Not a proper review, as I have no intention of providing an unbiased take. The inspiration for this came from attempting to compare the differences between my old first edition book by Target AB and the new third edition by Mophidius# that I bought last year.  Of course, the more time I spent with the Mophidius book, the more I came to hate it, so now I will explain to anyone curious in excruciating detail why, exactly, it offends me.

To be fair, the book does reveal a lot more about the setting. You know: Things like what year it is.

So let us begin with the bringing of the pain.

At first blush its a much more attractive, colorful package. Lots of colored artwork, that sort of thing. Truth? Most of it is recycled black and white art from the First Edition book, the high quality but painfully Disco color art is mostly missing. The New Art is... bad.  Sloppy bad. Charles Ryan Millenium's End is looking at your art and laughing at you, bad.  Mike Mignola is looking at your art and shaking his head thinking you just don't get it, bad.  Hell, just for grins: The pictures of the guns in First Edition were line art drawings mostly. Nice clean draftsmanship, clear images.. that sort of thing. They appeared in various other pictures and were clearly recognizable.

In the third edition someone hired their third grade honor student to redraw them with crayons.  Sure, they are in color now, but the clear draftsmanship is most (not entirely, to be fair) missing, and a few of the guns are actually redrawn as unusable monstrosities.  The Purifier was never a well thought out concept, artistically, but the Deathlokdrum, which to be honest was lacking a line art draft pic originally, looked like a usable (if cartoonish) monster of a double barreled cannon with a grenade launcher. Now it looks like a maybe double barreled cannon that some goon stuck a grenade launcher to teh bottom of with some crazy glue and no concept of how human arms bend.  Not that it matters, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

So we have a lot of setting material, which is nice though maybe... just maybe... a far future war against alien demons from beyond Pluto isn't the BEST setting to lay out an exact timeline of, hmm? Its one thing to learn in the background material that the Cardinal(Pope) of the church might actually be an immortal wizard who has been fighting these alien demons from beyond pluto since before the dawn of man... its another thing to read his fucking itinerary over the last twelve hundred years, and realize his big plan to save us all is his thousand year quest to clone his dead brother...  But maybe I shouldn't blame Mophidius for the setting.

But talking about the setting does make me think about the goofy layout.  You know, dumb ideas like sticking the chapter on Heretics (nominally NPC villians unless the GM really wants to run a campaign about baby eaters serving alien demons from beyond pluto), between character creation and, oh, the equipment chapter. Or, for that matter putting all the space ships in your game about people fighting alien demons from beyond pluto in the sewers of the moon before the big guns? Maybe. Just a thought, guys.   To be honest the chapters sort of meander quite a bit, and a lot of concepts about their goofy ass 'Narrative' rules are used heavily well before they are explained in any detail.  Just maybe, when you want to divide your skills between Expertise and Focus, you should CLEARLY explain how that works BEFORE character creation when people are trying to... I dunno... make characters with those skills? Just a thought.  For that matter: At one point the book mentions having a Focus of Zero, but I'll be damned if I could find how THAT is supposed to work.  Do you start with a zero (and thus unable to earn strong/critical successes???), or do you start at one when you are 'trained' to use the skill? Because, if I have to be perfectly honest, I'd rather have an expertise of zero and a Focus of 1, given how skills work. Just sayin': Since my governing attribute is likely to be anywhere from two to four times greater than my bestest ever skill expertise, the ability to pass difficulty three or higher tests is a bit more, um, critical than a pissant bonus to actually succeed.  

But I'm still getting ahead of myself.  Bad Pika!!!

So, on the setting.  One thing new in 3rd edition, that I honestly thought must have come from a tabletop wargame edition I wasn't tracking, was the addition of the Whitestar faction.  So, for those not up on Mutant Chronicles: ages ago (1200 odd years by the third edition time line, so I at least have that much to praise...), the corporations (The germans, japanese, americans, british and... just a tiny bit ago, the cyborgs...) left earth in the middle of a huge ecological disaster that rendered it uninhabitable, but that's ok because they pretty much terraformed everywhere, including the moon, but most definitely NOT Pluto (because Alien Demons, don'tcha know!!!), so pretty much everywhere IS Earth now, just with different names, m'kay?  Hard science, it is not.  Well, apparently the Russians said 'fuck that noise' and they stayed on Earth, because fuck you, that's why. Also:Russians.  And they are lead by Anastasia Romanov, because "Fuck You, Russian!".   If I have to be perfectly honest, I pretty much think Mophidius invented Whitestar in order to have six factions you could roll on a six sided die, and I am totally not joking.  

Now, having a hard core faction of bitter survivalist still on earth isn't all bad.  Maybe stop pretending everyone just discovered they were still there and pretend instead that they've always been there, because New Edition, hey?  Also: Maybe you could, say, actually develop this faction with a little MORE depth? HItting the levels of depth of your average war game would be an improvement here. How old is the Tsarina? How long has she reigned? Who led the sorta-fake russians before her? Why are they so sexist that they only let women be pilots (seriously: That's wargame levels of development at best), and why are their only pilots (In NUCLEAR WINTER cold russia) flying around on glorified hover bikes? Isn't that... you know... cold?  Why are their only detailed monster hunters guys who are only allowed to use magic swords made out of bones?  I mean, I can see preferring magic swords made out of bone, if a little silly, but if you REALLY need to kill mutant demon monster things, maybe shooting them once in a while is actually... practical?

Nope, just bone swords. Because wargame, apparently.  Also, fuck narrative choice and defining your character the way you want. Bone. Swords.Motherfucker.  Because that is just how Russians roll.

But hey, now you can randomly roll your starting faction on a D6. So, we got that.

Did I say 'Can'?

Oops.

I meant: Now you HAVE to. Why? Because this is a Narrative Game, asshole, and being able to define your own character background is fucking Gamist or something. Just like letting the GM decide when his evil villain sorcerer casts spells at you. Nope, can't have that shit.

Seriously, I'm moving on to character creation now, because about ninety percent of the bullshit in this fertilizer bag of a game book is concentrated in character creation.  

You know: For a game that doesn't trust the GM to run his own game in peace, this turd burger sure as shit doesn't want him skipping the part where the players make their characters. I've never seen a game that was quite so hard core as this one in demanding the GM carefully supervise every single possible... not choice, variable... in character creation.  

I'll walk you through it.

So you have eight attributes, which for the record is a bit on the high side.  They all start at five, but you can move a few points around. Don't go above six, motherfucker. that shit is forbidden. Also,don't go below four.   Nobody should ever be forced to voluntarily play a character that is actually bad at something, or something.   Now, you DO have five 'lifepath points', which you can totally use to buy up your stats. As long as you don't go above six.  The game doesn't really advise you not to do this, per se, but don't do it.  It DOES tell you, in no uncertain terms, that you can't go backwards and put a few points into your stats later.  No, players can't be trusted with that level of responsibility.   So now you have your stats. Feel empowered yet? Feel any of that sweet narrative control?  Feel like your character is fundamentally better or worse at some things than any other character?

For the record, your stats are the number you are trying to roll under on just about any 2d20 roll. Those dice are not added, btw.   This is the fundamental dice mechanic of the game, but the 'dark symmatry' dice get a LOT more coverage.

No, I'm not going to try and spell that correctly, cause I'm fucking lazy.

Moving on.

Now you roll to see which flavor of asshole you are.  Imagine playing vampire and dicing for your clan? Playing D&D and dicing for your class?  THats just about how fucking pissant this particular rule is.  You don't even get a proper say in what nationality your character is! Oh, there are actually two rolls here, since the first one is to find out if you are even a member of the six factions, or an underground street hood instead. Its fifty-fifty. Mind you, being a criminal street hood to start isn't that bad a deal once you see the AWESOME benefits to being a citizen.  At least the street hoods can buy black market clothes that can get them hung! So, yay?

I'm not entirely facetious here.  An easily missed rule is that you can buy faction equipment (mostly the guns) at a slight discount in price and difficulty, plus exceedingly pointless citizenship rules (you know: Like you can totally carry a pistol legally in a game where everyone, even school teachers, wear body armor and almost every sample npc is either a rich noble above the law or a military veteran or mercenary..., or the one where A Clansman (note: Not ever Imperial? Just the Clansmen?) can not charge another Clansman (See last parenthetical comment) for air or water (is charging for air even a thing in the setting? I mean, for fuck's sake the moon is the most heavily occupied planet in the god damn setting!!!!!), but after the first request he can roust you for trespassing.  Yay.)

