Brave New World was a super-hero role-playing game that came out on the cusp of the Nineties from Pinnacle Entertainment Group, designed and written by now New York Times best-selling novelist Matt Forbeck. The game ended up at Alderac Entertainment Group, who didn't do a lot with the game over the years. Forbeck recently posted on Facebook that he was getting the rights to Brave New World back, and was hoping to launch a Kickstarter project for a second edition this summer.
Brave New World was almost painfully 90s in its influences and presentation. The introductory comic, and art throughout the book could have as easily been at home in any number of Image Comics of that time period. Books like Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns and the Claremont-lead runs of X-Men from the 80s and 90s figured heavily into the tone of the game's setting. You can also see the influence of comics like Youngblood and WildCATs in the world building.
The setting of the game is an alternate present where President Kennedy was able to survive the attempted assassination against him (although in this world the assassination plan was lead by a super-villain), thanks to the intercession of "good" super-powered beings, called Deltas in the setting. This lead to Kennedy taking an action not dissimilar to the Mutant Registration Act from the X-Men comics, and eventually cracking down and declaring martial law in the United States. Brave New World posited a more complex approach to politics than you would normal see in the comic book source material, where social and political status quo tend to be maintained regardless of the presence of beings who should change the world around them.
The "present" of the game has a world where most freedoms aren't all that free. Deltas have no privacy, are subject to be called up to service by the government even if they aren't in active service, the actions of super-villains have destroyed parts of New York City and Chicago, and the interference of Deltas in U.S. political actions has lead to limited nuclear engagements between the United States and the Soviet Union. It is a world informed by the comic books of the time, and shaped by people who lived through the scares of the Cold War. It was not a happy comic book world.
One issue with the setting is that there was a mataplot that was hinted at in game material, not all of which was revealed by the time that the game went out of print. Secrets dealing with some of the most powerful Deltas in the setting, and the truth of what happened to Chicago, only ended up getting revealed through posts on Forbeck's website after the fact. This was always a gamble with games that utilized unrevealed metaplot, and in the case of Brave New World, it could be considered to be a weakness.
There were also vampires in the world, because of course there were. It was the Nineties, after all. There is also a strange "class" of Delta that gets powers from bargaining with demons, or other extra-dimensional places. Most likely these Deltas were going to be important to some unrevealed secret or another of the setting that wasn't addressed in the core book. As it is, the characters are a bit jarring, and stick out in a setting that otherwise doesn't appear to have a lot in the way of magic going on in it. This demonstrates why rolling out secrets of the setting over the course of a game line can cause troubles for the game. Yes, there would be a Bargainers supplement for the game, but what if there hadn't been?
Brave New World was not a generic super-hero game by any stretch of the imagination. It was definitely created to tell a story set in a dystopian world, where super-powered beings can be as much of a detriment to their world as they are a help to it. That can be a strength, or a weakness, depending on what sort of approach that groups want to their games. If you're looking for four color action in your super-hero games, Brave New World probably won't be the game for you.
For me, the system is where Brave New World really sings. Like with Savage Worlds, the other (and more popular) game system from from Pinnacle Entertainment, the game system for Brave New World comes from early edition Deadlands and other Pinnacle games. Where Savage Worlds embraces the wide variety of polyhedrals available to gamers, Brave New World only uses d6s. This makes the game feel more like West End Games' D6 System in play. This shouldn't be surprising since Pinnacle's Shane Hensley worked on various D6 System and TORG games for WEG. It is just that with Brave New World the influence is much more direct than with Savage Worlds.
Brave New World does have a cool mechanic that is fitting for the super-powered world of the game. Each character has a number of "tricks" for their powers and abilities, refinements of abilities or extra "oomph" that can be unlocked. The task resolution mechanic in the game uses a degree of success where, for every five points over a roll's target number, you can use one of the character's tricks on the result. This can make a character's attacks more potent, which can be handy, or give them better results on a skill attempt. It is a great mechanic that fits well with the source material of the game.
There are flaws. There are a lot of skills (which isn't unusual) for a game of this era. Grouping skills by attribute does cut down on deciding what skills to pick, but I think that a game about a super-hero rebellion in a dystopian present could probably use fewer skills like "carpentry" in the mix. Games of this era found themselves trying to find a middle ground between being a generic system and a specialized one, and Brave New World can suffer from being overly generic in some places. However, despite this the underlying system of the game is a solid one, and with the right tweaks could really push a Brave New World revamp into popularity.
The metaplot would have to go for a new version of Brave New World. Even White Wolf, the poster child for Nineties metaplot, doesn't utilize this like they used to. Hopefully, the developers will learn from the lesson of not having been able to get everything about the background of the game out the last time, and not have a stream of secrets about the world this time around.
Setting-wise I think that a second edition would benefit from moving to a dystopian near future, rather than a direct reboot of the setting from the first edition. Having an alleged President Kennedy who is pushing one hundred years old could start to strain the credibility of the world. Draw an inspiration from the Hunger Games franchise, and have the building of a rebellion against a totalitarian regime lead by the Deltas, who are springing up again for the first time in fifty years or so. De-coupling the setting from the "real world" can give the game longer legs as well, and keep the new edition from becoming dated as quickly as the first edition was.
Rereading Brave New World away from the context in which it was created, and in which I had originally played it, does show that, much like many of the comics that influenced the creation of the game, it has not aged well. Some of the political material is a bit heavy handed in hindsight, and setting material like the idea that no more Alphas (sort of super-Deltas of the setting) have developed in the world can be a little hard to swallow. A new edition of Brave New World really needs to find the sweet spot between the fidelity to the setting and maintaining the agency of the individual play groups that will explore this world. Getting away from deep secrets of the setting will help with this as well.
System-wise the game would benefit from a better, and more robust, power-creation system. This would allow for the creation of characters that wouldn't look as similar to each other, and it would give the players more control over their characters. Template-based character creation systems allow for quicker character creation, but sometimes at the expense of player buy-in with their characters. Super-hero games can be the most complicated when it comes to character creation, but I think that the payoff comes from players having more engagement with their characters, and by extension with the setting of a game.
If you haven't played Brave New World before, and it sounds interesting, be sure to check out the PDFs of the game's first edition that are currently available for sale on the OneBookShelf sites.
