Summary: The Rookie's Guide to Psi-Talent does a pedestrian job of outlining the paranormal phenomena that plague Mega-City One. A handful of unique feats and an innovative system for summoning/possession enhance otherwise standard content. The writer does a good job of presenting the flavor of the Judge Dredd world though word choice and world specific jargon.
Structure and Content
The Rookie's Guide to Psi Talent is a 92 page soft-cover book detailing Psi-Judges and the various psychic phenomena they encounter. These phenomena range from rogue civilian psykers to demons from other dimensions.
Structurally the game book follows the same format as the WoTC books, with a colorful border and chapter titles just below the page number. The first sections of the book deal with metaphysics, specialization (similar to that of the wizard class in standard D20), new powers and new feats. The second half of the book covers the summoning of, possession by and stats for various extra-dimensional entities. It concludes with a rules summary that covers the various new powers, feats and rules.
In a departure from the main Judge Dredd book Mongoose presents prestige classes and equipment between the summoning and entity sections. Although this more closely matches the layout of their "Encyclopedia Arcane" line, it also breaks the reading continuity of the book. Players have to flip though at least one section with modestly privileged information before getting into the kit provided for their use.
Applicability and Tone
With a narrowly focused supplement of this type two questions spring to mind. First, does the supplement provide useable rules to accurately portray the specific setting? Second, does the supplement create and maintain a consistent tone that you can then take into your games?
The Rookie's Guide to Psi-Talent does an acceptable job of modeling the psychic powers presented in the comics. In particular the addition of dimensionalists (specialists whose psionic powers manipulate dimensional barriers) allows the system to model the various cultists, demons and assorted weirdness that plagues Judge Dredd. Furthermore the structure of the summoning/possession rules grants considerable bonuses to individuals willing to sacrifice others, engage in rituals and otherwise act like good little warlocks. This keeps with the fun "medieval" flare of dimensional activity in the Judge Dread comics.
The book also does an acceptable job of extending the basic innovations in the Judge Dredd main book. It includes both new prior lives and the option to call for an exorcist squad as backup when faced with an entity that Judges cannot handle.
The author fares less well in maintaining a consistent tone. The various psionic powers presented early in the book are for the most part renamed spells; the renaming helps but players will recognize most of these from other supplements. A handful of the psionic feats provide unique flavor, but most are simply reprints of existing feats. The prestige classes mostly follow simple, accepted formats without providing a clear view of the background and motivations of characters associated with them. The shining standout in this section are the Celebrity Psi and the Snakehead, both of which at least provide clear story hooks in the prestige class for civilian characters.
The entities presented represent Judge-level antagonists. Springing even a ghoul on a party of civilians early will result in catastrophic results. In part this bias strongly represents the comic books though; entities fall outside of the ability of all but the strongest characters (i.e. Judges) to deal with.
Innovations
The Rookie's Guide to Psi-Talent includes the following D20 innovations:
· The DC to summon entities increases at half the rate of the DC to control the same entity. This allows characters or creeps to summon entities far beyond their power to control.
· By the same token the mechanics for preparation, group rituals and sacrifices encourage the formation of cults. This in turn creates a logical reason for cult enemies for Judges and civilian character groups.
· The serious physical penalties for possession (physical deformation, experience loss and permanent ability damage) force the players to choose between rescuing the victim alive and extending him the mercy of a quick death. It also allows the Games Master to create truly deformed villains who traffic with entities to sustain their twisted lives.
Short Comings
The Rookie's Guide to Psi-Talent falls short in the following areas:
· The repackaged spells and feats provide little value to the players and may actually damage the flow of the game. This problem affects all five talents to some degree. The dimensional talent is the least effected. Pyrokine suffers the most, with standby spells like burning hands and fireball making an appearance.
· The prestige classes seem overly mechanical in nature rather than presenting unique backgrounds. Many focus solely on esoteric manipulations of the new rules presented rather than on expressing a unique part of the setting.
Conclusion
If you intend to run a Judge Dredd game with psychic entities as adversaries and psi-judges as primary characters then the summoning rules and entity sections make this book worth the price. If you intend run a Judge Dredd game with just psi-judges or rogue civilian psyker the Rookie's Guide settles back into the pack as one of several variant psionic rule-sets you could explore. If you have no plans to include psionics or entities in your Judge Dredd campaign you can safely skip this book.
