RPGPundit Reviews: Earth AD.2: Roleplaying After The Cataclysm

Earth AD.2 is the name of Precis Intermedia's foray into post-apocalyptic roleplaying for their Genre Division i system, the same system they've used in several of their other RPGs, including Coyote Trail and HardNova.

The review copy I have received is a print version of the PDF; a little note on the back seems to indicate that this product isn't usually sold as a print game.  So there you go, publishers, if you want to send your product to the RPGPundit for review and/or publicity, but your product isn't usually in anything other than PDF, you could always create a one-time print edition to mail to me, and get it reviewed!

Anyways, back to the review: there's lots of different P-A games out there, everything from the utterly gonzo (classic Gamma World) to the relatively dark (Darwin's World) to the hardcore "road Warrior" (Redline) to the immensely worthless (Bruce Baugh's "gamma world d20").  Earth AD.2 is closer to the classic GW, but not quite a clone.  You do have all the standard tropes, though: "pure humans" from underground cities, mutants, cyborgs, and mutant animals (but no mutant plants).

In some ways, though, Earth AD.2 is darker and a bit more fatalistic than GW, if one P-A game can be moreso than another.  While GW is mostly about lighthearted adventuring without very much ethical concern (where the post-apocalyptic world seems almost fun), Earth AD.2 seems to put an emphasis on the devastation and hopelessness of the setting.  As well as the character classes listed above, you can play a Plague Carrier, a horrific zombie-like victim of a wasting disease that does not kill him but he spreads to others.

In general, the artwork, while comic-booky for the most part the way GW was, is not nearly as zany or bright, it makes it clear that you are playing in a dark world.

The Genre Division i system is the same as in the other games from Precis I've reviewed before: you have five attributes (Fitness, awareness, creativity, reasoning and influence), that range from one to five. You have a variety of skills that range from one to eight.  Task resolution is done with 2d6 with a roll under system for the attribute plus skill, minus modifiers. Its basically a very sound system which tends very strongly toward the "gritty", perfect for a wild-west RPG that isn't too heroic, and perfect for a hard sci-fi game, and perfect for a post-apocalyptic game that tends toward the "dark".

In addition to attributes and skills, characters receive gimmicks which represent special abilities.  These can be cultural gimmicks (which counter-intuitively to the name includes "infectious"  and "criminally insane" as well as the more understandable ones like "authority", "wealth", "technological predisposition", and "anti-mutant bias"), Cybernetic Gimmicks (representing the different kind of cyber-implants one might have, like "battle saw", "camera eye" or "nanocomputer"), Beneficial Mutations Gimmicks (mutant powers like "carapace", "cryokinesis", "elasticity", "levitation", "mental blast", "powerful pheromones", "sonic scream" or "weather manipulation".. the list is very exhaustive), Detrimental Mutation Gimmicks (which mutant characters must also take, not-so-good mutations like "diminished vision", "hemophilia", "seizures", etc), Limiter Gimmicks (full cyborgs, or human-implanted-robots, who are completely robotic except for their brains, have certain programs built in that create limitations that are supposed to keep them from harm but mostly end up causing them endless annoyance), and Remnant Gimmicks (animal-like powers for mutant animals, like "claws", "fur", "gills", etc.).  Each class starts with a list of certain gimmicks; for example, mutants have a number of beneficial mutations equal to their Fitness attribute value; and likewise a number of detrimental mutations equal to their fitness value.

The game also includes a chapter on vehicles, with suitable post-apocalyptic style in the spirit of Mad Max.  Vehicles can have gimmicks too, things like "custom armor" or a "ramming head".

This brings us to the setting of Earth AD.2; which the game designer describes as "a vast number of ecological habitats", all of which are relatively  lousy and most of which are unstable and seemingly due to get worse over time.

