Summary

RUN, dont walk, to your nearest game store and pick up this book. Nearly
every flaw from the first edition has been fixed. You dont need the
Moderators Guide to play, and the new Synergy system is a breeze to use and
adapt to other (non-cinematic) settings.

Detail

I think every reviewer realizes the difficulty of reviewing the 2nd edition
of a game. The game must be evaluated both on its own merit, and on the
successes and failures of its predecessor. I happen to have extremely poor
self-initiated recall, so this review will contain more of the former than
the latter. I deliberately chose not to review V2 with the first edition
open in front of me. It would have made very little sense in the end,
anyway. Take it for granted that large portions of the text from first
edition by Biohazard have been cut-and-pasted into Version 2, done by
Fantasy Flight, exclusively licensed from Biohazard.

So lets start with my own failing for the review of the first edition: a
summary of the Blue Planet setting.

Blue Planet is set on Poseidon, a planet discovered in the Lambda Serpentis
System, 35 light years from Earth in 2078. No, humanity isnt skilled enough
to have developed FTL by then, but we are skilled enough to uplift cetaceans
(thats dolphins and orcas to us non-biologist types) and perform some
genetic and cybernetic manipulations, and were lucky enough to have
discovered a wormhole just beyond the orbit of Pluto. So anyway, we send out
a colonization effort on the spaceship Cousteau, which starts to settle in.
Meanwhile, back on Earth, corporations get large enough to take on the
status and responsibilities of national governments, weve colonized the
moon and Mars, and miners are hard at work on asteroids. Finally, a virus
takes out most of the food supply, forcing the formation of an emergency
world government. Understandably, the initial Poseidon colonists dont hear
from Earth (Hey, weve got our own problems here!) for nearly 100 years. The
Incorporate States and the Global Ecology Organization both gradually
establish presences on Poseidon after an immortality drug is discovered upon
Recontact. Various degrees of conflict develop between and among native and
newcomer populations. Add to that a mysterious race of creatures dubbed
Aborigines, the true natives of Poseidon, and youve got a wide range of
possible complications for player characters to be thrown into.

You could easily assume that youre paying $27.95 for less content than you
got with the first edition. By page count, youd be perfectly right. You got
352 pages in the first edition, and the Players Guide is 256 pages now. Add
to that a sprinkling of campy, sophomoric, comic-style artwork (and thats
the best of it), and youve cut down content a little bit more. But focus on
the game instead of the artwork, and theres a real gem here.

The hardcover (no softcover available!) Blue Planet V2 Players Guide (hence
BPV2P) summarizes the entire game in the first eight pages of the book –
the setting, definitions for roleplaying and gamemastering, and the new
system mechanics. Talk about tight writing! I wish all RPGs did this so I
could make better-informed purchasing decisions quickly.

No significant changes have been made to the setting, when compared to my
memory of the first edition. However, all the content has been updated to
match the new system mechanics — and nearly flawlessly, I might add. They
kept the disparity of character power levels (everyday, exceptional, elite);
origin, background, and professional training packages; and the variety and
effectiveness of cyberware, and genetic modifications. (Note to self:
Genemodding cetaceans is not covered. Wouldnt Hydrospan have investigated
this? Great adventure fodder!)

Character generation is a quick and easy 10-step process of choosing a
concept and power level, selecting a base racial type and finalizing
Attribute values; applying origin, background, and professional training
packages, spending custom skill points, and acquiring any desired biomods.

The method for finalizing Attribute values deserves some mention. Most games
give the player a set number of points to apply to increasing attributes. If
you go beyond this set number of points and get greedy on attribute values,
another attribute must suffer (point balancing). In Blue Planet, this option
is provided along with a way of randomly assigning degrees of
advantage/disadvantage to attributes (probability balancing). It works like
this: I want to increase my Strength. I decide to apply three positive
probability points to Strength and roll 3d10. For every die that reads 3 or
less, my Strength increases by one. Now, I have to take those three positive
probability points and apply them to any other attribute(s) as negative
influences. I can choose to roll 3d10 three times to obtain 1 or less for
three other different attributes, or try to roll 3 or less for one other
attribute. If I “succeed”, the negatively influenced attribute(s) drop by
one for every “successful” die roll. I can choose which attributes to
advantage or disadvantage (you can’t do both to a single attribute). Very
clever, and can result in misfits, or truly advantaged characters.

Virtually everyones singular complaint about Blue Planet first edition was
the system mechanics. BPV2 holds an entirely revamped game mechanic, the
Synergy system, in 13 pages. So what is it that makes Synergy, so crisp,
clean and elegant? Lets take a look.

The approximately 90 Skills in BPV2P are divided into 19 categories called
Aptitudes. For example, Genetics is under the Life Sciences Aptitude,
Psychology is under Medicine, and Anthropology is under Human Sciences.
Although skill-category assignations may seem arbitrary, there’s a game
balance method to the madness, and they have grouped skills together in a
fairly logical manner, when holistically evaluated.

