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Continuing on with my project to read the entire Heavy Gear line, we now have the Southern Republic Leaguebook. In an entirely unsurprising turn of events, it covers “the Land of the Snakes”: the Southern Republic, the biggest member of the AST and the most powerful single nation on the planet.

The AST has a stereotype of being expansionist and militaristic, with citizens having very little political freedom. This is based firmly in truth. However, the other side of the coin is the fact that citizens enjoy vast amounts of non-political freedom; as long as they don’t try to attack the state or criticize how it’s run (too openly), they have almost total personal freedoms as compared to many of their Northern counterparts. Attitudes are generally liberal and art flourishes. It’s a study in contrasts, and part of what makes Heavy Gear so cool: the writers go out of their way to make their societies complex, living things instead of stereotypes.

The book covers all the general bases. We have chapters on history, social norms, general lifestyles, etc, followed by brief 2-3 page writeups of the major cities with some barebones maps. The land area involved is huge, so this book can’t help being a bit sketchy in some details. What it does detail is interesting. The cities are quite distinct from each other, with each one having a very specific “feel”. For a GM setting up a game in the South, there’s a lot here to help him/her get started even if the fine details would have to be generated separately.

Not much else to say here. The book does what it sets out to do, with the only complaint being the sketchy level of detail in many places; something that is mandated by page count.

Like the Southern book counterpart, the Northern Gear Compendium is a collection of gear and vehicle data collected from earlier books, this time focusing on the designs used by the North. Well, not much to say here. Like the South counterpart, it’s a big book packed absolutely full of info, and lots of the detail on the histories of the various gears is quite interesting – and hey, this one contains the Ferret. Ferrets rock.

As always, this book would be so much better in color… but color printing is something that is only slowly becoming a reasonable option and in older books like this it’s greyscale all the way. Maybe the new version of Heavy Gear than SJG and DP9 is working on will offer books in color ? I can always hope.

Reading this sourcebook about the premier state in the Northern Confederacy, it strikes me how much effort the DP9 writers have put into dispelling the easy stereotypes from their game world. When we’re introduced to it, we’re told about “the imperialist, expansionist South” and the “religiously fundamentalist North” – but then when we get to the actual details (and there are a lot of details), we begin to realize that those stereotypes aren’t worth much.

Sure, the South is expansionist and aggressive, and the North is heavily steered by religion. However, the truth about both power blocks is a lot more complex than that, and is far from being a black-and-white affair. In other words, DP9 has written the game world to world much like our real world, and this attention to detail and realism is one of the best things about the game. That, and giant combat robots of course.

This book is quite straightforward as such and does what it says on the tin: describes the NLC, the biggest power in the C.N.C.S. We get details on Norlight daily lives, social norms, styles, fashion, religion and general politics. This is followed by couple-page writeups on the main cities (with general-level maps of city layouts), and then some important NPCs, some adventure seeds, and lots of other stuff. As a whole, it manages to paint the NLC in a very interesting light… far from being small-minded religious fundamentaists, they are a complex society shaped by centuries of harsh life and trying to balance between secularism and religion – with religious extremists seen as a problem by some inside the NLC.

Another very solid Heavy Gear sourcebook, and a must-have for anyone wanting to run a game in the NLC (obviously).

This book is pretty much what it says: a compendium of South gear and strider designs for the Heavy Gear roleplaying game. It gathers together designs from a couple of earlier books into a one-book reference.

Not much to say here, really. The gear writeups are mostly quite interesting, since they contain lots of game flavor (“this gear was popular with pilots due to X but was hard to get because of part Y shortages due to factor Z”) and aren’t just lists of technical data. I would have liked to see more side and back profiles of the gears – in most cases we’re only given a front view – but that’s a fairly minor complaint. This is a solid reference book into South gear designs and you’ll probably want this (or one of the later vehicle compendiums) if you’re running a South-based HG game. It’s also probably a fun addition to the bookshelf for people only playing the Blitz miniatures game, it gives a lot of history and background on the gears that’s (understandably) missing from the miniatures rulebook.

