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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheAuldGrump" data-source="post: 2123242" data-attributes="member: 6957">This review originally appeared on the World Works Games forums as a response to a question about the game. Because of this the review takes a few digressions into how I handled certain situations. It also lists some books to supplement the game, the publishers of those supplements are credited for those who wish to find them.Well, I've been running and OGL Steampunk game for a good few months now, and opinions I do have. While I am likely going to list more problems than virtues I actually like the game a great deal, and very much enjoy running it, but I have had to tweak some stuff.The Good: Character classes are excellent, and fit their roles nicely.The player character races are nifty. You may not want to use all of them, but they are kind of fun. They include Human, Dwarf, Elf, Gnome (but not the D&D Gnome), Hybrid (think 'The Island of Dr. Moreau'), CoGS (intelligent constructs), Vampire, and Ghost (Not as powerful as the D&D equivalants). You spend background points when selecting your race and racial abilities, with Humans being free. An interesting way to balance things. Using this system Humans may come out a bit more powerful than you might like, because Human can be chosen for free they may spend those background points elsewhere.The Amazing Machine construction rules are involved, but a lot of fun - I tend to consider the items created to be prototypes, and lower the prices for production items.Vehicle Weapons are deadly! Like the ship weapons in Star Wars they deal x10 damage against characters... and with a Massive Damage Threshold equal to Con people can get very dead, very quickly. I liked this, but ended up patching it anyway - I will get into that below. The Bad: The weapons list is one of the two worst points of the product. The weapons list is essentially that from D&D, which means Sir Bothwick Nise may be strolling through Picadilly with a great axe over his shoulder... Bah! I ended up using the table out of Fantasy Flight's Sorcery & Steam and converting to a purchase DC.Some Amazing Machine features needed to be added, in particular the game has no rules for automatic fire. I ended up using the rules from Deadlands D20, which I preffer to the rules in D20 Modern. No burst (explosive) weapons were available either, so I added some.Prices... Oh my gods, the prices! It is cheaper to buy a ship, add a steam engine, and crew it than it is to buy a ticket to sail from New York to London... Telegrams costing per mile rather than per word... The prices and the weapons list are my two biggest complaints.Editing... Not one of Mongoose Publishing's strongpoints, this is worse than most, including outright contradictions in the course of two paragraphs, references to nonexistant feats, and others. I believe that many of the problems I have mentioned could have been found if they had spent another month editing the book.The Ugly: Amazing Machine creation is complicated enough that my players would have nothing to do with it until they reached 5th level. That said, I started playing with it as soon as I saw it, and loved it... very much dependant on the player.Lethality... Whoo Boy! Is it lethal! Especially since I added explosive burst weapons to the game. I 'fixed' this by adding a new rule that has become a favorite in my game - when a character fails the Fort. save against Massive Damage he may spend an Action Point to instead roll on a table for what limb is lost rather than die. I used the Called Shots rule out of Swashbuckling Adventures for this. Part of the reason for this rule is of course the lethality, but equally important - What is Steampunk without prosthetics? I use the Prosthetic rules out of Steam & Steel by E.N. Publishing, well worth the money as a PDF, and a print version just came out this week. So far only one character has lost a limb, and he was much happier wih that than he would have been with losing his character. If I had had it as the result of a critical people would have complained, as an alternative to death they love it!As you can see I tend to scavenge rules from a number of D20 sources, which is in my estimation the best thing about the D20 system, it is so easy to swipe stuff from multiple sources!While I spent a fair amount of words here complaining I do like the game, and think that it is worth the price, as long as you are willing to tinker with it.The Auld Grump, who does enjoy tinkering...*EDIT* One very nice thing about the Amazing Machine rules - they are compatible with the rules for mass combat from Mongoose Publishing's Strongholds & Dynasties and the naval rules from their Book of the Sea.</blockquote>

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