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Top Secret / New World Order
[978-1-945332-05-0]
$9.95
Publisher: Solarian
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by Marcus B. [Verified Purchaser] Date Added: 04/20/2018 13:28:12

I am a backer of the original KS and should have known. As soon as they said they did not want to share the PDF early with their backers so everyone could experience the "new gamebox" feeling unspoiled all my alarm bells should have gone off. Pretty much all of the problems with the game are very obvious on first read through and would have been found and commented on by backers if they would have had early access. That would not have been a guarantee they would have changed anything but at least they would have tried.

As other reviews have already said, the dice system is a bit of a mess with 3 ways of adjusting for difficulty and absolutely no guidance whatsoever on when to use what. The dice system has almost some narrative feel to it with the assembly of the dice pool from various sources and is not all bad. At other times though it is too precise. A choice example: To land safely with a parachute requires 6 separate rolls. Each step can fail and will result in you either getting damage or drifting off target. 6. To simply land safely with a parachute. Thats around 5 rolls too much for my taste.

There is a pretty bland table of phobias to roll on for your character but not really any rules that say when. Not to mention it is handled with no sensitivity towards the subject at all. It is just a list of 100 phobia types. There is also a section on how to add your own weapon types and that goes into weird math like “A 9mm round has 393 ft/lb of muzzle energy. 393/20 = 19,65. Rounded up to 20 that results in 2d10 Damage” instead of just listing a table with common calibers and relating damage. Not to mention missing tables, bad examples and absolutely no GM section at all. From the guys who were involved in the original Top Secret I actually expected a masterclass in “How to run spy games”. It feels like a rush job without the proper care many smaller publisher give their products.

And finally the art is mediocre with just a very few good pieces and some pieces veering into the bad. They collected over 100,000 USD for this game, I seriously wonder where that money went. Overall a disappointing release.



Rating:
[3 of 5 Stars!]
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Top Secret / New World Order
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