In the “best news for a while” department, the kick-ass scifi military / power armor game Heavy Gear is coming back in rpg form. Dream Pod 9 and Steve Jackson Games just announced that they will be collaborating on a new 4th edition of the Heavy Gear roleplaying game, coming out in 2009. The line design will be headed by the esteemed HG-guru and line editor John Buckmaster, and will feature a new streamlined version of the Silhouette rule system with focus on making it flow smoothly and fixing some current warts in the design (Complexity, etc). There will probably be 1-2 core books in print format, and then a pile of setting material and support stuff in PDF form (and possibly POD, as well) via e23.

This is fantastic news. I’ve always had a fondness for Heavy Gear, it’s probably the most detailed scifi world in roleplaying today and it tries very hard to be realistic on many levels (well, as much as a game featuring giant power armor suits can be “realistic”). There is enough “realpolitik” in the game to make your head spin. A new edition which would compile it all into smooth form for newcomers is just what the game needs, and we can always hope that it’s reasonably easy to integrate with Heavy Gear Blitz, DP9’s excellent miniatures wargame set in the Heavy Gear world.

There’s also a thread about this on rpg.net.

In other but also game-related news, my signed copy of the Magic Burner limited first batch (#62/200) arrived today, along with a spiffy t-shirt. I’ve only had time for a quick browse so far, started to read the thing on the way to work today. So far, looking extremely good. The guys quote Ursula K LeGuin as one of their main inspirations on “how magic might work”, and that gets huge points from me – I’ve always preferred LeGuin’s (and Cherryh’s) subtle magic to the D&D “eat fireball, kobolds!” style… though that does have its charms, too :). Like the other Burning Wheel books, this is more of a toolkit for building magic for your game than a ready-made list of spells.

If the rest of the book ends up being as cool as the beginning, I may just have to actually run a test game of Burning Wheel at some point.

The Southern Republic Army List is a book for 1st edition Heavy Gear, detailing the composition of the Southern Republican army. Now, this may sound dry as hell, but once again Dream Pod 9 delivers. While this book does have a huge amount of nitpicking detail, it also manages to be extremely interesting and includes a ton of plot hooks and NPC personalities. It details the structure of the Southern army, but also goes on to give detail on general Southern attitudes, army recuitment, various regiments (with histories), some vehicles, etc. Also included are adventure seeds to get a game running fast, and to top it off you are given four tactical scenarios (for the old HG tactical game).

Far from being a dry list of military “crunch”, this book managed to convey a nice “feel” of how the Southern army moves and thinks, and what its role in society is. If you intend to run a game involving PCs in the Southern army, this book is a must-have – and it gives very useful background detail and plot seeds for pretty much any South-based game.

Heavy Gear is quite easily the most detailed scifi game world in existence at the moment, with multiple thousands of pages of game world information published. This would be quite impressive in itself, but what makes it even more impressive is that the writers usually manage to breathe life into the mountains of technical, political and societal detail. It feels like a living, real world (which was a design aim, as far as I understand). One with giant fighting power armor robot thingies, of course… but even those make sense, mostly.

Character Compendium 1 is an old supplement to 1st edition Heavy Gear – and it’s really, really good. It’s also the only “character compendium”, so the number “1” is a bit redundant.

In a nutshell, this is a list of NPC characters. Some are movers and shakers in the HG world, some are just normal everyday people. So far, so good… but what makes it so good? The same thing as with most HG books: amazing amount of interesting detail. All characters have a “chesspiece” symbol next to them, denoting their importance to world affairs and the metaplot should you choose to follow that. Each is given a long writeup and most are given full stats. Most NPCs here are gathered into groups, and include relationship maps inside the group. Characters are given a multitude of options on how to use them in a game (as “ally”, “enemy”, “resource”, etc). As noted, the amount and quality of detail is just amazing.