So non-citizens buy everything at a discount but it's all 'black market', so they can be fined, arrested and executed if they are caught with it.  And clothes still follow the normal acquisition rules, so the third time you are busted with your 'black market' underwear on, you get hung.  Then you kick your GM in the jimmy and fuck his girlfriend while he's moaning in pain because he's a cunt. And since this is a Eurotrash game, I can call him a cunt.  But why in the fuck would you even write that shit into your game?  Everything you fucking own is black market, and we hang people with black market equipment! Go you!!!!

But yeah. You roll randomly to find out which breed of far future Eurotrash you are, unless you're Capitol, in which case 'Murica.  

And no, rolling is NOT optional. That's what Lifepath Points are for!  So you can totally spend your lifepath points on picking something that would be standard in any other game (and was standard in any previous edition of the game you care to name or even fucking imagine...), instead of trying to be more mechanically not-useless.  Now, fine: Maybe you don't want players trying to min-max the shit out of their characters, but this is just asshole levels of dickery.

So now you get your totally awesome, yet ruthlessly mechanically balanced reward for rolling whatever the fuck random shit you rolled.  Because any one faction is better than any others? Nope.

You get to more attribute points based entirely on your faction, and two skills, one of which will be one of your three 'signature skills'. Because, by god, you WILL be defined by your starting faction. GOD DAMN if I don't feel narratively empowered yet!  I can just FEEL my control over my destiny.   I mean, I totally thought I'd like to be well known for my absolute mastery of fan-wankery, but damned if Bauhaus only gets to pick from Mechanics or Lifestyle.  Decisions, decisions.  

Also, right here we come to another downside of actually taking the time to write up the setting in glorious detail.  You see, we now know for a fact that everyone from Imperial speaks... wait for it.. wait for it... Imperial. And everyone from Bauhaus speaks... Bauhaus!!!! Shocking, I know!!!!  

You know, I'm reasonably certain that first edition didn't bother to explain that level of detail, and that we could just assume, if we really needed to, that Bauhaus spoke mostly German or something. You know, some idiotic and totally nonesense idea like that.  I mean, who would have imagined that all the corporations had managed to develop their own unique languages NAMED AFTER THEMSELVES!!!  Mind: Blown.   I'm actually disappointed to find out the the new guys actually speak 'RussoManderin' instead of 'Whitestar'.  Way to let me down, Mophidius.

Now you get a roll on a faction event table. This is a huge, whole page table with six columns, one for each faction. Too bad I can sum it up with six lines, one for each result on a d6. Roll a one you get a favor from a contact. Roll a two and someone gave you a tenner. Roll a three you get a favor from someone who resents it. Four at its a criminal contact. Roll a five and you have an enemy who doesn't owe you a favor, roll a six and someone gave you a pistol or a cape or some not quite useless fucking thing.     That's it. Took an entire page and two quarts of black ink to put that in the book. Maybe its brown, sort of a burnt umber...

Now we get to roll our social status. No, your faction, or LACK OF FACTION, has no bearing on this.  You can belong to a corporation and be unemployed underclass, you can be street trash scum and be 'elite'.  See, Mophidius doesn't need logical connections between various rolls in THEIR lifepath system, fuck that noise.  Note that you can actually spend a lifepath point to just pick your result, or two if you need to be 'leet'.  Mostly though, it doesn't matter, and if you intend to shoot people in the face (a major theme in the game) you are actually better off rolling a shitty social status. The only 'real' thing it will effect is your Earnings Rating, which will, if low, be superceded by your job before we are done.   So, like your faction you get two attribute bonuses and one skill, but not a 'Signature Skill'... no, no. Your country of origin has far more impact on what you do well than your actual living conditions.  Just like every street bum in silicon valley can code better than any random hacker from russia. I mean, the damn russians don't get programming as a signature skill. There its all drinking and shirtless bear wrestling, even for the rich guys.

Then there is another of those big ass tables, only this one has no dice rolls. No, it tells you how nice a house you have based on your social standing, and gives you another pile of useless fucking crap that will TOTALLY enhance your Narrative, bitch.  Did you know that as a member of the Upper Classes you might chose to have a statue of someone famous? Don't you FEEL your character coming together now??  I'm really glad that some lower class characters will actually own not one, but SEVERAL sets of dog tags!!!  Even if they never serve in the military!!!! WOOHOO!

Then you get yet another VERY IMPORTANT roll, this time to find out where your character grew up, in a sort of general sense.  But, since this is space, we've got great options like 'Heritage world' and 'Heritage Foothold' or even... dun dun DUUUNNNN... "Sequestered".   Because rural vs urban is too... pedestrian or something.  Now we get TWO MORE attributes, but this time there is a twist! We can only take one!  Also, another skill, but still that all empowering 'no choice'. You WILL know piloting asshole, because you grew up in Luna City!  Everyone in Luna City is a pilot, doncha know!

AND another big useless black/burnt umber chart helpfully breaking down the individual factions versions of each painfully generic "environment"... so you know which neighborhood of Luna City the Brits live in.   Of course you also get another super useful item to adventure with.  I'm pretty sure that with the right random rolls and the right choices you could have three Aggressor model pistols. Maybe four.  Narrative, bitch!

At last we get to 'education' and damn me if this isn't where the whole damn train rolled right off the rails for me.  Somehow its entirely possible for an insufferably rich kid, in this stultifying hereditary class based corporate society, possibly raised in a hidden asteroid city, to somehow be raised on the streets or suffer the teenage draft... or even... in a game about shooting alien demons from beyond pluto... be trained as a cubical monkey, with just enough letters and maths (because in Eurotrash, that shit is plural!) to do exactly his job, and not one bit more!

To be blunt, roughly half the options don't even feel like they belong in the setting as presented, though they might be fine in the modern world.  There is absolutely no connection between any of your previous choice (Rolled or Picked with Lifepath Points... and if you haven't rolled once yet you've spent three out of your five, and you got another half dozen chances to spend coming!) and what you roll here.  

Even discounting that, taking this chart alone in isolation reveals how idiotic the Lifepath Points mandatory roll system actually is... and this particular bit of stupidity is going to repeat almost exactly in the next step, so buckle up, cowboy!

So you got three columns of six choices, labeled A, B, and C.  Column A is clearly the shit school choices, and Column C is meant to be the higher class education system. So far its fine.  Choice 6 in column A is literally 'pick one in A'. Column B ALSO only has five choices, but instead of tossing in a 'pick your own', instead doubles up Technical Pre-Career, because in a game where every sample character is in the damn army (one of a dozen armies, give or take, if I must be serious. Want me to name them? I will if you want). Why double up on the military academy when the players really are hoping to get a job as a janitor?  Column 6 has six choices, but it sort of feels like it doesn't.  I mean 'Post Graduate Technical, Post Graduate Scientific, and Creative Education' are your three first choices and they all sound like fancy college degrees stripped of context, don't they?

So far its sort of weak sauce, but not actually stupid. Stupid comes from the Life Points. See: One point gets you a free pick from A OR B, and two points let you pick C.  Also, if you want to be a Brotherhood wizard you HAVE to take Brotherhood Apprentice from the C column. So, right here we have a fake choice.  Roll randomly from five options that all suck, or at least imply you came from a shitty, poor background, even if you didn't, or pay a point to pick one of eleven options that still sorta imply you suck... or pay two points to pick the cool kid list.  So there really isn't much random rolling going on at all, is there?

I can point out that it mostly doesn't matter when we get to careers. Only the Brotherhood Apprentice choice really matters at all, and you have to pay two points to get that no matter what you decide.  

Oh, you can CHOOSE to pay a point to get column B, then CHOOSE to roll on it instead of just taking your pick, but frankly that's stupid.
 
