Stupid kids like me played West End's Star Wars or FASA's Star Trek or TSR's Star Frontiers. Probably the main reason for this neglect is that by the time it really hit its stride the market for sci-fi games was already saturated. RoleMaster's redheaded stepchild doesn't get nearly the love it deserves. But if anything I've said about the game picques your interest, do yourself a favor and check out Jason Sartin's excellent review. That, my friends, is the exact moment when SenZar started to look redundant. I run a epic gestalt campaign where one guy took a level in Ninja just because he can. In fact, the only reason why I never played this game was because I didn't locate a copy until after 3.x was on the scene. Everything in the book was dedicated to the basic idea of rocking out - hard. I am not pulling your leg when I say that before the publication of D&D 3E this was the single tightest design in the field of killing people and taking their stuff. Because SenZar is the most mechanically-coherent adolescent male power fantasy I have ever seen. But if you judge the game on its own merits, as adolescent male power fantasy drivel, then SenZar gets a big shiny gold star. And its over-testosteroned "Gaming in God Mode" approach is the absolute height of adolescent male power fantasy drivel. I will grant you that it's yet another fucking fantasy game. This game has a World of Synnib arr-level bad rap over there. You gaming hipsters who know SenZar from its bad rep on RPGnet are probably laughing your asses off right now.
Although you could call achieving the rank of Lord of Creation a victory condition, the real heart of the game is much simpler than that: Here are the keys to the multiverse, kids. This is kinda like the ancient Gygaxian concept of the Junior Dungeon Master, as Lords of Creation are encouraged to GM when the party ventures into their realm. At level ten you are declared a Lord of Creation and you gain the ability to make your own worlds. Although the PCs start out as simply skilled normal people, each new level unlocks some of the hidden godlike powers contained within them. PCs in Lords of Creation worked on different rules than everyone else. And the large NPC section includes stats for Pussy Galore. The random encounter charts include things like "shady contact" and "priviledged henchman". The other fake sequel Victory Games did, Goldfinger II, reputedly sucked donkey balls.īut questionable adventure modules aside, the corebook is solid. The one adventure module I'd really like to flip through is You Only Live Twice II: Back of Beyond. The core rulebook contains enough guns and cars and whatnot that extrapolating your own wouldn't be very hard. The latter was the first 'equipment porn' book I ever owned for an RPG, though I'm not sure it's worth the collector prices nowadays. But the other supplements were good, particularly Thrilling Locations and the Q Manual. I can't quite bring myself to plonk down money for an adventure I've already seen. The line supporting this product was pretty extensive, but large chunks of it consisted of adventure modules that were replays of the movies. Unlike most rpgs, these seduction rules are crunchy enough I don't think I'd feel weird if one of the PCs tried to bed their own Bond babe.Īs a kid this game was a little too heavy for my group, but nowadays I look at oo7 and see something that would work well for a explodey and sexy little one-shot. And the first and maybe still the best system for seduction ever devised. Guns, fistfights, gadgets, chase scenes, and casinos. If it was a Bond staple, this game covered it. Released by Avalon Hill's short-lived Victory Games imprint in '83 as part of Operation: Oops! We Passed On That Gygax Manuscript And Now We Have Some Catching Up To Do, designer Gerard Christopher Klug did everything right with this one.
The hip new kids have Spycraft 2.0 and the grognards clutch their tattered copies of Top Secret, but for me the quintessential espionage rpg will always be James Bond 007. Today I'm just chewing the fat (or mangling the electrons, whatever) about some old games.