The second entry to the awards this year has been a number of years in
development and was one of the RPG entries in the Dragons Den at Expo last
year. Sleeper takes place in a world
where the various supersoldier programs that were running at the time of the
cold war didn’t come to fruition while the war was still on.
But they’re up and about now the war is over…
Good premise and written in lively style, the background paints an
engaging picture of soldiers with powers beyond those of mortal men engaging in
rolling battles over objectives that not even they know the relevance of. There is an interesting range of powers
available through the book and many of them are anything but mundane in their
nature. An example of this would be (and
every group picked it out, which is why it’s appearing in these notes) Entrail
Burst, wherein the character gets to try and attack the enemy with their own
entrails…Or tie them up, using their own entrails…or…
You get the picture…
With such imagery present, it can’t be said that the game is for
children, and there is a mature players advisory in the opening pages that is
well earned by a short read through the background material. With this in mind, the teams moved on to the
rules and found something that polarised the opinions of the judges. The basic rules for skills are roll versus
target number with a variety of modifiers, but it was the combat rules where
the difference of opinion occurred. The
combat rules are designed to take place on a board, with modifiers for almost
every conceivable possibility that could enter into the equation, and rather
than flowing quickly as the single skill roll for the main skills does, the
modifiers system does slow combat down to the point where plotting distance and
tactical play take up a good portion of each combat round.
Those who were very much in with the flowing nature of the basic skill
tree and the background found this to be a little jarring when it came to
switching out of Roleplaying mode and going into Wargame mode (to put it in
perspective, there’s less rules in Warhammer 40k than there are here), whereas
those who saw the game as an extension of how these agents would be trained to
fight thought that it was an excellent addition and well matched the idea of
the game.
On the subject of artwork, the teams were aware that the copy sent to
us for the awards was an advance release, and that the finished product may
have more artwork in it, but there was a level of disappointment after seeing
the excellent front and rear covers to find that most of the artwork in the
book was either of the characters, or of a single scene that gets repeated at
another point in the book. Layout is
otherwise well done, plenty of content in the near three hundred pages.
And with that, we’re on to the Judges comments
Fantastic premise, plenty of atmosphere, doesn’t flinch from presenting
the world as a dark place full of shadows.
Not sure If it’s a tactical game with roleplaying elements or a
roleplaying game with tactical elements, It’s possible to do combat without the
board, but it doesn’t work as well.
If there’s going to be a miniatures game to support this, I’ll be
buying it, but a lot of crunch for an RPG.
