This is a review?
Last night some friends invited me to play Warhammer's
Dark Heresy, a new p&prpg. The gimmick is that the entire system can be played with 2d10.
So I made a character. I spent over 30 minutes randomly rolling (you can also manually select them) such minutiae as height, eye color, even a debilitating trait (I walk with a slight limp which I immediately declared to be a gangster lean). I randomly rolled "The pain of the bullet is ecstasy compared to damnation!" Toughness +1. Hell yeah.
The character creation system is rad. Being a pen and paper master (level 28 Game Master with a Greatsword forged from the soul of a dead overgod and boots of PCKing*) I had little trouble with it. On the other hand I can see how a newb would be turned off by this potentially rather lengthy process. On a third, mutant hand many gamers I know go apeshit for character creation, and the guys at Black Industries seemed to have a very good understanding of this.
With my character locked and loaded (Victus Kylo is a Void-born Psyker with powers over the human mind and a plastic surgery fetish) we started to play.
Sweet loins of Jesus.When it came time for battle we spread CD cases and about 25 random D6 out on the floor. The DM declared that dice were crates. Our figurines moved 1-2 cm. per round, rapidly dispatching seven armed thugs from the Scum sector (the uberghetto) of an icy world's capital city. We were delighted to learn that Khorn had sent an invasion force to summon a Collector precursor in an attempt to inspire Warp-borne corruption in our Imperial sector. During downtime I got my eyelids and lips removed.
The combat system is fast, adrenaline-friendly and above all very satisfying.
When the session was over we sat around praising the many neat features of the system, not the least of which was the 5 minute leveling at the end. Despite purchasing three new abilities with my 400 experience points I failed to level, which was refreshing. While more fast-paced than D&D's advancement it's still slow enough for months of good solid roleplay/combat potential. Leveling will never take more than two minutes, keeping the flow intact if you've got any kind of a decent GM**.
All around great purchase. All that is needed is this one book and a single d10, though it helps to have 2 or more (We had 24). The most I had to roll was 2d10 but later in the book a weapon that deals 5d10 damage was noticed by one player, prompting a "Holy fuck that's a ton of damage!"
This system is exactly what I was looking for in FFAGS: A compact, easy to learn roleplaying system with enough realism to satisfy the PCK in me and enough flavor to satisfy the storyteller in me.
I give it 8/10 in the category of gameplay and 8/10 for flavor.
Reviewer comparison ratings:
BESM: 8/10 gameplay and 7/10 flavor
Star Wars Sagas Edition: 9/10 gameplay and 7/10 flavor
D&D 3.0: 6/10 gameplay and 8/10 flavor
D&D 3.5: 7/10 gameplay and 8/10 flavor
*They call me a Player Character Killer, beezy.
**All that is needed to be a good GM is the knowledge that most players don't really care if it's a bit cheesy, contrived or just plain predictable. It's more important that they pay attention to who's bored and what that player likes to do, then provides those situations in at least some haphazard semblance of a meaningful timeline.