You have your standard radioactive wastelands (the worst of which can bear no life, but most of which have many mutant villages), road networks full of "road warriors" and occasional underground tunnels filled with degenerate mutants, deep underground communities where the only pure-strain humans continue to exist in artificial cities (most of which are either terrible fascist states, like in Paranoia but without the humor, or are on the verge of collapse), mutants cities built on the side of crater walls, regions of teeming mutant forests and jungles where almost everything is dangerous, great metal cities built by supercomputers and meant to protect and house humanity (but where the machines turned on and slaughtered the human inhabitants), cavern towns filled with "lazars" (plague-carriers) living in forced imprisonment, icy northern wastelands, floating pirate-cities (a la "waterworld"), coastal communities of mutant porpoises, islands full of dinosaurs, terrifying ice storms, warlords, cannibals, and other terrors.
An extensive monster list is included.

The setting is put together quite well, and GM advice is given on how to organize adventure ideas, and have goals and quests that fit the context of the game.  A decent set of scavenging rules and equipment lists are included (not the best I've ever seen in a P-A game, but not bad either).

Earth AD.2 also includes a good set of pre-made adventures, made for quick play for three to six characters. They're set in a carnival in a town, at an ambush in the roads, while exploring the wilds, discovering an ancient (pre-apocalypse) museum, and having adventure at sea. The adventures are all short, but good at capturing the essence of the game.

Reference charts and character sheets are included at the end of the game.

My copy of Earth AD.2 includes the "Enhancement Pack", which includes a new character class (Demonic rejects), some new skills and gimmicks, some useful random tables (for determining things like random cybernetics and random mutations), and a new area of the setting (the Demon Pits) which injects an optional element of the supernatural into the game; detailing a deep underground community centered around a "portal to the nether-realms". Personally I don't see much point in adding supernatural stuff to P-A gaming (because then you end up with something more like RIFTS and less like a pure P-A game), but for those who like this sort of thing, here it is.

The enhancement pack also has some new weapons and gadgets, some new random encounter tables (which are badly needed for a game like this!), and a couple of new scenarios, one of which has to do with the aforementioned Demon Pits.

On the whole, both the basic Earth AD.2 game and the Enhancement Pack are a good, fast-playing, useful addition to any P-A collection. I think anyone who enjoys either the road warrior or the original Gamma World will find this an entertaining game; those who liked Bruce Baugh's fake "gamma world d20" not so much, but then those who liked that game deserve to have their skulls caved in with jury-rigged shovels.

I would certainly recommend that if you get the game, you get the Enhancement Pack; while the "Demon Pits" might or might not be to your liking, the random tables and new equipment make it quite a worthy addition to the basic rules.

In short, Earth AD.2 is a little more pessimistic than Gamma World, but it still leaves a lot of room for wacky adventuring in a slightly more coherent and serious setting than what you get with GW, too.  That fills a niche that was lacking in Post-apocalyptic gaming: something that manages to be less wacky than Gamma World without slipping into the stark realism of something like Redline or the pretentious unplayability of Baugh's monstrosity.

RPGPundit

Thanks. This was a tough game to create, because every time I got a section of the world done, another idea popped in my head, and it wouldn't stop

I liked that it was credible and coherent as a setting, without becoming tedious, boring, or pretentious.

RPGPundit

Sounds a bit gonzo for my taste but I went and got the GDi manual (rules with no setting) anyway. Now I just await Brett's Story Engine 2

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;266656Sounds a bit gonzo for my taste but I went and got the GDi manual (rules with no setting) anyway. Now I just await Brett's Story Engine 2

Now why would you go and do that when the 3E genreDiversion Manual (part of the Story Engine 3E foundation) is on its way? Granted it's over 100 pages and more money, but it does so much more than GDi while still being pretty easy.

Well, I'm not entirely sure I need that thespy stuff. But even if I do, I can't buy it until it's published.

thespy?

Yes. Thespy, as in thespian. As distinct from a hack.

Anything with "story" and "scene" in its title or blurb is not likely to be all about killing things and taking their stuff

I know what you meant. I was questioning your take on it as being thespy. The thespy stuff (like exploits) actually encourages more killing (and other things)

Well how would I know that? I'm just going by the blurby stuff. You have to publish and sell it to me before I can truly say if it's thespy or hacky or where it fits on Jeff's threefold retro-stupid-pretentious model.