This book is quite integrated with the Heavy Gear game world, and while you could use this as a general NPC resource for a scifi game, you’ll get the most mileage if you use this as intended, as an NPC resource for Heavy Gear. Simply put, this is probably the best book of this kind I’ve ever read. Far from being dry and boring to read (as I feared), it turned out to be quite fascinating.

Books of this quality are the main reason I love Dream Pod 9 games.

Heavy Gear Blitz L&L is the latest and greatest incarnation of the Heavy Gear tactical miniatures game. This version is an improved version of the original “Blitz!” ruleset, tweaked based on playtest and fan feedback over about a year of playing. It also includes updated versions of the 3 faction books, so this book is all you need (in addition to the minis, of course). The deluxe version (one I have) is in full color, the “normal” version has some color pages but is mostly B&W.

Having read the rules but not having played any games yet: the rules seem to be a nice balance between tactical options and speed of play. I’m mostly clear on how the game works, though I’d have to re-read the sections on Indirect Fire, Concealment and such before actually trying it out. With any luck, I’ll be able to coax some local players into running a demo/tutorial game, at Ropecon if nowhere else.

I’m currently planning a Paxton/PRDF 1000 TV force, based on some feedback I’ve gotten on the DP9 Blitz forum. I recently ordered some Gear minis for it from Noble Knight, and am waiting for the Coyote tankstrider minis to be available (sometime later this month) for the big(ger) guns. After that, I need to get me some paints and modeling tools, and start learning the construction + paint thing. Scary.

With the disclaimer that I have extremely limited experience with wargames in general, and that I haven’t actually played this yet: this seems to be a pretty solid ruleset, with lots of cool options, flavor and tactics. Looking forward to trying it out.

Some small notes that don’t really merit a separate post…

• Good things about our house #N: having two showers means that if one should break (as one did, by starting to drip ceaselessly), you still have the other one and don’t need to fix the thing right now! (just “asap” will do).

• The Cat Containment System (tm) is not fully operational and functioning. In other words, we finally completed the extra fencing on top of our yard fence, so that we can now let the cats out into the yard without too much furry leakage. Seems catproof so far; there is one theoretical escape route but that should vanish Saturday when we get a certain tree cut down. Who knows, maybe the felines will start digging an escape tunnel next – stay tuned.

• I’m slowly dipping my toes into miniatures. Having been fascinated with Dream Pod 9’s Heavy Gear roleplaying game for a long time, I’m now getting into the miniatures wargame side of that game. The new tactical system (Blitz!) has been getting a ton of praise from various directions, and the new expanded Heavy Gear Blitz! Locked & Loaded rulebook should be shipping in my direction next week. After I get that, I’ll decide what factions appeal to me most and get a few starter squads… and after that, I’ll actually need to learn how to assemble and paint the things. Scary. I’m not sure if there are many (or any) Heavy Gear tactical players in the Helsinki area, but if nothing else I can recruit some friends to help with playtesting. Don’t know exactly why, but even though “mechs” as a concept has always left me cold, the smaller power-armor style that Heavy Gear uses triggers all my “kewl!” buttons. The rpg rocks, and I’m hoping the miniatures game will too.

• The Delta Green: Targets of Opportunity ransom is now at $15750 (of $20k), so it needs 85 more pledges/pre-orders to be a “go!”. Still 12 days to go on that, no panic yet – but it’s hard to predict how this will go. So… if you’re on the fence on this, now would be a good time to throw in your $50. Even if you later decide you don’t need the book, it’s a limited printing of 1000 and the previous such (Eyes Only) sold out very fast. In other words, you can easily make a profit on eBay later, if needed (when available, Eyes Only has been eBay:ing for around $90-$100). Of course, the real reason to get this is to get some more great DG stuff. Not enough of that in the world.