On a recent thread about cyberpunk games, I mentioned that I have and enjoy Zaibatsu from Zozer games. As there was some interest in the game a request was made that I review the product.
So here I am, writing my first-ever game review. I call this a mini-review because Zaibatsu is based on the Cepheus Engine from Samardan Press Publications, and as such should be familiar to anyone who's played Traveller and related games.
My intent with this review, then, is to provide an overview of what makes Zaibatsu stand out.

As is typical for the genre, mega-corporations, or conglomerates - the titular Zaibatsu, often run by powerful families - have become so powerful that they effectively rival the nations of the world in terms of power and influence.
Your characters are agents of these corporations, and your job is to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, theft and other illegal activities on your employer's behalf - all strictly deniable, of course. The executives that hired you
must remain respectable, after all. As such you've got one foot in the board room, and the other in the filth and squalor of the criminal underworld.

Characters are generated by starting with a concept, then rolling 2D6 six times and assigning your characteristics. Social standing has been changed to social influence since, on the streets of Tokyo, nobody gives a damn where you come from.
The rest of the characteristics are the same you know and love. You can roll your concept on a table or pick one that suits you. The book provides a number to choose from, and each notes its most important characteristic, a skill you gain at
level 1 and any gear that comes with it. So a software jockey (hacker) gains Computer-1, a free Cyberdeck and values the Intelligence characteristic over the others. By contrast a professional Assassin gets Aim-1, a disguise kit and values Dexterity.
Your EDU score will determine how many more skill points you gain, ranging from 1 to 4. All these you simply pick from the list provided, and each is bought at level-1. The only exception is that Heavy Weapons-1 can only be taken by those who have
a military background (concept). What this means is that characters will start play with only 2-5 skills. The game points out that this is intentional. The idea is to gain more skills quickly via promotion in your zaibatsu.
Skills, like money and retrogenics, are dangled like a carrot by your employer to keep you loyal and eager to do their bidding. We'll cover retrogenics in a moment, but in brief they are genetic enhancements that take the place of cybernetics in this game.

Life events, called Shady Past here, can be rolled to indicate where you've been before play. A roll of a 3 & 4, for example, means you've done prison time or were held hostage for some amount of time.
These backgrounds are meant to be quick thumbnails, however, not to provide an elaborate backstory. We're meant to create characters quickly and get to the action. Life is cheap on the mean Tokyo streets and your character will almost certainly die.
Therefore your backstory is meant to emerge in play.

Every player starts play with one social contact they can turn to for help, advice or information. These can be rolled for on a table or simply chosen. These can be used as a source of "off-duty" missions or jobs, but mostly exist to tie your character
to life on the street.

Then you get a Y4,000 signing bonus, and a corporate card with which to buy gear. You are assumed to start play with a head-set and a handgun (auto pistol). Everything else comes off the corporate card. There are rules detailed for figuring out how much your
crew has available. Consumables, such as drugs, may not be bought in this manner as any gear bought for a mission must be returned before your account can be replenished.

You finish up character creation by spending 20 points with which to buy retrogenics. The justification here is that your corporate sponsors will want to protect their investment in you. So these give you a slight edge under specific circumstances. For example,
you might take "second skin" to gain fire immunity. If caught in some kind of fire attack or hazard, this will protect you, then shed within a few minutes - leaving you stunned, and a new second skin will regrow after a night's sleep.

At this point I should note that non-combat characters are assumed to have Guns, Karate, Jujitsu and Bujutsu all at Level-0. This prevents them from having to take the -3 penalty for trying to fight untrained, and is justified because "street scum", of course.

The Zaibatsu themselves are covered next in their own chapter. There's a brief write-up of each of the most influential ones, giving you a firm idea of what each one focuses on. Perhaps more importantly for players, this is the chapter that details
how you advance in rank, which you do of course by completing missions. Each rank in the company requires a certain number of points - which are calculated by on various criteria on your mission de-brief - and comes with advance is pay,
retrogenic points, and skill levels.

Combat in the game differs from the Cepheus Engine standard in that rounds are simultaneous. This is done in phases where melee actors go first, then ranged (I know that sounds contradictory, but still). The system is meant to be both fast and chaotic. In the same spirit, the game specifically avoids counting ammo for guns. The justification is that, as toughened street thugs, you'll know to carry more than you need - or can quickly scavenge some in a moment of crisis. Damage itself is first subtracted from your armor points. Any left-over damage comes off your endurance. When that hits zero you are wounded and knocked over for 1 round. Then you reduce either STR or DEX (player's choice) and if one of those hits zero, then the character is seriously wounded and knocked out for 2D6 rounds. Character death occurs when all three characteristics are at zero. It should be noted that, given the simultaneous rounds and chaotic nature of combat, armor will mitigate damage from one attack in the event you are hit by multiple attacks.

