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Normally I disdain the "traditional' judicial attire still favored in some countries, finding the black robes encumbering and the wig ludicrous. However on this occasion I shall tolerate them, for Verne is set in the era where such costume was official judicial raiment, I am Judge Death and I have come to judge it.
"Verne" (First person to make an Jim Varney reference dies horribly.) is the steampunk/victorian fantasy setting for EABA, written and produced by Greg Porter in his citadel, BTRC.
I am not by and large a steampunk fan, my only acquaintance with the genre being a passing familiarity with the genre's seminal RPG "Space 1889".
I'm more of a hard SF devotee, preferring future settings with plausible science in them to most fantasy themed settings, but even tho I'm hardly an aficionado of the genre I find Verne to be so well written and thoughtfully designed it has much appeal to me.
As usual with Greg Porter's work, a lot of the core premise of the genre has been given a very thorough examination and retooling. Verne does not so much create a specific world in the steampunk genre as it lays out a guide to creating your own worlds.
Verne lays out the ugly realities of the real victorian era that many people would find repugnant and intolerable today, such as institutionalized racism, classism, sexism and nationalism, then offers a view of the victorian era as it could have been if the science of the day had proven to be true, and things like "ether" had existed.
You can recreate the works of Verne, Wells, Doyle, Burroughs, etc with Verne. Martian walkers can invade and lay waste to london with their heat rays, renegade geniuses can prowl the oceans in their fantastic submarines and devilishly clever oriental villains can conspire to dominate the world and (GASP!) have their way with our women!
Verne is a fairly crunchy supplement, adding some rules and gear that could be of interest to any and all EABA fans, even those not normally interested in the genre to any great degree such as my own good self.
The artwork in Verne is a vast improvement over earlier EABA products, tho still not up to, say, TSR standards. This is quite fine with me and I'd rather have game products where the material was more developed than the art as is the case is too many companies products. The art was a nice touch and a pleasant surprise, and I'm quite satisfied with it.
In addition to all of the above, Verne has a chargen program for it that's quite attractive and complete, done in color and using period graphics. It allows you to create a character the usual way or to answer a set of questions and have it suggest a character for you. Note that the chargen is a separate product from Verne and must be downloaded separately. I fail to understand why it was not bundled into the Verne pdf...
EABA has needed something like this for a while, even if it has some limits, and is a real improvement for EABA. I must say I was somewhat disappointed that my last EABA purchase, "Fires of Heaven", didn't even have a character sheet of it's own and seeing this for Verne only exacerbates my disappointment.
In terms of quality, Verne seems to represent a real paradigm shift for EABA products and I hope the trend continues. I wish the shift had started one product earlier, however.
If you like steampunk or EABA, this is well worth getting.
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Posted Tue Mar 8, 2011 5:36 am