So lets talk about the column choices a bit.  Three of the choices are more or less repeated across the three columns. Teenage Draft becomes Military Academy becomes Office Trained. Technical OJT becomes Pre-career training becomes post graduate technical...  Clerical Education becomes Managerial Experience becomes Mangerial Trained. The other choices in B and C repeat similarly. You can get a Brotherhood Educated, or you can chose to become a wizard with Brotherhood Apprentice.  So at every step of the process we have false choices that don't mean much. Your only real choice is wether or not to become a wizard.

Lets simplify. The choices are: Criminal, military, working stiff, mechanic, wizard, farmer, college.

seven whole backgrounds, broken into class based catagories, and presented in a table of seventeen options? Hell, I'm actually sort of shocked it worked out to as many as that.

Now, each of these backgrounds gets an entry which gives you some skills, some more generic crap and some attribute points, and also tells you what careers you can default into.  Now, for the record there ARE differences other than purely class based for the various entries, but they are fairly similar. You get five mandatory skills, you pick two out of three secondary skills (er... why? Why only three secondaries if we can pick two of them? Sort of... not really much choice again. NARRATIVE!!!)  One talent, and again fairly pointless crap.   For attributes things get decidedly wonky, though. See, I thought every background provided 8 attribute points, ranging from 0 to 2, but when doing a direct comparison I saw that, instead, the middle class and upper class backgrounds actually provide 9 attribute points, one of which will be +3.  The exact skills available do differ, and I'm amused to note that a hypothetical Imperial coming from the Officer Training might actually have collected Five Aggressor Pistols by this point (since you can only take faction weapons, and each faction really only has one weapon in each 'catagory'. So you just keep getting identical pistols!), and may have two or three sets of shoulder pads, because DAMN if Mutant Chronicles doesn't love it some fucking shoulder pads! (this is not a ding on Mophidius per se. Mutant Chronicles loves shoulder pads MORE than Warhammer 40k, and that's saying something...).

So again: Unless you want to be a fucking wizard, or you have a burning urge to be a street hood or a farmer, pay the one point and take the B column choice and your almost free attribute point.

Our next step is the adolescent Event table, which is a pure random roll.  You can use a life point, but that just gives a reroll unless your GM is a chump and lets you pick.  I feel compelled to say this list was ripped right out of first edition, which is was, but despite using that insane burnt umber background, they still managed to stretch it out over four pages instead of the original one and a quarter.   First the good news: They took out all the 'your character concept is fucked for life' options. Its still a 2d20 roll, but its no longer 'high is good, low is very, very bad'. How bad did it used to be? Well, while hardly relavent to this edition, at the low end losing a limb or spending a decade in a federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison were common for any roll under 15 or so, while rolling a double twenty gave you the I-win prize of +2 to all attributes, automatic commando status (er... two 'free-ish lifepaths worth of skills?), and status as a minor celebrity. Not... exactly... balanced.

But lets talk about Mophidius. LIke every other modern game, and quintuple that for being so damned narrative and empowering, this table is very, very balanced.  Boringly so, almost. I'll give them credit, however... it still has a decent mix of good and bad options, so they did take SOME chances with letting players gamble a bit. I know, I'm absolutely floored.  But its still Mophidius, and that means its still full of suck.

So, lets detail the suck, because THAT is what I'm here for. Well, that and a good Tiajuana hooker, but sadly I'm all out of hookers. Even the bad ones.

So the chart has four columns, the first being your dice result. So three columns. The first column is the actual event, narrative event.  Some asshole comes to your house and gives you a box. That's entry 5.   Entry 40 is a huge paragraph that could just say 'Puberty'.  Column two is the suggested character trait. I love that word 'suggested'. I'll also point out that the word Trait appears to have no actual rules attached to it, so its pretty fucking useless by itself.  Basically, as I find with most narrative games, you aren't allowed to play your character the way you want him to (because Empowered Narratives or something), you have to play out random, no-rule having random descriptions.  So good luck playing 'Slender', motherfucker (Entry .  Hey, what are you doing over there, bob? Me? I'm playing my Slender Trait. Look at me guys, I'm skinny! No you aren't, bob. You look like you ate all the skinny players!

The last column is labeled, no shit, Optional Effects.

So we have a mandatory dice roll, a narrative description of said dice roll... which gives us a suggested trait and an optional effect?  Can I just record the number and pretend I care?

But seriously, the Optional Effects are the actual rules for what you rolled. Why are they optional?  I don't know. Is Optional MORE or LESS mandatory than Suggested?  I don't know, and I seriously doubt Mophidius does either.  I won't bother detailing most of these, since that would require getting in the weeds of the goddamn narrative rules, and I'd like to not get ahead of myself, for once.  By the way: Despite not actually having a job yet, you can actually get promoted and raise your Earnings (remember that... from way back where I tore into the Status background roll? Yeah, I don't blame you for forgetting that....), so your unemployed lowlife can totally get promoted and make more money than the other unemployed lowlifes, and your noble scion Elite? Totally promoted to be Elite PLUS motherfucker.   Yes, there are a few goofy entries, and yes, to be fair I'm pretty sure getting promoted as a pre-job adolescent event was possible in First Edition. Still totally gonna mock it.  MOCKED, bitch.

Ok, so we FINALLY get to Careers. For reasons that are never explained you MUST take two careers. You can take up to four, but that isn't actually explained here, you gotta find that nugget of rules in the Iconic Careers portion.  This portion is painfully similar to Education, but I'll talk about it in detail to cover the differences.  Another rule nugget? You only get bonus attributes from your first career. That is not nearly as well hidden, but looking at the sample character at the end of the chapter let me tell you that you WILL feel small in the pants when you're done compared to that motherfucker if you DON"T get attributes from both mandatory careers. That said, let me keep this sucker on the rails (NARRATIVE!!!!).

Before I get too deep in the weeds, there are a bunch of slightly confusing little fillips here. Easily missed is that your time in a career is 1d6+1 years, compared to only two years in the original.  The first confusing thing is that you can chose to extend a career and roll an additional 1d6+1 years. That is it. You just get older. You don't count it as a second career, you don't get better at whatever you do. No, you MUST change jobs and learn to do something else to move on.  It does allow you to roll an additional event, but that's a universal table, so it won't really reflect much a growing career.  Also, if you have been trying to follow creation by reading the example character (say, to find out how he got such awesome stats!), good luck, it only covers one career.

So that said, lets look at how to actually get a job in this abortion of a lifepath system.

So, your education gives you a free pick. Military options mean you can join the military for free, that sort of thing.  Otherwise you're looking at the table of stupid design. Once again we have columns with six choices, because they only break that format when its a callback to the first edition 2d20 tables of doom.  This time we have four columns instead of three.  Once again, column A has options no other column does, this being 'pick any A' and Roll on B... so there are only four careers in A, and you might get 'lucky' and get a roll on B.  B has three careers in six slots. Three military, to police and one criminal. These aren't different police or military choices... they literally just repeat.  C is a little more balanced, but still only three choices, medical, academic and media, and D has three choices, Executive, ship crew and Intelligence.  So for those playing at home, that is 13 total options out of 24 possible rolls.  Why not just round it down a little and make one roll? Because we need stupid and confusing ways to spend our Life Path Points, of course!!! Duh!

So you can pay one point to pick any A or B, or to Roll on either C or D. Or Two points to Pick on C or D.  There are no Brotherhood Wizard choices this time, not exactly. That has to wait until we get to our second mandatory career choice. You know, because no Real character would ever just pick the job they wanted to do and stick with it for life.  Nope, you won't be serving twenty years in the army until you retire, you're gonna have to take a chance and take that job as a reporter! What? Not your concept? Not my problem, because NARRATIVE!!!!

I get a real kick out of how empowered I am about my character here.  I only wish the game gave me this many options to control the world through my unrelated dice rolls!  

So, provided you have any desire to play a character remotely like what you want, I hope you kept some Life Path Points!  Because if you didn't get/take the right Education, you're gonna have that choice taken right out of your hands here.  

Now, by my count there are either TOO MANY jobs, most of which are boring and not very adventure like, or TOO FEW jobs. I mean: Why is Media an option (for example), but not Pilot? What about Ship Crew? Maybe that's for piloting? Sure, maybe... then were is my job as a professional athlete? Why are all the military jobs just 'Military', and all the criminal jobs just 'criminal'?

