a bit more fanservice.

I have briefly touched on the Code of Honor and Amarax points. The latter are something created basically uniquely for the RPG. The gist is, the Code of Honor is how you're supposed to behave. Amarax Points are like Action Points in D&D3.x or Willpower in WoD, which you can spend to boost various tests - with the caveat that you only regain the Amarax points if you spent them doing things in accordance with your Honor Code (in which case you get more!)



However, if you act like the Paladin in strip #3, you not only don't get Amarax points, you might earn a Necro-Dream point.

Characters get Necro-Dream Points for giving into the temptation to imerse themselves in the apathetic forces in the universe, choosing inaction over action. hey represent how lose a character comes to drifting off into a life of passive pleasure in the oblivious stupor of the Necro-Dream.

Gamemasters should always warn characters when their actions risk earning them a Necro-Dream Point. Give the player the option to change his mind if he wishes. If he continues, he does so at his own informed risk.

If you end an adventure with no Amarax points, or more Necro-Dream Points than Amarax points, your PC becomes an NPC. Characters can also roll willpower to resist the temptations of the Necro-Dream (examples given include "taking a drink of Cocolo; spending the night with a homeoslut; participating in holovid gambling; sitting down to watch holovid for the aternoon.") You can also spend two Amarax poins to remove one Necro-Dream point, which sounds like a bad deal and it is a bad deal.



I'm not going to say that the whole Code of Honor/losing yourself in passive pleasures thing isn't present in the Jodoverse - they totally are. But they're also from completely different series. Di Fool in The Incal has to deal with a penchant for passivity that would make a hobbitt proud; he starts the adventure just wanting to get drunk and get laid and has to spiritually advance from there. The Metabarons, by contrast, are all about a brutal warrior code and its long-term consequences of the Bushitaka philosophy. They sort of cross, a little bit, because the Metabaron first appeared in The Incal, but the themes of the two works are otherwise largely very different.

And from a roleplaying game point, I can empathize with the designers - they want to create a fast-moving game that encourages players to do stuff. But when do you threaten PCs with Necro-Dream points? When they get up from the table to take a piss? When they want to play with their mobile at the table? Because most PCs don't decide that they're going to tell the adventure to fuck off and wait while their PC gets high and bangs a couple of homeosluts. They save that shit for a lull in the action, when they can't do anything. So I have to give this whole Amarax/Necro-Dream subsystem a big "choo choo" on the Fuck You Train-O-Meter. Suck gamemaster's cock or...what? You stop playing? Shit man. I can get up from the table whenever I want!


Shit, when I finish a book I can just go back and start another one! There are more! I don't need your half-assed space opera adventures! There are plenty of homeo-sluts in these pages already!

[OgreBattle]

Why is a woman that hot and busty bald and in working class attire