The second in a series of six books, Coalition Overkill (hereafter referred to as CO) continues the storyline of the Coalitions war to eradicate Tolkeen. Here we see the Coalition at its darkest, and begin to see the extremes to which Tolkeen has also sunk. But should one really care?
Introduction
One of the things that really struck me about this book (and the last) is that the authors keep striving to make the war seem more real, but end up making it feel clichéd and two-dimensional. A good example being the following line, “the Siege on Tolkeen is one such war, where the line between good and evil is continually muddled by actions on both sides of the conflict.” (CO, pg. 15) The rest of the book then covers Coalition concentration and death camps (along with token comparisons to Nazism and Hitler),
-massive- saturation bombing of civilian targets, and dozens of Coalition sociopaths who enjoy nothing more than killing. At no point in this (or the other) book does the Coalition really seem like anything but evil; some attempts to protect or remove Coalition sympathizers from the war zone to safety might have helped improve their image to me as a reader. There are some examples of Coalition officers giving charity, but these are quickly crushed by the overwhelming evil of higher ranked officers.
I dont mind the Coalition being portrayed as murderous villains. What I mind is their portrayal as tactical idiots, and the authors insistence that “not all wars are black and white”. The Coalition started it, and now that theyve gotten hit back, theyre going to annihilate everything they can reach.
Coalition Overkill
Once you get past the whole “everything is an evil shade of gray” contradiction, there are some interesting developments to the war. I still dont understand why the Coalition started it, and I dont know how things on the Quebec front are going (they seem to be mostly on hold while Coffin and Siembieda write these books), but I do see how Tolkeen can put up a fight. And Im honestly impressed with the thought that went into explaining Tolkeen tactics and why the Coalition is having so many (initial) problems with their invasion.
Its the fear and confusion of these initial successes thats driving many to accept the concentration camps and mass-genocide. Here we are introduced to characters like the General Drogue and the “Dirty 30″, which embody the darkest aspects of the Coalition evil. While Drogue seemed a little implausible, the Dirty 30 struck me as an interesting example of an efficient Coalition strike team. Adventure ideas (Hook-Line-Sinkers) are given for the Dirty 30, but they mostly revolve around to simple fighting. Some more social/political scheming against them would have been nice.
Next are fleshed out templates for various CS OCCs which seemed fairly useful. All their gear, skills, and stats are ready for use, and would be handy in other CS oriented adventures. After the templates is information on CS mercenaries and bounty hunters, along with sample bounties the CS is paying out. Oddly enough, vampires (rare in the area of the siege) are worth ten times more than dragons (which are arguably more powerful and much more common). Sample mercenary groups and bounty hunters follow, and they struck me as being fairly interesting. My only real complaint is what happened to the mercenary groups from Rifts: Mercenaries? A paragraph or two on their role in the conflict would have been nice.
Twin Faces of Evil
Here we have more fiction, which was mostly so-so in quality, although I did enjoy the “Greetings from Camp Prosek!” piece and its hidden message. The rest was basically just showing how evil the Coalition is and how people handle it. Nothing too exciting. Also detailed are the Coalitions plans of Operation, including Operation Hardball and its death camps.
Tolkeen Triumphant
This I liked. We see Tolkeens tactics, in detail, and explanation as to how and why they are used. Real Dead Boys, dragons, teleportation, warlocks, and Tolkeen’s goals for the conflict are all presented and make sense. Tolkeen doesnt hope to win by crushing the Coalition (yet); they just want to stop it. That alone will hopefully be a big enough victory to stop further Coalition aggression. Also discussed is how the stumbling and overloading of the CS is encouraging bandits, vampires, and the Federation of Magic to be more bold and daring in their actions. After all, everyone else is too busy fighting to stop them and their schemes.
Furthermore, we finally see the Daemonix (mentioned in the first book). Basically, they are demons with lots of magical power but unable to cast spells, and are seen as cosmic whipping boys whose race has almost died out. The Tolkeenites found them and equipped them with Techno-Wizard cybernetic weapons, and pointed them at the CS. Theyre aggressive towards all other supernatural creatures, and theyre sure to turn on humanity at some point, but Tolkeen doesnt care. As a whole they seemed all right; they made decent war machines for Tolkeen, and had an alien and menacing appearance to them. For once I actually liked- the balloonish art style Kent Burles used in depicting these creatures.
To finish things out was a short little adventure about an elder dragon, his army, and the Coalitions largest bomber. A large-scale adventure with lots of potential, I enjoyed this much more than the adventure ideas given for the Dirty 30 earlier in the book. Heck, I liked it more than the ideas given in the first book. It was detailed enough to be useful, without being too narrow in scope for a GM to easily throw in his own twists and surprises.
Conclusion
There are a lot of good ideas and material in this book, but only if you care about the Siege on Tolkeen. For those GMs focusing their games in Russia or Phase World, this book is largely useless. GMs interested in seeing how the Federation of Magic would stand up to the Coalition might find this book to be of some help, but even then Id hardly call it a must buy. As it is, its too specific to see much use outside of a “Coalition vs. Magic” type conflict, and I cant really recommend it.