Well... I don't know,Bob. Just go back to playing 'slender', m'kay?

So now you've got the career of your dreams... or the random one your dice gave you. Still no Wizards though. What have we won?

Well, eight more attribute points, for a start.  Then you get three mandatory skills (unless you chose to be unemployed, then you get two. Bonus skills for lazy assholes following their hopes and dreams? That's for shitty gamist games like Traveller!), one of which will be one of those three signature skills everyone has, because everyone is special here, bucko!  Then you get two more skills (chosen, once again, from three electives... again, except for those lazy shiftless bums following their hopes and dreams in a ruthless alien demon infested galaxy... I mean solar system!).  Now, it gives you a list of 'signature skills' to pick from, SO I gotta talk stupid design decisions.  THis list of skills is exactly the same list as your mandatory skill list, plus ONE skill from your secondary list. So, in theory you could take a signature skill that you didn't pick from your secondaries.  The short form of this is that the entry for Signature Skills is more than a little redundant, and it either raises questions that really don't need to be raised OR it allows you to make a dead end choice because you don't understand the rules very well. Maybe both.  Stupid.  

Now you also get one talent, an earnings rating that might be higher than your previous status, so go you, and maybe some 'stuff'. This is your big chance to collect YET ANOTHER FACTION PISTOL!!!! Time to run that six gun kid you always dreamed of!!!!  

To do it you pretty much have to play a beat cop however. The only other careers that provide weapons are the military,which gives you an assault rifle (even if you were in the Navy?), and Intelligence, which gives you a 'light pistol', by which I assume they mean the Pirhana... as there is nothing in the game called 'light pistol'.  There are some confusions of terms in this book, this being the one staring me right in the face as I mention it.  I also find it hilarious that 'corporate worker'...which is a nice catch all for cubicle monkey all the way up to the CEO's personal girl friday, are paid only slightly more than the unemployed bum begging for change out on the corner.  So, if your dice are remotely good, you can make more money from your birth status, even if you rolled Working Lower. LIving off of dads paycheck from pumping gas since Y.C.1199, bitches!

So ya made it through your first career, but the game says ya need two! Well, first you roll another 2d20 event table.  This one is a little more sane, only two columns and none of them say Suggested or Optional in them.  Still have stupid entries like 'Gain a Trait: I Am Your Nemesis'. Great. What's a trait? Where are the rules for Nemesis?  Oh, I get to play having a nemesis along side my playing Slender? Fun.

But you can get some assets along the way. What are assets? Man, we have some seven or eight chapters before we'll learn a thing about earnings or assets! Just... I don't know, write them down on your arm or something for now.  Believe me, I'd love to crack some mad jokes about assets right now, but frankly this is too much words as it is.  I'm already suffering syntactical fractures from the stupid.

The important things are that you can get fired from this event table.  Its actually modestly common (entry 20, which experience with dice tells me is the single most common result of rolling adding two twenty sided dice together...), and that the earlier rules about Earnings are more or less contradicted here.

Earlier, at the status table, we were told that status 5 was only the highest you could roll, but that as we went through character creation and adventures it could go up infinitely.  Now, there are at least three entries in the Events table that more or less say you get more earnings, the CEO of this solar system spanning company loves you like his girl friday, and so on... but you'll never beat that five, bitch. No, seriously, read the 40 entry (called Major Career Success), where it talks all about how you just shot up in earnings and status (instead of just earnings, which is more common... still a street bum, but paid like a BOSS (or BAWSE))... but if you are already Elite, take a favor from the top leadership of the Corporation instead.  Really? This one in 400 dice roll, with all that glowing fluff text telling me how I just did the BESTEST EVAH, and the CEO can't let me move to a bigger mansion? Because there is no cap to earnings in Mutant Chronicles? That's a quote, by the way. Reach for those stars that you could totally chose to be born with.  Dream of staying right the fuck where you are.

If you mean to say status/earning of 5 is equal to a corporate CEO, then fucking say so. I expect a game not to contradict itself in one fucking chapter. Is that so very much to ask???

If you are fired... um... it sorta doesn't mean anything except you can't voluntarily extend how long it took you to go exactly nowhere with it.  You can pay lifepoints AND earnings to ignore the firing...

Now, to be fair and honest, at this point I see that repeating a career is actually... well, sorta maybe?... allowed. You know, after reading all the rules about careers, even the careers themselves, then a three page burnt umber chart of doom... now, only in the paragraph covering being fired does it suggest that maybe, just maybe, you could repeat a career instead of just 'extending it' like an idiot. Mind you, that's merely my interpretation.  And I did go back and check and sure enough repeating is mentioned in the opening paragraph, just before it explains all those dice totals.  So I'm gonna leave in all my savage reviews of the career system, not because its strictly accurate but in protest of how badly explained all this is.  Extending Careers get a long as paragraph complete with large font/fancy color header saying 'this is a rule', but repeating careers is buried in the 'you're fired' chapter and mixed into the wonky explanation of the stupid table of stupid?  Good job, guys!  

Seeing a theme here, regarding organization and explanation? Say, have you figured out yet what to do with those redundant skill points? Expertise or focus? You mean you don't know how those work? Well, that's another two chapters away... so just leave some sloppy and confusing notes on your scratch paper for later, m'kay?   I mean, in a normal game you would just keep adding numbers up as you went along, but this is Mutant Chronicles! That would be too damn simple for us! We'll have to tell you how to spend experience before we get to Skill focus.

Now, for your second mandatory career it is worth looking into the Iconic Careers. Why? because while you CAN"T chose between ruthlessly balanced background details without a lot of fancy point tracking, you absolutely CAN chose to take careers that are mechanically better (and fluffytext cooler) than the boring ass generic careers we forced you to start with!

See, here we have no random tables, no ways to tax our idiotic life path points... just free and open choosing of some pretty nice careers. How nice? Well, at a minimum they give you two talents instead of one. I know, I can hear your erection from here. Down boy!

Actually, out side of some setting specific fluff, these aren't terribly different than before. Very, very minor upgrades. Some do have better Earnings (if you didn't already hit 5, you can just pick a career here that gives it flat out. If you care.), and they do have some nice free stuff compared to the base classes, and yes, they DO have two talents. For all of that you have to work to take one.  There are three things to look at, really.

First: Do you belong to the right faction?  Aside from the three Brotherhood Wizard classes and the 'GM Approval wreck-your-game' Heretic, all of them require you belong to the right faction. In more than a few cases you might wonder why they aren't more universal, but NARRATIVE EMPOWERMENT motherfucker!  Well, that and the Luna PD. No, you can't be a faction specific police officer, not if you want to be special... only Luna City gets fancy Iconic cops.  Them and the Doomtroopers... but really those two classes are specific to the Cartel, which is sort of like the UN.  So you have one evil, wreck your game Iconic wizard, three church wizards (which require that you took that one and only education background...), and two UN iconics. Every thing else is purely factional.  And yes, you'll still wonder why some of them are factional, like most of the Capitol Iconics, for example.  By 'Most' I mean two, because every faction gets three Iconics (Except the UN and the Alien Demons from Beyond Pluto), and honestly, I think every faction gets one unique military option, so really your choices are pretty slim when you think about it. Like: Why is a gun toting accountant/lawyer so faction specific? I get Ninjas, sure.  But celebrities? I mean just about anyone can roll a background that includes becoming a minor celebrity, but suddenly only Capitol has celebrities? Ok, then what about 'Rakes'? Only Bauhaus has noble dilletants who drink and fuck and duel each other all day long?  I'm pretty sure the Imperials might have something to say about that, after all I believe the term originated with real brits, and for as stuffy and rigid the Japanese of the Tokugawa era were, those assholes could party. Karaoke much? No rakes in fake Japan?   Ditto Politicians. Also... what if you are an unemployed loser from and unemployed loser background? Can you still be a Politician in Capitol? Man, they really ARE egalitarian 'Murica motherfuckers!