Given I intended this to be a mini-review, and I've been typing it up for a while now, I'm going to skip ahead to Cyberspace and hacking, because Zaibatsu has a cool system for it that uses a deck of playing cards. Before I get to that though, I should point out that there are a number of deliberate anachronisms when it comes to computers in this game. First, there is no wifi. You've got to "jack in" over a telephone line to get connected to the net. Second, computers don't store programs on internal disks. Instead, you get cartridges like the old-fashioned ROMs from the 80's. Each computer model has a number of slots that will accommodate a given number of ROMs at any given time. These ROMs can be anything from business programs to databases or, of most interest to player characters, Icebreakers.

Icebreakers are intrusion programs that are rated from 1 to 10. The number of Icebreakers you can run at a time is limited to the number of slots available on your cyberdeck. The player will hold a number of cards equal to the number of Icebreakers. The numerical face value of the cards should equal the Icebreaker ratings. This will become important momentarily.

The system you want to break into will have a 10-card deck cut from the full deck of cards. To gain entry into the system, the player wants to guess the suit that the GM will draw from the top of the system deck.
A professional computer jockey will get a number of free guesses equal to the rating of his computer. In the event that all the free tries have been exhausted, and the next guess fails (meaning the player still doesn't guess the correct suit),
the the GM will cut the deck and draw a card. If that comes up black, then an ICE attack occurs. The numerical value of the ICE attack is equal to the face value of the card drawn.
To counter this, the player selects one of his Icebreakers of equal or greater value to that of the ICE attack. Doing so cancels the ICE and allows the intrusion to continue another round undetected. If he runs out of cards, however, the ICE program will crash the player's deck, and force you offline for a few hours.

Once you've broken into a system, you have to deal with the subsystems you find within. These are broken into easy and hard (for big banks, military complexes, etc). To penetrate an easy subsystem the player needs only guess the correct color of the next card drawn from the
System deck. Success means he can apply any number of software routines, which are detailed in the game. Hard subsystems require you to continue playing the suit-guessing game. Failed attempts mean the ICE tags your deck and permenantly reduces the value of your Icebreakers by 1.

I've taken quite a bit of space here to write this, but in play it's simple and fast and cuts down on all the dice rolling. In the event that players don't want to use a deck of cards, then you can play with standard dice rolls, and sample difficulties are provided.

For me, this covers the heart of what I wanted to cover in this mini-review. What didn't I cover? Well, quite a lot actually. There is of course gear, which includes robots and androids; rules for vehicles; A chapter on the Yakuza, street gangs and terror groups of the setting.

There's a district-by-district overview of Tokyo, advice for running a game of Zaibatsu (which is quite good), information about off-world colonies, general life in Japan which includes things to eat and phrases to say (a small table). The book concludes with some sample missions, six in total, to get you started.

When I bought Zaibatsu, I actually just wanted to see how someone else tunes Traveller / Cepheus Engine for genres other than space opera. I'd seen Judge Dredd years ago, and I own Mindjammer (transhuman space opera), but I'm always looking for more. I was particularly drawn to the idea of a game that doesn't use Traveller's traditional random roulette for character generation. I really didn't intend to run it straight, but I did so anyway because I was hooked by the time I got to the end. The scenario I chose revolved around a Macguffin a delivered to the PC's in the opening scene. The setup was intended to be a simple "get the shiny briefcase from the Corporate Mole at Point-A to our security team's safe house at Point-B. Try not to get killed." To set the tone for the game I scripted the event of the Mole's head getting shot square between the eyes, blowing out the back of his head, by a sniper as soon as the Mole handed the briefcase to the PC's. An innocent bystander was killed with a second shot, which got the PC's moving.  This mission wasn't a secret one - someone was onto them, and there would be rival teams to beat or avoid all along the way! Three out of four PC's were dead before it was over, but because character creation is so fast and easy, we were able to keep the players in the game by injecting new characters into the scenario as we went on, often having them come in as existing members of the team from just "off camera" to keep the players engaged. It was intense, brutal and at times hilarious (our computer jockey has a gift for guessing wrong) as the players went about completing their mission.

