Read Through: Alpha Omega

June 1, 2009 4 comments

A while back I wrote a review of the Alpha Omega PDF sampler, which I didn’t feel gave me any true indication of what the game was about. The publisher offered me a review copy, and in the interest of fairness I said I’d happily read it and give it a fair shake. Since then I’ve also had the opportunity to interview the crew from Mind Storm Labs, Tom, Dave and Earl, for Examiner.com.

If you haven’t read any of the hype about Alpha Omega, it’s a really pretty coffee table book with high production values that also happens to be a roleplaying game. It’s sort of Shadowrun meets In Nomine with aliens and replicants. It’s like everything I loved about science fantasy gaming from the late 80s and early 90s thrust into the 21st century with great artwork and stunning graphic design.

Okay, it’s not really a coffee table book. I’m being a little snarky here. It’s a standard-sized roleplaying game hardcover, except it’s printed and bound in landscape format. It’s an interesting design choice. I don’t know that it serves any practical purpose other than making it look like a coffee table book, and possibly jacking up production costs and thus the cover price, but it’s interesting. I like companies that are willing to try new things. One of the design choices that I really like are the icons on the pages edges. You can flop through the book and easily locate where you are, and the icons are both graphically pleasing and add to the tone of the game. You feel as if this book itself fell out of the setting, and I really like that. What I like far less is the page numbers. It follows the old wargame rules schema of Chapter.Section.Topic, so in the Table of Contents and Index you’re referred to 6.2.3 rather than page 89. It’s not a big thing to overcome and yes, it compliments the tone of the game, but that’s a negative when it works against, and not for, the reader.

Setting
A series of natural disasters of Biblical proportions, including multiple comet strikes, wreaks havoc upon the Earth. Over decades, Mankind rebuilds. Then the aliens appear. The Seraph and Orphanum — angels and demons, basically — were once one race, but the Orphanum were run off and now they come to Earth every 10,000 years to make war. Why Earth? There are hints, but no solid answers (what kind of setting would answer all the deeper mysteries for you in the core book, duh?). It’s now about 200 years since Mankind regained its feet and the aliens arrived. Player characters get a variety of races, including aliens and bio-engineered beings, as well as magic and technology, to futz with.

A good part of this book is a gazetteer of the world, and it worth reading even if you’re not going to play the game. The illustrations evoke feelings I got as a kid looking at old scfi-fi magazine covers. A huge European-looking mansion built into the side of a cliff. Arcologies that look like high-tech Egyptian pyramids, with glowing spider-robot things walking around them. A deer walking through an abandoned city. The locations are detailed just enough to spark your imagination, but not so defined as to box in a creative gamemaster. This also leaves room for Mind Storm Games to develop these locations into splat books later on. It’s all very well thought-out, from both a creative and a business standpoint.

Characters
This is where my head began to swim. When I see tables and what appear to be number-crunchy bits in character creation, a door slams shut in my head. I am now and forever spoiled by streamlined and “lite” systems such as Savage Worlds, Risus, PDQ, SKETCH, and even OD&D clones. I want to create a basic character in 5 or 10 minutes, then spend an hour massaging it into what I want, not spend two hours just building the bare bones. That’s a personal preference, not a declaration that one is superior to the other; to each his or her own.

It turns out it’s not all that bad. It’s a point-build system, although heavy into its own jargon. You start with 500 CDP (character development points), with which you buy Core Qualities (CQ, aka attributes), Abilities and Drawbacks, Genetic Deviations, Skills, and Wielding.

There are seven Core Qualities: Strength, Agility, Conditioning (endurance), Vitality (hit points), Discipline (willpower), Intelligence, and Charisma, ranging from 1 to 30 for player characters. Each species (not race, species) has its own base, minimum, and maximum CQ. You get these numbers by default, and can modify them up or down to suit the character. It’s suggested, but not required, that you only use about 100 of your CDP tweaking your CQ.

Abilities, Drawbacks, and Skills are what you’d expect them to be. Skills add ranks to Qualities.

Genetic Deviations are mutations or species-based abilities. You can be a human who has an alien ancestor that passed on some odd trait. These are things like low-light vision, claws, gills, a strengthened skeleton, and so forth. Not so much superpowers as neat things to make your character unique.

Wielding is magic. Innate, Arcane, and Spiritual Wielding are available, which equate to psionics, magic, and pseudo-divine powers. The source of your power determines what CQ your power is associated with. You also have Intentions, which is sort of like the character’s world view on wielding. Not all power sources are compatible with all intentions; the source “Alpha”, which oversimplified is the positive divine enery of the universe, cannot be wielded by one who’s Intention is nihilism. It’s less complicated than it sounds, and provides good roleplaying hooks into how and why the character uses these powers. There are no defined “spells”, simply effects that the player describes, and the allowable effects (called Capabilities) are limited by Source and Intention. For example, a character with the Elemental source and the Intention of Creation can create air, earth, fire, or water, summon elemental beings, and similar effects. There are sample wielding effects that cover most common situations, but the player is allowed to use it freeform and let the gamemaster adjudicate the effects. It’s a unique system with a lot of potential.

Mechanics
Your quality score (CQ, or CQ plus Skill ranks) determines the die pool you roll. There’s a chart for this, but it’s also on the character sheet. The die type, as well as the size of the pool, increases with the Quality score. For example, a 10 rolls 5d4, a 20 rolls 4d6, a 35 rolls 5d8, an 85 rolls 3d20. I have mixed feelings about this. I like the idea of the increased die types, but it requires a lot of polyhedrals. For experienced gamers this is no big deal, but new players may not have 6d8 or 5d12 in their Crown Royal bag. The die rolls are added together and must beat a difficulty number to succeed. Simple is 10, average is 30, formidable is 50. Pretty simple. In opposed checks, no difficulty is assigned, and highest roll wins.

There are more crunchy bits if you want to use miniatures for combat, but they aren’t required. I like that the section on hazards (darkness, poison, disease, etc.) is titled “Real Concerns for an Imagined World”. Little things like that make this a fun read.

Summary
I am far more impressed than I expected to be. Yes, it owes a lot to Shadowrun, but it takes that ball and runs off in its own direction. It’s less cyberpunkish and even less fantasy-based, and has more of an epic science fiction feel. While reading it, I couldn’t help thinking about Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. Yes, there are “munchkin” elements to it and I can see it being used for rip-and-run, hack-and-slash style play, but I can also see it being used for more thoughful, investigative games as characters get involved in political intrigue and explore the setting’s mysteries. It’s less crunchy than I thought it would be, and the Wielding system would knock my socks off as a player; I hate playing spellcasters in games, but this would allow me to be creative and essentially just roleplay my spells. Overall, I give Alpha Omega a Good Touch.