But seriously: To get ALL THIS AWESOME (or this sorta cool), you have to have exactly the right skills (which can be shockingly hard to get. MAD agents (the lawyer/accountants with guns) require both Stealth AND Persuad, and aside from the Media no other career provides both. Stealth in particular seems hard to get, as only 'on the streets' seems to provide it as a background.  THen you have to ROLL your required skill(s?) against a difficulty (of two, usually) in order to qualify.  I'd recommend spending a lifepoint to ensure its only a difficulty of 1.  Now here's a stupid rule for you: You can only take four careers max (not stupid), so if you FAIL to pass your Iconic Career, you can repeat your last career unless that would take you past Four Careers.   Mind you, Iconic Careers do not, so far as I know, allow you to 'break the game!' by taking a fifth career.  In fact, I know for a fact that it doesn't.  So... redundant and stupid rule is redundant and stupid. They REALLY REALLY want you to know you can't take more than four.  Just remember this, kids. You can't take five careers. Nope, not even on the way to six.  Four, okay? Have you got it yet?  NO, you don't actually need to know that you can repeat careers... just so long as you remember that four is the maximum.  Count with me now.. one? Not enough... lets not start there, people might get ideas. Two, three... four. STOP! Don't pass four.

There will be a test later. If you took more than four careers, we'll hang you right along side the guy with his black market clothes.

Anyway: Now you can spend any remaining life path points in a few idiotic ways, including chronicle points... which... ugh. You get some more benefits, like more attributes points and two more random skills... you know, so you'll stand out from all those other characters who are also career x from faction y and one more talent.  There are some (like... two) derived stats (hit points... which look pretty much like first edition hit points, which is frankly bizzare given what they did to the combat chapter!), and a bit of an optional rule for aging, in case you really stacked up those extended careers for some reason.  You can (should?) randomly roll on yet another full page burnt umber (how much did the printer spend on fucking ink?) chart of how you know the other players that provides zero rules, but if you're bored I guess it's nice.

So we get to the experience portion... not that I'm entirely clear on how much you should be earning right now. This leads to a bit of a contradiction for the skills, by the way, and one that is repeated later.

Ok, so when you get a skill for the first time you automatically get an expertise rating of one. No mention is made of Focus. Every other point you get in the skill is called training.  Expertise and Focus are both rated (according to the skills chapter, and the character creation chapter) from 1 to 3. Clearly we consider that not having the skill isn't counted as a rating. With me so far?  Generally speaking, if you roll a 1 that is a 'strong success', worth two successes, necessary for beating difficulties of three or higher.

No where does it say you have to 'take' the first point of Focus. Until you get here, where we learn that Expertise AND Focus have to be bought up from Zero with experience points.  So.... does this mean that when you first learn a skill... and no matter how high you raise the Expertise... you can't get strong successes? Or is Focus ADDED to that automatic 1 thing? Because, I sort assumed it was when I went through this the first time. And the second time, and the third. But that nagging question about Focus 0 (which according to the other text doesn't exist...) is still there bugging me. This seems like a fundamental rule that should not be murky at all.  Mind you, the game explicitly lists focus as the target to roll at or under to get two successes on that die, so adding would be wrong, but then again the game told me that there was no cap to earnings several times, then insisted on capping earnings just a few pages later, so you can see why I'm confused.

And this would affect EVERY SINGLE DIE ROLL in the game!  Yeah, kinda important to get it right. So what is it? No Focus Zero?  I mean, it clearly costs experience... so I gotta assume that 'mister know it all' with his Signature Skill of 'Smart Ass' all the way up at +5 can never beat a difficulty of 2 because he never put even a single point in focus? Is that right?  

Fucking fiddly double dip skill systems. It sucked when Dream Pod 9 tried it, it sucks here.  I can't think of a single skill system that double dips that didn't make me want to take the book behind the woodshed and put it out of its misery.  So, congrats, Mophidius, despite years of examples of failed games that tried this, you just HAD to prove you were as stupid as the rest of them.

More amusing fun with bad layout: The skill XP is laid out in a nice clear, easy to follow chart... ruined only by that nagging Focus 0 rating.  Talents? You know those TOTALLY AWESOME exception based design rules that every fucking game has to make the centerpeice of their design (looking at you, Star Warts....) has? Now that you'll have to read and take notes on to understand. No chart for you, asshole. No, you gotta count how many steps in your talent tree you've gone, look that up in a paragraph (instead of, you know, a CHART)... or just multiply it by 200, whichever is easier, THEN discount it by 50xp times the rating of your focus in that skill.

Simple.

Mind you, this is practically the easiest part of the entire game to figure out.  But lets just put a hypothetical out there.  Bob... you remember him, right? The fat guy playing Slender?  Bob has figured out that Focus is much more important than Expertise, so after that first point of skill he has stacked all of his skill points into his focus for his signature skill of 'Slenderman'. Now, as it happens, he forgot to take any talents, so after earning his 3-500 xp for his first session he decides to take the first talent in his skill... Slenderman. How much does it cost?

I'll tell you. As the GM I am now mathematically obligated to give him 50 xp for that talent.  Way to maths it up, bros.

This sort of thing is apparently so likely that they had to include a caveat that a talent has a minimum cost of 50xp.  Mind you it can only happen if you take a signature skill and no talents AND you get your focus to at least four (out of a possible five)... I submit to you that there are a dozen other ways to ensure this doesn't happen... the simplest of which would be to just fucking make sure that signature skills get talents before the players get this far!  No,no... too hard, I know. I mean, a two career chump character might reasonably have a dozen skills at this point, but only have five talents... and every single first talent has the exact* same effect (ooh... a reroll of ONE of your skill dice. How exciting!!), but that's just... no, can't figure out a single way to ensure all Singature skills (all three of them) have the first talent that won't break the game horribly.  Lets put in a bad mathematic discount and then wipe it away with a caveat.  Its more... elegant.


So that is character creation. You'll have an assload of talents that give you moderate to boringly crappy exceptional bonuses to various skills. Equipment? Pshaw. You'll have to wade through every other chapter in the book to find out how money is handled and to buy your flavored choice of shit sandwich guns or armor.  Wouldn't you rather let me harp on some of the other stupidity first?

Now?


Fine.  Fine.

SO, like so many other games, Mophidius is TOO GOOD to let players keep track of money. So we have a wealth system. Its not the worst I've ever seen, but rather like double dip skill systems that's really saying its not the smelliest turd in the bowl, so hardly a compliment.  Strap up for some serious narrative empowerment, as we discuss.... equipment!

Right, so by this point in the game you should probably be rocking a four or a five Earnings, unless you just really, really want to be a bum.  Or, I dunno, swinging swords made out of bone at an undead walking tank the size of a house, and firing a cannon the size of your leg, sounds like a smart thing to do.  And you probably have some assets buzzing around, but since Narrative Empowerment, they probaby have some weird qualifiers attached to them like 'Mysterious Box worth 5 assets that I'm not allowed to open'.

Well I guess I'll explain this shit.

See: All items, even the clothes on your back, have a Cost and a Restriction. Clothes, unlike a lot of things, also have a Maintenance.  

Step one: Take your Earnings and subtract it from the Cost. Is the cost Zero or less? Congratulations, you now are the proud owner of some random piece of junk that is mechanically different from any other random piece of junk... in your dreams.

Most things have costs greater than five, even if that doesn't really make sense. Want a pistol? Well, you may have a gold plated mansion complete with french maids providing morning hummers, but that pistol has a cost of 6 because Mophidius. Or Narrative Empowerment, your choice.  Think I'm kidding? A used car has a cost of 8.  The most common handgun in the universe, favored by every sort of criminal, bodyguards and schoolteacher, has a cost of 6, which is actually higher than more than half the handguns available. Because someone didn't understand their own rules.  Most handguns have a cost of five, meaning that you need a gold plated swimming pool in your back yard to avoid the Wealth system just to shoot someone in a game about shooting Alien Demons from Beyond Pluto.  

So. You can't afford a handgun (but, curiously you could afford the sort of bespoke suit that literally changes the entire fashion industry every time you step outside... thats the game fluff text for a cost 4 suit... Oscars Ceremony, here I fucking CUM!!!)

So how do you get a gat to shoot a fool?