What was in the briefcase? Well, I'm afraid that's above your pay grade.

Zaibatsu - highly recommended.

*ICE, by the way, is a recursive acronym standing for Ice Countermeasures Electronics.

Thanks! So it's more Genepunk than Cyberpunk?

I seem to remember a free pdf by the same name that if memory serves me sounds very much like this. Not sure who was the author tho.

Quote from: GeekyBugle;1092460Thanks! So it's more Genepunk than Cyberpunk?

I seem to remember a free pdf by the same name that if memory serves me sounds very much like this. Not sure who was the author tho.

That's probably a fair label. Though there is still plenty of cyber in it given the cyberspace and cyberdeck (hacking) rules. I forgot to mention that when you jack in, you have electrodes attached to your head and your perception changes to that of "cyberspace", described of course in 80's style greens and ambers. But, yeah, your meat upgrades are more genetic in nature.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1092461That's probably a fair label. Though there is still plenty of cyber in it given the cyberspace and cyberdeck (hacking) rules. I forgot to mention that when you jack in, you have electrodes attached to your head and your perception changes to that of "cyberspace", described of course in 80's style greens and ambers. But, yeah, your meat upgrades are more genetic in nature.

Thanks again, so genepunk with a dash of cyberpunk, still the setting sounds interesting, pretty close to what I'm going for with my own cyberpunk game, minus the placement, and some bits here and there as per your review. Might buy it if and when I get the cash.

Gah, "retrogenics, not cybernetics."

Jacking into the local Matrix analog is fine, but I gots to have them cybernetics.  The rest of it looks pretty strong, and I deeply love Hostile from the same folks.

Good review, though!

Excellent review! Thanks. Some questions/thoughts:

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1092455the titular Zaibatsu, often run by powerful families - have become so powerful that they effectively rival the nations of the world in terms of power and influence.

Do they actually rule the world, or is the game set in Japan?

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1092455Social standing has been changed to social influence since, on the streets of Tokyo, nobody gives a damn where you come from.

Like Charisma?

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1092455You finish up character creation by spending 20 points with which to buy retrogenics.

I like it.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1092455Non-combat characters are assumed to have Guns, Karate, Jujitsu and Bujutsu all at Level-0. This prevents them from having to take the -3 penalty for trying to fight untrained

Genius. I am stealing that.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1092455Hacking... deck of playing cards

Sounds fast and fun.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1092455What was in the briefcase? Well, I'm afraid that's above your pay grade.

It was his soul.

Quote from: Aglondir;1092526Do they actually rule the world, or is the game set in Japan?

Really it's just Tokyo, but Tokyo has "gone global". It's a major world power.

Quote from: Aglondir;1092526Like Charisma?

More like your "reach" in the underworld, knowledge of etiquette, ability to intimidate. Stuff like that. There's definitely some overlap with Charisma there for the last one. It was renamed from "Social Standing" because you're supposed to be a nobody, without any real "standing" or class or position in society. So you can think of it as a semantics issue.

Quote from: Aglondir;1092526Sounds fast and fun.

It is. And what's cool is that technically anyone can try it. You're just going to be better equipped if you actually have the skills. Though some (or even all, I don't recall right now) of the routines you can execute once you've penetrated the system do require expertise as a software jockey.

Thank you for the awesome review!

I see Zaibatsu is available PDF on DriveThruRPG and POD via Lulu
http://www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/paul-elliott/zaibatsu/paperback/product-23655969.html
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/234679/Zaibatsu

I didn't see on Amazon unfortunately.

Apparently Paul Elliott has a 1998 draft on...Angelfire???
http://www.angelfire.com/games3/errantknight/zaibatsu/

Who knew Angelfire was still a thing?

Quote from: Spinachcat;1092842Thank you for the awesome review!

I see Zaibatsu is available PDF on DriveThruRPG and POD via Lulu
http://www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/paul-elliott/zaibatsu/paperback/product-23655969.html
https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/234679/Zaibatsu

I didn't see on Amazon unfortunately.

Apparently Paul Elliott has a 1998 draft on...Angelfire???
http://www.angelfire.com/games3/errantknight/zaibatsu/

Who knew Angelfire was still a thing?

It isn't in México

Does Lulu not ship to Mexico?

They breakdown Latin America vs. Worldwide.
http://connect.lulu.com/en/discussion/33707