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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Messageboard Golem" data-source="post: 2009450" data-attributes="member: 18387">I have a confession to make straight away - I am a complete and total Judge Dredd fanatic!  Therefore, this will not be a review on how good Judge Dredd is as a setting - it will be a review on how well Mongoose have done to actually creating the feel of Mega-City One in the new game.The new Judge Dredd role-playing game (I remember the old Games Workshop one well!) is a full colour hardback book, running to just over 250 pages long.  After an introduction and a ‘welcome to Mega-City One’ section (which was quite cool in that it ‘funnels’ readers into newbies, Dredd fanatics and d20 experts and tells them what they need to read), the rulebook launches straight into characters.  Only humans are allowed in this game, and three character classes are provided - Street Judges, Psi-Judges and Citizens (or perps, as we 2000AD veterans like to call them).  The judge character classes are seriously powerful - d12 Hit Dice, good saves and lots of feats.  Citizens are quite sick in comparison, but they get a load more skills and a choice of ‘prior lives’ such as Goon, Wall Hopper, Rogue Psyker and Citi-Def Soldier.  Most of the favourites from the comic strip seem to be in there.  The rulebook makes it clear that citizens are not designed to be balanced with judges at the same level and so are not supposed to be placed in the same group - obvious to those who know the comics, but it is worth pointing out.A short skills and feats chapter changes a few core d20 rules and adds a few other bits and pieces to cope with Mega-City One.  Computer Use, Craze, Drive, Medical, Pilot, Psi-Scan, Streetwise and Technical skills are added to the mix, with a few others, like Diplomacy, taken away.  There are way too many new feats to list here, but some personal favourites would be Bike Wheelie, Luck of Grud, and Menacing Presence.The Equipment chapter is huge.  The first few pages covers all the standard issue equipment that all judges get, such as the Lawmaster bike and Lawgiver gun.  The Lawgiver alone takes nearly two pages of rules to cover, as it comes with 6 different ammunition types and all sorts of other goodies!  Citizens get a far wider choice of equipment, with everything from Spit Guns and Sonic Cannons to Anti-Mugging Suits and Mega-Skunk (is this the first time that ganja has appeared in an RPG’s equipment list???).The Combat chapter adds all sorts of new tweaks to the d20 system to cover firefights and what have you - Armour Class is no longer around, replaced by a Defence Value, and armour now provides Damage Reduction.  Not sure how that will work with the d20 purists, but in our few games it seems to work well enough.  Other rules cover aiming (useful for any d20 game, perhaps), rapid fire, linked weapons, stray shots and called shots.The Vehicles and Robots chapter does what it says.  The new vehicle rules can seem a little heavy going at first, but you soon get the idea and they seem to reflect 300mph chases down the motorway very well.  Collisions seem very punishing but then, I guess they ought to be!  You don’t want to be crashing into anything if you are on a bike. . .  All sorts of vehicles from jet packs to huge merchant hoverships are detailed, though the pictures here are drawn rather than taken from the comics, and a few look a bit odd - the big luxury mo-pad doesn’t look as nice as the small cheap one, and the Servo-Droid just looks silly.  There are all sorts of modifications to be made to vehicles too, though I think I recognise one or two from Car Wars.  Fits in well with Mega-City One though.Psi-Talent rules in the game seem very close to those in Psionics Handbook, though they have been messed around a little - there is no longer any straight psychic combat, though you can still get a similar effect through various powers.  Some of the powers are the same as in the Wizard’s book, though there are enough new ones to keep you interested.The Justice Department - now this is a chapter I liked!  There is a full description of all the different divisions of the Justice Department (way more than ever appeared in the Games Workshop version), details on how to actually play a judge, making arrests, sentencing and, something I really like, actual rules for calling on back up units such as H-Wagons, Med Squads, Clean Up Crews and all the rest.  A range of judge vehicles are included, as well as rules for disciplinary action (get sent to Titan!).  Last, there are the prestige classes, or specialist judges, as they are called - Med-Judge, Tek-Judge, SJS (yippee!) and Wally Squad.The Life on the Streets chapter seems to be the same sort of thing, but for citizen characters.  There are full rules for running a street gang, similar to the Leadership feat in the Dungeon Masters Guide, but actually generating an income.  There are also way more prestige classes, such as assassin, blitzer, bodyguard and nark.  A Tour of Mega-City One is one of the largest chapters, and gives a complete run down of the setting of the game, doing a good job at getting across why it is the most dangerous place on Earth, and why the overcrowding causes so much crime.  Nestled away in this chapter are some excellent technical-type pictures of the Lawgiver, Lawmaster and the Manta Prowl Tank.  The Creeps chapter gives a good range of baddies for judges and citizens to fight (including rules for running intelligent apes as player characters!), followed by a Campaign chapter that shows how to play Judge Dredd and really capture the feel of Mega-City One.The book winds up with a detailed Timeline, a much needed Glossary (there is a whole new slang language to learn!), an index and character sheets.  Overall, this book feels very polished, though the quality of the artwork did suffer in a couple of places.  But that full page picture of the Manta Prowl Tank went a long way to making up for that!As I warned before, I am a complete Dredd-head, so I did not need to be sold on the setting of this game.  What I was looking for was a game that fitted my expectations.  Did it succeed?Oh, yes!  We have not tried citizen characters out yet, but, playing as a judge bombing down the streets at 200 mph with bike cannon blazing as we pursued an entire gang of perps, the rules fit the setting perfectly.  It has been a few years since I last played the Games Workshop game, but starting this felt like meeting an old friend again.  If you are even slightly interested in Judge Dredd, you will love this book.  If you have never come across him or only seen the film (ugh!), it is well worth checking out.  There is certainly nothing else like it on the market right now!</blockquote>

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