AH, well you might be thinking... assets. Well, you're on the right track, but you're a step ahead of me.  Now, first let me explain organization. We're in chapter 20 right now, and cars and spaceships and shit were actually chapter nineteen. So clearly the rules for wealth and acquisitions are chapter 18, right? No? Seventeen maybe?  Single digits?... well, chapter 17 is all about Alien Demons from Beyond Pluto, and the assholes that serve them for sweet, sweet power. And 18 was cars, while 19 was space ships.

No, you're not thinking like those geniuses (genii???) at Mophidius. No, no... the SMART move is to put the wealth rules in Chapter twenty three, right between Armor and Belongings.  Perfect.  Everyone will know EXACTLY where to find it.  Sooooooo obvious!!!

Okay, so after you've taken away the cost (and to be fair, your Citizenship discount, that you probably forgot about by now...), you roll Lifestyle. Unless you roll Persuade. Or if you like (and I'll assume the hanging for black market goods is still a go...), you want to roll Theivery. You know what? This is motherfucking Mutant Chronicles. Roll motherfucking Slenderman for all I care. Pick a god damn skill and just... like... hang loose. Its Narrative, right? Groovy.

Anyway, Restriction really matters here, because that is the difficulty of your roll.  Mind you that restrictions tend to be pretty high for anything a player character would want. Like, I dunno, a Used Car. That's a two, by the way. Managable, but annoying.  For most guns we are talking a three or four, so just kiss this check goodbye unless you have focus (and even then...), or you start slapping down those Campaign points for automatic successes.  Anything bigger, or the crap that is perfectly average but comes from one of the three asshole sources in the game (Brotherhood, Cartel or Cybertronic), and its best to just bring hookers for the GM, cause now you're looking at a five minimum, which is pretty much off the charts of possible unless you got weighted dice and narrative meta-points to burn.

So you roll.  Assuming you brought the hookers, you succeed.  I like how the game assumes you'll have Momentum here, which basically means extra successes. Yeah, because even with a three focus (assuming lifestyle isn't a signature skill), a difficulty three check is statistically more likely to fail than succeed.   Difficulty four? Hookers, man. Hookers. And you probably didn't stack Lifestyle very high... most careers and education (except On the Street... weirdly) don't offer it.  Again, Expertise is largely optional as its too small a factor to reliably counter the swing of big d20 dice rolls... and rerolls are absurdly easy to get.  Double dip failure.

Anyway: If you have momentum you can either reduce the cost equal to the momentum or you can speed the process up. Since 3 takes a week and 4 takes a month, this is a hard call, depending on the pace the GM sets and the amount of downtime in your campaign.

So NOW we use assets, right? I mean, since we won't have any momentum to speak of.  

Well, no.

Now you roll a number of 'dark symmatry' dice (D6's) equal to your Earnings. Yeah, bucko, Earnings count twice in this neighborhood.  Or they don't, depending on where you look. In THIS chapter... not so much. In this chapter its straight roll.  So how do these dice work? Well: You roll a d6. If its a one or a two it counts as a one or a two. If its a 6, or you chimped out and paid mophidius for pretty stupid dice its a funny symbol, then its... special. Otherwise ignore it. Special good? Special Bad? One success two success?

Well, I guess that all depends on why you're rolling them.  Here... well you have to read teh example to understand the rule (and no, they don't fully illustrate it, but that's ok, I trust you are smerter than Mophidius, and might be able to figure this out. Spelling intentional.).  So  you roll. For each 1 or 2 you gain that much 'Assets' towards the purchase... called Cash in this one and only special place in the rules.  If you roll a 3-5 you get bupkis, if you roll a six you also get... and this is stupid... two cash, but it costs you one asset.  Assuming you have assets to spend on purchases, then really you get one Cash.

Now that you've got your 'Cash' from polishing your gold plated toilet bowl (and really: The statistically average amount of cash you get for being filthy rich is what? 2-3 cash? From five dice? I mean... excuse me, 3-4 cash, but costing you, statistically, one asset as well?). Now maybe you'll get super lucky and roll all 2's. Congrats, you still can't afford that sweet, sweet sniper rifle.  Heck, you need this much luck to afford a used car!!! Fucking rich bastards and their hoity-toity ford pintos!

So now you make up the difference in Assets.  Mostly the only way to get assets is from looting the shit out of badguys.  No, seriously: I don't see any way in the rules for a guy with a gold plated toilet to actually save up or earn assets over any length of time. So random rolls in creation or looting shit during adventures, that's it. No,the fact that it took a month to get that dead average pistol has any bearing on your cash roll.

So, you spend assets, unless you don't. If you don't, then you get nothing and lose any assets from your Cash Roll... whatever. I'm tired of this nonsense anyway.

So what are assets worth?

Fucked if I know. First of all, the value of an asset might be inversely proportional to the amount of cash rolled to buy some shit. Think about it.

So lets take our example from the example in the game... right here in this chapter.

So our Example Character, a police detective, has a briefcase full of drug money he took from some criminals earlier in the adventure. (sigh.)

This is worth 8 assets.  

Fair enough. So how much money is in a briefcase full of drug money? I'm guessing its between thirty and fifty thousand dollars. Anything less and it won't be worth sticking in a briefcase, anything more than a full 100k and it won't fit in the case... and 100k sorta seems too much. At that point you really are trading plastic wrapped bundles and shit.

So he wants an assault rifle, which costs 8, so the same as a used car.  Fair enough. In real life both of those would run roughly 2 to 3 thousand dollars.  Of course, in real life assault rifles don't come with grenade launchers as standard... in real life that costs extra, but this is a game about shooting alien demons from beyond pluto in the face, so allowances will be made for cheap grenade launchers.

In our example he winds up with three momentum, because of course he does. Did I mention he's only got a focus of 1?  Did I mention its a Restriction (and therefore Difficulty) 2 item? So how does three successes on two dice wind up being three momentum? Mophidius, that's how.  He also winds up with two cash from his 3 earnings (believable, but modestly unlikely), so he needs four assets (because... Mophidius cheated when counting successes?), which he spends out of his briefcase full of cash.

So... magically, when making this purchase, 30k in cash becomes more like 1k in cash, leaving him... four assets whose value will fluctuate wildly depending upon what, exactly, he chooses to buy with it.

And people wonder why I hate wealth systems so much.

Never mind that this example only worked because Mophidius can't figure out their own skill system... and that trying to compute the value of a briefcase full of drug money fails miserably because 8 assets really is only slightly more than 8 cost... and no assault rifle should ever cost a 'breifcase full of cash' unless you happen to be playing in a medieval setting. DOn't get me wrong, those things ARE pricy, but we're talking 'used car' prices... and if your typical used car requires you to rip of drug dealers to pay for it... I don't know about you, but I can buy a god damn used car right now, and I haven't worked for a month straight.  I was thinking about going into self employment ripping off drug dealers, but thanks to Mophidius I now know that risking my life for less than an average month's salary isn't worth it. I thought for sure those fuckers would have at least two months salary lying around!

I'm starting to think Mophidius DOESN"T understand dice probability. Or maths. Maybe they just don't know how to count higher than one?

But now that we've sorted out a very painful way to fucking buy perfectly ordinary shit, lets see how that shit works.

It doesn't. The end.

Fine.

Every single weapon in this game has exactly the same stats. I mean Stat.  There are twenty pages of guns that are mostly distinguished from one another by minor variations in how hard you have to work to pay for them.

Let us look at the stat block for the Aggressor Pistol, since I've mentioned it by name several times.

Range:C
Damage: 1+Fucked up Symbol for Dice 4
Mode:Burst
Enc: 3
Size: Unbalanced
Reliablity: 2
Qualities: Close Quarters.


Well, that doesn't look too bad, in terms of variables. I mean, range, damage encumbrance and reliablitly and so forth. I left off the cost (5) and restriction (3), but...

Now lets look at another pistol, the Bolter from Capitol.

Range:C
Damage: 1+FUSfD 4
Mode: Semi-Automatic
Enc: 3
Size: Unbalanced
Reliability: 2
Qualities: Close Quarters, Armour Peircing 1

by the way it ALSO costs 5 and has a restriction of 3.

Notice any differences?  I see exactly two. One is the mode is Semi-Automatic instead of Burst, and the other is that it has the Armor Piercing Quality.

