Triple-Mega Future Player’s Companion RPG Review Part 1

Welcome again, Palaeoites! Today, we will be going for a new record, an unprecedented force, a mighty…TRIPLE MEGA REVIEW™! In this TRIPLE MEGA REVIEW™, we will be looking at the three parts of the Future Player’s Companion by the Game Mechanics. You know what that means; yes, slathering praise of the group that already wowed us with Modern Magic and the Modern Player’s Companion! Our first installment is of the first volume, Tomorrow’s Foundation.

Chapter 1

In a strange departure from the standard format, chapter 1 starts with species, rather than advanced classes or feats or even occupations. The new aliens are all Closed Content rather than Open Game Content, so I cannot legally use them, alas…that doesn’t mean we cannot look over them. The first on the list is the Khel-thirad, warrior reptiles who believe that their holy texts state that they must create a grand federation of various species to make an interstellar and interspecies empire. Khel-thirads are Large-size creatures with natural claw attacks and a penalty to Will saves against acting impulsively on their instinct. The Liandran are even more humanoid, resembling purple-skinned humans with fangs that denote their serpent ancestry. Liandrans have little in their favor beyond a natural psionic resistance. Then there are the Grandrites, rock-men from a volcanically active planet..not much to say beyond that. Okulans, on the other hand, reach the other end of the size and specialization; these little fellows are sort of like four-armed gnomes, and enjoy natural bonuses concerning space travel. Finally, there are the Pernocians (the token giant insect race) and the Vios (the token space wanderer race, who happen to be humanoid plants).

After those aliens, we get the Sol Colonials, essentially rules on human adaptation to their other planets. We have asteroid (backwater rock miners), Jovian (lawless jerks on the moons of Jupiter), Lunar (Moon colonists whose years on the lesser gravity have made them weaker in Earth-grav environments), Martian (wealthy snobs from various other colonies), Mercurian (biosphere-dwellers whose sense of light and day have deadened in the wake of the sun), Neptunian (space colonists who literally have to live with technology), Plutonian (gruff criminals in an iceball hell of a prison), Saturnite (used to bad weather), Uranian (determined ore-gatherers), and Venusian (people poison-ignorant fortitudes) colonists. There are also humanoid “environment packages” for fantasy planets: desert crawler (think Tatooine’s moisture farmers, but with aquaphobia), eclipse chaser (burrowing shells of humanity due to living on a world that constantly faces the sun), greenhouse dweller (venomous humanoids of jungle planets), soultech (humanoids that need nanites to live and are hurt by EMP blasts as if they are robots), submortals (think the underground colonies in Gurren Lagann or the morlocks from The Time Machine), and tectonic shambler (claustrophobic and flighty people who live on a world that is geologically unstable).

Next, we get new talent trees, some of which are fairly useful in a normal setting as well. The Strong Hero gets the talents within the trees of Feats of Strength (increasing his lifting capacity) and Man and Machine (which allows the Strong Hero to use his Extreme Effort, Ignore Hardness, and Melee Smash with a mecha, amongst other things). The Fast Hero gains talents that increase her combat speed with Efficiency and starfighter prowess with Starship Pilot, while the Tough Hero increases her survival rate with the Death’s Door talent tree and her cybernetic compatability with the Body Enhancement tree. The Smart Hero, for once, doesn’t get the shaft; he gains the Skill Enhancement talent tree (which speaks for itself), as well as upping the levels of technology with the Advanced Engineering talent tree. The Dedicated Hero gains obscure knowledge and judgement capabilities with the Lore tree or navigation and self-sufficiency with the Starhopper Tree, and the Charismatic Hero can either expect the foe with the Know Your Enemy tree or temporarily empart skill, feat, or talent bonuses with the Instruction tree. There are also some new talents for old talent trees, but they’re mostly just icing on the cake.

As to be expected, yes, there are new occupations: Alien Visitor (aliens that are spies for their species), Dimensional Outsider (dimension hoppers), Enforcer (vigilantes), Experiment (test tube babies that escaped from their labs), Lone Survivor (the last remnant of a species, planet, or organization, like the Doctor), Netizen (the ultimate computer geek), Temporal Castaway (a time traveller forced to make do with a new time period and living in it), Terraformer (architects on a planetary scale), and Universal Vagabond (travellers of the galaxies). These are fairly well-made, and add a rounding out to the areas that d20 Future didn’t decide to poke on its own will.

Chapter 2

Chapter 2 is on skills and feats. Some of the new skill uses are space-centric, such as using Climb in space, but there are also more generic ones such as using Forgery to fake a transmission signal or barcode. There is also a new skill, Craft (Biological), which allows you the fun of creating your own lab creatures. There are also two new languages available: Alien Language (as a placemat title for whatever alien you use, but it makes sense to note how an alien language functions differently from more readily accessible and more easily learned languages) and Machine Code. Like skills, some of the feats are fairly generic…but in this case, it is because they are reprints from the Modern Player’s Companion. Oh well, everyone does that (including myself) at times, because the Open Game License means you can share something from one OGL book that your readers may not read. There are new feats that focus on mutations (such as Benevolent Mutation), genetics (Gene Spliced and Gene Therapist, amongst others), nanites (like Craft Nanotech and Nanotaker), starships (including Bridge Commander), and cybernetics and tech (such as Cyberphile and Ghost in the Machine). There are also some feats that don’t go into a thematic set and sit alone and unique, such as Mecha Engineer and Jetpack Flare. There are also a few feats that work well only in certain types of campaigns; for instance, Dimensional Vagabond and Time Walker might work well for a Doctor Who-style campaign, but not so much a Star Warsy one.

Chapter 3

This chapter deals with replicating certain professions with only the six base classes rather than advanced classes; if you’ve read my Modern Player’s Companion, you’ll know what’s coming, so I’ll be brief and just list the ones here. There are the Aide (Charismatic Hero/Dedicated Hero), Astrophysicist (Smart/Dedicated), Cybertechie (also Smart/Dedicated), Freighter Captain (again Charismatic/Dedicated), Ground Pounder (Strong/Tough/Charismatic), Gunner (Fast/Smart), Marhsal (Tough/Dedicated), Mechanic (Smart/Strong), Medic (Smart/Dedicated), Miner (Strong/Tough), Navigator (Smart/Dedicated), Net Jockey (Smart/Charismatic), Pilot (Fast/Smart), Pirate (Tough/Fast), Scavenger (Smart/Strong/Tough), Warbot (Strong/Tough/Fast robot), and Xenobiologist (Smart/Dedicated). Yes, there are a lot of Smart and Dedicated Hero combos, but that’s okay since each comes with a lot of details on occupations, skills, feats, and talents to take that make each special. Most are also easily put in the modern day, which makes this invaluable.

Art

The art is fairly solid, typical Game Mechanics (similar to typical RPGObjects ). A few of my favorites are a woman with her alien bodyguard, a charismatic pilot grinning as he walks from his ship, and the Ground Pounder because he is sitting on an upside-down box..I dunno, something about it just makes me giggle.

Final Thoughts

There are some pretty cool ideas here, and it solidifies the holes that were in d20 Future. I really hope the Game Mechanics will return to d20 Modern some day, because the small collection of books they made for it are amongst some of the best. I guess that makes sense, since they have members on their team who actually wrote the d20 Modern Core Rulebook. 10/10.

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Expect some new posts over at Shadows of Arkaden today, some new Celtic Gamings when they come (really, read them, they’re awesome. Rappy commands you!), and the next part of the mega review tomorrow: on Tomorrow’s Hero.