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Book 9: Robot follows Mongoose' wonderful eighth career book, Dilettante. There are some large shoes to fill, and unfortunately Robot fails to live up to its predecessor. The fluff is fine, giving insightful looks at a few different "ages" for robots, indicating the degree of social acceptance and rank that robots may achieve. Imaginative NPCs are provided, as well.
However, the rules system does not work. For instance, if creating a large Size 5 robot, unless one takes the Lightweight frame option, it is impossible to make a large android, because Size 5 legs cannot support the weight of the body. There is a "slot" system provided, but its usage is not fully explained. Do limbs "use up" slots, or does their slot statistic provide extra slots for gadgets? Legs are specifically mentioned to come singly, but there is no mention of whether arms come in pairs or as one. The number of slots indicated on the arm entry seems to indicate that they come in pairs, but no explanation is given.
The PC generation process is incredibly tedious, with players being required to do a lot of bookkeeping in order to remember whether their character will be smart enough to go adventuring and whether or not all of its spiffy gadgets will fit. Statistics are provided for human-like robots reminiscent of the Cylons from New Battlestar Galactica. However, these characters are incredibly unbalanced, gameplay-wise, and the careers provided do not mesh well with the point-buy rules.
I personally wish that this book would have followed in the path of Mongoose' Cybernetics book, simply listing components and how and where they fit on the body. If I ever run a campaign featuring androids, I will house rule that the Cybernetics book represent robots as well.
Puntuación: [2 de 5 Estrellas!] |
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