Every single pistol has a range of C. Every single pistol has the Quality of Close Quarters. You might say that the very 'word' pistol means 'Range C, Quality; Close Combat'.   Every pistol is either Burst or Semi Automatic, and once you know the rules this means almost nothing.  Literally this means you can spend 1 reload or 2 reloads (or 3 if it say automatic) to either buy an additonal d20 on the attack (one of about four ways to do that), or a bonus FUSfD dice to roll for damage.  Whoo....hoooo.

Mind you, there are only four ranges in the game. Reach (for stabbing people), close, medium and long. All weapons in a catagory have the same fucking range, making differentiating them very fucking difficult.  

Now, almost every single pistol has the Unbalanced in it. Almost. This is really Mophidius forgetting that this is Mutant Chronicles, where you shoot Alien Demons from Beyond Pluto in the face with guns of absurd size and while wearing shoulder pads that literally make it impossible to walk through a doorway.  Judge Doom looks at Mutant Chronicles Shoulder Pads and weeps bitter tears of Envy. Space Marines look at Mutant Chronicles gun sizes and nurse imaginary sprained wrists, then they go 'at least our shoulder pads might actually protect our arms from bullets' and cheer Da Emprah! for small mercies.

Basically Unbalanced means it is a big, fuckoff huge handgun that no normal person would ever think to carry, much less shoot one handed, so you better have a nine Strength motherfucker.

I'll point out that without any shenanigans, every character from a military background should have at least a nine strength, except oddly the officers, who in real life would be the ones actually lugging these monstrosities. So right here we have a Genre Failure.  Let me put it this way: The Average Sniper Rifle in the game is nine feet long**, that Bolter pistol we just looked at? Seventy motherfucking four caliber, and its baby brother is a 55 caliber with a built in grenade launcher in case you have a really tough stain in your jimmies you need to wash out.  There is a SIXTEEN BARREL MACHINE GUN in this game for your character to use when shooting alien demons from beyond Pluto in the god damn face!  SHould I point out that future space wizards have ninjas who wear pointy helmets a foot tall and wield Katanas (Katanae? Katanii?), and that future space russians refuse to use guns because they have magic swords made out of bones?   That other future Space Russians fly across the nuclear winter arctic tundra on god damn jet motorcycles wearing nothing but a simple onsie and a furry hat for protection from the cold?

So its pretty fucking moronic to insist that three quarters of your handguns are too absurdly big and require two hands to wield for puny mortals not from Austria.  That is not too far off from pointing out that a character in an anime shouldn't find another character attractive because she's a god damn cartoon.  Genre motherfucking fail.  Next Mophidius is acquiring the rights to 40k, and we'll learn that Space Marines run out of ammunition in the first round because clearly a Boltor Magazine can only carry three or four shots, but that's okay, because Tyranids are bugs, and bug lungs could not support that size, so they all suffocated... and Necrons? Rusted. Yup. They rusted away.  So the god damn Imperial Guard wins, because that really is all that's left.

Fucking duck ass, that's tight, yo.  

So in a game about shooting... anything really... Mophidius decided that narrative motherfucking combat was the bomb, just like Phantoms, yo.

What is missing here, in our little gun stats? Ammo would be nice.  An actual proper range wouldn't be bad. Good way to distinguish between accurate and inaccurate weapons if you don't want to get fiddly with additive bonuses.

What am I talking about?

Well, for the most part there isn't really a difference between those two guns except one has armor piercing and the other fires bursts... which mechanically means... very very little.  

WIthout copying the entire stat block from first edition (which, honest was a bit much...)

I can tell you that the Bolter carries 18 rounds, the Aggressor carries 26. The Boltor has 50% more range, and is 500 'credits' cheaper.   Moving beyond stat blocks, I can also do more with the Aggressor because of its rate of fire, though I don't want to get into the weeds of actual rules for burst fire and automatic fire in roleplaying games.  Lets just say that 'bonus skill dice or bonus maybe damage dice' is not only among the worst of the breed, but also utterly lazy.  

So using any of this junk really comes down to one of three narrative mechanical systems... maybe four.  Lets cover them, shall we?

Ok, so first up is that god-awful damage code.  Almost all of your damage is decided by those stupid Dark Symmatry Dice. Most guns except for the very biggest do one point of damage, with minor... to the point of being statistically trivial... changes to the damage from Dark Symmatry dice. Remember, fully half the results of the dice are 'zero damage', so it really takes two dice to make a statistical difference. I know, I'm giving a very shallow take on the maths.   See that Armour Piercing effect? Yeah, that: That is pretty much entirely up to the Dark Symmatry Dice coming up with FUSfDs. But you ignore one whole point of armor for every one you get... so yeah. Luckily for you, most armor totals are almost equally pathetic, so that one point of armor you'll ignore every two out of three rolls will actually mean something.

Dayum! At least I tried to find some positive angles on this.
I can't wait for the post if you try to play it.

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So you like it then?

Fair play on the effort that took - i've read paperbacks shorter than that!

Well, when the stupid burns that hot, you gotta share it, right?   Besides, I know I've mentioned that I didn't really like this game for 'reasons'... but sometimes you just gotta put those Reasons down.  Also, it may make a good primer for what can, and usually does, go wrong when you try to go 'narrative'...

Ok, so I'm gonna do some follow up. I'll keep it considerably shorter and considerably less savage.  

It occurs to me that I see a recurring trend in games that appear to be 'narrative', regardless of the underlying philosophy.  Mutant Chronicles is almost an ideal exemplar of the breed.

Mutant Chronicles has a very well developed character creation system, one in fact that takes up the bulk of the book, second only to the setting that Modiphius inherited from Target AB, which was supported by something like a dozen suppliments, and two editions worth of development (not to mention something like three card games, two novels and a video game... and I'm still certain there is a wargame out there somewhere!).

Yet it has, attached to literally a hundred pages of character creation, virtually no ruleset.  The chapters dedicated to any rules that are not explicitly about the characters are limited to one or two pages.

Call this the World of Darkness problem.  Across some... two dozen or so main rulebooks (Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Changeling, Demon, multiple editions of each, then repeat for the New World of Darkness... then add three editions of Exalted, Aeon/Trinity, Scion (for argument call this one rulebook...)), the fundamental design of character creation never really changed. A bit of tinkering on the margins, but that is it.  Nine attributes, divided into physical mental and social, rated from one to five, a bunch of skills... say around 24 or so (on average) also rated from 1 to 5. Add skill to attribute and roll that many ten sided dice.

This never changed. Yet how to read the dice and get results often swung wildly between editions, and even still many people probably wouldn't be able to tell you the main differences between dice pools between editions!  This edition counts ones as fumbles, that edition has floating target numbers...

In other words, the only thing that anyone at white wolf really cared about was how do you define your character. Rules for interacting with the world? A dim and distant second. And for all that White Wolf games are still not terrible narrative, lacking almost any true meta-mechanics.

This then seems to be the fundamental difference between traditional Role playing games and Narrative minded roleplaying games (not 'Narrative designed'.. remember White Wolf games are solidly traditional in design)...  In both games the way we define the character is important, in the Narrative game, the game world itself agrees.    I could list a dozen examples I know from personal experience and second hand reports, but I want to keep this reasonably short and on topic.  Modiphius didn't really design any rules that weren't about the character, not because they were lazy or sloppy, but because that is literally all they really were interested in.  The only reasons why Heretics get a full chapter of powers is more or less because some player will want to play them. THe only real reason there is a beastiary of sorts for the Dark Apostles is because someone gave them a pretty complete list of monsters to shoot, complete with art and fluff text.  They can't actually do anything against the player characters until the player characters give the GM Dark Symmatry points, just like any NPC.  

Despite it's flaws, the character creation system is actually, at its core, good. Its robust and its biggest flaws are pretty easy to fix with simple hand waves.  Seriously: Nothing will break about the game if you just let players pick everything that they want to pick, and only make them roll on one or two tables. Hell, get rid of the requirements for Iconic classes and what really happens? Players play Iconic classes all the time? So what? Most of those were pretty much assumed defaults if a player wanted to play one before. If you're in the Imperial Corp and you're a military character you were probably in the Blood Berets. If you played Bauhaus and you were military you were probably a Venusian Ranger. The fact that these were elite commando units was just fluff. So every character will get a Two Talent career pick if he wants to qualify, no dice needed.  Oh noes! THe game just borked!!!!