Aptitude values, rated from 1-3, determine how many ten-sided dice you roll
when performing a skill classified under that Aptitude. The objective is to
roll under your Skill values, which are modified by whatever Attribute
(ranged -3 to +3, sans biomods) and modifiers the GM feels are appropriate
to the given situation. Each d10 under the final target value is a success,
and for some purposes, the highest successful difference between a rolled
die and the target value is the action value. For combat initiative, the
action value establishes when and how many times you can act in a round.

In my review of first edition, I gave people three pages to read. For BPV2P,
theres only one: page 116. Heres the short version: Any attack that can
harm a character has the potential to kill the character. . . Any combatant,
regardless of skill, can be dangerous in the right situation. . . There is
no such thing as nonlethal damage. . . It is not where the attack lands that
matters, it is what it damages. . . Wound lethality is not cumulative, but
impairment and blood loss are. . . . This is what the damage rules are
based on, and damned if it doesnt make sense.

Every attack has a damage rating. If the attack hits, subtract the victims
Toughness and armor from this rating, and roll three d10. For every die
under the damage rating, the target takes one wound level. Minor wounds
simply impair you, Serious wounds impair you and can stun you (knock you
out), and Critical wounds impair you and require a trauma roll to determine
WHEN, not whether, you die without treatment. If youre still standing from
a Critical wound, you get to make a stun roll too. Brutally fun. Impairments
are cumulative for everything except subsequent stun and trauma rolls.

Yes, the system is that neat and easy. Try not to get hurt.

I looked really hard to find things wrong with this book, putting on my
editor’s hat to find them. Here are the additions/changes I would implement,
and remember — I had to proofread the book to find these issues:

1. Pick a new scheme for delineating different levels of headings. The
   current difference between heading levels (point size variations of a single
   decorative font) is too subtle to be noticed easily.

2. Clarify training package allocation, as described on page 39. Everyday
   characters get 3 packages, and both Exceptional and Elite get 5 packages.
   This is implied from examples, but not explicitly stated anywhere.

3. Literally, only a handful of packages carry Sailing in their skillset.
   This unforgivably includes the native population, who were abandoned by
   Earth for nearly 100 years. What were they thinking when they put these
   skills together? I would have defaulted to Sailing (wind-power vehicles)
   over Piloting (mechanical/electronic-powered vehicles) in many of the native
   training packages.

4. Elaborate on the difference between Oration and Persuation. If oration is
   supposed to be public speaking, relying heavily on presence, and persuasion
   is more of a one-to-one argument, well, they should have written it so. As
   currently written, it appears they do exactly the same thing.

5. Provide an example for the application of single-shot, burst fire, and
   full-auto weapons combat. Recoil modifiers are only calculated for each
   trigger pull after the first. For burst fire, each burst counts as a single
   bullet for recoil purposes, and you can fire multiple bursts in a round. For
   autofire, the book specifies only that recoil modifiers are doubled, but not
   how to apply them. For readers who have or will purchase the game, I suggest
   a single roll for autofire, with recoil modifiers applied to each burst in a
   autofire event, as if the combatant fired multiple bursts in sequence rather
   than all at once. I.e., roll your dice once, then keep subtracting 4 from
   the target number for every burst until you lose all your successes.

6. Ai yi yi! Provide character sheet support for cetaceans! If you can run
   cetacean characters, with a fundamentally different makeup than human
   characters, why doesnt a section of a character sheet cover these ability
   exceptions and additions, such as echolocation, environmental sensitivity,
   weather sense, etc.? Can you say oops? I knew you could. Cetaceans for
   Equality, make your chitters heard!

7. Do your TOC and index right, or don’t do them at all. Gamers can tell
   when a company puts put out a lackluster effort. Fantasy Filght/Biohazard
   are lucky that they wrote and organized this book well enough that it doesn
   t really require well-done peripheral reference aids.

Finally, I feel compelled to repeat myself. Who are these artists? Cover to
cover, the artwork is terrible (okay, some, and I mean very little, was
tolerable). I much preferred the cover of the first edition. The guy on the
cover of BPV2P is missing the whorls in his ear, for crying out loud (and
don’t give me any crap about shadows). Sure, the drawings in the first
edition were sparse and mostly technical, but they were relevant to whatever
was being discussed. The book was meaningful, and much more immersive in its
first edition.

I’ve put out a fair amount of publications in my time, and if my
commissioned art looked like this, Id be embarrassed. The only good part of
the art was the interior graphic design for the page framework, but even
then, I couldnt identify its relevance — it just seemed to take up space.
If pressed, I’d say that the artwork was a detractor to the game itself. I
certainly wouldnt have complained if theyd dropped all the extraneous art,
dropped the body text font size a touch, cut the book by (at least) another
40 pages, and charged $8 less.

On the other hand, I claim that you don’t really need the Moderator’s Guide
to play this game. Sure, It’ll add flavor and adventure seeds, but there’s
plenty of ideas in this book, and there’s enough history for gamers to fill
in the blanks and run adventures without worrying about the Moderator’s
Guide. Think of it as spending $30 on a complete game — Blue Planet’s
Synergy system and the wondrous setting of Poseidon.

You won’t look back, except with fondness.