James Nicoll Reviews

Greg Gordon and Bryan Nystul’s 1993 DC Heroes Third Edition is (I know this will astonish readers) the third edition of the venerable superhero tabletop roleplaying game, DC Heroes Roleplaying Game.

Yes, I too am astounded that the tie-in game for one of the two comic book companies that claimed the trademark on ​‘superhero’ did not have the word ​‘superhero’ in the title of their superhero tabletop roleplaying game.

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Emanuele Galletto¹​’s 2023’s Ennie-award-winning Fabula Ultima is a level and class-based tabletop (in Japanese vernacular, ​“table talk”) role-playing game. Fabula Ultima’s² goal is to emulate the techno-magical worlds of Japanese role-playing computers games (JRPGs) like the Final Fantasy series³.

What do these games have in common? Fabula Ultima​’s eight pillars, common to all its settings are: ancient ruins and harsh lands, a world in peril, clashing communities, everything has a soul, magic and technology, heroes of many sizes and shapes, it’s all about the heroes, and mystery, discovery, and growth. Basically, decent people doing good in a dangerous world and having it mean something.

Normally, I would wait until I had the hardcopy in hand to review the game. My enthusiasm overcame my executive functions and I splurged on the PDF version of the game.

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Gavin Dady’s 2022 Project Bayern is a campaign for Mongoose Publishing’s TTRPG 2300 AD¹. Project Bayern details a nearly five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no person has gone before survey the Pleiades open star cluster, far beyond the edge of human-explored space.

But first! A word about William W. Connors’ 1988 Bayern, which was an adventure for Game Designers Workshop’s 2300 AD, which also detailed a nearly five-year mission to survey the Pleiades open star cluster, far beyond the edge of human-explored space.

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Colin Dunn’s 2021 2300 AD is an expansion of Mongoose Publishing’s current edition of Traveller. It is also the fifth version of the venerable near-future tabletop roleplaying game 2300 AD¹. The 1988 edition was reviewed here. Note that as this is an expansion for Traveller, you will need the Traveller core rules to use this set.

This review is brought by power of affordable bundles of holding and also spite².

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Jason Durall and Steve Perrin’s¹ 2023 Basic Roleplaying: Universal Game Engine (BRUGE) is the latest edition of Chaosium’s venerable simulationist house system, Basic Roleplaying (BRP). As one might guess from the title, BRUGE facilitates roleplaying in all genres.

Why release a new BRP²? There were two excellent reasons, the first of which was Hasbro bean-counter idiocy.

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Clarence Redd’s¹ The Comae Engine (V. 1.0) is a tabletop roleplaying game. First published in Beta in 2022, the most recent update came out in 2024.

The first thing buyers will notice on receiving the perfect-bound rulebook might be Axel Sauerwald’s striking cover art. The second would be the book’s length, or rather lack thereof. Comae is just fifty-four pages long. As they say, more words, deeper hole. Brevity can be strength.

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Tomas Härenstam’s¹ 2023’s Dragonbane: Mirth and Mayhem Roleplaying is the English language edition of the most recent edition of the venerable Swedish tabletop fantasy roleplaying game, Drakar och Demoner (DoD).

Dragonbane began as the Swedish translation of Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying and the Magic World supplement from Worlds of Wonder. It has evolved greatly over the decades and I am not sure how many editions it has had (have fun working out which versions were true new editions and which were merely variants!).

What waits the modern player inside the hefty, sturdy shipping box?

WARNING: Excessively Long Review Follows

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2022’s Blade Runner the Roleplaying Game Core Rules is an alternate-near-future/science-fiction/police-procedural roleplaying game. Tomas Härenstam was lead designer, Joe LeFavi was lead setting writer, with additional writing by Nils Karlén and Gareth Mugridge¹.

As one might expect from the title, this is an adaptation of the film Blade Runner … from a certain point of view. It is put out by Swedish game company Fria Ligan (Free League).

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L. Douglas Garrett, George Macdonald, and Steve Peterson’s¹ 1985 Danger International is a modern-day roleplaying game (modern per 1985), intended to cover adventures set ​“from 1945 to the year

2000 and beyond.” Published by Hero Games, Danger International (or ​“DI” as it was known to aficionados) is a descendent of the rules pioneered in 1981’s Champions.

And what did one find in the box? First, that there was no box. Danger International replaced the box sets of previous Hero Games, games with a 174-page perfect-bound text² (176 if you count the ads).

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Steve Jackson’s GURPS, 3^rd Edition (Revised) is (as one might expect) the third, revised edition of GURPS, whose first edition was published in 1986. Also, as one might expect, it is published by Steve Jackson Games¹, founded by GURPS designer Steve Jackson (human Texan)².

In a previous review, I discussed the sad history of the venerable tabletop roleplaying game The Fantasy Trip (TFT). It was doomed to decades of oblivion by a combination of clashing personalities and business setbacks. But all was not lost. We soon heard that Steve Jackson was working on a great unnamed roleplaying system, to be given a shinier name once Steve Jackson thought of one. In 1986, that shiny new name was revealed: GURPS. Which stood for Generic Universal Roleplaying System.

GURPS prevails. While a 4^thedition is available, this is a (commissioned) review of the 3^rdedition.

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