See? Easy fix.  

And at the end of the day you have a reasonably good basis for an actual RPG.  What is it, after all?

Its a small dice pool game mechanic using d20s, using attribute plus skill as target numbers and counting successes for difficulty.   We've got a character system in place to generate attributes and skills, and means of changing the size of the dice pools, and in many cases we already have examples of difficulties.

So, to be honest there is half, maybe three quarters of an actual game right there. Maybe not a great game, but a playable game. But we ARE missing some things. And they ARE missing. They've been papered over with 'narrative mechanics'. You know, things like combat actions. What is an actual turn.  We could start small and build up from there, but frankly Modiphius, those brit-eurotrash assholes, aren't paying me to do their job for them.

There are only a few things that may actually be broken beyond simple repair, but even there the fixes aren't very hard. Sure, equipment needs something of an overhaul, but for that we might want actual combat rules first... and a lot of the overhaul can come, as so much else did, from the previous editions.  Maybe I don't like double dip skill systems, but I have to admit this one does work as advertised. I don't like wealth systems either, and this one works about as well as they all do, but neither one of them brings the game to a screeching halt.  Frankly I'd rather have the GM handwave equipment than use the wealth system, but that's sort of the problem... once you get away from defining your character the game sort of runs on piles and piles of handwavium.  

Because its Narrative, and for some reason that is all narrative people care about.

tldr

Honestly, I've run at least a dozen sessions and the system drives me nuts but at the same time there's a lot of good stuff in there.  Hands down the best discussion of range bands and zones I've ever encountered.  An autofire mechanism that's actually fast, works in play and does a decent job of representing the tradeoffs involved.  Range penalties at close ranges for long ranged weapons.  There's actually a good reason to use a pistol instead of a sixteen barrel heavy machine gun in this game.  There are far too many games where there isn't.

So, addressing various points.  White Star is a creation of Modiphus.  The Sons of Rasputin, Templar Tribes, Lutherian Triads, and nomad arab guys I forget the name for were introduced late in the second edition of Warzone.  Cool concepts, awful miniatures.  White Star feels tacked on because it's tacked on.

Modiphus has also changed the background a lot.  I don't know if I care for it but I can see why they did it.  They looked at Paul Bonner's artwork and said, this should be a game of crazy pulp heroes with huge biceps.  I think they might have a point.  focussing on the over the top heroic action sets them apart from Warhammer a bit.  Now this gives us a Brotherhood that's not morally bankrupt.  But then, why not let the church be the good guys for a change?  It makes Cybertronic unambiguous.  I always liked that Cybertronic was so screwed up that even they didn't know which side they were on.

But for all my misgivings, my players love the mechanics.  They have big lists of cool stuff they can do on their character sheets.  They can destroy huge numbers of monsters in battle without taking as much as a scratch.  They love the sound of the momentum points tinkling in the cup.

It's not perfect, but damn it the supplements cover spaceships and give us space travel that doesn't look like it came out of a Mathew Loony book.  And, for the most part I find it works in play.

I do find it's telling that the current Warzone miniatures which was clearly written by Polish folks who don't English so good, is easier to follow, read and figure out.  The organization of the book is messy and as you note, it's often unclear.  I don't think I've ever had so much trouble learning and figuring out a roleplaying game.

Isn't Conan supposed to use the same system?  I'm interested to see how that performs.

Sure but it uses a GM momentum pool instead of Dark Symmetry Points.  Too many of the talents cost Dark Symmetry Points, it makes the players unwilling to use them.  Still, as they get more used to the system they get less worried about starving the GM which is the obvious strategy.

I think they also ditched the dread mechanic.  Really dread is a big deal in Mutant Chronicles because as it accumulates the chance of fumbling and giving the GM a Dark Symmetry point increases.  I actually really like that mechanic.  People make more mistakes when they're stressed.  It's one of those things that 'simulationist' systems utterly fail to simulate well.

Really, while I wish the points economy was an optional feature or at least easily stripped out, I'm pretty happy with the game.  It's fun to play, it punishes people for ignoring their social and other non-combat abilities.  Sure the guy with Melee 5/5 can cut a helicopter out of the air but he's got nothing else.

The OP complains extensively about the restrictions in character creation and the ability to pick which random rolls you make.  Really it's very easy to build a combat monster.  A full melee tree lets you make free parries, parry bullets, make a free attack after a parry, reroll all your damage dice or just the ones you don't like.  But that character will struggle to find and buy gear, fail to resist mental assaults, and have a whole lot of other weaknesses.

There is a non-random character creation option in the book where you have 12 (rather than 5) life path points to spend.

From the title, I though that this was going to be about the Savage Worlds version.

Reminds me of the chargen for 4e D&D Gamma World. The only things you got to choose were your character name and your starting weapons type and dice, and starting armour. Everything else was random and every long rest your powers randomized again. Possibly your equipment too. Random World. And the designers insult you for wanting to choose.

Quote from: David Johansen;940575The OP complains extensively about the restrictions in character creation and the ability to pick which random rolls you make.  Really it's very easy to build a combat monster.  A full melee tree lets you make free parries, parry bullets, make a free attack after a parry, reroll all your damage dice or just the ones you don't like.  But that character will struggle to find and buy gear, fail to resist mental assaults, and have a whole lot of other weaknesses.

I think you're missing the point, dave.  Its not that the restrictions are there to prevent you from making a competent character, its that they prevent you from making basic fundamental choices of flavor that every other game in the history of gaming would let you make, and in the process also makes the entire process of character creation entirely dependent of the GM verifying that you made each of those random rolls, or actually spent those life path points... for every single player character.... for every single step in the damn process.

In fact: The fact that this process doesn't actually prevent you from making combat monsters or competent characters, and in fact has almost zero effect on character balance (not entirely zero, but close) actually makes it worse.  It would be like putting a bank vault quality combination lock on your flimsy wooden internal door to your bathroom. It actually serves no purpose except to create a long tedious delay when you are really in a hurry to use the toilet... and the only real solution is to break the damn door down.  Mind you: Breaking the door down doesn't actually alter the function of your bathroom, but it is annoying and ugly...making this probably the most useful metaphor I've ever employed.

Quote from: HappyDaze;940578There is a non-random character creation option in the book where you have 12 (rather than 5) life path points to spend.

From the title, I though that this was going to be about the Savage Worlds version.

You mean the option where they just assume every single life path point is spent allowing you to chose everything? The 'system' that is just a backwards way of ignoring the system entirely, only making you account for the points along the way for... reasons?  Leaving that out of the inital post was actually a small mercy for Modiphius.

Also: Thanks for giving me another reason to be annoyed at the ubiquity of Savage Worlds. Now I can't even use a perfectly good adjective without people assuming I'm talking about it... sigh.

See, I've made dozens of characters and run the game and it kinda starts to make sense.  It's not what I'd have done because I loved the original game and while it needed a bit of polish here and there it wouldn't have changed much.

Part of the problem is that the book isn't clear and easy to use.  It just isn't.

Another part of the problem is that most of the good stuff is in the supplements.  Which may be traditional but leaves the core just feeling less than fulfilling.

I think a big part of the problem is that Modiphus tried to keep lots of legacies from the original game while welding it onto their own dream game and both sides suffer from it a bit.

But I don't mind running since I found where it says the GM gets a Dark Symmetry point in the pool for every Chronicle point the PCs have.  You don't know how annoying it was trying to run it without any until the PCs give you some or make a bad roll.

Spike, you loveably misanthropic Pika of Doom, please come over to my city where for a night and a day I will lubricate your brain with alcohol and satisfy your passions with some RPGs. I'll even spring for Mexican food (Taco Bell is Mexican, right?).

You need it after travelling through that shitstorm of a game.

Seeing as I spent the last year on the road, I may have passed through your town already!  That's right, I've already drank your booze and your taco bell!  Yes, real Pikas drink Taco Bell. Chewing is for losers who aren't hungry.

Also, that twenty you rolled? You know the one I'm talking about... yeah, I saw you nudge it, ya damn cheater!